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A grunting snarl rang in my ears and I looked wildly about, then realized the sound was in me rather than outside me. I forced myself to silence. The night was empty. Pieces of dead howler lay scattered around but nothing lived here except for me. I’d killed all of my immediate attackers. Or driven them away.

I’d won. But at what cost? My right arm and hand would scarcely work. My left leg was mangled and smeared a blood trail behind me as I tried to move. I could hardly tell where the shreds of my left boot ended and shreds of my foot began. The only good thing was that the bone wasn’t broken.

I fumbled with my good hand and found a small limb, pulled myself up onto my good knee with a convulsive effort. Floaters bloomed and multiplied in my eyes, then slowly faded as I got back my breath. By some miracle the sword was still clutched in the rigid claw of my right hand. The fingers had spasmed and would not open. I reached with the left hand and took the blade away—though I had to jerk it free—and sheathed it at my hip.

“Get up,” I rasped at myself.

Somewhere in the trees around there were more howlers. I couldn’t see them but knew they were there. And if they attacked now they would kill me. I had to try to get away. For myself. For Bryce. For Rannon.

I reached higher on the tree, grasped another limb, hauled myself up onto trembling legs. Thorns poked and stabbed at me but the pain of them was little enough against the larger pain with which I already lived.

Just to my left was one of the deep notches in the trunk that I had noted before, the rungs in a ladder leading up to the rope bridge overhead. I forced my left leg to move, was surprised when it obeyed. Wedging a torn boot into one of the notches, I bade the leg hold. My left hand searched higher. Fingers scraped away loose bark and locked in another of the worked grooves. Gingerly, I let the weight settle on my leg. It shook, but held.

Kicking the toe of my right boot into a notch, I used the muscles in my good leg to push myself higher up the trunk. Then I brought the left leg up alongside the right, wedged the boot into the same notch. My perch was precarious. My right arm dangled. But my left hand had the strength of fear in it.

Trying to breathe shallowly to avoid having the thrust of my chest push me off the tree, I reached up with my left hand and searched for another hold. I found it, clung for a moment before pulling my right leg up to another notch.

By such inches I moved—working toward the rope bridge that led I knew not where. At first I talked to myself, urged myself on. Then even whispering came too hard and I just climbed. My thoughts drifted. I wondered if Diken Graye was alive. Had the red-eyed beasts taken him once Bryce had abandoned his body? I began to wonder where the rest of the beasts were. There had to have been at least a dozen more than what I had killed.

There was nothing I could do for Graye now. I could barely do anything for myself. The fear began to come back from the place where it had hidden while I fought for my life. But I couldn’t climb any faster.

A vine brushed my cheek. No! Not a vine but a length of drooping rope. I glanced up. The bridge was right there, right overhead. Exaltation swept me. Crashing terror followed. I was so close, and so afraid—so afraid that the beasts would come take me, drag me down, tear me apart as Bryce had prophesied.

I reached up with a shaky hand, caught one of the wrist-thick ropes that anchored the bridge to the huge thorn tree. I drew myself up. Nothing came to get me.

The bridge itself was a dense webbing of finger-width ropes woven from some plant resembling hemp. Flat boards of cedar-red wood, worked fine and smooth, lined the bottom of the webbing to make a walkway. I got my right knee up on that walkway, used my left hand to pull myself onto it. My other arm thumped painfully on the boards, although at least now I could move the fingers.

Still, nothing came for me.

I rolled over, lungs gasping for the sweet air. Nimeru was setting.