The Blood Lance Read online

  THE BLOOD LANCE

  Also by Craig Smith:

  Silent She Sleeps

  (published in the United States as: The Whisper of Leaves)

  The Painted Messiah

  MYRMIDON

  Craig Smith

  For Martha, the love of my life, and for my good friend and wise counselor, Burdette Palmberg, keeper of the Blood Lance.

  Prologue

  Kufstein, Austria

  March 16, 1939.

  The dead man wore the uniform, coat and high black riding boots of an SS officer. Missing were the officer's cap, his sidearm, his identity papers, and the SS Totenkopf ring every officer wore. The first military personnel on the scene understood at once the gravity of the situation and rang Berchtesgaden for assistance. The Wilder Kaiser, after all, fell within the outer defences of the Eagle's Nest.

  Less than an hour later, Colonel Dieter Bachman arrived in Kufstein with two platoons escorting him. A tall, thick, balding man, Colonel Bachman watched with a dispassionate gaze as his men began to search the village. The Austrians were frightened of course, but they came out of their houses without offering any resistance. Satisfied with the progress, Bachman took a squad of men to the base of the mountain. The day was cold, just as the night before had been. Snow fell in flurries mixed with sleet. The sky was grey, the ground frozen and white. Bachman met the two Austrian SS guards standing at the base of a hill that was covered with saplings. They pointed him toward the body. Ordering these men back to the village to help with the search, Bachman walked up the hill alone.

  As he approached the corpse, he saw that the victim was on his back. The eyes were open and gazing up at the sky. The body and head were deep in the snow. The arms and legs appeared to have been relaxed at impact. Bachman shook his head in wonder and looked up at the snow-capped ledge from which the man had dropped. The snow stung his face as he tried to count the metres. Enough at any rate that he had fallen for several seconds, three or four at least. A long, harrowing moment before the end. And what had he thought about as his life came to a close? What image did he bring down the mountain with him? God only knew.

  Bachman stepped closer to have a better look at the face and suddenly sobbed. The emotion hit him so suddenly he could not control it. He bent down on one knee, hoping to cover the sob, hoping to sound like a man struggling to kneel down. The effort was wasted. His men did not seem to have heard him. Or pretended as much. He took one of his gloves off and ran his fingers across the cold, waxy cheek of the handsome face. He felt the stubble of a day-old beard. He traced his fingers over the delicately turned lips. He touched the finely arched brow. The serene expression confounded him. How was it possible?

  He looked up at the mountain again. It had been night, of course. In the dark he might not have seen the mountain flashing past him. He might have been looking into the sky without any point of reference, but he surely would have heard the wild scream of the wind. He would have felt the acceleration pulling at him. Four seconds to live. It was enough to terrify any man, but here was the plain truth looking at him. Yes, Bachman thought, he had gone to his death like a Cathar walking blissfully into the Grand Inquisitor's fire . . .

  Chapter One

  North Face of the Eiger, Switzerland

  March 24, 1997.

  Those who knew it best called it the Ogre. Its solitary neighbours they named the Monk and the Virgin. For almost a hundred years after climbing became a sport, it killed anyone who dared its gnarly north face. In the process its shelves and slots and crevices and steep monolithic pitches had earned a litany of fanciful names. On the outskirts of the rock there were the Red Chimney and Swallows Nest. Higher up Death Bivouac marked the site where two German climbers, having got farther than anyone before them, froze to death in 1935. There was the Traverse of the Gods - a vertiginous piece of rock that had to be crossed before coming to the White Spider - the last and most treacherous ice field, so named for the numerous crevices spinning out from its centre - and finally the Exit Cracks, thin almost vertical channels of stone leading to the summit.

  The first successful ascent of the Eiger's north face occurred in 1938. Two teams, one German and one Austrian, had started a day apart from each other but consolidated in order to come up through the Exit Cracks tied to a single rope. The next climb came nine years later with better equipment and the traces of the first climb still in place. Like the first team, these left their ropes and anchors in their wake and walked out across the western shoulder. Later teams did the same, simplifying the more difficult pitches with strategically placed anchors and the occasional rope.

  After that, Eiger's dark face became a proving ground. National teams attempted the summit, then solo climbers. The first single day ascent occurred in 1950. A woman summitted the north face in 1964. A year before that, a team of Swiss guides accomplished a harrowing descent by cable from the summit in an attempt to rescue two Italian climbers. They saved one and lost three of their own in the effort. There was a most direct route, called the John Harlin route after the climber who died trying to make it, a successful ski descent on Eiger's western flank, a youngest climber, and then even a seemingly impossible eight-and-a-half-hour climb in 1981 - shattering all records.

  But even after it had been domesticated with ropes and anchors, detailed narratives of its various challenges and helicopter rescues, the Ogre could still sometimes awaken from its slumber and come roaring out of the alpine south with howls like that of a wounded beast. Its winds were capable of ripping climbers from their tenuous hold on life and rock. The ice was notoriously unstable, the stone pitted and fragile. Fog made a habit of following the sweet clear foehn like night follows day. It swept across the face so thick and close one climbed by touch alone. Then there were avalanches of rocks and ice and snow, the unrelenting cold of shadows never warmed by the sun's rays and the bone-tired weariness that comes of crawling across vertical walls. Nine had died before the first successful climb. More than forty had perished in the decades since.

  By the time Kate Wheeler made her first attempt in 1992 all the records, it seemed, had been set. The Eiger was a rock in the Bernese Alps with a storied history; dangerous, yes, but well travelled and almost comfortable as mountains went. Kate was seventeen - not even the youngest to climb the Eiger. She had been involved in the sport seriously for three years. She had already summitted a great many of the glories of Europe, including the legendary Matterhorn.

  On the first day, Kate and her father climbed for ten hours and were making jokes about the first father-daughter team - the list of firsts having grown so long as to be the stuff of humour. They planned to summit late the following evening because things had gone so well, but a snowstorm that night came in fast and white and cold and pushed them back. They made camp and tried to wait it out, but when their supplies ran low they finally retreated.

  Kate tried it again the next summer, partnering this time with a young German climber she had met that spring. After forcing their way across the lower ice fields over the course of two days, they made love at Death Bivouac. They intended to climb out on the third day, and awoke to perfect weather. They started the day confidently by ascending the ramp and completing the Traverse of the Gods. Then an ice screw broke free at the Spider and sent Kate's partner tumbling across almost a hundred metres of ice and rock. He was lucky that the worst of it was a pair of broken legs.

  On her third attempt Kate partnered with Lord Robert Kenyon and a Swiss guide who had been up the mountain more than a dozen times. It had been Robert's idea to make it a honeymoon climb. 'We'll take it,' he had told Kate with the quiet confidence of a man who never failed, 'or it will kill us both. One way or the other.'

  An individual without Kate's passion might have
hesitated at such an awful promise, but Kate loved it. Robert Kenyon's life was not about compromise and patience. He seized the moment with audacity and savoured his victories as though they were his God-given right.

  They followed the classic route of the 1938 ascent and planned a three day climb. On the evening of the second day, Alfredo, their guide, found a bit of winter snow lingering in a large crevice and dug a snow cave, whilst Kate and Robert commandeered a narrow shelf hanging like a nightmare over an abyss.

  After two days of scrambling across pitches and hammering their axes into rotting slabs of ice, Kate was exhausted, but with the prospect of only a three or four hour ascent the following morning and good weather promised, she realised she had never been happier. Below them night had already settled on the village of Grindelwald, but from where they sat they could still see the faint glow of the setting sun reflected on the distant snow-capped peaks to the west. Having secured themselves with ropes, they let their legs hang off the ledge as they ate a cold meal and drank hot black tea.

  Their meal finished, they fell into a comfortable silence, like an old married couple, though in fact they had said their vows only four days earlier. Finally, longing to bring Robert into her thoughts again, Kate whispered with a sigh, 'Our last night.'

  Kate was a fair skinned beauty of twenty-one years, slender and tall and preternaturally strong. With Nordic blue eyes and pale honey blonde hair she might have been a model or an actress but, as she was the first to admit, she wasn't suited to taking directions or pretending at romance. Robert was thirty-seven, ruggedly handsome, wealthy, athletic and even- tempered. They had met only six months earlier at a party Kate's some-time boyfriend Luca Bartoli had given in a resort town south of Genoa. Robert, as it happened, was an old friend of Luca's. Kate and Robert had spent that first night together talking - just talking - and by dawn they both knew nothing was ever going to be the same. Kate supposed they ought to have gone a bit more slowly, that was how one was supposed to do things, but they both lived like they climbed. Nothing stopped them, least of all common sense.

  Robert laughed pleasantly at Kate's mournful sigh and took her hand with an affection that was so much sweeter than desire. 'You sound like you wish we had a couple more nights up here.'

  'I wouldn't mind another night or two,' Kate answered, letting her eyes sweep across the dark world below them, 'as long as we could keep climbing.'

  Robert groaned good-naturedly. 'My God, what have I married?'

  Kate laughed, 'You can't say you weren't warned!'

  'I was warned!' Robert agreed.

  Kate smiled ruefully. 'Between an ex-boyfriend and a possessive father you pretty much got the worst of it right off!'

  'And all true as it turns out. You know if I hadn't been madly in love I probably would have listened to them!'

  There had been no one willing to tell Kate stories about her fiancé. Certainly there were no dire warnings about his obsessions, the kind her father and Luca had given Robert about her. In fact it was weeks before she knew Robert was the seventh Earl of Falsbury and the owner of a country manor in the rolling hills of Devon. At Falsbury Hall she had been surprised to see photographs of Robert in a British military uniform receiving an award. He had admitted under close questioning - a virtual interrogation, actually - that, yes, he had been decorated 'for valour and distinguished service and the like a few times.' A hero? 'More like making a habit of standing in the wrong place at exactly the worst time. . .'

  Kate was too young to be practical, too accomplished to be overly ambitious for a courtesy title, but it wasn't a bad thing, she discovered, being called Lady Kenyon and seeing men her father's age looking at her husband with a sense of awe. Not that it really mattered. She had married for the best of reasons. She had fallen in love. And why not? Robert Kenyon had the storybook dark features and mysterious air of a Heathcliff, the sweetness, natural pride and uncompromising virtue of a Mr Darcy. He knew the Prime Minister and had served at the side of several of the Royals during his time in the army. He had travelled the world, was fluent in five languages and had a working familiarity with several more. But what she liked best about her husband was that he backed down from absolutely nothing.

  Kate's only hesitation, and it had been a slight one, came because of the differences in their ages. At thirty-seven he was a full sixteen years her senior. Of course she had always dated older men, at least from her sixteenth birthday onward. Her occasional flings with a younger man, inevitably a climber, never failed to end with a row and hard feelings.

  With older men she had rarely endured the churlish resentment that comes of besting a young man in a physical contest. Older men simply had more confidence and seemed to enjoy her remarkable skills as a climber. So it was inevitable that the man she finally married was solidly placed in his world and comfortable inside his own skin. Eight, ten, sixteen years? What difference?

  'I hope they aren't planning to bivouac with us.'

  Kate's gaze left the snowy peaks in the distance and fixed on two figures coming up the rock. They were not easy to see in the gathering dusk, but she could tell they were moving with the steady rhythm of climbers who have worked together for years. They certainly came up faster than she and Robert and Alfredo had done. Of course that was the nature of two on a rope. All the same, they were very good.

  Reflecting on Robert's remark about their bivouac Kate looked down at the ledge where they sat. The two climbers might ask to share it, she thought, but it wasn't going to get them very much. The sleeping area was a couple of feet wide and hardly sufficient in length to accommodate two individuals. Above them an overhang protected them from falling rocks. Below a vertical descent of several hundred feet ended in a glacier.

  'I doubt they intend to take the Traverse of the Gods in the dark,' she answered. As the fact of the sudden intrusion dawned on her, Kate felt a bit of unfriendly irritation. She didn't want company in these high altitudes. She wanted her husband's complete and undivided attention. She had not even wanted Alfredo, had in fact argued against the use of a guide, but Robert had been insistent. If something happened, he had said, a third climber could make the difference.

  Robert continued to watch their approach. T don't know,' he said finally, 'it might be interesting.' He was talking about a night-climb across a rock that only the top climbers in the world would dare in the sunlight.

  'Interesting is what you call the Traverse of the Gods on a sunny afternoon,' Kate answered. 'At night it's just plain crazy.'

  'There's a full moon coming up in a couple of hours,' he told her. 'If the sky stays clear a couple of strong climbers could summit by two or three o'clock in the morning.'

  Kate considered the prospect and felt a throb of excitement hit her. The idea hadn't occurred to her previously, but now that it had, a moonlight climb sounded like just the finish she was looking for.

  She heard Alfredo offering the obligatory Swiss greeting, Gruezi-mitenand, to the climbers as they scrambled up the pitch. They answered Alfredo's greeting in High German, expressing a bit of surprise at finding someone bivouacking so close to the ramp. With simply no extra space to share, it was an awkward situation but climbers are famous for helping out and making do.

  'You want to bivouac here?' Alfredo asked them in an ambiguous mix of High and Swiss German. Alfredo was Robert's age but with his leathery skin and flecks of grey in his beard he looked closer to fifty. He spoke a countrified version of the Bernese dialect - an unimaginably sluggish patter with its own peculiar mountain charm.

  'Not unless we have to,' the larger of the two men answered. 'We're hoping to move on once the moon comes up.' He spoke with an Austrian accent. 'But you don't mind if we settle down here and wait a couple of hours, do you?'

  Alfredo looked in the direction of Kate and Robert, 'Up to the man.' The Austrians looked out toward the ledge in surprise, apparently having not seen Kate and Robert.

  Robert called from the ledge in good High German that it was fi
ne with him. 'Take as long as you want! When did you start up?'

  'We took off at four this morning,' the man answered. 'We are still hoping to make it in under twenty-four hours, but it is going to be close.'

  'It took us two days to get this far!' Robert answered.

  'Are you the two love birds on the honeymoon climb?' the second man asked.

  'That's us!' Kate called.

  'If you want to come on up the rock with us, you're more than welcome,' the first man said. 'There's supposed to be a heavy fog coming in early tomorrow - might be a little tricky getting out of here if you wait for sunrise.'

  'The last I heard, we were supposed to get clear weather for a couple more days,' Kate answered.

  'I expect the three of us would just slow you two down,' Robert added.

  'Hey, I read all about you two! There's no way you'd slow us down!'

  Now Robert seemed to consider the invitation. 'You really wouldn't mind if we joined you?'

  'Are you kidding? If we summit with you two tied to our ropes we could end up on the cover of the Alpine Journal!'

  Robert laughed cheerfully. 'I hadn't thought of that. I'll tell you what. Give us a minute to talk it over.'

  'No hurry. Take a couple of hours, if you want,' the man answered.

  'Alfredo! Why don't you brew up some coffee for them!'

  'I think I've got a cup or two that's still warm, sir!'

  'That's just the thing!' the first Austrian answered. 'That's very hospitable of you!'

  Alfredo, who had run his rope through a permanent anchor to walk down to greet the men, now turned and began pulling himself back to his makeshift snow cave. The Austrians followed up the steep grade using only their crampons.

  When the three men had gone up the rock and were out of sight, Kate said, 'Do you really want to do it?'