The reindeer was expressionless as she nodded. “Mountaineer, and I’ll carry your crap through the Needle if that’s what you pay me for.”

“I know we’re not there yet, I know we won’t be there for a while,” Fallende said, rolling her eyes. “I just want to know how we’ll know when we are there. Or do you expect we’ll find signposts going, ‘end of valley here, turn around’?”

“…You know what? No.” A magical haze surrounded Daring’s head and she was wrenched to one side, muzzle-to-muzzle with a snarling Fallende. She prodded Daring hard on the chest. “If you don’t snap out of it now, my dimwitted dope,” Fallende said, her teeth bared like fangs, “I am going to take all your crap, and I am going back to Light’s Edge, and you can freeze to death out here, grazing on your own pubic hair for all I care.”