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His supporters shout their agreeance.

“Think it through, Splitter,” Dawsyn says, stepping carefully to the side. She can spy one of the armed men stalking closer to her in her periphery, where he thinks she will not see. “What you claim makes no sense. You are delirious. Hungry. Heart sore.”

“YOU’RE FUCKING RIGHT I’M HEART SORE!” he bellows, spittle showering over Tasheem’s shoulder. “My whole fucking family is gone!” Nevrak scrunches his eyes shut a moment, as though he can squeeze the pain out. “And I ain’t dying on a ledge, or in a hole, or corralled into some trap like an animal! I’m getting out of here. We all are. NOW!”

“You’ll either journey down the path, or you’ll die here. Those are your choices.”

“Nay,” Nevrak pants, then nods subtly to someone over Dawsyn’s shoulder. “I’ll choose neither.”

The man with the ice-pick lunges toward her, his footing so unsure, Dawsyn hardly has to move to fell him. In one swift action, she slides her inside foot back and throws her elbow around in an arc. It connects with the side of the man’s head, and he wails as he falls to Dawsyn’s feet, his ear already bleeding. It will likely ring for a week.

“Don’t,” Dawsyn says, holding her ax aloft on her other side, where another has stepped forward with his blade raised. The man halts in his spot. He eyes her ax warily.

“Fuck,” Nevrak mutters, his breaths coming faster. “Tell your friend to take me above, Sabar!” He moves the blade to Tasheem’s throat, nicking her skin with the tip. “TELL HER!”

“Tasheem is injured. She could not take you even if she were inclined.”

“You forsake her then! You’d rather I kill your Glacian pet, then let me leave?”

“It’s not her death I worry for,” Dawsyn says. “It’s yours.”

“I’ve got a knife to her neck, Sabar. I’d say she’s closer to meeting the Mother than I.”

“I assure you,” Ryon sighs. “That’s not the case. Last chance, Nevrak.”

“YOU AIN’T IN CHARGE NO MORE!” Nevrak bellows and the others shout in raucous assent. “We’re taking our own way out now and if this spawn of the devil won’t fly us out, she is of no use to us!”

More cheers. Nevrak throws his head back in apparent rapturous victory, howling maniacally.

Tasheem, however, only looks sullen. “Now?”

Ryon shakes his head in dismay. But then squares his shoulders. “Now.”

It is over within moments. Tasheem thrusts her head back hard enough that the resounding crack of Nevrak’s nose reverberates. She twists his wrist and the man’s blade clatters to the ground. His lips and neck are slick with blood by the time he topples, eyes dazed, jaw slack.

Tasheem hisses a stream of old language, none of it recognisable to Dawsyn and surely none of it refined. She holds her wasted leg aloft, her face scrunched in pain. “He broke my fucking leg, Dawsyn,” Tash mutters. Shaking her head. “Attacked me from behind with an ice-pick.”

“So I see,” Dawsyn says. But her attention returns to the mob before them. Twenty or so men, now holding their weapons with less conviction. Some are backing away.

“You’re a murderous fucking devil,” one says to Tasheem, hocking a gob of spit onto her boot. But he too retreats.

“He isn’t dead,” Tash says viciously. “Yet.”

As though in answer, Nevrak groans.

“Enough of this,” Dawsyn calls loudly, so that all can hear. “We will reach the end this day! I am sure of it.”

“And how many will we lose in the hours before?” another calls, a woman this time.

Dawsyn will not let that old weight fall heavy on her shoulders again. She won’t let it wane the light she feels. “Yennes and I will see to the sick,” she says. “We can help them.”

“You can’t!” someone says from the gloom. “Your remedies only go so far!”

“We’ve found the cure,” Dawsyn calls, refusing to be talked over. “We will attend to those–”

But her words are strangled, for the necklace at her chest suddenly grows shockingly hot. It pulses against her skin, in time with her racing heartbeat.

She grabs at it through her clothing, then looks over at Ryon.