Slowly, the shaggy head nodded. “Hunkapa—Hunkapa understand. Go together. Ehomba look out for his friend.” Huge fingers squeezed painfully tight, but the herdsman did not complain. He glanced back over his shoulder.
“You coming, Simna? Or does your love for this vehicle extend to floating downriver with it?” He mustered an ironic smile. “Swim a little ways and your feet might strike a sandbar.”
“They might strike something else, too,” the swordsman growled ominously. Sheathing his sword and holding his backpack above his head, he slipped both legs over the side of the steadily sinking wagon. With a grimace, he dropped into the cloudy, silt-rich water.
“Together now.” Ehomba allowed his hand to be half crushed as he stepped resolutely over the side. River buffeted him as Hunkapa Aub’s much greater mass displaced water. The ungainly hulk disappeared—only to reappear seconds later with its head well above the surface. Astonishment and delight beamed from the guileless, hair-covered face.
“Hunkapa not have to swim! Hunkapa’s feet on bottom!”
“I hoped it was so.” Treading water while struggling to keep his pack dry, the herdsman started to kick for the shore. Against his back, the sea-bone sword quivered orgasmically at the sensation of being submerged. Anyone else would have found the unexpected vibration unnerving, but Ehomba had anticipated it. What more natural than that the wondrous weapon should react to being placed in the surroundings from whence it had originally evolved?
Suddenly he was out of the water, high and dry, heaved skyward by a robust thrust from below. No gigantic eel bursting from the depths this time, but the hand of Hunkapa Aub, lifting him from beneath. Effortlessly, the herdsman’s huge companion placed his angular friend on broad, hirsute shoulders. In this manner Ehomba rode in comparative comfort the rest of the way to the shore. Only his ears suffered, bruised by an unending stream of blistering profanities from the struggling Simna, who, forced to swim, trailed well behind.