by Travis Perry
“I hear you, Roger. But I can’t help being concerned.” This is the first time I have ever heard anyone address Lord Pederson by his first name.
He pats Madam Susan on the shoulder in a comforting way, actually touching a woman in public. I’m shocked twice in a row.
Soon the balloon pulls the sled tight against the restraints. A rope down from the bottom of the balloon to Sir Carson will allow him to release hydrogen as needed. Susan has told me this is how it works. Below the sled on ropes is suspended a metal device with a hand crank, which Carson will use to pull up the main rope, assuming he lands the sled on the mountainside and secures the device without being injured in the landing, so he can use the machine. And does not come under attack, or at least is able to suppress any attack that comes his way, enough to use the device. By himself.
The three hands with experience in falconry who had brought out the birds and stayed near them, now hold the massive birds on their forearms, the animals towering over but lighter than the men that hold them, talons on thick leather gloves that go all the way to the elbow. Other hands have stepped forward, ready to remove the falcon hoods.
Four riders with swords shining in the morning sunlight stand by the four ropes holding down the sled. Sanchez turns to Govnor Pederson and Madam Susan. “My lord, my lady, with your permission?”
Glancing at Susan first, the govnor says, “You have it.”
“At the count of three, hoods off the birds, slice the ropes on the command ‘slice’ after that. One, two, three!” The released lead falcon immediately begins to flap hard, attempting to fly straight up in the direction of the cliff, crying out in the distinctive cry of a bird of prey, which always reminds me of a scream. Four other wings slap in the attempt to follow and Sanchez shouts, “SLICE!”
The sled jerks upward and ever so slightly toward the cliff on the other side of the canyon and Sir Carson yells out in triumph, “Woo hoo!”
Soon I’m craning my neck upward to see, the balloon rises so fast. Bit by bit, the falcons pull the sled forward, toward the cliff face. At perhaps five hundred meters height, the sled begins to rock side to side, very hard, in side winds that must pass up higher than what we can feel. I glance downward and see Govnor Pederson’s hands clasped in front of his face, his brow furrowed in silent prayer. Madam Susan’s eyes remain fixed upward but her lips move in her own supplications.
In swinging back and forth, the rope tugs hard on one of the falcons. It’s pulled into the center. The swinging sled smashes into the bird, the one on the left, a horror of open wings breaking on the high figure of the falcon, seeming to happen very slowly, the injured bird dangling loose on its rope now. “Oh my heavens!” Susan cries out, covering her eyes.
But the lead bird had been given a longer leash and it continues flying according to its training, the falcon in the right manages to keep flapping after it, somehow avoiding the danger from the flailing sled, pulling the machine closer and closer to the cliff, the guide rope trailing behind the sled and pulling upward from the carefully arranged loops on the ground nearby me. After a time, the crosswind seems to have disappeared and it becomes very hard to see the sled. After an hour, the now tiny balloon disappears from view as it goes over the top of the cliff, above the lowest ground on most massive mountain ever known, what the Lady Susan tells me used to be called “Olympus Mons” but which everyone I have ever known calls “Mons Olympus.”
After another two hours, the guide rope, which has stopped rising some time ago, begins to pull upward again, as if by itself, to pull the thicker rope into the air. The hands let out a thunderous cheer and unexpected to me, tears begin to flow from my eyes. Sir Carson is alive and is using the device—he succeeded.
It takes the rest of the day for the larger rope to move up, which is attached to the thin guide rope being cranked up from above. The first thing hooked up to the larger rope once it has played out is a tent and food and other gear for Sir Carson so he can survive the cold of the night. It does not reach him until well after dark. I can’t help thinking he must be very cold, five kims higher than us.
In the morning, the single heroic rider up top pulls up two hands at the same time. I wonder how this is possible, but Susan explains to me that the pulley system on the device she designed reduces the force required. The machine that was below the sled did more than simply provide a crank to move rope.
Once the two hands are up, the rope moves faster and with more force, bringing up more men and eventually we receive back from up high a length of thick rope, it having been strung all the way back up and lowered down along the rope in a clever design. Sanchez affixes this to the end of the rope we have by placing a binding collar on the two ends the rope, the collar held in place by long pins hammered through the fibers. This creates a loop running through a pulley attached to the ground on our end. The loop allows hands where we are below to help those on top to pull up cargo.
Hands down here attach several large baskets to the rope and begin the process of moving people on a larger scale, ten or more at a time. Firstly riders go up in groups with sacks of gear needed to survive and to build an outpost on the side of the mountain. The rope itself must be unusual to be so strong over such a distance, made of the magic of the carbon nanotube, I learn.
Govnor Pedersen must have invested much of the wealth of Ascraeus in his plan. I find opportunity to ask the govnor a question, who is standing by watching, “My lord, do you suppose the Olympians do not patrol the cliff we’re climbing?”
He is watching the third set of riders move upward, his arms crossed over his powerful chest, while the drenched-in-sweat hands do a valiant job of pulling the riders upward, on this third day after Sir Carson established himself on high.
“I informed the heretic king of my declaration of war by messenger. So he should be alert to the possibility of my attack. If he wasn’t patrolling his entire realm before the declaration, he should be doing so now. Or that is what I would do if I were him. Though in fact Olympus is so large that even with seven hundred riders it’s probably impossible to inspect a difficult approach like this one more than once a week or so. So it could be our men have enough time to establish themselves. Or it could be that our men are discovered at any time by a roving patrol. If so, they must quickly kill or capture that patrol, so it can’t call for reinforcements. But we don’t even have any horses up yet. We remain vulnerable.”
“I see. Your plan had great risks.”
He momentarily glances my way. “Yes. But as they said in ages past, ‘Fortune favors the bold’.” He adds nothing else to that plain statement. I almost ask why I had never heard before that he had sent a messenger to the King of Olympus concerning the state of war. Of course it makes sense that he would send one—Govnor Pederson no doubt considered it his duty as a rider and a servant of Jesu Christu to be honest and direct. The riders of Olympus we met earlier on, no doubt set forward in response to his message. But since I was the only rider in Ascraeus who had travelled the entire road to Olympus, it would seem to me that I should have been at least considered for the role of delivering my lord’s statement to the King of Olympus. But not only had I not been asked to be the messenger, I had not even been told one had left. Which seems strange to me.
Lord Pederson commands the entire camp will go up, save twenty hands who will maintain the rope down below. The five riders in my tent he commands to remain behind to protect the last hands until everything else had gone up. We and our mounts will be the last to take the long, long ride into the air.
So now, fourteen full days after Sir Carson made his flight, the whole camp has gone up, Madam Susan, my Lord Pederson, all the wagons, all the horses, all the gear. At one point before she left I’d asked Susan where she obtained such a rope that would not break over a great distance.
She winked at me. “You’re asking me to reveal my secrets again, Evan.” So she did not tell me, but clearly she has some means to obtain goods from the magical past.
Today, it is finally my turn to go up, the last of the riders to ascend. The last of anyone, because the twenty hands remaining below me are not coming. Well, I am not quite the last, since Gallant is after me, just below me, strapped in a large woven basket with holes, so his legs hang down. That way, if he were to thrash and kick, he cannot destroy the basket. He is strapped in place, so twisting winds will not cause him to fall. I am in the same basket beside him to comfort him, standing on my legs, making me taller than him for once. And in a way it means I go up before he does. My mount remains very brave and does not thrash at all, which is funny. He fears water and is terrified of mud, but heights unlike anything he or I have ever seen, which threaten us with genuine danger, do not bother him at all. Though I think the blinders Madam Susan made for the horses that keep his eyes from looking side to side surely help.
As we go up, I see the real danger is the wind, which rocks us back and forth as we climb. It could smash us into the cliff face once we begin to draw close to it. But Carson picked a good spot for the rope; somehow we get no closer than five meters from the rock. As we rise, I can see past the red rocky sands directly below, to the hills we traveled around, not far away from here at this height. Clear over them, in the distance, I see Jovis Tholus, my dreamland, looking very small from afar, but still appealing to me. We rise so high, almost like flying to heaven, though much slower than the Second Coming, I imagine. Perhaps if the air was very clear I would have been able to see Ascraeus itself in the east. But I never can be sure if I can to make it out or not through the dusty horizon.
Looking north, the slopes of Olympus reveal where the north road had once gone, a collapsed area of the mountain flank yielding a way to climb up, though long and steep and requiring one to first descend a steep path into the rim canyon. From what I can see, that route appears abandoned. Looking south I hope to see the Pilgrim Road and I may in fact see it. But so many lines of fissured rock cross this land it is hard to be sure if the road I think I see is real or imaginary.
Three hours pass on the ascent. It would have been impossible to send everyone in as short a time as they went if the rope had not been able to hold a large number of people at the same time. After two hours, a curve in the rock face makes the campment site we left below disappear, the heroic hands laboring hard to make possible my rise into the clouds now invisible. The air definitely grows thinner and cooler on the way up. It’s comforting really, because my body had not yet entirely readjusted to the thick hot air of the lowlands.
I arrive just before reaching a plateau that merges into the slope of Olympus, a slope not so steep or high as the cliff below, but which rises so tall it blocks out the sun on its descent westward. I am received by my tent mates and Govnor Pederson himself, who calls out. “Quite the ride, isn’t it?”
“Yes, my lord. Like no other.” A high outcropping of solid rock is where Carson connected the upper pulley, lashing it and fastening it with dozens of mooring lines. There is a narrow shelf of rock where Gallant and I are released, below where the ropes that connect the basket reach the level of the pulley. Helping hands aid us on a steep short climb up from two meters below everyone else.
“Good to see you, my lad.” On level ground, the govnor is pounding my back in unconcealed delight. “Will you be ready to ride at first light tomorrow?”
I find myself looking around. I spot the campment site on this vast mountain ledge some one hundred meters back from the cliff face. My mind can’t help but wonder about Susan and the auburn-haired woman, who are no doubt there.
I answer, “Kay, my lord. First thing.”
Morning comes sooner than my body likes and I’m swallowing down sour oatmeal from a wooden bowl at the same time my feet are slipping into boots, the meal delivered to our tent pre-dawn by the efficiency of the hands under Sanchez’s direction. The quick meal is followed by armoring up, checking gear, and prepping the horses. Even working efficiently, Sanchez-style, it is a full hour before the camp is struck and we’re ready to move.
Instead of following the rim around the flank of the mons to the south, to the main entrance, our govnor commands us to ride straight up the gradual slope of Olympus. The mons is not especially steep here but the rise goes on and on and on, so that after some hours of riding it becomes impossible to see the drop off of the flank where we were. Nor anything else other than the mountain itself, an entire world from horizon to horizon of the same upward sloping rise. Just like Ascraeus, there is little soil, but water flows down in small streams that must assemble from melting ice that must be somewhere further up. There is some forage for the horses and the daytime coolness encourages everyone to make fast progress.
In some places the fissures in the black rock of the mountain run deep. This happens also on Ascraeus, but all the routes on our mountain we know well. This mountain is foreign to us, though Sir Carson and some of the earlier warriors had ridden route reconnaissance up Olympus. But after three days we pass the distance they had explored and find our progress slowed by encountering crevices and deep cuts and sudden escarpments into the rock that we have to find routes around. Sir Carson rides up and southward seeking routes, Sir Isaac stays on our heading of due west, and Sir Dallas explores routes northwest.
As the campment waits, in the late morning I take my turn to draw water from the tanker wagon on behalf of our tent. The air has grown cooler and thinner, but still breathes easy for me and my fellow Ascraeans. At the tanker, I see a familiar female shape drawing water in front of me, the one-eyed dog beside her.
As I walk up, perhaps I step a bit harder than I need to, rattling my armor ever so slightly. The auburn-haired woman glances back at me, eyes wide in curiosity, her hands still holding a pitcher under the water spigot. The dog turns my way, wagging its tail and steps my way. The woman’s lovely lips raise up to trace a near smile. “Sir Evan.”
“Hello.” I stand there, my mouth gaping open, as if I’m a fish out of a water tank. The dog is licking my right hand, his good left eye a striking shade of blue. Words come to me in a burst as I face the woman, “What’syourname?”
She chuckles. “Rebecca. Talk to women much?”
“Ah…more than most men here, actually.”
“Well, it’s a shame you aren’t better at it.” Now she shuts off the water spigot. As she walks past me, she gives me a full smile, lighting up her face as if I am special to her. Or that’s what I think the smile might mean.
“Come on, Leftie,” she calls. The sled dog follows her, the two of them leaving me behind.
My heart pounds in my chest and long seconds pass before my shaking hands are able to draw the water I came for.
We ride for several hours once the riders return toward the southwest, not making campment until after dark. Not until the next day do I learn that Sir Carson will lose his nose to frostbite from being out too late in the plummeting cold of night. This is a painful reminder that the ways we adopted on the plains lead to death on the mountain. Sanchez again makes sure we begin to set up camp an hour before sunset and don’t begin to strike camp until after sunrise.
After another day we reach the frost country, which perpetually deepens into ice and snow the higher we rise. Our forward progress each day begins to be smaller, the air harder to breathe, the food supplies less and less.
During evening prayers, I kneel, thanking God and Jesu Christu that we still have not seen a single Olympian of any kind, let alone any of the legendary 700. But my mind wanders to Rebecca as I pray. I find myself wishing there was no war and I could be somewhere with her, she and I building our own future, no matter that she is older than me. I feel ashamed that I still do not know if she is married and I pray God to forgive me, both for thinking of her and being distracted in my prayers.
In the morning, we follow our usual routine of warm gruel for breakfast, striking tents, preparing horses. The work never ends and I admire the hands for doing so much of it. Without them we’d be lost.
I mount Gallant for t
he morning ride inside his horse tent, assisted by two hands who care for the six horses there. I’m the first rider in this enclosure to mount up this day, by virtue of being the first awaken and to arrive this morning. The air is thin at this elevation, cold enough that both my mount and I breathe out a cloud a vapor that freezes mid-air, from the cold that has come inside the now partially open tent.
At the very moment I ride Gallant out of his horse tent, a horn sounds in the camp. Three blasts—intruders! I dig in my heels and my mountain steed rumbles forward. The cold wind smacks my face, the sun just barely risen to the east. But it’s not so cold as to invite quick frostbite and death.
I look for signs of movement and see several horses and riders rushing up the icy mountain slope just above our campment. A shape I can’t make out is up there, fleeing from them as they charge after it. Their route is up, but also out—southward.
Gallant gallops forward after the other riders, steam of his lungs coming faster now. Thin snow coats the ground hiding treacherous holes. A gallop is not safe. I breathe a prayer for safety while we continue thundering forward, on a parallel southward track to those already uphill.
A black form plunges down slope from the front of the hard-charging riders. Putting whatever it is on an intercept course with me.
I glance behind me. Yes, two other riders are on the same track as me, but far back, more than one hundred meters.
I draw sword as the black shape continues to cut downward. It has a rounded body the size of a man but not at all the same shape. And legs of what seems to be metal, like cast iron, long legs of darkness, many of them, moving over the ice in a flurry totally unlike a horse galloping or a man running. It throws chunks of ice backward and clinks in rapid fire as it does so, clinks like a sword tapping metal armor in motion over and over again.
I draw back the sword to slash its metallic body, which is covered with large glassy eyes and small pointed knobs I notice as I close in. Several dents mar its surface from what must be other sword blows.