Judging by the expectant and conspicuously silent members of the group in general, Eledhe decided with some disgust that none of them did. At least the Phantom, whom she skirted to stride disdainfully over to the heap of rope, looked somewhat abashed about it. "It's little more difficult than standing about unhelpfully," she said pointedly. "And last I checked most of you would prefer not to drown."

The Phantom watched her deftly separate strands of rope for a moment before dropping into a crouch to assist. He cast a look over his shoulder, one eyebrow raised, as if to echo her words.

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Squinting his eyes narrowly at Kjan's back one more time, Dante settled with a mere suspicious grunt. He didn't offer to help splice the rope, though he'd had some experience doing it before, after all he wasn't being paid to splice rope for them on this fool - Whatever It Was. All the same, he couldn't help pointing out, "No no, yer not doing it tight enough!" rather rudely to Merrell, before turning a sour gaze back to that other one, the familiar one again.

No matter. He didn't have time to think about familiar-looking, greasy-haired, over-packed, up-to-no-good idiots. There was that river, a much more present trouble. He was going to have to go over it too... eventually. After the greasy-haired idiot did first.

It looked dreadful. Cold. Rapid. Perilous. Not to mention this rope they were all putting their hopes on didn't look exactly the most trustworthy...slightly rotted, is they'd ask me.

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<center>
"The piano is able to communicate the subtlest universal truths by means of wood, metal and vibrating air."

Splicing rope was not overtly engaging work, which was why the Phantom finished it as fast as possible and straightened, eying the various members of the group. Next step was to shoot said rope across the river. This required aim fair enough to have the arrow hit somewhere solidly, and strength enough to have it stay, while one of them - the lightest - climbed over. It only took a moment to scroll mentally through his various companions and come to the conclusion that while he might not be the best archer, he was certainly the strongest one.

Therefore, when Eledhe straightened as well, he knotted the - now thicker - rope around the shaft of an arrow and squinted at the opposite shoreline. "Opinion?"

"Oak. No, to the left. Up. Right there." Her help, if monosyllabic, got the Phantom pointed at the solid bole of a leafless tree, and when he loosed it thudded to with a reassuring sound - even across the river.

With a grin that could either be described as dangerous or overtly innocent depending on your mental bent, he turned to the congregated members of the group behind him, holding the tail end of the rope. "Volunteers?"

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Ash coughed quietly and tried to avoid the Phantom's gaze, ducking discreetly behind Kjan. He didn't like crawling across ropes, even with solid ground beneath him. The thought of doing it with a loud, rushing river under him made his stomach turn.

Having a feeling that everyone's eyes would soon be turning to him, Ash straightened and coughed, louder this time. "I'm sure Kjan would like to go first." He smiled hopefully.

Jate started to laugh at Ash's comments, but quickly muffled it. After all, it wouldn't do to have him get attention. No way was he going over that rope. He eyed the icy river swelling around his feet, and the flimsy bit of twine that supposedly would hold him up. Disbelief painted every feature of his face.

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going on a journey through my old claims

Dante stopped short in the process of gradually backing away from the river (which he had really seemed intent and passionate upon doing) and took an sharp intake of breath. Whirling about to face Ash, he covered the ground in a surprising short moment, face lit up in something between fear, fury, and exhilaration.

"What name did you say?!" he demanded furiously, pointing a finger in the young man's face. "You said Kjan didn't you?"

For a moment it seemed as though he'd just bit into a particularly potent lemon. His features contorted themselves in all kinds of odd and ridiculous appearances, and it looked as though he was willing himself not to have an internal combustion. Finally, he jerked sideways and faced Kjan.

"You!" he shuddered in fury and gestured wildly with his hands. "You... you..."

Swallowing hard, he wiped his red face, and glowered furiously.

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<center>
"The piano is able to communicate the subtlest universal truths by means of wood, metal and vibrating air."

Kjan was in the process of vehemently denying Ash's claim and slowly backing away from the rope when their beloved guide abruptly went into a passionate display of something closely resembling apoplectic fury. More specifically, apoplectic fury directed at Kjan.

Oh dear.

"Me!" he exclaimed brightly and roughly an octave higher than intended, raising his hands in a perfectly convincing display of innocence and rather more quickly backing in the opposite direction, toward the rope. "Me...me....Why me?"

The lovely purple-ish crimson colour beginning to suffuse Dante's face was answer enough, in Kjan's expert opinion. Swallowing with some difficulty, he forced a smile. "Kjan would absolutely love to be the first to climb across...right now."

"Why you??!" half-screeched a swelling Dante who appeared to be on a slightly unstable verge of imploding any moment. "Oh, of course you'd look innocent, you would, always were such a little liar!!"

"How about the wild squirrels sent into private corridors, or starting fires on the top of our hats, or slipping skinks down our shirts when we want to kiss someone, or putting that bloody Kyth'awi in our drink!!"

For the moment, Dante seemed scarcely aware that the Kjan he was speaking too was a much older - and hopfully maturer - version of the one he had held up bitterness to all these years. He had caught up in stride with Kjan now, and was moving just as quickly towards him as Kjan was away.

"I ought to - I ought to - I ou... AND THAT TIME YOU TOLD HER I HAD SEVEN TOES!!" he bellowed, and made a violent rush at the accused.

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<center>
"The piano is able to communicate the subtlest universal truths by means of wood, metal and vibrating air."

Kjan barely had time to react. Stepping back was no good- there was an unfortunately quite solid Phantom standing behind him. Nothing for stepping forward, either, as that would only bring him closer to his intended attacker. Right held some promise for escaping an immediate frontal attack, but would only leave a very enraged Dante between Kjan and his only other current means of escape, which could prove problematic. Bother.

Without even waiting for reassurance that the Phantom had the rope properly secured, Kjan hooked both of his legs crosswise over the line and began to haul himself across. "If you wanted privacy, you would have stayed at your own home, all young boys - and quite a few men - have a natural fixation with fire, the skinks fell out of my hands, Aran told me the Kyth'awi was vanilla, and I could have sworn I counted seven toes whenever I was slipping beetles into your bed that night. It's a perfectly natural assumption, given the degree of incest in....*beep*!" This all came in breathless, barely-comprehensible rush as Kjan hurriedly pulled himself hand-over-hand across the river, the last word coming from the realization that he really was not helping himself any.

He really should have paid more attention in Diplomacy class.

Before that recreant whelp had only halfway finished defending himself, Dante had already started stumbling, wrathfully blind, to get his hands around that all-too-deserving neck. He stopped, almost more in shock than anything, when he thought he caught a vague glimpse of a man standing in between him and that bloody Kjan, but his eyes were still glaring holes - numerous ones in fact, - in the back of Kjan's greasy head.

In a matter of seconds however, his rage had returned full force; and using a few choice words that would have made said girl in question wince, he clambered onto the rope after him.

"You aren't going to run away from me this time, you ba-"

Not exactly as thin a man as the wiry Kjan, the twine strained beneath his weight, and gave one last discontented wheeze.

Snap!

A powerful current, which made the cold wind above feel like the seaside, greeted him. All at once Dante remembered why he hadn't wanted to cross the river, and also why he'd stopped chasing the squirt Kjan around everytime he ruined yet another perfect day for him.

It just wasn't beneficial.

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<center>
"The piano is able to communicate the subtlest universal truths by means of wood, metal and vibrating air."

SNAP

Threng swore loudly as the rope and both men plunged into the river. IN waters this cold, hypothermia would set in quickly. He grasped for the rope: it had very fortunately snapped 3/4 the way across the river, and Kjan and Dante both still held the line. Threng pulled with all his strength, but the combined force of the raging river and two full grown men was too overpowering. "Help!" He growled through clenched teeth. Kjan and Dante wouldn't be able to hold on much longer.

The Phantom, who really had been quite proud of their acquisition of the necessary rope and the subsequent excellent shot (of his, of course) that got it secured on the other side of the river, swore rather colorfully and scrambled to help Threng haul at the now-useless fragment of rope. His displeasure seemed mostly due to the unfortunately snapped rope, though the fact that his second-in-command and his would-be guide were in immediate danger of drowning might have had something to do with it. Said would-be guide, however, certainly hadn't given the impression that he would be amiably accepting of Phaerin's complicity with the offender, which really made it quite a pity that he got pulled in before Kjan did.

Of course the Phantom wouldn't have let him float away - callous, that - but he could have dangled the fellow at the end of a rope for a moment or two and extracted a promise of civility. Oh well. He was the leader of a rebellion, he could deal with a bit of (deserved) displeasure. To be sure, he wouldn't have been happy to wake up and find every pair of stockings he owned hung in front of a fireplace to merrily burn their toes off, or suddenly and unpleasantly discover his pockets full of frog spawn, and probably deserved everything he got.

Except. He remembered Dante Salone as less than extremely intelligent, but it only took half a brain to compute traitor-to-the-crown Kjan Armadur with traitor-to-the-crown Phaerin Grey, come up with Phantom Grey, and suddenly hold the keys to a secret that could tear apart an entire rebellion. Not good.

Having had all this whiz through his mind in comparatively little time, the Phantom companionably offered a hand to a dripping and tomato-complexioned Dante, and stood back to see how much he'd realized, and if something needed to be done about it. As an afterthought he gave the rope a cursory tug to haul Kjan back in, too.

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Threng grasped Kjan, wet clothing and all, and hauled him onto shore. His rope-burned hands bled sluggishly in places, but it was a minor injury compared to the illness that may have set in on Kjan. Dragging the sopping man without even giving him time to think, Threng slid him in front of the dying fire and through on a stray branch. "Just...stay there" Threng commanded. He leapt into the forest to find whatever dry wood could be scavanged.

Having been chased across a rope, dropped in the freezing river, pulled out of the freezing river, and dragged over to a pathetic excuse for a fire, all within the past two minutes and all without so much as a word of consent on his part, Kjan was understandably less than happy at the moment. "Forgive me if I don't comply," he said, waving Threng off with a dismissive flick of his hand and coughing up some more water. "Considering that I'm positivly freezing, I think I'd much prefer to keep moving." With some effort, he stood up and shook the water out of his hair. "Is the imbecile alright?"

Sopping wet and still coughing up mouthfuls of slightly discolored water, Dante scarcely noticed the hand that had pulled him up. For a moment the water seemed to have cooled his wrath, although traces of it still showed on his slightly irregular expression.

Finally, after using his shirt to blot the water out of his eyes, and giving one final hacking noise resembling something a dying horse would do, he gurgled out in a semi-whine, "...all...his...bloody...fault..."

But this exertion seemed to be a little much for him. In what started as an attempt to rush a Kjan, he blundered, stumbled forward, and then crashed backwards into the Phantom.

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<center>
"The piano is able to communicate the subtlest universal truths by means of wood, metal and vibrating air."

The Phantom let out a brief shout and scrambled to catch at Dante's arm, or clothes, or something graspable about the somewhat frenzied fellow. "Might I inquire," he said somewhat breathlessly, "as to what is making you quite so anxious about Kjan there?"

Eledhe's expression took on a quality of pure stupefaction. Nothing. These imbeciles were capable of nothing without her help. Shrugging the Phantom aside, she drew her scimitar with a ring of steel and gave him a look with the same dangerous underlay. "Kindly stop assaulting Kjan for no apparent reason." She paused. "If you gave me an apparent one, though - "

"Thank you, Eledhe," said the Phantom pointedly, shunting her aside in turn. "Er...yes...kindly stop assaulting Kjan," he repeated somewhat feebly, looking at a bit of a loss for words. The diversion didn't seem to be working, so in a rare moment of recklessness he said airily - "Hanging your stockings over the fireplace was my idea, actually."

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