In the pink of dawn they stumbled upon a small cabin with little to offer except its shell; […] Broken shutters and a cold fireplace. A blanket of dust on the rough wooden floor, on the table and the bed, on the cabinet that leaned on three lopsided legs with its door hanging open crookedly.

So, but little to offer you really mean fully furnished and needing just a bit of cleaning?

Jeeze, if you’re going to try and sell the place as unlivable, talk about cracks in the walls.  At this level of ‘survival,’ four solid walls and a fireplace is a huge boon.

They decide to stash Po there, even though it’s a big and obvious hiding place, because he can sense when people are coming and hide for realzies before they get to him.  On the other hand, cleaning all that dust up and adding real blankets would make it very obvious that someone is living there, regardless of where Po is.

There’s a pool with a waterfall nearby, and Po senses a cave with an underwater entrance, but for the sake of fooling Bitterblue, Katsa dives into the water to ‘find’ it herself.

You know what?  All of Po’s problems could be solved if they told people about his sensing magic while leaving out the actual mind-reading part.  “I’m totally in tune with the physical energy of people and can tell when their muscles bunch up for a move.  I’ve been sensing and interpreting this subconsciously my entire life, which is why I thought it was (part of) a fighting grace, but lately I’ve been developing the ability to sense more than just humans.  For instance, there’s a cave behind that waterfall.”

There, and now all he has to do is not verbally reply to people’s thoughts.

Or, you know, just come clean entirely.  Douche.

Katsa can’t bear to leave Po just yet, so she convinces him that the horse needs a rest and starts trying to make a bunch of stuff for him and kills a bunch of things for him to eat.  She makes a basket that sits underwater and fills it with fish.

She caught fish for Po; so many fish that by the time she was done, the basket swarmed with their crowded bodies.

“You may have to feed them,” she said, once she’d returned to shore and dressed. “But they should last you some time.”

No, they’ll be dead pretty soon.  Those fish are terrified and thrashing; if they don’t die from beating each other to death, then they’ll die from being stuck in a confined space next to all the fish that do die from getting beaten.  Plus I’m pretty sure that actually swimming around instead of sitting still is important.  Not to mention all the fish poop that’s about to accumulate in one spot.

Finally Po convinces her to stop doing stuff and go, and he gives a bunch of parting advice while Katsa tries to mentally convince him to come along.  And…considering how stiff and distant the writing has been so far, it’s actually a surprisingly touching scene.  I think because it was done primarily though dialogue and not through pseudo-poetic narration.

After Bitterblue and Katsa strike out on their own, the book spends several pages detailing how hard it’ll be to get out of the kingdom, because the two of them are so thoroughly recognizable and literally everyone everywhere is going to be looking for them.

Therefore Katsa decides the only answer is to go over the mountains somewhere other than at the actual pass.

In winter.

But hey, she’s magic, so it’s okay, right?

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.

Why are you still hauling gold around?

Also, that seems an oddly light collection of things, considering they should have everything they brought with them into Monsea.  Or at least half the things.  What, no bedrolls?  (Very important in the cold; sleeping on frozen ground will get you sick.)  No firestarters or flint?  No campfire pot for cooking?  Socks?  Tent?

These are things I can fit in a rucksack when I go out, but you couldn’t put them on a fucking horse when planning a cross-country trip way back when?  What happened to all your gear?

Bitterblue tries to point out that Katsa is crazy for this plan, and Katsa just carries on with her attitude of “lol, magic.” 

On the one hand, I can understand that the fun of magic is being able to do things that normal people can’t.  Of course.  There would be no point in writing magic if you just end up doing normal things.  On the other hand, wow, it is boring as fuck to have every answer be “I literally do not care and will give no thought to anything because my magic will make it work anyway no matter what.”

They keep walking, it’s all told in summary, and good lord is there anything more boring than a summary of walking?  Eventually they get high enough that the horse can’t carry on, and Katsa decides to let him go.  Her decision being based on the fact that a dead horse is a trail maker and a live one will probably wander off in a misleading direction.

Katsa decided with some relief that the horse must live. They removed his bags, his saddle, and his bridle. They wished him well and sent him on his way.

On the other hand, a live horse without any of his gear was very clearly deliberately let go and says to pursuers that they went high into the mountains.  So unless the horse wanders very far away (and since it doesn’t have a home on this side of the mountains to return to, would it?), that’s still going to be a marker.

Things do get slightly more interesting as they go, and Katsa takes the time to cut up Bitterblue’s skirt and the saddle and fashion makeshift pants out of them, and there’s mention of checking often for blisters and frostbite.  I do so prefer my survival stories to involve more than just walking.

But then they get attacked by a mountain lion.

Yes, a fucking mountain lion.

Earlier in the chapter, Katsa said all they could catch was mice and squirrels, and since then food has become even scarcer, but there’s a fucking mountain lion hanging around.  And also wolves, but we didn’t actually see those, just heard them.

What are all these carnivores eating?  Why the fuck is there a mountain lion in the land of mice and squirrels?  No wonder it attacked Katsa and Bitterblue; it’s probably starving to death!

Katsa, naturally, wrestles the thing to death.

I don’t even care at this point.

From head to tail the cat was longer than her height, and she guessed it weighed a good deal more than she did. Its neck was thick and powerful, its shoulders and back heavily muscled. Its teeth were as long as her fingers, and its claws longer.

…

… …

Technically cougars get to that size, but I don’t think that lives on mice and squirrels is going to manage it.

So they cook up some cat steaks and make a coat from the pelt, and they intend to carry more cat meat frozen as they climb.  Even though they’re getting near the tree line and there’s heavy snowfall, which means frozen meat is just going to stay frozen meat because good luck getting enough dry wood to burn.

Oh, right, magic.  Silly me.  Who needs to things like research and logical considerations when you have magic?