Twelve miles with a pole-litter along a side-hill timber bench took them two full days.
There was nothing heroic about the work; it was simply heavy, awkward, and hard on the knees. Because Ashaun could not grip a front pole with her stone left arm and Ysabet could not close her burned, bent right fingers around a rough fir shaft, they rigged a braided hemp shoulder-yoke across the front ends so Ashaun and Osha could take the weight on their collarbones while Chaska and Ysabet traded off at the rear poles.
Lilt could not carry two people, nor could she fly through dense pine timber with a wounded man strapped to her back. Instead, whenever the bench opened into a half-mile clearing of frost-browned bracken, Chaska lashed Osha’s heavy oak archive case and Deyun’s trap-sack to the sandray’s walking pad and sent her ahead in a low, skimming glide to the next creek crossing, saving the women fifty pounds of dead weight on the climbs.
Pip walked beside the right-hand litter pole the whole way.
Whenever the fir shafts jolted over a frost-heaved root or slid a few inches on wet pine needles, Deyun reached down over the edge of the blanket sling and steadied his knuckles against the rough, healed seam of Pip’s shell. At midday halts, while Ysabet checked the circulation in his swollen toes and set the mouse’s half-covered box by the fire so the little creature could eat its grain in the warmth, Pip chewed wet…
