Last time, Metaleyes decides to go take out Leck alone.

He leaves his personal ring with her, with the idea being that if he doesn’t come back she should go run to the coast and find a Lienid ship. Because clearly, no one could ever just steal a ring.

Katsa thought of doing some exercises, or of teaching Bitterblue to use her knife. But she didn’t want to attract attention with the noise it would make.

It’s like you can hear the author admitting that they don’t really give a fuck and just mentioned it for feminist cred.

Bitterblue’s still all worn out so Katsa just tells her to take a nap.

Finally, the sun goes down and still no Metaleyes. Katsa gets ready to leave but doesn’t want to actually go.

At the last second she hears him coming.

Po lying on the horse’s back, unmoving; and an arrow, an arrow in his shoulder. His shirt soaked with blood. And how many arrows in the horse’s neck and side she didn’t try to count, for suddenly pebbles were spraying over the cliff edge. The horse was slipping, and the whole path was sliding under its panicked hooves.

Poor horse.

The horse twisted and turned in the air. Po smashed face-first into the water and the horse crashed in after him

That sounds pretty fatal. I can’t tell exactly how far it was they fell, but if there was enough time to move around, got to be pretty high. And water is not exactly soft and friendly when you’re hitting it at speed.

she tore down the trail to the gully, feeling nothing as her shins bashed against rocks and branches whipped across her face. She knew only that Po was in that water and that she must get him out.

The book needs to stop putting things like this. She feels nothing normally because she’s super durable with pain resistance, she’s not able to extra feel nothing to show off how panicked she is.

For some reason the horse is sinking like a stone. Katsa cuts Metaleyes loose before it drags him down. He’s unconscious a minute but then he wakes up and he’s just concussed and not dead.

Katsa freaks out because the water was cold, oh no he could die! I’d care more if we hadn’t seen two other characters get horribly chilled and end up doing fine despite Katsa’s complete lack of proper treatment for them. Then she yanks the arrow out. This raises interesting questions, like, if Katsa was shot, would her grace somehow tell her this was fucking stupid, or can it only do so much against Ms. I don’t need to know anything that isn’t stabbing people?

For the record: it’s not necessarily true that the best way to deal with an arrow is to push it through, either. It depends on the location and how deep it is and such. And if it’s just a pointy stick type arrow, which it isn’t because those are not arrows you shoot at people, it can be safely pulled out for a value of safely that involves realizing removing it will cause the bleeding to worsen and at least get the bandages ready first.

While she attempts to dress the wound, she badgers Metaleyes to tell her if he killed the king or not.

This Katsa knew: that a man vomited if struck hard enough in the head, that he became forgetful and confused.

Yes, for some reason she knows all about head injuries and not arrows. Although it’s possible to justify this – knocking people out seems to be Katsa’s way of handling all nonfatal attacks. Maybe whenever arrows are involved, the person’s always too dead to need medical care, so she’s never seen the aftereffects.

She manages to harass him into answering that no, the king lives.

Katsa’s heart sank. For now they must flee, all three of them, with Po in this state and with only one horse. In the dark and the cold, with little food, and without Po’s Grace to warn them of their pursuers.
Her Grace would have to serve

In that case, everyone who isn’t Katsa is fucked.