by Ian Irvine
‘Is that a yes?’ said Nish.
‘Yes,’ said Aimee. ‘We’ll head up that cleft.’ She pointed to it.
‘We’d better move,’ said Nish. ‘Try to keep out of sight. If Klarm sees us up there, he might guess what we’re up to and pull his troops back, out of danger.’
‘We’d be doing some good, then,’ said Aimee. ‘Let’s go.’
‘You’ll need a coat,’ said Nish, for Aimee, like the rest of the militia, wore only a long-sleeved shirt, pants and boots. ‘It’ll be freezing up there.’
‘I haven’t got one. No one wears coats in Gendrigore; it’s too hot.’
‘And the enemy greatcoats would go around her four times,’ said Clech. ‘She can’t climb like that.’
‘Then we’d better be quick.’
‘I am quick,’ said Aimee, ‘but I’ll bet you won’t be.’
They gathered ropes, climbing spikes and hammers. Nish slung the serpent staff over his back, and where its spirals pressed against him he could feel the sluggish, churning heat. The warmth would have been welcome, had it come from any other source, but how could anything left behind by Stilkeen be trusted?
Besides, he still did not know how to liberate its heat – assuming it was possible. He felt like a fraud. What would Aimee and Clech think if they knew how little hope he had? And what if his clearsight let him down again?
Though only mid-afternoon, it was almost as dark as twilight and getting darker. As Aimee reached for the first handhold, it began to rain: big, freezing drops with pellets of ice inside. Wisps of mist formed all across the mountainside and the base of the clouds had moved steadily down during the afternoon; it was not far above the top of the nose-shaped ridge now.
The mist would help to conceal them, but if the cloud base dropped much lower they’d be feeling their way in fog. They might not reach the ice sheet before dark, and certainly would not get down again.
The slope here was about fifty degrees, yet Aimee was already three spans up and climbing like that gecko. Clech had been right – she was light, agile and perfectly suited to this kind of work.
‘Not so fast,’ Clech called, looking more bear-like than ever. He wiped his wet face on the back of his arm and followed, grunting with the effort.
Nish was only a span up the slope when there came a roar from the eastern side, and the furious clash of weapons. His heart jumped and he turned to go down, for the defences could not be seen from here.
‘Flangers will handle it,’ Clech said quietly.
And if he did not, there was nothing Nish could do. He had to put all other concerns aside and concentrate on his own job.
The first twenty spans were an easy climb, since the rock in the cleft was broken and provided good foot-and hand-holds, though above the cleft broadened and became shallower until it was just a crease in the side of the mountain. Aimee was going up rapidly, clinging with fingers and toes to handholds that Nish could not even see.
Clech was also moving steadily, but when Nish tried to climb out of the cleft his body felt heavy, his arms and legs weak, and his blistered feet shrieked. The serpent staff seemed to weigh twice as much as before, and it was hot now. I’m not up to this, he thought. I’ll never get there.
But that’s why Aimee and Clech were with him. ‘I’m going to need a hand,’ he called.
She came down to him. ‘Sorry, Nish. I keep forgetting you’re a gwishin.’
‘A what?’
‘It means a foreigner and a flatlander,’ rumbled Clech, his chest heaving as if he were holding back laughter. He exchanged glances with Aimee and a small light danced in her dark eyes.
Nish suspected gwishin also had a rude meaning, for the Gendrigoreans were fond of vulgar jokes, though if it did they would never tell him.
‘I wouldn’t exactly call myself a flatlander,’ he said. ‘My homeland is rugged enough, though it’s in the far south and much colder than here. No one would ever go climbing there for fun.’
Aimee stood up on the steep slope, not even holding on. Her slender fingers were blue from cold. She rubbed them together and put them into her armpits. ‘How could anyone live in such a miserable place?’
‘We lived well enough,’ said Nish. ‘I remember sitting by the fire when I was little –’
‘Yes?’ said Aimee, when he did not go on.
‘It doesn’t matter.’
Nish hadn’t thought about his childhood in years and did not want to now. He had been fond of his sister, who had died a long time ago, but he had not got on with his hard, ambitious father nor his three older brothers, also dead now, who had been just like their father. His mother had been cool and distant, and had driven her children relentlessly.
Where was she now? She had abandoned Jal-Nish after he’d been hideously maimed in a lyrinx attack thirteen years ago. Had that rejection driven him to become the power-crazed loner who had hunted down the Profane Tears, then murdered his own men so no one would realise he had them? Nish often wondered what had turned his father from a hard, calculating man to a thoroughly evil one. He also worried that, in trying to overthrow him, he might end up as bad.
‘Nish?’ said Aimee.
‘Sorry, what did you say?’
‘You’d better take these.’ She had three metal spikes in her hand, each with a ring on the end.
‘As soon as we start hammering spikes into the rock, they’ll know we’re climbing, and it won’t take Klarm long to work out where we’re going.’
‘What can he do about it?’ said Aimee.
‘A lot, with the air-sled.’
‘These aren’t normal climbing irons,’ said Clech. ‘They must be specially made for the Imperial army.’
Aimee handed Nish one. ‘They’re split. You jam it in a crack, wind the ring on the end, and it pulls tight.’
The climbing iron was beautifully made, which came as no surprise. Nish’s father had always been fascinated with machines and devices, and as God-Emperor he had the means to indulge that passion without limit. Nish turned the ring, holding the spike tightly in his other fist, and the two split pieces of metal moved outwards, forcing his fist open.
‘We tested them yesterday,’ said Aimee. ‘They’re easy to tighten, and one spike can hold twice Clech’s weight when it’s seated in good hard rock.’ She threaded a length of rope through three spikes, knotted it and tied the other end tightly around Nish’s chest.
‘Put the rope over my staff,’ said Nish. ‘I wouldn’t want to drop it.’
As she was doing so, he looked up the mountain and swallowed. Even with irons it wasn’t going to be easy to climb up the bulge above them. Distantly he could hear the clang and clash of weapons at the slot. He should be down there, helping them. Nish was the most experienced fighter they had, apart from Flangers, and if he fell the defenders would be leaderless.
‘The best way to help them is to get this job done,’ said Clech.
Again Nish wrenched his thoughts back to the here and the now. Aimee, who was moving steadily up, called, ‘There’s a good crack here.’
Climbing was awkward with the serpent staff tied to his back, but Nish heaved himself up to the crack and pushed in the first of his irons. When he turned the ring, the split spike pulled so tightly against the sides of the crack that no heave could budge it. There must be mancery in the spike, or the most brilliant craftsmanship, he thought, ruefully remembering his days as a barely competent prentice artificer.
Nish had used climbing irons before, the kind that one hammered in, usually whacking one’s fingers in the process, and these were a luxury. He inserted his three in a vertical line, stood on the middle spike and stretched down to twist out the lower one, but could not quite reach. He’d put the spikes in too far apart.
Unslinging the serpent staff, he went to poke the point of its tail through the ring, but as he touched it the ring rotated, pulling the split spike together, and it fell out of the crack to hang from his rope. Another marvel.
He wen
t up quickly after that, and within minutes had joined Aimee and Clech at the top of the bulge, where a nodular protrusion was wide enough to sit on, assuming one had no fear of heights. Nish wasn’t terrified of heights but he had a healthy respect for them, so he pushed in a spike first and tightened the rope around his chest.
The cloud base was just above their heads now, an undulating layer of white cutting off all sight of mountains and sky. ‘I’m not looking forward to going up through that,’ said Nish. ‘How are we going to find the way?’
‘But you studied the side of the mountain from the pass,’ said Aimee. ‘Surely you remember where to go?’
‘I’m not good at that kind of thing.’
She looked at him pityingly. ‘Lucky you’ve got us.’
‘I give thanks for my good fortune every minute,’ he said drily.
‘From here we head up to the right,’ she said, ‘around the curve of the mountain towards the bridge of the nose. If the wind comes up and blows the clouds away, anyone looking up will see us, so we’d better be quick.’
‘Rope together now,’ said Clech.
They did so. Aimee scrambled up through the cloud base and they followed into a clammy white-out where Nish could barely see the rock he was clinging to. The slope wasn’t as steep here, and there were more handholds, but every surface was wet and it was very cold. He had not been really cold for a long time – before he’d come to Gendrigore, certainly, six weeks ago.
The wind had dropped and it was only drizzling now, though it was darker than ever and another downpour could not be far off. Nish tried to move faster, but it proved impossible in the miserable conditions.
There was no sound save their heavy breathing, the click of metal spikes on stone and, muffled through the fog, intermittent sounds of fighting below at the slot. The rope running up from his chest faded into whiteness within a span; he could see nothing save the moss-and lichen-covered rock.
There was no other sign of life, no sounds from above, and after a while his mind began to play tricks on him. Was he heading up the slope, or down it? His eyes told him down, even though the strain on his legs proved he was going up, and now he began to doubt that there was anyone else on the other end of the rope.
What if he reached the top and Jal-Nish was waiting there, luring him to Stilkeen? The idea was absurd, but it would not go away, for there was no end to his father’s cunning and he loved to set people up, allowing them to think they’d won, just for the pleasure of bringing them down and crushing them utterly.
He had sacrificed an army once so that Nish would think he’d had a great victory, then mocked him for believing it. The revelation had been shattering; only now was Nish recovering his self-confidence.
‘Clech?’ he said softly.
‘Is something wrong?’ Clech replied.
‘No, I just wanted to be sure you were there.’
‘Where else would he be?’ came Aimee’s high, scornful voice.
‘This mountain is an uncanny place,’ muttered Clech. ‘I feel it too.’
They headed across an icy patch where Nish never felt secure, despite the spikes. The mist was thinner here, Clech a lumbering shadow a couple of spans ahead. Nish only saw Aimee fleetingly but he could hear her teeth chattering, and once she must have dropped a spike for he heard the metal ring off rock, and her muffled curses.
‘I’m level with the Emperor’s Warty Pizzle,’ she called shortly, shivering in her thin clothing. ‘What now?’
Nish climbed up to her. A few spans to his right the rock swelled into a broad, out-jutting ridge crusted with smooth ice – the bridge of the nose. Nothing could be seen beyond that, though he knew that the nose broadened further down before a knob of black rock at the tip, which acted as a dam for the ice. Somewhere, way down there, was the flaw or fissure he’d seen with clearsight, but unless it returned there was no way of telling where that flaw was.
‘Down to the end. I’ll know the spot when I get to it.’ He hoped. ‘I’d better go first.’
He edged across, only now appreciating what he was trying to do. The bridge of the nose was about twenty spans across and ran down steeply. The ice sheet was thin here but he’d seen from below that it grew ever thicker towards the tip.
Clech anchored the rope to a spike, tested it and nodded. Nish moved down onto the ice, which felt rough beneath his boots though it looked smooth further down, where the wind swept across the top of the ridge. Aimee stopped at the edge of the ice sheet and waited.
He continued slowly, choosing each step with care. ‘I can’t see any cracks. We’ll have to hammer spikes directly into the ice.’
‘They’d want to go awful deep,’ said Aimee, and for the first time he could hear tension in her voice. ‘Solid rock is one thing, but trusting our lives to brittle ice is quite another.’
‘They’ll hear us hammering,’ said Clech. ‘Can we scramble along the side of the nose?’
Nish’s throat tightened at the thought. This side was almost sheer and the dark granular stone was partly covered by overhanging ice like the roof of a thatched cottage, with down-thrusting icicles as long as javelins. ‘That would take forever, and I’m already worried about the time. We’ll have to risk the bridge of the nose.’
He headed down the ice. The first few steps were secure enough, where the surface was corrugated, but beyond that point the ice was glassy where it had partly melted and refrozen, and there were no crevices in it. Taking a hammer from his pack, Nish bent to tap a spike into the ice and his feet went from under him.
He landed on his back, banging his head painfully, then slid over the edge, and there was nothing he could do about it. He tried to jam the spike into the ice but he was moving too fast.
‘Brace!’ cried Clech, but Aimee did not have time; Nish’s weight pulled her off the ridge and they fell together, separated by a span and a half of rope.
The rope pulled tight around Nish’s chest and he stopped with a jerk that snapped his head backwards. Above him, Aimee cried out as his weight tightened the rope around her chest. If Clech lost his footing his massive weight could rip the climbing iron out of its crack.
He grunted, and Nish saw him being pulled forwards, but Clech bent his knees to absorb the shock and slowly stood up. ‘I’ve got you. Don’t struggle or swing on the rope; it’s slippery underfoot.’
Nish revolved on the end, the rope so tight around his chest that he could hardly breathe, and one of the hot curves of the serpent staff was gouging into the middle of his back. His head swam; he closed his eyes until it passed and, when he opened them again, Clech was pulling himself backwards until his boots were on firm rock. He heaved on the rope and Aimee gasped.
‘What’s the matter?’ he cried, peering anxiously at her.
‘Think I’ve broken a rib,’ she said in a high voice. ‘Don’t jerk the rope like that.’
‘Sorry.’ He began to draw in the rope smoothly, hand over hand, watching her all the while.
Nish could see the strain on her face, the spasms that wracked her with every movement, no matter how careful Clech was, and it could not be otherwise with Nish’s weight pulling the rope crushingly tight around her little frame. If the broken rib punctured a lung she would die.
He shook off the morbid thoughts. There was nothing he could do to ease her pain save to keep as still as possible.
‘Hurry it up, you big oaf,’ said Aimee, her voice cracking. ‘Slow is nearly as bad as fast.’
Clech pulled her up, tied her to a spike and she lay on her back while he recovered Nish, then unfastened her chest rope. Nish undid his own; his ribs were aching and he could feel a groove around his sides where the rope had cut into him.
Aimee pulled up her shirt. Clech flushed and looked away. ‘Don’t know nothin’ about healing,’ he mumbled.
Nish crawled across. ‘I’ve seen plenty of broken ribs on the battlefield.’
Her ribcage wasn’t much bigger than a large turkey’s. One rib, low down under
her left breast, was clearly broken, and the surrounding flesh was bruised and swollen, though he did not think there was any internal damage – so far. He managed to bend the broken end of the rib out a little. She clenched her teeth, and tears formed in her eyes, but she did not cry out. Nish knew he would have.
‘Is that the only broken rib, Aimee?’
‘How would I know?’ she snapped.
‘I’ll have to check …’
Her cheeks went a ruddy colour, then she pulled her shirt up above her little breasts. ‘Get on with it.’
He traced the ribs along, one by one, and she winced several times, though she made no sound.
‘Nothing else broken,’ said Nish, binding her chest with strips of cloth torn from the tail of his shirt, to immobilise the rib as much as possible, ‘though you’re going to be sore –’
Aimee whipped her shirt down again. ‘We came to do a job, so let’s get on with it.’
FOURTEEN
We can’t risk the ice again,’ said Clech. ‘And the rock on this side looks solid all the way along. I don’t see anywhere we can put in a spike.’
‘Then we’d better go to the other side,’ said Nish. Having come this far, he was determined to find a way.
Another round of sword blows echoed up from the slot – or were they coming from the western side of the pass? He could not tell, but if the militia were being attacked in force from the western side as well, it must surely signal the final onslaught.
They roped together, though this time Clech fashioned rope harnesses which would distribute the strain more evenly if they fell. Nish did not want to contemplate that. They would not be so lucky a second time.
‘I’m not sure about this crutch rope,’ he said. Whichever way he moved it, it lay across a sensitive part of him. ‘If I fall, it’s really going to hurt.’
Aimee smirked, which in the circumstances he had to ignore.
‘This time I’ll go first,’ she said pointedly. ‘You’re not a good enough climber to go along the side of the nose. Stay here until we get back.’