<div class="floatright">(http://i63.tinypic.com/1zq8oc6.jpg)</div>Pozhvim was realizing that he'd made another mistake.<br/><br/>Swimming upriver was hard, and even moving in the shallows and running along the bottom as best he could was slow going. Nug was much stronger than him. Just like with the cliff, she'd be able to move faster than he did through this. But, he realized, she wouldn't need to be swimming in the river to hide her path like he was. If she came out and caught sight of him, she could simply run along the bank and catch up to him in a minute or so.<br/><br/>But that wasn't the worst mistake, no. The first time, he'd had an idea of where to go, how to get out without leaving marks on the bank. This time that wasn't possible. There weren't any branches hanging over the water upstream anywhere nearby that he could think of. There weren't even bushes near the waterline, here!<br/><br/>The only thing, the only possibility he could think of, lay before him. He tried to lean into the current, steadying himself as he thought about it. His tracks and hers came down to the river, overlapping here and there. If he backed out...<br/><br/>He heard her shout behind him, down the river, and a shiver ran through him that had nothing to do with the chill of the water. He could hear brush moving.<br/><br/>He eased out of the water as quickly and silently as he could, trying to walk backwards like he had before, but it was hard to go up the slope of the bank backwards with any accuracy. Ten paces, twenty paces...<br/><br/>He couldn't see, looking down the rushing water, but he thought he could<em>feel</em>her coming.<br/><br/>Pozhvim reached the nearest tree and practically shot up it, hiding in a low notch among the leaves and trying not to shiver. A new mistake. There were no other trees close enough to this one to let him safely or quietly leap to their branches. In fact, he wasn't even sure he could make the distance to the nearest.<br/><br/>And now, as he peered at the ground and tried to still his panting breath, he realized that something new had been added to the doubled braid of interwoven tracks, even in the places where his feet had landed steadily centered in earlier footprints.<br/><br/>The moonlight glittered on droplets of river-water, decorating the dark loam like stars in the night sky.<br/><br/>Pozhvim heard footsteps. There was no time.<br/><br/>The slender kobold closed his eyes, curling into the smallest ball he could in the hollow of the tree-limb, trying not to breathe, thinking only small thoughts and stillness.