Free North! Or Be Eaten by Andrew Peterson Page B

tail. “Why aren’t they coming?”
    “Because they know we’re trapped, lass,” said Podo. “Look.”
    The Fangs gathered at the bottom of the bank and ordered the trolls back. The Fangs seemed worried that the children might somehow get pushed over the falls in the fight if they advanced too quickly, so they proceeded with caution. More Fangs appeared, and they organized themselves into ranks. Meanwhile, the trolls knelt like children at the river’s edge and ran their fingers through the speeding water. When daggerfish leapt, the giggling trolls batted them out into the rapids.
    “Where do we go now?” Oskar asked.
    “Nowhere,” said Podo with a deep sigh. “We stand and fight.” He drew his sword. “We fight, and we don’t give up until the water’s lapping at our toes, eh? If something terrible happens and us old codgers don’t make it through this, then you kids stay together, hear? Fight with yer teeth if you have to, but
stay together
. I don’t know what old Gnag has planned for you, but you just trust the Maker and…and do like your father would have you do. Do like me and yer ma would have you do. Don’t just follow your heart. Your heart will betray you.”
    “Tink, where are you going?” Janner asked. Tink was ten steps or so away, picking a path around a boulder that seemed to hover in the fog. “Tink!” Janner yelled, growing angry again.
    “I told you, I thought I saw something,” Tink said without looking up. “An outline in the rocks, like someone had started to draw some stairs or a path down from the tree line but never finished. Look!” He kicked at some loose stones.
    All Janner could see was more rock.
    Tink rolled his eyes and brushed some more of the shale away. “Steps,” he said.
    The squared hunk of rock was worn smooth from years of erosion, but it was clearly man-made, as wide as a sword length and cut from the bedrock.
    “I don’t see what you’re so happy about. How does a step or two get us past the Fangs?”
    Tink pointed below the cliff where the others gathered, and Janner understood. He saw buried beneath the pebbles and slate the faint outline of more steps, cut into the face of the cliff. Even now that he knew they were there, he had to squint and use his imagination to see the stairs, and he wasn’t sure anyone but Tink would have spotted them.
    Janner laughed and clapped Tink on the back. “Stairs! Tink found stairs!”
    The steps probably led to another dead end, but knowing their final stand wouldn’t be there on the bank, that it wouldn’t happen for a few more minutes, made Janner giddy.
    While Podo lowered an eyebrow and Oskar raised both of his, Nia, Leeli, and Nugget sprang to where Janner and Tink stood. Nia saw the steps at once. She gasped, kissed Tink’s forehead, and led Nugget down. Janner, after giving Tink a look of apology, followed his brother down. Podo and Oskar went last. In moments they disappeared below the lip of the cliff and into the mist.
    The stair was treacherous, no more than a narrow ledge cut into the wall of rock. The wall curved away from the bank and seemed to lead straight into the waterfall, while on the right the ground fell away and vanished into the void below.
    Over the noise of the falls, Oskar and Podo could be heard just behind Janner and Tink, huffing and grumbling things like “blasted wet clothes” and “my spectacles are so fogged up I can hardly see a thing” and “speed up, ye old bag, they won’t be far behind.”
    Just in front of Janner, Nugget kept as close to the wall as possible, his tail between his legs. The ledge took them behind a rush of water, a passageway of thunder, spray, and stone. When they emerged, the stair descended more sharply into the mist.
    Nugget stopped, and Janner bumped into the dog’s rear.
    “What is it?” he called to Nia and Leeli as he squeezed past Nugget.
    “The steps end here,” Tink said, pointing at a fall of white water hissing through a gap as wide as