The wind wouldn’t save me at this distance, hanging from this ladder which was just a thin, knotted rope. Birger stood at the top of the ladder on the twig ten yards above… his arrow pointing straight at me. And because the climbing-rope I was clinging to was knotted, it would be a lot harder to slide down to gain distance.

Why did climbing have to be so complicated…? I would take the others’ advice and fly from now on!

I threw myself to one side, spinning around the rope like a pole-dancer. Birger paused in a half draw, seeing that my dancing and the wind made me sway in every direction.

While carrying their things, I had seen a quiver with a dozen arrows, with fletchings just like the one Birger shot at me. He had already used one of his dozen—it would be a problem to lose many more, if he was planning to hide the murder of Crow, his blood-brother, from the others.

After hesitating, he finally drew back his longbow. It was almost as tall as he was, and took a couple of seconds to draw back fully.

Loosening my grip and stepping off the knot, I slid down, feeling a jerk of resistance as I hit the next knot below me. Repeating this, and throwing myself about, I confused his range and target. I just needed him to loose his arrow and miss… then I could safely throw my dagger. If I throw it before he shoots, he could hit me while I cast it at him—in that moment of stillness after all my weight and force had been placed behind that blade, and sluggishly I regain control after a few deadly seconds. So I had to get him to shoot, and then kill him.

He couldn’t hold his draw for long, easing off and then drawing again. It was a powerful bow meant to launch a heavy arrow some 100 yards straight up, and it would shoot even faster straight down. It did take a couple of seconds to fully draw back to his ear, and I could send my knife to his heart in that time—but his bow was half-drawn, more than enough force that his arrow might wound me even as I slew him, if he let go of the string.

He aimed here and there, back and forth, leaning so far off his twig to shoot down I hoped he might fall. Then an evil grimace crossed his graffitied face… and he laughed.

“Look at you, so spooked you can’t stop wobbling around! Not so still and sure of yourself this time.” He stepped away from the edge. “Come on up!”

A trick…? Would he leap forward and shoot an arrow while I relax in the last few feet of the climb…? My knife would be faster, if so.

He slung his bow over his shoulder.

OK, he was planning to stab me as I crested the twig… My knife would still be faster.

Approaching the last few feet of ladder, tensely, he offered me a hand.

He’s going to throw me off the twig after I take it, knowing if I stab him I’d still be doomed to fall—but he mustn’t have noticed the cinch-knot binding me to the ladder. I could cut him to pieces, then regain myself as I slid down.

Birger chuckled as I grasped his hand, my grin suitably nervous to give nothing away… then he helped me up. I waited for the shove, the stab, the, “let’s see if you can fly, Crow!” which I’d interrupt with a slice of his throat.

There was an unpleasant jerk; not Birger, but a lurching sensation, as I felt the cord from my belt which was tied to the ladder stopping me suddenly.

“What’s that?” Birger pointed at my cord and cinch-knot.

“Insurance, in case you cut my ladder.” I untied the knot, looking between it, him, and the thicket below. Njord’s unmistakable menace was peeking through the leaves, which shook as he tried to force his horns through them.

“Why didn’t you just use a bite-pulley?”

“A what?”

“You know… the dvergr pulleys that stop you falling.” He reached into his satchel, pulling out a wooden pulley. Removing two metal pins he removed the face of it, revealing what looked like a wheel and a set of iron teeth, a line of rope strung around the wheel.

“It lets you go up,” he pulled one end of the rope, and it easily threaded through the pulley, “but won’t let you fall down.” Pulling the other side of the rope, it caught on the iron teeth, and caused them to bite into the rope until he couldn’t pull it further.

“I think that would’ve just made it harder to dodge your arrows, if I couldn’t go down.” I squinted at the frivolous dvergr tool. It was pretty simple… I could make that; if I wanted to, and it wasn’t a waste of time.

“Bah! What are you so scared of? There’s no way that arrow would’ve hit you.” Birger put away the device, scowling.

No way it could’ve hit me, eh? I couldn’t tell if he was violent and murderous or violent and stupid.

“Besides,” I continued, “if you cut the rope above me I would ‘fall up’ the rope. And that stupid pulley wouldn’t care in the slightest, as it has no sense of gravity.” I stood on my hands to demonstrate my point. If the top of the rope became the bottom of the rope… I’d slide down easily.

“You could’ve just put it on upside down; if I cut the rope and it dropped below you, it’d stop your fall.”

“Except it would’ve stopped me climbing up the rope, too.”

Birger blinked, about to argue something stupid like clamping on that awkward little gimmick while I was falling. “But you could jus— What do you know, anyway? You don’t even know how we fix routes!”

“I fixed them all the time, up in the tree.” I thought back to all I had seen in the upper parts of the tree, below Asgard’s glittering glory: looking down as people went about their lives. They would form long trails of ropes, ladders, pitons, and all sorts, harvesting anything they could to sell to the lower branches. Iron seeds, the shed skins of Golden Beetles, eggs from mother birds’ nests, and the fruit that sometimes grows from Yggdrasill high in the heavens.

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

Birger chuckled. “We’re not going on a little berry-picking trip, Feilan.” He picked up his bag and walked away along the branch.

“I’ve seen people die on some of those ‘berry-picking’ trips.” Following, I recalled what it’s like when one of the upper treemen did miss a step, or a knot came loose, or they made some other tiny mistake while they were panting in the thin air near the end of the day. Often, they were remarkably silent as they fell off, their fellows being the ones to holler and cry as they watched their companion disappear—if the others even noticed him falling.

“Well, they should’ve used a bite-pulley.” He came to a stop, pointing at a higher twig. “You see that? That’s what our ladders are for.”

“Should I climb on your shoulders?”

“Enough heimskulegr talk!” He grabbed an arrow and I grabbed my knife.

Birger snickered. “Seems I really did get you jumpy.” He took out a strange arrow from its own part of the quiver. It had a small grappling hook instead of an arrowhead, one able to fit in the palm of your hand. He took a long coil of string out of his pack, and threaded it through a hole in the grapple.

He handed me both ends of the string. “Tie these somewhere.”

“Can you ask nicely?”

“No!”

There were two ends of the string, and he didn’t tell me if there was any special way to tie them. I decided to use a double mermaid knot, vaguely remembering some karl using it for his fishing nets. I made a loop, the mermaid’s tail, and put the other string through it. Then, I made that second string a noose to choke the mermaid to death. I fixed the knot around a thick sprout as I tied it.

Birger drew back the mighty bow. This involved lifting the bow a little over his head. Grunting loudly, he leaned forward, his ars sticking out, engaging all his torso’s many muscles. He lowered the bow as he drew it, until the arrow was at eye-level, the string drawn all the way back to his ear. Then, he pointed it almost straight up, and shot the hook towards the high branch.

It missed.

“Shut up!”

“I didn’t say anything.”

“You were going to!” Birger reeled in the grappling hook. “It takes a few tries….”

He wasn’t wrong. He missed the second time, too.

“Let me try!”

“No! It’s my bow!”

“But you keep missing. We’ll be here all day.”

“A skinny sprout like you couldn’t pull this bow, anyway.” Birger said, missing again. The grapple made the arrow fly awkwardly, so it could veer in an unexpected direction. The twig he chose may’ve also been just a touch too high.

“You must be tired at this point, let me try!”

“Þegi þú! You keep distracting me!”

While Birger missed a fourth time, my gaze moved from between his shoulder blades to the thicket down below. Njord and Erik were starting to climb the ladder.

It’d be fun to cut it….

“There! You see!? Weren’t you watching!?” Birger furiously pointed to the grapple, which had presumably sailed over the high twig.

“Good job, Birger!” I clapped enthusiastically.

“Shut up! Now pull the grapple in.”

Pulling in the string, I felt some resistance as the grapple—

“Stop! What are you doing!?” Birger grabbed the string, halting my reeling.

“Just what some fífl told me to.”

“Another joke like that and I’ll gut you like a pig and throw you off, Blood-Brother or not.” He began to tug on the string, carefully, testing the grapple’s grip.

He gave a hard pull… and whatever was holding the grapple in place slipped, and it jumped free. Birger paled as it rolled towards him.

“Ahhh! No!” Birger squealed. He began whipping the string up and down, causing waves to bounce through it. Despite the great length of string, it was just enough to flip the little grapple, which rolled back to the far side of the twig.

“The Firekeeper be thanked.” He sighed, beginning the process of tugging on the string again. He wandered up and down our twig, trying to get the best angle, to manoeuvre the grapple to a solid place to get stuck. Giving another hard pull… the grapple stayed in place.

I noticed Erik bumbling up from behind. “What are you two heimskingjar doing?” Erik scanned between us, searching for stab-wounds.

“Shut up, Erik.” Birger pulled out a larger grapple from his bag, weighing probably four merkur. He tied another one of those annoying, quarter-þumal knotted ‘ladders’ to the big grapple.

Then, there were several stealthy footsteps approaching me. A big, meaty hand grabbed my shoulder, flipping me around. It was the bull, and he was about to punch me in the head. I blocked with two arms, feeling them shake with the impact as I stumbled back.

“Blood-Brother or not, you need to watch your mouth, you þrælborinn hundr!” Njord glared down at me, fists ready—so I did my best to suppress a grin.

Born was I, to a thrall? Don’t smile, don’t laugh—he wants to hit me again.

“What do you find so amusing, hundr…?” Njord asked, fist raised.

“Are you and Ragnihild twins?”

“Yes… why?”

“Just imagining the commotion at the birth when Hel herself was made flesh, with her beautiful half… and your half.”

Njord had a real talent for turning as red as a beet. Just as I had a talent for getting into trouble.

“I think it’s time to find out if you can fly, Crow.”

I groaned even before he finished speaking, knowing he would say that.

Odinn, why must they torture me so?

Njord grabbed me, ready to hurl me off the tree.