"The channel hits the gray rock and gets steeper," he said.

"Steeper?" she said dubiously. "Or impossible?"

"Steeper. Work your way to the deepest cut and there should be handholds. Below that, there's a talus slope, like I reckoned."

"How far below that?"

"I maun thirty kingsyards."

"Oh, is that all? Thirty kingsyards of wedging our fingers and boot tips in cracks?"

"If you've got a better idea…"

"I do. Let's go back up and fight them all."

Aspar grabbed the thickest vine and carefully pulled himself to a sitting position. The natural net creaked and sagged, and leaves and chunks of rotting wood fell silently past him. Then he started working his way toward the rock face, cursing Grim in advance should a vine come unanchored and send him to the bonehouse.

He reached the wall and managed to scrabble sideways to the ledge, where he spent a few moments appreciating having something solid between him and the earth's beckoning.

He turned at a slight noise and found Leshya on the shelf just above him.

"How's the leg?" she asked.

Aspar realized he was wheezing as if he had just run for half a day. His heart felt weak, and his arms already were trembling from fatigue.

"It's fine," he said.

"Here," Leshya said, holding out her hand.

She helped him up, and together they sat, regarding the descent still before them.

"At least we don't have to go up it," Leshya said.

"Sceat," Aspar replied, wiping the sweat from his brow.

It had looked somehow better from the other angle. Now he could see the river.

"You might make it to the talus slope," she said. "But the river…"

"Yah," Aspar snarled.

The river had dug itself down another hundred kingsyards. Although he couldn't see the canyon wall on his side, the other side looked as smooth as a fawn's coat.

"We need rope," he said, "and lots of it." He glanced back at the vines.

"No," Leshya said.

He didn't answer, because she was right. Instead he scrutinized the gorge, hoping to find something he had missed.

"Come on," Leshya said. "Let's make it to the slope. At least there we'll be able to camp. Maybe we'll see a way to the river, maybe we won't. But if they don't think to look down here, we could survive for a while."

"Yah," Aspar said. "You said this was a stupid idea."

"It was the only idea, Aspar. And here we are."

"From here I might be able to get back up. Certain you could."

"Nothing up there we want," the Sefry replied. "Are you ready?"

"Yah."

They started from the ledge at middagh, and it was almost vespers when Aspar finally half fell onto the jumble of soil and rocks, his muscles twitching and his breath like lungfuls of sand. He lay looking up from the deep shadow of the gorge at the black bats fluttering against a river of red sky, listening to the rising chorus of the frogs and the ghostly churring of nightjars. For a moment, it almost felt normal, as if he could rest.

It sounded right. It looked right. But he could smell the disease all around him. It was all poisoned, all dying.

The King's Forest probably was already dead without the Briar King to protect it.

He should have understood earlier. He should have been helping the horned one all along. Now it was too late, and every breath he drew felt like wasted time.

But there had to be something he could do, something he could kill, that would set things right.

And there was Winna, yah?

He pushed himself up and began to limp his way down to the next broad ledge at the bottom of the slope, where he could see Leshya already searching for a protected campsite.

In the fading light, from the corner of his eye, he saw something else. It was coming down the way they had, but quickly, like a four-legged spider.

"Sceat," he breathed, and drew his dirk, because he'd bundled his bow and arrows and dropped them down before the most arduous part of the climb. They were still ten yards down the slope.

He relaxed his grip and shoulders, waiting.

The utin changed course suddenly, leaping from the rock face into the tops of some small poplars, bending them in a nightmare imitation of Aspar's earlier stunt. As the trees snapped back up, he saw it land effortlessly on the slope downgrade of him.

He let his breath out. It hadn't seen him.

But his hackles went back up when he saw that its next leap was going to take it right to Leshya.

"Leshya!" he howled, coming out of his crouch and starting to run downhill. He saw her look up as the beast sprang forward. Then his leg jerked in a violent cramp and his knee went down, sending him into a tumble. Cursing, he tried to find his feet again, but the world stirred all about him, and he reckoned that at least he was going in the right direction.

He shocked against a half-rotted tree trunk and, wheezing, came dizzily to his feet, hoping he hadn't broken anything new. He heard Leshya screaming something, and when he managed to focus on her, he saw her below him, backed against a tree, grimly stringing her bow. He didn't see the utin until he followed the Sefry's desperate gaze.

The tree-corpse that had stopped him was part of a jumble clogging a water cut in the slope. He was on top of a natural dam.

The utin was two kingsyards below him. Something seemed odd about the way it was moving.

Aspar got his footing and leaped.

It was really more of a fall.

The utin was on all fours, and Aspar landed squarely on its back. It was very fast, twisting even as the holter locked his left arm around its neck and wrapped his legs around the hard barrel of its torso. He plunged his dirk at the thing's neck, but the weapon turned. That didn't stop him; he kept stabbing away. He saw something bright standing in the utin's chest, something familiar that he couldn't place at the moment. He also noticed that the monster was missing a hind foot. Then the night was rushing around him at great speed. He leaned back to avoid the creature's armored head slamming into his face and felt his weapon drive into something. The ear hole, maybe. The beast gave a satisfying shriek, and they were suddenly in the air.

Then they hit the ground hard, but Aspar had already blown out the breath in his lungs. He tightened his grip and kept thrusting.

Then they were falling again for what seemed like a long time, until the utin caught something, arresting their descent so hard that Aspar actually did loosen his grip around its windpipe. He expected to be flung off, but suddenly they were plummeting again. He managed to throw both arms around its neck.

It fetched against something else, howled, and fell again, twisting in the holter's grip like some giant snake. Aspar's arms were numb now, and he lost his clench again. This time he didn't find it before something astonishingly cold hit him hard.

"Holter."

Aspar opened his eyes, but there wasn't much to see. He hadn't lost his senses in the fall, but it had been hard keeping hold of them since. He'd been lucky in hitting the river where it was deep and relatively slow. From the rushing he heard up-and downstream, that easily could have not been the case.

Once he had dragged himself out, his abused body had finally given out. The warm air soon had taken the water's chill, and the forest had worked to soothe him to sleep. He'd fought it but had drifted into and out of dream, and he wasn't sure where he was when the voice spoke.

"Holter," it croaked again.

He sat up. He'd heard an utin speak before, and this was just what it sounded like. But he couldn't tell how far away it was. It could be one kingsyard or ten. Either way it was too close.

"Mother sends regards, Mannish."

Aspar kept quiet. He'd lost the dirk and was unarmed. However badly the utin was hurt, if it could move at all, he doubted very much he could fight it with his bare hands. His best chance was to stay still and hope it was bleeding to death. Failing that, morning might give him a better chance.