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The assailant turns at the sound of Ryon’s approach. Though she cannot yet make out his face, she hears the crunch of bone as the butt of Ryon’s blade collides with his nose.

The man is hurled sideways, his head hitting the side of the jutting crevice. He collapses in a heap on the ground, a pitiful moan escaping him before he is quiet and still. The woman in the shadows struggles to stand. Dawsyn hears her panting, then spitting something onto the ground, and when Dawsyn holds the mage fire closer, she sees that the woman is hardly a woman at all.

“Abertha,” Dawsyn breathes on an exhale.

She couldn’t be more than eighteen. She tries to straighten her cloak and don her hood, concealing the auburn curls that tumble wildly about her face.

“Fucking mongrel,” she rasps, wiping her mouth aggressively with the back of her hand. “Sat on my chest as I slept and tried to pin me there, as though I haven’t won every fucking match against him since we could walk. Coward has to wait until I’m asleep to claim a victory.”

But Dawsyn spies the discolouration around Abertha’s lips, the angry red patches on her throat “He tried for much more than that,” Dawsyn says darkly. It is not a question.

Abertha spits once more. “I was handling it.”

“Are you hurt?” Ryon asks, his voice quiet, his face still turned toward the assailant, likely considering further injury.

“Course I’m not,” Abertha mutters.

Dawsyn grimaces. It seems a common defect amongst Ledge women to want to bear the burden of their aggressors alone. Dawsyn can see it in Abertha’s face now. The determined set of her eyebrows. The rage that masks the insult, though there is a slight shake to her voice. The girl turns her face away in a show of disinterest, but Dawsyn makes out the glistening of her eyes in the firelight. “If you don’t mind,” Abertha says dismissively, and begins to stand, brushing herself off.

Dawsyn knows better than to expect a person of the Ledge to show gratitude. She doesn’t dare embarrass the girl with coddling; Dawsyn does not possess the flair for it, and it would only compound the insult. Instead, she does the only other thing that ought to be done. She turns to the man on the ground and kicks his side until his body flips over.

Wes, son of Nevrak, lies unconscious at her feet. A trickle of blood flows freely from a cut on his scalp, but he is alive. His eyes move behind their lids.

“The fucking weasel,” Dawsyn murmurs, lip curling in disgust.

The boy’s pants are halfway undone, as if there were any doubt to his intentions with Abertha. Dawsyn’s eyes run over his gap-toothed mouth, his plain, round face and bent nose. She raises her ax.

“What is this?” comes a voice, much louder than necessary. It bounces off the rock face, stirs the bodies that lie nearby.

Nevrak disentangles from the gloom. Behind him are two other men of the Ledge, standing behind him like pillars. Nevrak looks down at his son, lying lame and bleeding on the ground, with his trousers askew. Then, he looks to Dawsyn and Ryon, who hover over Wes with their weapons drawn.

Nevrak’s eyes narrow, and he pulls a dagger from his sleeve, spinning it in a menacing circle. His chums do the same.

“Nevrak,” Dawsyn says, trembling with fury. Others have begun to rouse. They gather beyond Nevrak, some of them lighting their torches. “You ask an excellent question. Why don’t we confer with your kin?” Then, without waiting for an answer, and with unceremonious violence, she launches the toe of her boot into Wes’s side once more.

The boy jolts upright as Nevrak hastens forward, raising his dagger. But Ryon meets him with his sword. “Watch your step,” Ryon says in a voice that promises death, and Nevrak is forced to halt.

Wes coughs and splutters into his own lap, gasping painfully as he grips his side.

“Pa?”

Dawsyn lowers to her haunches next to him, placing the blade of her ax beneath his jaw. “I’m afraid not,” she says flatly. “Now stand.”

Wes gulps against the edge of the ax blade but does not dare reply. His eyes do not leave hers, even as she applies pressure against his throat. He rises unsteadily, keeping his chin lifted as the ax follows.

And with the absolute imbecility of a man cornered, he reaches for the sheath at his hip.

Dawsyn’s hand arrives first, and she grips the hilt of the blade in his belt. She could happily slice his throat open now, let him spill out into the Chasm.

“I wouldn’t,” she warns, her voice a void.

“What thefuckis the meaning of this, Sabar?” Nevrak demands. Rage was seeping into his reddened cheeks, spittle dampening his beard. Here was a man she had only yesterday begun to sympathise with. A man she thought no different to herself. She laughs through her nose, and it seems to rattle him. His eyes flit between the ax at his son’s throat and Ryon’s sword tip. “You dare threaten my son?”

Dawsyn turns her gaze back to the weasel boy. His lips quiver. One of his eyes is swelling shut. She waits until his stare meets hers. She waits for the pupils to dilate with fear, for the swallow at his throat to reverberate against the ax blade. Then she says, “Go ahead and tell Pa all the bad things you were doing in the dark.”

Wes’s eyes flick to Nevrak’s, silently pleading. “I…”

“Louder,” Dawsyn orders.