Slowhand came to a skidding, skittering stop, gasping with exhaustion and frustration, watching in disbelief as stones pushed by his sliding soles tumbled away only a few inches in front of him over a precipice. What made his predicament a hundred times worse was that not only had the terrain come to an end ahead of him but, unnoticed until now, to his left and right as well. In fact, there was little more than a half foot of rock on either side of him before -
Slowhand's focus zoomed in and out at the same time, and there was a vertiginous rush in his ears.
Oh boy.
Battered by wind, the archer turned slowly and carefully in a circle, taking in his precarious situation.
He was standing at the tip of a very long, very narrow outcrop of rock that, by all rights, should have collapsed under its own weight. Instead, it thrust itself defiantly and dizzyingly out into the night sky, seemingly ignoring gravity. In profile he guessed it would look like some part constructed bridge, stretching halfway across the deep chasm over which it jutted. But where a bridge might have had supports to stabilise itself, here there was nothing beneath it. Nothing at all. For a very, very, very long way down.
As Slowhand looked down at a river that height had reduced to the width of a hair, he realised his perch was impossible. A thing that should fall but didn't. And that realisation brought another — where exactly he was.
My Gods, this is Thunderlungs' Cry.
He recalled Kali telling him how she had travelled here once with Horse — the original Horse, that was — to experience the legend that had been a favourite girlhood tale.
Two tribes, split by this vast chasm in the mountains, had met only once when freak weather had driven them both into the valley far below. That meeting had led to romance between two individuals but war between the tribes themselves. When each tribe had returned to their own side, the two lovers were prohibited from ever meeting again by their elders, and all paths to the valley were barred to them. The man, who became known as Thunderlungs, managed, however, to despatch a message to his lover, Mawnee, using a carrier bird, telling her that if their ancestors favoured their bonding, they would provide a bridge across which the two of them could be reunited.
He had come one Kerberos-lit night, and there she had stood, far across the chasm. He had cried out to the souls who scudded across Kerberos's surface, asking the aid of those who had gone before to unite the pair once more. This they had done, by growing a half bridge of rock from the side of his chasm, and another from that of Mawnee's side, and the two had begun to cross towards each other's outstretched arms. The ancestors had warned, however, that if their love faltered, even for a moment, then the bridge would be no more.
Thunderlungs' love was strong but something that night made Mawnee falter. To her lover's horror the bridge beneath her crumbled away, and she fell to her death.
It was said that Thunderlungs roared his heartbreak into the night — a roar that some said those who had lost loved ones could still hear — until he had frozen solid where he stood. Whereupon his ancestors had laid him down and made him part of the bridge itself, so that his shadow might touch, once a day, the place where his love had fallen.
It was a sad story, Slowhand reflected, and one that might have brought tears to his eyes if they hadn't already been streaming from this farking wind. And it was not as sad as his own would be if he didn't get off this rock right now. Because there had been that sudden, strange crackling behind him once more — as if he were listening to a tavern fire — and he had spun to see the k'nid had caught up with him, reaching the start of the Cry in a clammering rush but there coming to a dead stop, as if assessing what lay before them.
Now that they were at a stop, it was the first chance Slowhand had had to properly study the creatures.
A little over the length of a stretching man when they unfurled for the kill — a manoeuvre he had seen on four occasions and fervently wished that he had not — he saw now that they seemed to be neither animal, vegetable or mineral. They looked like a tangle of roots of glistening black wood that writhed about each other, as if suffering the death throes of the tree from which they had come. Except that they had come from no tree — the way his arrows had bounced from them proving that whatever it was they were made of, it was not wood. As tough as their bodies were, however, it did not prevent them being infinitely flexible. While they seemed to favour pursuit of their prey while in the form of a rough, gnarled, rolling sphere, chance glances had revealed that form shifting constantly between tumbleweed and what appeared to be a running shnarl and, on occasion when obstacles needed to be negotiated, even the briefly airborne form of some predatory bird. But of all their incarnations, it was the one that had slaughtered his companions that Slowhand could not shake from his mind.
He recalled his horror as he'd tried to fend off the k'nid who had closed rapidly on his guide and helpers, because while he'd expected them to be simply crushed beneath the rolling forms or smashed from the rocks to fall below, that wasn't what had happened at all. Instead the creatures had unfurled to reveal a red and fleshy interior and simply swallowed their victims before returning to a tangled sphere form. And no more than two or three seconds later each man had been deposited back outside the sphere, but all they were now were piles of stripped and steaming bones.
And now it was his turn. Unless some miracle occurred.
Slowhand looked around in desperation for a way out, but there was nothing. Thunderlungs Cry simply projected too far from the rest of the rocks to provide any escape route. As the front rank of the k'nid began to crackle towards him, he was beginning to think the most merciful way out would be to jump, when he glanced something approaching from the north. Something in the sky.
What was that? A cloud? A bird? No, too small to be a cloud. Too big to be a bird. Unless it was a small cloud, of course. Or a big bird. Yes, a very big bird.
Then it slowly sank in what it actually was he was looking at.
It was a thing of inflated cloth like a giant balloon, with a thing of wood, like a gondola, slung beneath it. On the deck of that gondola he could just make out the tiny shapes of people. He realised then that he was looking at some kind of… airship.
A flying machine.
"Hey!" Slowhand shouted, desperately waving his hands above his head. "Hey!"
If the people on board heard him, however, they chose to ignore his cries, as the airship continued on its route without any reaction at all. He shouted again, but once more with no effect. The airship was closer now and he could see the people aboard, busied in the tasks he presumed were needed to keep the craft aloft.
If Slowhand couldn't bring the airship to him, then he would have to go to the airship.
Forcing his wonderment aside, the archer calculated its height and trajectory relative to the Cry, and while on the one hand the news was good — it would pass beneath the Cry — on the other it was bad. Too far beneath.
Slowhand double-taked on the k'nid and the airship. If he jumped from this height he would likely bounce right off the balloon and plummet to his death, so that height needed to be reduced. As far as he could see there was only one way to do that. He would need a rope. A rope he didn't have.
He sighed in resignation. It was as unbelievable as it was inevitable.
To make the ladder he needed, his clothes would have to come off. And to make the ladder long enough, that meant all of them. It was certainly the most unusual place he had had to resort to such action, and it was almost a pity he didn't have an audience but then, in the dire circumstances in which he found himself, there would be little if any time to show off his assets.