by Paul Kearney
“Take it easy, will you. It’s not like I bought you dinner or anything.”
Her face flushed pink.
“Where are my clothes?” she demanded.
The sleeping bag was unzipped with a tearing whine, and the cold air rushed in across Cutter’s skin, raising instant goosebumps. Stephen handed him a sodden mass of black clothing. Abby was already on her feet and pulling on her soaking wet trousers, shuddering as the material met her flesh, and shaking a bandaged hand in just-recognised pain.
Cutter stared at his own gear with distaste.
“No dry stuff, eh?”
“Afraid not, went down with the dinghy. Besides, all the stuff that survived is wet, too.”
“Well, that’s nice.”
“Nick, another thing —”
“Don’t try to cheer me up, Stephen, whatever you do.”
“We’ve only got one hand-held anomaly detector left and it got pretty waterlogged. It may well be unusable.”
“Brilliant,” Cutter muttered grimly. He shook his head and sat up. “Now that the bad news is out of the way, what’s the cheery half of the story?” he asked, glancing from Willoby to Stephen and back again.
“Take a look,” Stephen said, and he moved out of the way.
They were on a long, narrow shelf of stone above the beach. There was a deep overhang, not quite a cave, but offering some shelter against the wind and rain. Along it, the team had laid out their gear and karrimats, and most were still in their sleeping bags. Cutter recognised Connor’s unkempt head of black tangled hair. He was snoring loudly. Stephen and Willoby seemed to be the only people awake.
“Is everyone all right — did we all make it?” Cutter demanded, shivering in his wet clothes and struggling to pull on his boots.
“We’re all here,” Willoby said. He had a nasty gash above one eye, the blood clotted and black. “As soon as I made it to shore we emptied out my boat and Stephen and I went back for you. It was a close-run thing. But we lost half our equipment when your dinghy went down, including the sat-phone. All we have now are short-wave radios. And we’re three sleeping bags short, not to mention water, food, ammunition and weapons. We look — as my old sergeant major used to say — like three pounds of shit stuffed in a two-pound bag. But we’re alive, for now anyway.”
“The sat-phone. Damn it all,” Cutter said, sitting down again.
“Here,” Stephen said, offering him a water bottle. Gratefully, Cutter sloshed some of the salt out of his mouth.
“The mission has become more difficult, but in war the plan is always the first thing out of the window,” Willoby said. “We still have the climbing gear, the Minimi, half a dozen of the personal weapons, and enough rations to tide us over for three, possibly four days.”
“I’m still waiting for the good news,” Cutter said.
“The weather’s turning again,” Stephen told him. “This is a tidal shelf; when the waves kick up again, where we sit will be hammered by the breakers. We have to get up the cliff as soon as possible.”
Cutter looked at the heavily breathing bundles which were the other members of the team. Some of the soldiers were sharing sleeping bags, as he and Abby had done.
“Best way to fight hypothermia,” Willoby said, following his eyes. He winked at Abby, and once again she blushed down to the roots of her hair.
“I suppose you saved my life,” she said.
“I suppose I did,” Willoby told her.
Cutter staggered to his feet, his wet clothes stealing warmth from his body. “Have you found this path we’re going to climb?”
Stephen spoke up.
“Hanlon was right. It’s been a long time since the monks made it, and there have been several rock-falls since. Come take a look.”
There wasn’t far to walk. The tide was coming in now, and the little beach had disappeared. The Atlantic breakers were thundering barely twenty metres away from the people in the sleeping bags. Cutter felt the spray on his face.
“We really didn’t think this one out properly,” he muttered.
“Unfortunately, yes,” Stephen agreed. “We’ve been flying by the seats of our pants for too long. We may have come a cropper this time.” They both turned and stared up at the cliff soaring above them.
“Reminds me of Hoy, on Orkney,” Stephen continued, craning his neck to look straight up. “I tried climbing the Old Man once, but bottled it a third of the way up.”
“I see no path,” Cutter said.
“This scree here to our left. Look up it about thirty-five metres. You can just make out a ledge. That’s where the path starts, I think. The bottom part of it has been worn away.”
“The ornithologists make it up there every summer,” Cutter said, following Stephen’s pointing finger.
“In summer, yes. And I’ll bet they aren’t carrying rifles and ammunition.”
“There is that,” Cutter admitted.
“Nick, we may have bitten off more than we can chew on this one. I’m not even talking about what we might face when — or if — we get to the top. I’m thinking about basic survival on this bare piece of rock. To all intents and purposes, we’re marooned.”
Cutter was silent as he allowed the words to sink in. The plan had been to use the sat-phone to contact Lester once the team had set up a base of operations on the plateau above. But they were out of comms now, and likely to remain so.
“Lester’s a cold shark, but he’s efficient, I’ll give him that, and he’s not stupid,” Cutter said. “When he doesn’t hear from us, he’ll find some way to get in contact. A chopper, I’m thinking, once the weather clears.”
“The weather,” Stephen said sombrely. Cutter clapped him on the arm.
“Come on man — it’s not like you to be down in the mouth. Buck up!”
“You sound like a Scottish nanny,” Stephen said wryly, and they both laughed. It was the first time they had laughed together in a long while.
They went up in single file. Sergeant Fox led the way, having been climbing from childhood. Next came Captain Willoby, then Farnsworth, Bristow, Watts, Connor, Cutter, Abby, Doody and Stephen bringing up the rear.
The scree shifted and clicked under their feet, and the equipment they bore made them all clumsy and top-heavy, so their progress was slow. Up at the front, Fox was the only one of them who carried no extra gear. Wielding an ice axe and a nylon rope, he was breaking trail, finding a way forward. He would pause frequently and watch the movement of the scree, gauge the size of the stones upon it. Their ascent was like walking up a sand dune, where the sand grains had been magnified into rocks, some the size of tennis balls, others the size of sheep. And all of them were insecurely anchored to the slope, awaiting the signal that would indicate the start of another avalanche.
Rain blasted into their faces. Though the bulk of the island kept the worst of the wind from them, there were still errant, vicious gusts which came careering down the cliffs to stagger them and make them clutch at inadequate handholds. Soon the rain was turning to sleet. It hammered them without let up, stealing away whatever warmth they had found in their sleeping bags, soaking their clothing. Were it not for the fact that they were labouring hard, thus keeping up their body heat, they would quickly have been on the way to hypothermia again.
Up at the front of the group, Fox paused. The scree slope had been steepening, becoming ever more treacherous. As they ascended further from the reach of the waves, so ice began to form on the rocks. Some of the larger ones had a translucent caul of blue ice on their undersides, and icicles dripping down.
“End of the scree,” Fox called down to them. “It’s good rock now, no choss or crumbly stuff. Boss, we should think about roping up.”
Willoby nodded. “Dig out the harnesses, lads.”
They fumbled with the big black Bergens, searching through them for the climbing harnesses. Six had survived the sinking of the dinghy.
“Civvies each get one,” Willoby said, holding a harness out to Cutter, who
was shivering violently. All of them were, now that they had stopped moving.
“Not me,” Stephen said. “I’ve climbed a bit. I’ll be all right.”
There was no argument. Before long, Cutter, Abby, Connor, Watts, Fox and Bristow were roped up.
“So,” Connor said, fingering the slim, scarlet rope, “if one of us slips, the rest will hold on.”
“No,” Abby said tartly, “the rest jump off after you. What do you think Connor — come on, switch on!”
“You’re beginning to sound like one of these soldiers,” Connor grated through chattering teeth.
“I just want to get up this thing, and into a tent. I’ve never been so cold.”
“What, didn’t sharing a sleeping bag with the Professor warm the cockles of your little heart?” Connor said, grinning in spite of the discomfort. She shot him a dirty look.
“Cut it out,” Cutter said, embarrassed despite himself.
“Sort out your gear,” Stephen told them. He gestured to the soldiers, who were securing their weapons and webbing, tightening every strap, checking their bootlaces. “Don’t have stuff dangling off you — keep it close to your body.” He sighed, and reached over. “Here, Connor,” he said, and he yanked tight the buckles holding the Bergen to the younger man’s back.
“Ow!”
“If you slip, try and grab hold of something on the way down,” Stephen told him with a wicked smile.
“What, like Abby?”
She ignored him this time.
“Move out,” Willoby said. He was looking upwards at Sergeant Fox, who was already twenty metres above them, pointing out the way. The sergeant was wearing their only surviving pair of crampons, and had belayed the rope around a large outcrop. He braced himself now with both feet, paying out the rope as the rest began to climb after him.
He gave the thumbs up, and the team began slowly to make their way up the cliff.
The pitch wasn’t sheer, but angled at some sixty degrees. The most unnerving thing was the exposure. Even though they had only started off, the distance back down to the sea and the white breakers already seemed a terrifying height.
It was a different kind of fear, Cutter found. When his feet slipped, and his hands latched onto the icy, unforgiving rock, he felt that he was carrying his entire life in the grasp of his fingers. He had a rope running through the carabiner at his waist, but it seemed so frail and thin that the notion of it supporting his weight seemed laughable.
The only good thing was that the fear and the concentration kept his mind off the cold, the sleet that was blowing into his left ear and numbing that side of his face, the chafing of his salt-streaked clothes.
The team made three pitches, pausing at the end of each so the rope could be run up again and Fox could climb ahead to scout out the route. Bristow scanned the rock face above them and spat out a curse. The burliest of all the team, he had the Minimi strapped to his back and seemed not to feel the cold. The melting sleet ran down his face unheeded.
“Path?” he said scornfully. “Path, my big fat hairy behind. There’s never been any path here, boss, made by monks or anyone else.”
“It’s here in places,” Willoby told him calmly. “Some of these rocks bear chisel marks. A thousand years is apt to change the geography a little, that’s all. In summer, with a light day-sack on your back, you’d be racing up here, Joe, hardly breaking a sweat.”
“If you say so, boss,” Bristow replied, yet he seemed unconvinced. Digging into a pocket, he pulled out a Kendal mint cake and wolfed it down without offering anyone else a bite.
Connor was staring down at the drop below them, and he seemed transfixed.
“I don’t think I’ve ever been so high in my life,” he said.
“Well, you’ll be higher before the end,” Cutter said. “Hang in there, Connor. Think of all the lovely creatures awaiting you at the top.”
“Actually, Professor, I’ve been trying not to dwell too much on that,” Connor replied. “One step at a time, if you know what I mean.”
“I know exactly what you mean,” Cutter said, with feeling.
The climb continued.
The soldiers seemed to take it in their stride, and Stephen was almost as well conditioned as they were, but Cutter, Connor and Abby weren’t quite in the same league, fitness-wise, and soon it became clear that they were slowing up the ascent. The team had to pause more often to let them catch their breath and ease the cramping muscles in their arms and legs.
Willoby ordered Farnsworth, Doody and Bristow to take their rucksacks, and, though Cutter protested somewhat feebly, once the weight had been lifted off his back, he felt more human, less of a labouring animal. They made better time after that, yet as they went higher, so they found that they weren’t following a perpendicular pitch, but rather a path of least resistance around to the west. It made their progress easier, but lengthened the climb.
Before long the short winter daylight began to dim, and a great gloomy wrack of sodden cloud drifted over them. Eventually it lowered itself around them like fog, until they could see nothing but the back of the next person in line and the icy rock in front of their faces. Inside the cloud, the temperature plummeted, until even the exertions of the climb couldn’t keep them from feeling the cold that ate at their marrow.
“This is no good,” Willoby said during a brief rest break. “We need to make better time. If we’re still on this cliff-face after dark, we won’t make it, and that’s flat.”
The rest of them stared at him dully. Even the super-fit soldiers seemed exhausted.
“Head-torches on,” Willoby said in his clipped, no-nonsense tone. “No more rest breaks unless someone collapses. We keep going now, right to the top. Sergeant Fox, lead on.”
Cutter wanted to protest, but his mind was too fogged with fatigue and the penetrating cold. He had been eating chocolate bar after chocolate bar until his stomach rebelled, and now he felt the slack emptiness of the post-sugar rush. He knew Willoby was right, but still hated him a little for being so damned correct all the time.
The bastard really is perfect officer material.
They made it up another three pitches when snow began to fall round them. It didn’t fall, really; it was thrown at their faces, and felt hard as gravel against their exposed skin. The wind picked up again, as well, adding insult to injury. They had moved too far west in their meandering climb, and were coming out of the shelter of the island’s bulk. The northeast gale was still hammering in from the open Atlantic, and it felt as though the black rock beneath their hands and feet was a path leading into the heart of it.
Doggedly, stubbornly, they climbed on.
Ice collected on their faces and in their ears. They had to rub it off with their gloved hands every few minutes. Underfoot, the rock was treacherous and slick with ever-accumulating ice upon which the snow settled in clogged lines and folds, hiding the worst places.
Darkness fell, but Willoby wouldn’t let them pause or even slow down. They worked by the lights of the head-torches, and their world contracted further, into that little beam of yellow light with the snow wheeling thickly through it.
Suddenly there was a cry — Abby’s voice, shrill and terrified. Then a massive tug at Cutter’s waist, jerking him off his feet. He went head over heels, struck his shoulder agonisingly on rock, followed by another concussive impact on the side of his face, hardly felt, then he was tumbling, falling free through the air, astonished, too astonished even to make a sound.
The harness caught his weight. He slammed to a halt in mid-air, the breath smashed out of his lungs, the nylon at his waist feeling as though it were about to cut him in two.
Warm liquid trickled down one cheekbone, and that side of his face felt numb. He moved his head and the beam of the head-torch caught Abby’s white face. She was dangling below him, six feet away.
The pair of them were hanging free only for a split second; then they swung in and hit the rock with a jarring thump that set the lights reelin
g in Cutter’s head again.
“Abby,” he called, and he reached out his hand. He could hear the others shouting, but they were invisible beyond the curtain of the whirling snow.
She was unconscious, a small slug of blood oozing from one nostril. Cutter cursed madly, and swung on the rope, trying to reach her with a gloved fist.
“Stay bloody still!” Willoby’s voice came out of the snow. “Cutter, Abby, try and get a foothold on the rocks.”
“She’s unconscious!” Cutter yelled back, his dry mouth cracking the words.
“Don’t move then — we’ll try and haul you back up.”
Hanging as limply as a sack, Cutter felt a momentary pang of gratitude that he couldn’t see the drop below him.
“Abby,” he said quietly. “Abby, lass, wake up.”
She stirred, groaning in pain as the climbing harness bit into her. She was hanging almost upside-down, and the blood oozing from her nose had begun to slide in a thick line up her face, into the socket of one eye.
“Jesus, Abby,” Cutter whispered.
He could hear the rest of the team grunting, like slaves hauling on an oar. He rose one foot, two, then a yard. Below him, Abby swung, limp as a drowned kitten.
“We’ve got you, Nick. Give me your hand.” It was Stephen. He took Cutter’s arm at the wrist and hauled him inwards to the rocks. Other hands grabbed him.
“Thank you,” he murmured shakily in Stephen’s ear.
Abby’s eyelids were flickering as they pulled her back up. Connor crouched beside her and wiped the blood from her face. His eyes were glittering with tears.
“Make room there, son,” Willoby said with unusual gentleness. He grasped Connor by the shoulders and set him to one side. “Bristow, keep an eye on him. Doody, get over here and bring your kit.”
Doody, the medic, scrambled towards them.
The soldiers were belaying slack lengths of rope about the nearest rocks, securing the team to the cliff-face. The snow blew steadily in their eyes, and the wind had picked up into a roar, as bad as it had been back on the trawler — perhaps worse, for now they were unbelievably exposed to it, clinging to ice and rock hundreds of feet above the Atlantic.