Bullboats were not Thornsong’s preferred mode of water travel.

If he’d been traveling alone, he would have built a birchbark kayak or maybe a canoo to make the trip downriver. He might even have scooped and burned out a dugout, if he thought the water would be too rough.

The River Bell, however, was as gentle as rivers came. And Raspberry’s bulk would swamp anything smaller than a bullboat or a barge.

Finding the poles for the boat was trivial. Willows dotted the banks of the muddy little river, and it took no time at all to cut the lengths required. He set Raspberry to bending and binding them into a frame. First, a great hoop that would form the lip of the boat. Then a series of smaller hoops, set inside one another and linked with lengths of willow in a triangular pattern for strength. When the frame was about waist-high to Thornsong, he pronounced it complete.

Now, to waterproof the great basket. There were two preferred methods. He could cover the outside with buoyant reeds and grease it. This had the advantages of speed and ease, though the bullboat would likely only be a single-use craft. For a more long-lasting vessel, he’d need leather - and lots of it. Leather would be waterproofed and used almost indefinitely, so long as the supply of grease held.

Reeds tended - on average - to be much easier to subdue than many yards of leather. And his ribs and his arm were still on the mend. It would likely be a few weeks still till he felt comfortable making a killing attempt on a ground sloth or a small mammoth or even a bull bison - the preferred leather for a bullboat, as the name implied.

So Thornsong turned his eyes to the water itself. The River Bell wasn’t impressive, as rivers went, but like all rivers, it had its secrets.

“I think we ought to go fishing,” he said from his seat along the sandy bank. He tapped his dagger against his knee.

“I mean, I agree - but how does this help us cover the boat?”

“I’m not talking about eel or grayling. I want a gar or two. Big ones.”

Raspberry looked doubtfully at the brownish gray water.

“I think - or you - could ford this thing without the water ever touching our chins.”

Thornsong nodded.

“Yeah, it’s slow and shallow. But that’s prime gar habitat. They can corral minnows more easily and then slash through them.”

“So you’re not only Thornsong, monster hunter - you’re Thornsong, master fisherman?”

“They’re pretty much the same thing,” he said, reaching into his pack.

He produced a length of braided grass line. Using the tip of his dagger, he unpicked about two feet of the line to produce a snarl of loosely woven fibers. He rolled these between his hands, tangling them further.

“Gar mouths are tough,” he said to Raspberry as he worked. “Good luck getting a hook through about a half-inch of bony plate. Gorges won’t work, either. They do tend to take prey in one big swallow, but you’d need a gorge a foot long to stick in its throat - and most likely it’ll just snap it right off once it starts fighting.”

“You could spear one,” Raspberry pointed out, gesturing to Thornsong’s spear from the Little People. He grimaced.

“That’s a mighty nice spear. I don’t really fancy sticking it into an eight-foot fish and watching it swim away. We could craft a harpoon, I guess - but this will work just as well. And - more importantly - once it’s in the water and baited, we just wait. Do we have any more of those frog legs left?”

“A few,” Raspberry said. “They’re getting a little slimy, though.”

“Perfect.”

Thornsong pulled three of the legs - all that remained - from his pack and threaded them through the snarled line. He threaded one end through a hollow reed, crafting a crude float, and tied the other to a mossy tree overhanging the river bank.

“Toss it out,” he said. “Far as you can.”

Raspberry grabbed the reed and threw it underhand into the water.

“I said as far as you can,” Thornsong said.

“I’m not the thrower. Shoulder’s not built for it. You want something thrown, you’re going to have to do it yourself.”

Thornsong held up his still-bandaged left arm.

“You’ve got two,” Raspberry said, turning away. Thornsong smiled.

“And that’s it - we’re fishing. The idea is that a gar will come along, smell those rancid frog legs, and take a nice, big bite. It has hundreds of tiny, needle-like teeth. They’ll catch in the snarled braid, and we’ll turn his big, tough mouth to our advantage. Once that line goes taught, I’m going to need your help to muscle him into shore. The really big ones can be twice my weight, easily.”

“Or as heavy as my left leg,” Raspberry said.

“We’ll need three, I figure, to cover the boat. Fewer, if they’re truly huge.”

“So - we just wait.”

“You can just wait. I’ve got some gear to tend to.”

Thornsong sat with his back to the anchor tree, glancing at the floating fishing line every few minutes as he took inventory of his pack. They were in good shape, food-wise; the Little People had seen to that.

His equipment had also improved considerably. A new spear, a lechuza-feather shield.

“I’m almost kitted out for war,” he thought. “Not that I expect a war anytime soon.”

His meteoric iron dagger could use a little sharpening, but that was about it. The more gear, the heavier the pack, he thought.

Still, it would be nice to have a little obsidian razor.

“I’m not looking forward to skinning those gar with the dagger,” he said to Raspberry, who was picking at an ant mound about thirty feet from the bank. Raspberry grunted.

“What are you doing, anyway?”

“Right time of year for the ant larvae to be fat and sweet,” he said, popping something in his mouth.

“Too acidic for me,” Thornsong said. “But mash up some of the works and fold them in leaves, please? Makes a great polish.”

Raspberry waved half-heartedly and resumed worrying at the mound.

The fishing line suddenly went taut. Thornsong dropped his pack and snatched the line.

It went slack in Thornsong’s hand. He sighed.

“Bit straight through,” he said, tugging absently.

Something big tugged back. Thornsong grabbed a bit of scrap rawhide from the pack and wrapped his hand. He braced his knees against the anchor tree and pulled.

A low growl rippled the pond’s surface.

“Raspberry,” Thornsong said. “Might need your help here.”

Raspberry looked up just as the line again snapped tight. Thornsong put his unshielded hand on the line and strained. Another yank sent his face directly into the rough bark of the anchor tree.

“Raspberry!” he said, trying to control the line. “Grab it and pull! Don’t wrap it around your arm unless you want to lose it.”

Raspberry bounded over to the line and grabbed it on the opposite side of the anchor tree. Another hard yank sent him tumbling.

“That’s some gar,” he said, scrabbling in the mud and fumbling for the line.

“It’s no gar,” Thornsong said. “Look.”

A pair of antlers breached the surface of the water, followed by foot after foot of twisting, squirming snake. Raspberry’s jaw dropped.

“Uktena,” he said. “The horned serpent.”

“Revered horned serpent,” Thornsong said. His mouth was set in a thin, white line.

“Cut the line,” Raspberry said.

“No,” he said. “Look at its forehead.”

Raspberry noticed a reddish sparkle in the midst of the thrashing.

“It’s a bony plate or scale,” Thornsong said. “The local tribes call it a jewel. It’s hard as stone.”

He gave another mighty yank on the line, praying that it held. “That’s my new knife, if we can land this thing.”

Raspberry finally found his footing and grabbed hold of the line. The more the uktena twisted in the water, the more tangled in the line it became. Its jerks became slower, more urgent, as the line bound its coils together and prevented it from gaining more leverage.

“When we get it to the bank…” Thornsong said.

“On it,” said Raspberry. He took his coil of line and walked behind the anchor tree and Thornsong both, using the tree as a fulcrum to drag the uktena ashore.

“Now,” Thornsong said. “It’s tiring. Hand me the line.”

Raspberry passed off the line as the uktena slithered ashore. It was no longer struggling to return to the water.

“Hurry,” Thornsong said. “We’ll probably only get one chance before it catches its breath.”

“Or turns on us,” Raspberry said, hefting his cedarwood knuckle.

On cue, the uktena ratched its head away from the riverbank and turned toward Thornsong. It opened its mouth - almost two feet across, fang to fang - and issued a throaty roar. Thornsong felt the low tones rumbling in his chest.

Thornsong gave one more tug, briefly putting the snake off-balance, and Raspberry barreled into it from the side. The cedarwood knuckle came down squarely on the reddish scale between its antlers.

The uktena whipped its head to the side, nearly catching Raspberry in the throat with its tines. One dug into the earth, and the snake rapidly coiled and flipped its body against the muddy bank to free it.

Thornsong released the line and grabbed his spear. Raspberry delivered three more blows, in quick succession, leaving a bloody divot in the side of the uktena’s skull.

“Stand clear!” he shouted, running toward the uktena with spear couched against his right side. He rammed it home, through the crack in its skull Raspberry had opened.

It sunk to his hands. Thornsong released the spear and the uktena’s loops of muscle went wild, bashing against bank and water alike.

Finally, an all-over shiver consumed it, sending ripples from bank to bank. The shiver turned to spasmodic twitching, and then - finally - it lay still.

“Don’t go near it,” Thornsong said. “They take a long time to properly die.”

“No argument here,” Raspberry said, backing away. He dragged the cedarwood knuckle through the grass, leaving scales and clots of blood behind.

They built a fire a good distance away, starting every time the uktena’s body twitched. It was long after dark before the twitching stopped completely.

“Can we eat it?” Raspberry said.

Thornsong shook his head.

“Deadly poisonous,” he said. “Its blood is its venom. We shouldn’t eat anything downstream for some time.”

“I’m just glad there are no villages nearby,” Thornsong said. “Most worship the horned serpents. They likely wouldn’t take too kindly to us killing one.”

“Aren’t you going to make a knife from the - forehead stone? Red scale?”

“Gem,” Thornsong smiled. “And yes. It darkens after the creature’s death. Will just look like an odd piece of flint, but it’ll cut like a razor for years.”

“Won’t our boat give us away?”

“Gar skin,” Thornsong said. “Looks close enough. Scales are a bit small, even.”

Raspberry held his massive hands over the fire.

“Not a bad catch,” he said.

“Not bad at all.”