Last time, bye Metaleyes!

They ran occasionally over open land, but more often than not their progress was slowed by cliffs, crevices, and waterfalls-places where there was no footing whatsoever for the horse. There, Katsa needed to dismount, backtrack, and lead the beast to lower ground. And then the hair would stand on the back of her neck and every sound would stop her breath; she couldn’t breathe freely until they’d climbed again. For the lower land gave way to the forest, and Katsa knew the forest must be swarming with Leck’s army.

But for some reason none of them look to the open, easily observed mountains above the forest. Also, from the sound of it the poor horse is being forced into a run every time it’s physically possible in edition to being dragged at top speed on every other terrain. Somehow, it still isn’t dead.

Katsa says that after the king gets through searching every other inch of ground and the ships at the coast, he’ll check out the mountains. This will happen within a day or two. Presumably they cell phones that let him call his whole kingdom and then hear back from them the moment they’re done.

Because it’s impossible to hide within such a small area as an entire country, Katsa decides their only hope is to flee. Also, no matter what they do they can’t disguise themselves, because everyone studies every person they pass on the road closely, so merely changing their appearance, having them pass themselves off as boys, and having Katsa hide one eye will just make people super suspicious.

It’d be funny if that’s actually not true at all and it’s just that as a graced noblewoman, Katsa’s so used to people automatically paying attention to her that it doesn’t occur to her no one’s going to care enough about two random travelers to notice the discrepancies in the first place.

Anyway, point is Katsa decides to do a suicide trek over the mountains instead.

“Even in summer, no one crosses these mountains,” the girl said. “It’s almost winter. We have no warmer clothes. We have no tools, only your dagger and my knife. It’s not possible.

Problem is, Katsa actually doesn’t know jack about mountains or winter survival. Dumbass doesn’t even know enough to keep animal hides, she catches geese by jumping into the lake with them, and she thinks fox is a good meal. She might be able to just wander around the mountaintops without a problem because she’s immune to cold, but that won’t help Bitterblue.

THEY DIDN’T really have only one dagger and one knife to bring them over the Monsean peaks into Sunder. They had the dagger and the knife; a length of rope; a needle and some cord; the maps; a fraction of the medicines; most of the gold; a small amount of extra clothing; the ratty blanket Bitterblue wore; two saddlebags; one saddle; and one bridle.

Oh well in that case it’ll all be fine.

Why are they even still carrying the gold? That poor horse.

She starts leading the poor girl north. Bitterblue attempts to explain that the mountains are deadly cold and also, inexplicably, are packed with apex predators. I guess they live off snow.

No worries. Katsa explains they’re not just crossing at any point, they’re going to take Grell’s Pass. Who was the guy, by the way?

“Grella was a famous Monsean mountain explorer,” she said. “He died in the pass that bears his name.”

Oh. Well, Bitterblue’s fucked then.

Katsa informs us she isn’t offended that Bitterblue doesn’t believe someone who’s never even seen mountains before will have trouble crossing a deadly section completely unprepared. Aren’t we magnanimous.

Katsa caught squirrels and fish and mice for their meals, and rabbits, if they were lucky.

I’m curious what the wolves and mountain lions are living off of. Also, are mice even worth the time to catch? From the sound of it, she’s still going through the trouble of skinning and butchering them.

From the mice skins, she makes Bitterblue a hood.

As they travel Katsa tells Bitterblue stories of her life, and Bitterblue eventually says that Katsa isn’t like the tales she’d heard.

“The stories are true,” she said. “I am that person.”
“But how can you be? You wouldn’t break an innocent man’s arm, or cut off his fingers.”
“I did those things for my uncle,” Katsa said, “at a time when he had power over me.”

Way to dodge responsibility there, Katsa.

The thing is, the king never had any power over her, and it’s not even well explained why she thought he did. He did a great job of making her think she was an uncontrollable animal, sure, but the link between that and thinking she couldn’t disobey him is rather lacking. Even if it wasn’t, Katsa’s response is just so lacking. She doesn’t express real remorse for all the people who suffered because of her own confusion, and her phrasing implies she had no choice.

What’s particularly irritating here is that it isn’t even like she has much guilt to dodge. Just saying she hadn’t realized she had other options would still be quite excusable.

“You should know that my Grace isn’t just fighting, child. My Grace is survival. I’ll bring you through these mountains.”

As you’ve demonstrated, if your grace is survival it’s personal survival only. It hasn’t stopped you from any fuckups that involve other people’s survival. There’s the arrow yanking, the being too dumb to think you should save rabbit skins when you’re got shivering little girl, hell, even the whole lengthy business with being his enforcer – surely a grace that felt survival in general was great instead of just making you more durable would have presented a way for you to not kill all those guys more often? And not that I mourn Cousin Badtouch, but your grace sure wasn’t conductive to his survival.

THE DAY came when the terrain grew impossible for the horse. Katsa didn’t want to kill the animal,
but she forced herself to consider it. There was leather to be gotten from him. And if he were left alive,
he would wander the hills and give the soldiers who found him a clue to the fugitives’ location. On the
other hand, if Katsa killed the horse, she couldn’t possibly dispose of his entire body. They would have
to leave the carcass on the mountainside for the scavengers; and if soldiers found it, its bones picked
clean, it would serve as a much more definite marker of their location and direction than a horse
wandering free. Katsa decided with some relief that the horse must live.

There are so many things wrong with this.

First, Katsa gives no fucks about horses. If this was a real horse, it would have collapsed ages ago from her riding it to death.

Second, Katsa hunts and kills animals all the time. She doesn’t even care about clean kills with them, she wrestled that poor goose to death just to prove she could.

Third, we’ve told that Bitterblue could barely sleep from the wolves howling all night. If they let the horse go, it’s not going to get far before it’s killed and eaten. They might as well get food and skin.

Fourth, that last bit is probably a good thing because otherwise the horse would probably starve considering it’s a domestic animal being released into the wild when it’s almost winter

(Fifth, finding a live horse that’s obviously been set loose tells them things finding a carcass doesn’t. The stripped corpse might mean they were all overtaken by wolves, or that the horse escaped them. A live horse with its saddle and bags removed is one that was obviously let go because they couldn’t take it any higher.)

Anyway.

Bitterblue is tripping on her dress so Katsa sews it into trousers. She’d probably be better off if you’d skinned the horse, though. But no, instead Katsa tries to rework the leather saddle into clothing. Somehow this works.

In the light of each morning, Katsa removed the girl’s boots and checked her feet for blisters. She inspected the girl’s hands to make sure that her fingers weren’t frostbitten. She rubbed ointment into Bitterblue’s cracked skin. She handed Bitterblue the water flask every time they stopped to rest. And Katsa stopped them often for these rests, for she began to suspect that this child would collapse before admitting she was tired.

It is not explained why Katsa knows to do all this stuff or even where the ointment is coming from.

Then Katsa runs into a mountain lion. Her grace doesn’t let her notice it in advance. Nor, apparently, does it do much to helping her fight efficiently.

The great cat plunged, screeching, and she hurled the blade into its stomach. As she dropped and rolled away, its claws tore into her shoulder. Then the cat was upon her, great heavy paws slamming her shoulders against the ground and pinning her to her back. It came snarling at her, claws swiping and teeth bared, so fast that it was all she could do to keep her chest and neck from being ripped apart. She wrestled with its hopelessly strong forearms and swung her head away as its teeth came crashing together right where her face had just been. It slashed her breast savagely. When its teeth lunged for her throat Katsa grabbed its neck and screamed, pushed its snapping jaws away from her face. The animal reared above her and raked her arms with its claws. She saw a flash of something in its stomach, and remembered the dagger. Its teeth descended again and Katsa swung out, smashing its nose with her fist. It recoiled for the merest second, stunned, and in that second she reached desperately for the dagger. The cat lunged again, and Katsa thrust the dagger into its throat.

I’ve figured out Katsa’s grace.

It sure as hell isn’t survival. I mean, really, dagger to the belly? Sure, it’ll be fatal eventually, but eventually leaves more than enough time for it to still kill you now. Wrestling instead of kicking it off or any other attempts to retreat just because it has five pointy ends? Suicidal.

No, Katsa’s grace is soldier. She’s super strong and fast. She’s impossibly accurate and she’s just as accurate with terrible quality weapons. She doesn’t feel pain, hunger, or cold. She’s practically tireless but goes to sleep when she’s told to. She always knows exactly what direction to march in and what time it is. She doesn’t feel fear, throwing herself at any opposition. She’s even inexplicably obedient.

After murdering the cat, Katsa is irritated to notice she’s a bit cut up from its claws.

This fight had brought her injury and inconvenience, but it had also brought food that would last them a good long time, and fur for a coat that Bitterblue very much needed.

The horse would have given you both of those as well, and more of them.

So she drags it back and they eat cat steak, resolving to carry the extra along frozen because they’re too dumb to realize meat is lighter the more water you bake out of it and that they might not be able to make a fire later on.