"I don't want to kill you," said Patience.

"Go back," he said to the geblings. "Go back, you filth!"

Behind her, Reck fitted an arrow to her bow.

"He's a child!" Patience shouted. "He can't help himself!"

"Neither can I," said Reck.

Before Reck could get off a shot, Patience kicked out, catching the boy in the belly and knocking the wind out of him. He fell back against the stone wall of the cliff face behind him. He didn't drop the hammer. So she had to do it again, and this time she could feel ribs break.

"Live!" she shouted at the boy. "Live and forgive me!"

Then she ran on, leading the geblings to the base of the sewer line.

"All Unwyrm needs to do to defeat you is send an army of children," said Ruin. "Save your compassion for a time when we're not fighting to survive."

"Shut up. Ruin," said Reck. Then she pushed on the sewer pipe. It wobbled. "We're supposed to climb this? It's pottery. It'll break."

"The frame is wooden," said Patience. "And there are gaps in the stone wall. Easy." She proved it by climbing up beside the sewer pipe, using only the crevices in the stonework. Reck and Ruin scrambled up behind her.

Shouts below; the soldiers had come back, and Patience and the geblings were clearly visible now. There was no possibility of hiding; they were as visible as roaches on a whitewashed wall, and could not scurry nearly as fast. Patience knew the only escape was to climb as quickly as possible, getting higher and harder to hit before the soldiers came within bowshot.

"Maybe I could get some from here," Reck said. The gebling woman was obviously frustrated at not having been able to use her weapon all day.

"If you killed five, there'd still be fifteen shooting at us," said Patience.

She reached the place where the sewer pipe stuck out from the stone wall. Unfortunately, the wall was newer here; it had not weathered as many years, and there were no crevices to which she could trust her weight. Using the last of the cracks below the sewer line, she was able to get up on top of the pipe. It was a precarious balance, not helped at all by the fact that the pipe was not firmly cemented in place; it wiggled slightly. Her face pressed against the stone, she carefully raised her arms above her head.

It occurred to her that if she really wanted to thwart Unwyrm, she had only to lean backward just a little, and it would be over. But as soon as she felt that desire, she was filled with a desperate urge to survive. Her fingers touched the top of the wall, with a few inches to spare.

The stones were firm; she began to lift herself. It was harder than hoisting herself onto a tree branch; she couldn't swing front-to-back in order to give herself momentum.

But slowly, with growing pain in her arms, she was able to lift herself till the wall was at waist height; then she toppled over to safety beyond the wall.

On this side, the road was half a meter below the level of the wall, so that the wall formed a sturdy curb to keep carts from toppling over the edge. Almost as soon as she was behind the wall, the arrows started flying from below.

Of course Unwyrm hadn't been willing to let anyone shoot when there was a chance of hurting her. Now, though, only the geblings clung to the wall, high and difficult to shoot, but open targets nonetheless. A chance arrow was bound to hit one of them sooner or later.

"I can't reach!" shouted Ruin.

Of course. The shorter geblings couldn't possibly climb as she had done. And she doubted she had the strength left in her arms to reach over and pull him up.

At the same moment, Unwyrm increased the urgency of the Cranning call. Leave them. She felt a sudden revulsion for the geblings. Filthy creatures, hairy and crude, imitating human beings but planning only to betray and kill her. It took all her strength not to do as she desired, to run from the wall and proceed alone to where Unwyrm waited, her lover, her friend.

She clung to the memory of Will's voice, telling her that her desires were not herself. She pictured the passions that Unwyrm sent as though they stood outside her, while her passionless self remained inside the machine of her body, making it do what it so desperately desired not to do.

She pulled her gown off over her head and knotted it to her cloak. Then, clad only in her chemise, with a cold wind whipping along the road, she sat with her feet braced against the wall, passed the cloak behind her back, and flipped the gown over the wall. She held the knot in her left hand, the other end of the cloak in her right; the friction of the cloth against her back would allow her to support far more weight on the gown than her arms could have managed alone.

"I'm supposed to climb this?" shouted Ruin.

"Unless you can fly!" she shouted back. Unwyrm raged at her, tore at her in her mind, but she held, despite the impulse to let go, to let the gebling fall. I will do what I decide to do, she said silently, not what I want to do, and she felt the emotional part of herself become smaller, recede as if it were rushing away from her. This is Will, she realized. This is his silence, his strength, his wisdom, that he can send away all his feelings when he doesn't want them.

The cloth of the gown gave and tore slightly, then more, but in a moment Ruin scrambled over the wall.

Then he leaned over and shouted encouragement to Reck.

Suddenly there was a cry from the other side.

"She's hit," said Ruin. He shouted, "It's nothing, it barely hurt you, come on, come on!"

From the weight on the makeshift ladder. Patience knew that Reck was climbing now. Ruin leaned over, caught his sister under the arm, and helped pull her up.

The arrow protruded from her left thigh, but Ruin was right-the head had not buried itself, and he easily pulled it out. Reck was gasping, her eyes wide with terror.

"Never," she said. "I could never stand heights."

"And you think of Cranning as home?" asked Patience.

She was examining her gown. It was shredded where it had scraped on the wall. It pulled apart in her hands. "I'm glad there aren't three of you. The third one would have fallen."

She unknotted the cloak from the gown. A spent arrow dropped beside her. She flipped it back over the wall.

"Hope it lands in someone's eye."

Ruin was looking at her. Studying her. "Why didn't you go off and leave us?"

"I thought of it," she said.

"I know-we get the shadow of what he says to you."

"Well, if I'm going to be a bride, I need a wedding party. Have to have you along." It was a bitter joke. She wrapped the cloak around her waist to protect her legs from the cold wind that whistled down the unprotected road. "I also need a warm fire."

"At least we don't have to run for a few moments."

Reck tried out her injured leg. "Hurts," she said.

Ruin looked around. "If we find the right herb-"

"They say everything that grows anywhere grows in Cranning," said Reck.

"Somewhere in Cranning," said Ruin.

"There are trees that way," said Patience. "And if we're lucky, we won't run into anybody that Unwyrm can set to chasing us."

The houses, which were several streets deep for a while, thinned out and finally gave way to gardens and orchards. Soon they found themselves on a road that led along the rim of a large flat orchard area. The trees were stunted, for only dwarf trees could live at such an altitude.

Ruin wandered among the trees, which had long since lost leaf and fruit; finally he called to Reck and jammed a furry leaf against her wound.

"We can't rest here for long," Reck said, holding the leaf in place. "He'll have someone after us soon."

"I've never worked so hard in my life," said Patience.

"And I'm so tired."

"We haven't slept since we left the boat," said Ruin.