Blade would not have survived his first mission as an agent if he had not been able to control his instincts, which at the moment were strongly calling out for a hasty retreat. Having calmed himself, he began considering ways of crossing the river and following the trail of smashed trees to wherever it led. The bridge was useless, the river too deep and swift to ford. Bitter cold though it was, he would have to swim it. He half-walked, half-slid down to the bank, threw his club aside to leave both hands free, and slipped into the water.

Before he had stopped shuddering from the cold of the water that seemed to flow straight from the heart of those glaciers to the north, the current had him, whirling him out into midstream so fast that the rushes he grasped to slow himself snapped off in his hand. In midstream the current was moving him as fast as he could have jogged, and there was a moment when a submerged rock rasped at him and flipped him head down. He lunged his head into the air again, spitting and coughing, then thrashed furiously across the current until suddenly he felt its tug lessen. A moment later he could reach out and grasp a projecting root on the far bank. Shaking with cold, waving arms and legs frantically to restore life to them, he scrambled onto the bank and began to make his way back to the path. In the short time he had been in the river, it had carried him nearly a hundred yards downstream.

The best route back to the bridge was straight along the riverbank, though «straight» meant a bruising, skin-tearing scramble over boulders, past close-grown trees, through thorny patches of undergrowth. He was sweating, scratched, and swearing before he had covered fifty yards. It was just beyond that point that he found the body.