It was exactly as much fun as I’d thought. The matting under my hands wasn’t sewn, or fastened together in any way. It reminded me of the material that comes out of palm trees, only not that nice. Instead, it was a thick clump of old, damp, half rotted leaves, threaded through with sticks, moss, vines, ancient insect shells—the latter crunching horribly under my hands—tufts of animal hair, and bark, all of which had been pressed down and felted over time into a kind of… stuff… that was stronger than it looked, but not quite strong enough.

Because it kept ripping apart under my hands.

Of course, I got the worst of it, as I was bringing up the rear. Since, believe it or not, I was the one still best able to fight. Or I would have been, because Arsen had given me a second sword before throwing Pritkin over his shoulder and scaling up the shaggy highway like a monkey. But my arsenal was in my belt, making me look like Black Jack Cassie, scourge of the seven seas, as I needed both hands to hold on.

And even that wasn’t working out so well.

I could see the others through the spreading limbs up ahead, but I was finding it hard to make much progress of my own. Leaves slapped me in the face, my feet kept plunging through the crappy material, making new holes or falling into old ones, and my hands kept bunching in what felt like solid fistfuls of the stuff, until I tried to pull myself up. Only to find that they came apart in my grip.

If it hadn’t been for borrowed strength, I wouldn’t have been managing at all, and if it wasn’t for Mircea’s speed, allowing me to catch myself when I stumbled, I’d have plunged to my death a dozen times.

And it was still bloody hard!

And that was before fey started jumping at me out of trees.

Some of them must have spotted us heading up, but instead of taking their chances on the rotten old highway, they had scaled some nearby trunks. I spied at least four of them, although there could have been more. There were plenty of places to hide in the heavy tree cover.

Not that they were hiding.

“Oh, come on!” I yelled, as a silver haired bastard came swinging on a vine at me, like a pointy-eared Tarzan, sweeping me off the path and taking us both into the air.

I saw Arsen look back and pause. “Witch!”

“No!” I yelled. “No, go! I’ve got this!”