We climbed up Birger’s new ladder, one at a time. Birger went first, a strange act of integrity from a worshiper of the Trickster. He looked a bit worried, staring where the grapple was meant to be secure.

“Everything all right!?” I shouted.

“YES! Just… wait a minute!” He disappeared from sight. I could just barely hear the hammering of pitons, over the wind. “It’s safe! Come on up!”

I never felt more endangered in my life.

Birger having ‘proven’ it was safe: I and Njord followed. Once we were up, Erik, who we left behind, had the job of untying the bottom of the rope ladder.

Birger produced that heimsks dwarf-toy, the bite-pulley, securing it to the twig with a piton. Looking past him, I saw the grapple, nailed to the twig with pitons. From there, I searched around a bit for where the grapple was originally hooked. I saw a little sprout sapling—big enough that it might just barely hold the weight of a man before suddenly snapping. It had grapple marks on it.

Leaning against the sapling, I grinned at Birger, waiting for him to notice.

He looked up, in confusion for just a moment... then in faux innocence. “What is it?” His eyes darted between me and the sapling.

I didn’t say anything.

“...Shut up!” Birger stood up and looked to Erik, waving a fist to indicate the rope was ready. Waving back, Erik tied his end of the rope to his klifrigg. The ladder could now be pulled through the pulley with no chance of it slipping back down and Erik plummeting to his death.

Pity.

I wondered if they’d bother with all this for me. Likely they would… for the sake of the princess. Otherwise, they’d just tell me to climb the ladder as it swung freely in the wind, laughing as I went.

We began to haul Erik up to the chant of, “Heave!... Heave!... Heave!…” pulling the rope up hand over hand and letting it furl behind us. The rope slipped through the pulley with remarkable ease.

Pulling like this, about two feet of rope every second, Njord and Birger started to visibly tire after two hundred feet. So... they simply leaned back to rest, leaving the bite pulley to do its work keeping the rope in place. It was easy to tell how much we’d pulled in, as every ten yards was marked with red dye.

“Erik, what’s taking you so long?” Njord called as we prepared to start pulling the rope again.

A stupid blonde face appeared. “Have some patience, would you? The view was incredible from down there.” Erik clambered over the side, up onto the twig.

Since I was at the back, I hadn’t really noticed the pulls and tugs of Erik ascending the rope as we reeled him in.

So, he’s a quick climber? That’s why he and Njord caught up with me so quickly, before.

I grimaced. I was still the better climber… but I would watch the idiot carefully.

With Erik secured, we gathered all the ropes and supplies and started moving trunkwards. As we were at the bottom of this new thicket, this meant going uphill. We soon walked on larger twigs and thicker branchlings.

“That’s high enough.” Njord looked down to the thicket below. “We’ll start lowering the lines.”

“We came all this way up… only to go down again.” I griped with zest. They’d been trying to ignore me for a while—so I was determined to get someone to react (other than Erik).

“Would you prefer to have climbed up all those twigs carrying twice your own weight…?” Njord had a hint of dread in his voice, wondering what I would say or do.

“We could’ve just pulled them up after us, as we went.”

“And swung all those packs across gaps? And slowed ourselves down so álfar might spot us? Some of those twigs we climbed would have broken if we put that much gear on them, so then we’d have to move it piece by piece. Are you a complete fool? Isn’t this obvious?”

“It is; I just like the sound of your voice.”

Njord wanted to strangle me. I could tell because his hands were shaking… around my neck. He didn’t squeeze, though—the image of the princess I promised kept him at bay.

“Crow… let’s have a talk.”

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“I love talking!”

“I noticed! But… you know….” He took his hands off my neck.

That’s a good sign.

Njord stepped closer, his voice much calmer than his balled fists. “We’re blood brothers, part of the same fóstbræðralagi. We bled together and swore an oath to avenge each other if we died, yes?”

“Oh, did we? I’d almost forgotten…. Good thing you reminded me!”

He placed a hand on my shoulder, gripping it with something stronger than brotherly love. “If you don’t start being serious… right now: I’ll kill you.”

I was about to say that wasn’t a very blood-brotherly thing to do… but then I realized there’d be a lot of Crow’s blood involved. “I’m deadly serious.” I said.

“You better be…. I may not be the most pious man, but we cut a strip from Yggdrasill’s living bark together. You and I and Birger and Stonebear—all nine of us. We made it into a living arch held up by a spear, both ends still part of the tree. You walked through it like returning to the womb and being born again. We cut ourselves, and spoke an oath as we walked under the arch, our blood mixing together on Yggdrasill’s bare cambium. Oaths are serious matters… and we did all this just for you joining, remember.”

“You threw me, before. Were you serious about killing your foster-brother, then?”

“I’m trying not to be.” The anger in his voice made it sound like he was trying very hard. “I’m asking you not to make that difficult…. You wanted to get a rise, and you got one. What’s there to complain of? And you should remember, I can make your life very hard, even without killing you.”

Why is he saying this?

Studying him… there were no obvious signs of falsehood. Had I just made him desperate to shut me up…? Or…

Oh Yggdrasill above and below…. Was he trying to be friends?

Scarcely had I contemplated such indignities. But it did seem this lecture was his way of forming a rapport. Not a bad idea, either, leaning on the oaths tappers swear to slightly reduce the amount of backstabbing among them. More importantly… I lost nothing by becoming his friend.

“There are few things I love more than wit.” I admitted, trying to smile in a friendly manner, and not mockingly. He still couldn’t tell the difference. “As you say, I enjoyed getting a rise and I have nothing to complain of… do you?”

Njord paused, assessing if I was trapping him in some way. “If things go well from now… it’s all fallen leaves. Forgotten.”

He grinned as if struggling not to bite me.

“We won’t forget about the princess though, I hope?”

“Believe me, Crow… it’s very much on my mind at this moment.”

My smile lit up like a drawn dagger. I would have no problems from him.

“Stop grinning at me. Come on, we need to lower the lines.” Njord went to the heavy pack he’d carried all this way. It was filled with a massive coil of thin, quarter-þumal knotted rope.

I groaned. “Why do we use this spindly thread as climbing rope?

“Would you prefer to carry half your weight in rope? Half-þumal-rope is four times as heavy. This cord is light, and that’s good enough.” He pulled out a coil that was particularly interesting, as it was equipped with rope stigreipar. These were stirrups or steps, loops of cord tied onto the climbing rope at regular intervals. Climbing would be a lot easier with those to grab and step into.

“Those look nice. Is that why Birger doesn’t use them?”

“You’ll curse them to Hel when they get caught on sprouts and brush. I thought upper treemen were knot-climbers like Birger?”

“I’ll have you know I used to climb strings thinner than that without stigreipar with my arms behind my back.”

“Really…? I’d love to see you do that.”

“Maybe later. I’m a touch out of practice.”

“Touched in the head, more like. Here, take this.” He handed me a bundle of string, with a lead weight. “Toss this over the side. Find a good place for the first line.”

I felt a temptation to toss the whole bundle of string. But considering our new friendship… I dropped the weight on the end of the string. The weight was only about a pound, but good enough to keep it steady in the wind. Of course, we had moved closer to the trunk, where the thickets around us reduced the wind. Lowering it till it hit a large twig below, I took the measure.

“It’s about 170 yards. How many yards of rope do we have?”

“Oh, some one and a half miles.” He spoke with a casualness that boasted loudly. So I was very annoyed that I was genuinely impressed. “Enough rope to stretch from here to Blábýr above us, where Ragnhild and Vidar went.” Concern overshadowed his gloating, thinking of what mischief his sister might get up to there.

“That’s a lot!” I calculated it as about three of our packs filled with nothing but rope.

He nodded sagely. “It weighs about as much as Ragnhild, too.”

“Do you think Vidar has found that out, yet?”

His eyes widened with intent to kill… and he had a lot of rope to hang me with.

“You stupid—rhghfraa!” His words became incoherent as he clawed out to grab me, crawling after me for several body lengths.

“Remember the princess!” My words were as rapid as my feet.

His incoherence was far more frightening than any oath or insult…. So I should probably stop laughing—I don’t think that’s helping.