“This isjustwhen a knife would help!” cried Breadlee from Fern’s paw, sounding near tears.
Astryx reset her feet and lunged forward, Nigel slicing upward in a rising angle, on the offensive for the first time.
Tullah’s grin shifted into something like delight as she hammered the Elder Blade to the side, then looped around it with the axe’s hook to fling the end downward.
“Why does she want to kill you? What did youdo?” cried Fern, grabbing Zyll’s collar.
The goblin looked like she might reply, but Tullah beat her to it, every word punctuated by steel on steel as she battered at Astryx’s defenses like the hells’ own woodswoman.
“She. Fucked. My.Life.”
But then Fern could pay no more attention to Tullah or Astryx, because Bucket reared, shifting the cart, just as the red-haired man rounded the end of it with his shortblade up. A peek around the wheel’s rim saw the orc’s boots heading the other way, presumably to the horse’s bridle.
Bucket whinnied angrily and reared again, rocking the cart back. The man with the shortblade put his free hand on it as though to steady it.
Fern saw his eyes widen in disbelief at Zyll, coughing an involuntary laugh.
The goblin stepped away from the cart wheel, brandishing two fistfuls of assorted cutlery.
He took in Breadlee in Fern’s paw. “How ’bout that, Kell? Looks like I’m fine dinin’!”
“Get on with it, Marv,” called the orc, sounding annoyed. “I got the horse.”
Then several things happened almost at once.
A sharp, pained cry from Astryx, although Fern did not see its cause.
Zyll hurled a half-dozen forks and knives at Marv with surprising speed and ferocity. One of the knife blades glanced off his temple, leaving a long gash, and a meat fork embedded itself in his left thigh. His pained oath joined Astryx’s.
And it turned out that Kell the orc did not, in fact, “have the horse.”
“Shit!” he cried, as Bucket swung his head hard to the side and cracked him in the skull with his cheek. Kell staggered away, dropping his maul and clapping both hands to his face.
The horse surged backward, and the cart began to jackknife, clipping Marv, who was just yanking the fork out of his thigh with a shout. He stumbled sideways and went down as the wagon rolled toward the lip of the bridge.
Zyll leapt on him like a rabid weasel tangled in a quilt.
Fern chanced a glance at Astryx and saw her down on one knee, fending off a series of heavy blows from Tullah.
The snow was feathered red around her.
And then the cart shuddered as the rear right wheel jumped the lip of the bridge and went over.
Bucket screamed as the end of the wagon sagged into space. The tarpaulin came untethered, and boxes and barrels and loose gear tumbled out of the rear. With the reduced weight, the horse almost brought the wheel up over the lip again with a surge of effort, but his hooves skidded backward on the icy bridge, and the second wheel began to ease out over the abyss.
“Oh, fuck,” whispered Fern.
Marv howled as Zyll clawed at him.
Tullah roared in triumph.
The moment stretched as Fern stared at the wagon in open-mouthed shock. It teetered on the precipice. She whipped her head back toward Bucket struggling in his traces, foam flecking his cheeks and chest, straining mightily against the dead weight pulling him toward a terminal downward journey. On the other side of the cart, Kell stooped to retrieve his maul, and in the far distance, the woman with the bow was shouting something.
“Bucket!” Astryx’s cry was anguished. Fern saw her lunge to her feet with her right hand clamped to her opposite side, the left barely deflecting another of Tullah’s attacks with Nigel as she retreated toward the horse.
The buzzing whine in Fern’s ears ceased.
The white receded.
