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“What?”

“Loose, jilnaedu. Loose!”

I loosed.

What happened next was really strange. As in, I’ve thought through it many times since, and I don’t know how it came to be. And honestly, there are parts I don’t remember that Galva would end up telling me later, because I was about to hit my head, and a real bellbanger, too.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

All right. Here’s how I think it happened.

I put an arrow in one of the karkers, but didn’t kill it. They’re fairly tough. And here came all six of them. The donkey, crazed with fear, ran straight off the edge and into the dark mouth of the crevasse. And now the owl-things were on us. Galva cut the leg off one, and then two of the others started fighting each other over the cut-off leg, including the one that was now short a leg; the mad, stupid owl-thing was scooting around on his stubby winglets and one leg, twisting his awful head about, trying to get a bite out of the leg he’d just had subtracted, like he didn’t know it was his.

They must be fucking delicious, those birds.

That still left three of them trying for us, and the blood must have made them mad, because they got really enthusiastic about it. So up that dead tree we went, me first, then the Spanth. You know, the tree looking over a huge drop into a crevasse that may or may not have even had a bottom. We shook some snow loose from the branches as we climbed, and it made me a bit sick watching it swirl below me and into that blackness.

Going up the tree seemed a good move at first; Galva was on a thick, low branch, fending them off like the brutal thing she is, cutting grooves on their beaks and snuffing an eye for one of them. From my higher branch, I put a second arrow into the one I’d stuck before, and it went into its body, though not deep enough, because it was hard to get a full draw what with the branches crowding me and me trying not to fall. Still, it had two in it, and one was deep. What were they, stuffed with straw? This was starting to feel deeply unfair. I said, “Die, ya arsehole chicken,” struggled to better clear my draw-arm, and loosed a good one right into its chest; this time, it did die, spinning in circles trying to bite out the arrow until, with a great spray of powdery snow, off the edge it went, its wee wings flapping madly as if they remembered what they were for and wished they weren’t stuck on such a big cunt.

The thing about a dead tree, though, is that it isn’t so well anchored as a not-dead tree. The creak was enough to warn me she was going over, and I would have jumped off under normal circumstances; normal circumstances being scarce, however, I hesitated to hurl myself into a pack of ravenous, man-sized owls, and rode the tipping tree into the void. Not a well-considered decision, just what my body did before I had time to think it all through. It was all very confusing. I remember snow spraying, snapped twigs and branches everywhere but especially scratching my face, Galva smiling—the mad thing was actually smiling—and a final look up as one of the monsters looked down at us, its stupid, stupid face getting smaller as we fell.

And then, bang.

And then nothing for a while.

A short while, it turns out, and that was lucky.

6Well Buggered, down a Ditch

The next thing I knew, I was holding on to tree branches, my feet dangling. Galva was saying something. She was near the other end of the tree, near its dead roots, trying to scramble farther back, because the tree had become a seesaw on a ridge of rock, down in the crevasse. I was at the heavier end, the branchy top end, tipping it. Slowly. Turns out Galva was saying Dalgatha, which was the name of her war corvid, but also the name of her goddess of death. She was still smiling, her eyes closed. We were done and over by her lights.

But it came to me fast that maybe we weren’t.

Maybe just I was.

The tree was tipping slow because the weight was near balanced. Without me, it might be balanced, and might, just might, settle and stay where it was.

I only had a heartbeat to decide.

I let go.

Did I let go because I was willing to sacrifice myself to save that grumpus?

Did I let go because I felt I had a better chance than her to save myself from a fall—especially if there wasn’t a big karking tree and a muscly, bony Spanth falling after me?

If you don’t know by now, don’t feel bad. I don’t either.

Funny things happen when you’re falling in the dark. First off, your bunghole clenches so tight you could use it to pull a nail out of a board. Second, your legs go tingly in anticipation of being spectacularly broken. I wanted to yell, of course, but they train that out of you at the Low School. I kicked and slapped out, trying to find the wall and slow myself, but I wasn’t close enough. I knew a cantrip that would have set me on the ground with a hard bump rather than a splatter, but I had to be able to see the ground to work it.

As I was out of ideas how not to die, I threw a quick thought to Fothannon.

I didn’t ask him to save me, he doesn’t care for such requests. Rather, I thought, “Foxfoot, paint the rocks with me as you please; I hope my death amuses you, you little ginger bastard.”

At that, I felt a pinch and a warmth about my finger.

My eyes stung me, and for an instant, I could see the world in shades of greenish gray, enough to tell there was a steep rock slope speeding up to meet me. I flipped over in the air, putting my hands and feet under me to absorb the blow, but there wasn’t much of a blow to be had. I felt I didn’t weigh a tenth of what I should, and I spun and tumbled, and came to rest on all fours. I twitched my tail before I realized I hadn’t one.

“Thief!” Galva cried. “Are you living?”