Page 12 of The Thrice-Bound Fool

“So take them off. Who is stopping you?”

“Well, I can’t, can I? Then I’ll go slower.”

“I did not know this was possible.”

She was talking a good game, but Galva was gulping air the same as me.

I looked behind us again.

Snow and rocks.

But something wasn’t right.

“Should we make camp soon?” she said.

“We still have two hours ’til nightfall.”

“I thought, with the way you complain of your ankles.”

“Don’t pretend you couldn’t use a sit-down. I see you drinking air.”

“Your weak, weak ankles.”

“You’re panting like a whore in a hot harbor.”

“Like the stems of flowers, your ankles.”

“But we’re not stopping yet. I’d like to get us up in those rocks ahead, first.”

“Why?” she said, looking behind us. “Someone is following us?”

“Yah,” I said. “Someone. Or something.”

It’s a good thing the donkey was a mountain donkey. He was shyte at snow, but he climbed rocks better than we did. Looking at the mountains up ahead, I had wondered if a time would come when we’d have to free him or kill him, but maybe now he was thinking the same thing about us. We came to a sort of rocky shelf, a fine place to make camp. We put up our oiled skins, wished we had Worrig to find firewood for us, but he was dead of a furious wife, and I had no idea where to find something burnable. If Norrigal were here, she could have lit up one of her witchstones and burned half our camp down like she did in Norholt when we first met her and embarked on this calamity. I missed her for more than that, though. A great deal more. I’d married her for a month, then she got her legs crushed by a giant, and I had to cut her throat to swivel her home. Forgive me if you remembered all that, I just know it’s been a while since we last talked.

But now Galva and I readied ourselves as best we could for night’s cold and the possibility of visitors. She was too tired to free the corvid again yet; it took a lot out of her, and she couldn’t just leave it out. It was made for fighting in temperate regions, and didn’t do well in snow and ice. Just like Galva.

I kept my bow strung, an arrow nocked.

We ate rabbit jerky, a few dried figs.

The light snow stopped altogether.

Above us, patches of stars shone between ragged clouds. Our outbreaths hung in long plumes. It was proper cold.

“Do you want me to sing?” I said.

“Do you want me to stab you?”

“I’m good at singing.”

“I am good at stabbing.”

I didn’t sing.

That’s when I heard it. A kind of mournful Hooooo that could have been wind in the rocks but wasn’t.

Galva’s hand drifted to her sword-hilt.