With Pip bracing the base of the pine and reading every tiny slip of tension through its lattice antlers, Chaska, Ashaun, and Ysabet paid out the doubled hemp line. Ashaun wedged her translucent stone left forearm into a notch of the granite bollard as a friction brake while gripping the live line with her right hand; Chaska and Ysabet took the rear haul behind her.
Kiv backed over the northern lip, kicked off from the solid rock wall below the level of the beetle arch, and swung across the misty gulf in a long, slow pendulum until his boots caught the inner corner of the southern shale ledge.
“Stay back there!” the bounty hunter snarled, pressing the skinning knife harder against Tern’s grey throat fur as Kiv found his balance ten feet away. Blood showed dark on the hunter’s cheek where shale had torn it, and his left boot was twisted awkwardly beneath the limestone slab that pinned Tern’s haunches. “Throw me the end of that rope and haul me up to the trail first! Once I’m clear on the south rim, you can come back for your dog!”
Kiv stood still on the narrow shelf, keeping his hands open at his sides where the moonlight could reach them. Tern’s yellow eyes rolled toward him without the wolf moving his head a fraction of an inch against the steel.
