Dag stretched his legs, driving up the hill, dodging around trees, boots slipping on old leaves and damp limestone lumps and green-black rolling round hickory husks. By the thump and pained grunt, at least one of his pursuers was finding the footing equally foul. He didn’t actually want to lose the boys in the woods, but he wanted a good head start by the time he arrived…

Here.

Ah. Hm.

His chosen tree turned out to be a shagbark hickory with a trunk a bit less than a foot and a half wide. And no side branches for twenty feet straight up. This was a mixed blessing. It would certainly be a challenge for the boys to follow him up it. If he could get up it. He pulled his right arm from the sling and let it swing out of his way, reached up with his left, jammed in his hook, clapped his knees around the trunk, and began shinnying. Yanked the hook out again, reached, jammed, shinnied. Again. Again. He was about fifteen feet in the air when the pursuit arrived, winded and swearing and waving their cudgels. It occurred to him, in a meditative sort of way as he dragged his body skyward, that even without the unpleasant searing feeling in his left shoulder muscles, he was putting an awful lot of trust in a small wooden bolt and some stitching designed to pull out. The rough bark strips crackled and split beneath his gripping knees, small bits raining down in an aromatic shower. If his hook gave way and he slid down, the bark would have an interesting serrated effect between his legs, too.

He made it to the first sturdy side branch, put an arm and a leg over, winched himself up, and stood. He searched for his objective. Absent gods, another fifteen feet to go. Up, then.

A dry branch gave way under one foot, which was partly useful, for he was then able to kick it free and drop it on the upturned face of the skinny fellow who was being urged up the tree in Dag’s wake by his friends. He yelped and fell back, discouraged for a moment. Dag didn’t need too many more moments.

To his delight, a rock whistled up past him, then another. “Ow!” he cried realistically, to lure more of them. A couple more missiles rose and fell, followed by a meaty clunk and an entirely authentic “OW!” from below. Dag made sure they could hear his evil laugh, even though he was wheezing like a smithy’s bellows by now.