This Crooked Way

"Khroi," Morlock muttered to Roble. "Watch out: they have three arms."

"Noticed," Roble replied, obviously pleased to be more taciturn than Morlock for once.

"Eh," Morlock replied wittily, and they charged into the battle.

There were at least five ranks of the buglike Khroi between Roble and Morlock and the rest of my family. The men took out the first rank almost before the Khroi knew they were there.

What, you think they should have announced themselves and cried out a challenge, all orderly and sportsmanlike? Try it when your family's life is at stake. Personally I was glad those sneaky bastards were on our side.

I was glad, but I wanted to do something. The joy on Naeli's wounded face when she saw Roble and Morlock was a beautiful and painful thing to see. I wanted to earn a piece of that, honestly; I was always pretty jealous where my mama was concerned, I guess. But it was more than that: Naeli was fighting for her life, for my brother's lives, and what was I supposed to do, just stand there on a pile of rocks?

Then it occurred to me: I was standing on a pile of rocks.

I wasn't reckless about it; I realized that a bunch of ill-thrown missiles could hurt my people more than the buglike Khroi. But some well-thrown ones …they might at least have some surprise effect.

There was a long heavy pointed rock digging into my knee. I grabbed it and lifted myself up onto the ledge. Picking my time, I hurled the stone at the Khroi who was fighting Naeli. The blunt end struck the Khroi on one of its eyes. It swung half around, its three arms waving. Naeli stabbed low, just above its tripod legs, and it crumpled.

"Hey!" I shouted, and added a suggestion the Khroi probably would have found impossible, even if their reproductive system were like ours. (It isn't, I found out later.)

Now instead of looking happy Naeli looked worried. That made me mad, and I took it out on some more Khroi. I didn't feel like I could reach the Khroi on the far side of the ledge (not without risking a strike on Stador and Bann) but I kept the rocks flying at the narrowing field of Khroi on the near side of the ledge.

Then Roble hewed one in half, and the fight on our side of the ledge was over: the Khroi had been reduced to severed bug-parts scattered over the stone.

Roble and Morlock charged past Naeli, Thend, and Charis without so much as a Hi, how are you?

"Bann, give way!" Roble shouted. I knew he wanted to take Bann's place in the front line, probably have Morlock take Stador's. The ledge wasn't wide enough for the men to shoulder past the boys.

But Bann didn't fall back and he didn't answer. Maybe he didn't hearit was pretty hard to hear anything over the clashing metal. Maybe he felt like he couldn't risk stepping back. Anyway, he wasn't moving. And he was bleeding; so was Stador: I could see it staining their shirts.

Here's where it gets a little weird. Morlock takes his sword and stabs it into the ground. Then he runs up and launches himself over Stador's shoulder, like he's playing leapfrog. In midair he shouts, "Tyrfing!" and the sword flies out of the ground and into his hand as he lands. And he hits like a boulder and takes down a couple of the Khroi as he lands. Then he grips the sword (it is called Tyrfing, but I have no idea how he gets it to come when he calls) with both hands and starts swinging it like a reaper harvesting wheat.

Stador was on the ground, now, and Bann was slumping beside him. Roble shook his head and jumped over them shouting, "Behind you!" (So, like, Morlock wouldn't cut his head off.) Morlock shifted back to a single grip as Roble took a stand beside him, and they settled down to the business of clearing all the Khroi off the other side of the ledge.

There were more Khroi over there than there had been on the near side of the ledge, but pretty soon they had help: the imperial soldiers, Thrennick and Tervin, were attacking the Khroi from the other side.

I cheered them on with a few more obscenities I'd learned while working in the cathouse, and then decided to help out with a few well-thrown rocks. I was bending over, scrabbling for a good missile, when something grabbed me by the ankle.

I was bent over, so I looked through my own bloodstained legs at the thing. It was one of the Khroi who'd been cut almost in half. It had lost the metal sheath from the ends of its arm (it only had one left, and no legs at all). There were six or seven snaky things, like boneless fingers sprouting out of the end of its arm, and it was gripping my ankle with those.

I tried to shake loose, but it was terribly strong. It dragged me down to the ground and started to pull me toward the edge of the cliff.

I screamed, of course. Who wouldn't? The trouble was, my scream wasn't terribly loud. The fall had knocked my breath out of me, and the battle noise was reaching a crescendo just then. I could see Naeli bending over Stador and binding up one of his wounds. Bann and Thend were sitting nearby, gasping for breath and staring at nothing. Nobody seemed to hear me or see me. It was as if my death were taking place in some secret place worlds away from these people who had been my family.

Then somebody landed on top of the Khroi, making its carapace crunch horribly. It was Charis. The Khroi released my ankle to pound feebly at Charis, who rolled with it over to the cliff's edge and pushed it off.

But it had caught hold of him just long enough to keep his momentum going. His feet tumbled over the edge and his body began to follow as he clutched desperately for a hold on the bare dirt and rock of the ledge.

This, I guess, was the moment for a Charis-like calculation of who owed what to whom. Should I have tried to figure out if Charis was still in my debt? (I had, after all, saved his life twice, and he'd only saved mine oncebut I hadn't acted in order to save his life whereas he …) Well, I didn't. I didn't even think about Thrennick wanting Charis alive. There was a roaring in my ears like a river of fire, and I rolled over to seize the arm of this evil icy man who was, apparently, one of my blood-chosen, if not given.

He was saying something. I didn't pay any attention; I was trying to dig my feet into the ground. I hoped my weight, pressing down on the rough surface of the ledge, would be enough to anchor his.

The trouble was: it wasn't. In a silence that seemed to fill the whole world I heard the most horrible sound I've ever heard: my body scraping over the stones of the ledge.

"Help here!" I shrieked, into the sudden silence, and slipped a little fur ther toward the gulf. I really should let go now, I told myself. Can't do this, can't go over the edge with him. But I clung even harder to his arm, so hard that my fingers sank deep into the flesh. That seemed weird, even then, but I didn't have time to think why.

Then Naeli grabbed on to my feet, arresting my slide toward the cliff. I sobbed gratefully and hung on to Charis's arm.

But he was still sliding away from me. I didn't understand it. I wasn't moving, but he was still sliding off the edge of the cliff.

Then his arm ripped away from his body. I was left with it and, no doubt, a dopey look on my face. I'll never forget Charis's expression as he slipped, one-armed, away from me into the abyss.

Morlock was abruptly there. One leg thrown forward so that his foot was at the brink, he bent over and seized Charis by the neck. As Charis gasped and choked Morlock lifted him out of the brink and tossed him beside me on the ledge.