The Blood Lance Read online

Robert laughed pleasantly at Kate's enthusiasm. 'I should have guessed you'd be up for it!'

  'With a fog coming, it might be the smart thing to do.'

  Robert gave the matter some thought. 'I actually feel pretty good, all things considered. How about you?'

  'It's what? Four hours?'

  'If we keep up with those two, it might be a good deal less.'

  Kate heard something like a club striking rock and looked back toward the pitch in time to see a shadow sweeping across the rock. A body, she realised with a jolt.

  The shadowy form slid at first, then began to tumble with the indifference of an inanimate object. It dropped over the edge and plummeted toward the glacier below. Kate and Robert leapt to their feet in alarm. Inevitably they collided - his shoulder knocking her off balance. Kate could feel herself leaning out and reached for Robert's hand. He didn't seem to understand she was in trouble. She cried his name, and then she was beyond his grasp.

  The rope she had anchored to the rock caught with a snap that sent her crashing back against the mountain. Something brushed across her head and dropped away. Her sleeping bag? One of their rucksacks? She wasn't sure. She looked down, but all she could see was the ghostly ice far below.

  She blinked and tried to understand what had happened. She was hanging a few feet below the ledge, twirling slowly from her anchoring rope. She was groggy from colliding with the rock wall and felt a deep sharp pain in her knee, but at least for the moment she was so juiced with adrenalin she would not have any trouble pulling herself back to the ledge.

  She studied her situation with a practised eye. She was probably eight to ten feet below the ledge. Her anchor was another three feet higher. The only difficulty was getting some kind of purchase. Unfortunately her ice axes were on the ledge, along with her crampons, so she was going to have to climb the rope.

  Then a thought struck her: why wasn't Robert leaning out over the ledge to make sure she was okay? Without daring to answer her own question, Kate felt a sense of doom and loss take hold of her. No, she thought, before she could even articulate the terror urging itself upon her. He had tied himself in at the same time she had. She had seen him do it. She looked around, thinking he might have come over right after her and be hanging a few feet below her position.

  'Robert?' she said. Her voice was timid, frightened.

  Could his anchor have pulled free? The thought sickened her, and she could not stop thinking about the object that had fallen beside her. Sleeping bag, rucksack. . . Robert.

  'ROBERT!'

  From the ledge above she saw the silhouette of a man's head. Relief rushed over her.

  'Robert? I'm here. I'm okay!'

  'Cut the rope,' a voice called from the distance.

  'No!' she cried in sudden panic.

  The silhouetted head pulled back as Kate kicked wildly trying to get to the rock. Her efforts nudged her closer to the wall, but she could still not touch it.

  'PLEASE, NO!' she cried.

  Her fingers brushed against the rock, but she failed to get any kind of grip. She drifted out, her legs turning away from the wall. She kicked to lengthen the arc of her swing and started back. She lifted her legs and leaned back in her harness, stretching a lone arm toward the rock.

  She got close enough this time to grab it but her legs kept twirling and she missed her chance. She looked above her and felt the rope give a slight bump.

  'NO!'

  When the rope broke free Kate gave a screech of terror and saw the shadow of a protruding boulder come at her. She slammed into its sloping shoulder and rolled away, too stunned to grab anything. Her hips and legs tipped off the edge, but then her rope caught on something.

  Fearing the slightest shift might send her plummeting Kate searched the boulder for a fingerhold. What she found was a slight ridge, but it took some of the pressure off the rope. For the moment she was safe, and looked up at the shelf from which she had fallen. The shadows made it difficult to judge distances. She thought she might have dropped another six feet. Twelve, maybe fifteen feet back to the ledge? She saw the same silhouetted head leaning out again. When the shadow disappeared, Kate pulled herself up, realising as she did that her second fall might have cracked a rib. She found the fissure that had caught hold of her rope and struggled to yank it free but it was wedged in too tightly. She knew she could untie it at the carabiner in her harness or even lose the harness if she had to, but she didn't want to leave either behind. A climber's instinct: having a length of rope and a way to tie in might mean the difference between death and salvation. She reached into the zippered pocket in her coat for her Swiss Army knife.

  She lost about a metre after the cut, but kept the better part of three metres - enough to tie in to something. She rolled the rope neatly and tied it off, then stuffed it in her coat pocket. Next she examined the mixed character of ice and rock rising up over her position. She glanced out toward the horizon and saw the faint light of the setting sun still reflecting above the mountains. It was going to be dark soon. Climbing in the dark without any kind of lamp was suicidal, but she had no real choice. She couldn't tie herself in here and wait for the moon. In two hours, exposed as she was to the wind, she would be too cold to move.

  She tried to shake off the sorrow and fear creeping over her. She knew from hard experience that if she gave in to it she was finished. She had to climb her way out of this, that was all there was to it. But which way? She looked directly overhead. That way would bring her to the two Austrians. She looked to the west and thought she might be able to traverse the sheer face under the ledge. It would bring her out below the Austrians, but she hadn't the equipment to descend the mountain. She took inventory. She was wearing a coat and boots. She had a Swiss Army knife, three metres of climbing rope, and a harness. It was not enough. The only way to survive was to get hold of the right equipment. She looked up. Fire, water, food, crampons, axes, rope, sleeping bag: all of it only fifteen feet away. Without those things there was no way off the mountain.

  After a delicate traverse on a narrow ribbon of stone, Kate headed toward the ramp, intending to come out above the two men, but almost immediately her head brushed into an overhanging shelf. She crouched and tried to study the shadow. A boulder was blocking her only way up and forced her to move laterally again. She held her weight with her fingertips and toes. Below her the void waited patiently.

  The wind kicked up a notch as she moved round the obstacle. Getting out farther she could feel the wind tearing at her coat. It had been above freezing all day, a bit warmer than ideal for the kind of mixed climbing the Eiger offered, but at night the temperatures usually dropped fast and kept dropping. Tonight was no different. She reached overhead now and found an icy crack. It was impossible to get a grip. She needed her axes! Suddenly standing on a half inch ridge of stone over a yawing abyss with nothing but her boots and bare hands to keep her from falling - not even an anchor to hold her - Kate realised that she was never going to get up to the ramp! What was she thinking? What did she intend to fight - God?

  She began to tremble and felt her eyes burning. Lady Katherine Kenyon died yesterday in a mountain climbing accident on the Eiger. . .

  A fine thing titles, she thought. Mourned by the better classes, envied by the rest!

  'No,' she whispered, shaking her head and hooking her fingers over a ripple of stone and ice, 'I'm not dead yet!'

  She pulled herself up. The rock's contour pushed her hips out. For a moment her feet lost their purchase. She was forced to take her entire weight into her fingertips. She felt the panic every climber knows when there is no protection. But she knew this move. She had practised it repeatedly. So what if there was no anchor! She was good enough in the sunlight to do this move without needing a rope! This was just a free climb through a bit of fog. You grabbed on and you kept going up.

  That was the way of the mountain. How many times had she really needed the security of an anchored rope? 'You take the mountain in your hands and you do what you know how to do!' she whispered.

  She reached higher and caught a knob of porous rock. It felt like a handle in her grip, and she pulled herself up easily. She found a fissure with the toe of her boot. She came over the bulge entirely now and lay across it catching her breath. 'Not . . . dead. . . yet.'

  The next stretch was easier, lots of fingerholds and ledges, typical of much of the mountain. She moved slowly because of the darkness and untrustworthy nature of the rock, but she kept moving. There were no outcroppings in her path, no sheer slippery faces to stop her forward motion. Not so bad, she thought. Then she found a wasteland of pure ice stretching out above her. Kate had been climbing icy slabs like this for two days. This one was actually easy. With a couple of axes in her hands and crampons on her boots she could have ascended the thing in a few seconds. Swing, swing, hop. Swing, swing, hop. When you got a rhythm going there was nothing faster. Without equipment she knew that if she started to slide it was over.

  'Stop,' she whispered. 'Stay here. Wait it out. You won't freeze.'

  Lady Katherine Kenyon died yesterday in a mountain climbing accident on the Eiger. She is survived by her father: . .

  Father. What would Roland Wheeler do with this in front of him? Would he lie to himself, settle down and go to sleep with a cold wind blowing a gentle death into his bones? The thought almost made Kate laugh. It was not in his nature! The man had a number of failings - amongst them a complete lack of morality when it came to other people's property - but the one thing he would not do was quit. No gentle goodnight for him! And he had never allowed Kate to do it either. Once, on their first real climb, she had panicked. She stood frozen on a ledge she would have killed to have at the moment, and her father had told her, 'You won't get off this rock with tears, Katie. You got here by climbing, and you'll get off by climbing!'

  And she had said, 'I can't!'

  'Well then you're not the girl I thought you were,' he told her and started on. Started on! Left her! Fourteen and shivering, and he left her behind and did not even give her a backward glance. The fury of it had burned away the panic - which was the point.

  Kate touched the carabiner running through her harness, but it was not made for something like this. She searched her coat. Rope, knife. . . piton! She brought the knife and piton out. With her knife in one hand and the piton in the other she might be able to work them like a couple of ice picks.

  Or die trying.

  Kate punched the blade of her knife into the ice and felt it catch. Then the piton. She caught enough resistance to pull away from the rock. Once on the ice, she risked a glance below. She could see nothing but a sheer grey wall with a slope of some forty degrees. It ran out for a few metres and then became sky.

  The hard way lay above her. She pulled her knife from the ice and struggled with trembling fingers to keep a grip on the piton. She drove the knife into the ice fast, and caught her weight with it. Now the piton, now the knife.

  The fury of driving small steel objects into the ice was exhausting, but hanging drained the last of her strength. Better to keep moving. . .

  They had cut her line! They had meant to throw her off the mountain! Had Robert watched them do it? Had he cried out without her hearing his shout? His silence bothered her because it meant what had fallen past her was a body. Not a sleeping bag. Not a rucksack. His body. She nearly gave out at the thought, but she couldn't be certain. It was possible he screamed as they cut her loose. She had hit hard, maybe lost a few seconds. It was possible he was alive. Maybe they meant to kidnap him. Take him out by the light of the moon and demand some obscene ransom. . .

  She stopped to breathe, to lament, to find deep in her core the rage it took to get up this last stretch. It was simply no good if Robert was dead. She looked back, her fingers beginning to cramp from the tension, her strength failing her. She had to finish this quickly!

  She had been unconscious. She had missed his cry of terror when they cut her free because she had slammed into the rock. His silence did not mean he had fallen. She had simply lost a bit of time. He was up there! Thinking she was dead! Praying for a miracle exactly as she was! She drove the piton into the ice and pulled herself up another few inches. The hand holding the piton was on fire with the pain of a cramp, but a boulder loomed above her now.

  She searched in vain for some kind of purchase, then traversed slowly to her left, resisting the urge to look down again, and came finally to a patch of snow. The slope was steeper here, the snow unstable. She could see several promising rocks just above her now - the end of the hard part of her climb - but when she pulled herself across the snow it broke under her. She got her belly and toes into it and could feel a bit of traction, but it wasn't much, and it wasn't safe. She could be gone in a second, the entire wall of snow sliding away. She drove her fists deep into it and got anchored into the ice. She pulled herself up a few inches and tried again and then again.

  A moment later she was scrambling over loose stones until she came at last to the long steep ramp. Kate pocketed her piton and tried calculating the distance left before she got down to the two Austrians. She thought from her position that they were about twenty metres below her, but she could see nothing. She looked at the sky. The stars had come out but they were still pale. The horizon had gone black. If she stayed in the shadows and if she was quiet, she thought she could be on them before they understood what was happening. She touched her thumb to the blade of her knife. It wasn't much of a weapon, but at least it was sharp.

  Kate descended as if she were climbing down a ladder. She held the rock with her fingers and toes, her knife clutched under her right thumb. She could see grey patches of ice and then the faint outline of the indentation where Alfredo had dug into the snow to get out of the wind.

  She was almost to the ledge when she heard the unmistakable sound of steel tearing into stone directly above her. She looked up in surprise, but it was too late. Her attacker came at her fast. Kate went down hard under the impact, but slashed out with her knife and anchored herself momentarily in the man's coat and at least some of his flesh.

  She was conscious vaguely of the man's scream as his fist slammed down on her head. The knife pulled free under the assault, and Kate began sliding. Before her speed had built, she caught a ridge with one boot. She was maybe three metres under the man, but he was already coming again. To move as he was, he had to be on a rope.

  He could have run it through some kind of natural anchor easily enough. That would let him come down on her quickly, but if that were the case, the rope would be tied into his harness on one end and he would be holding the other end. That would allow him to keep the tension in the line and feed it out as he came down the rock, but it also meant he was not completely secure. When he hit her the second time Kate was ready and threw her arms around his knees. He kicked at her but she wrestled him to his back, so that they were both dangling from his rope. Then she lunged over his chest and cut his wrist.

  They began sliding across the pitch together, the man clinging to her with desperation. Kate slashed at his face and gave a hard bump with her knee as she rolled out of his arms.

  His cry was different now, his voice filling with raw terror as his speed built. Kate felt her legs slip off the edge of the ramp and caught a jutting piece of stone with both hands. The rock cut into her fingers as her body went over, but she held on, her legs swinging wildly into the sky.

  The second man came from the ledge, calling out to his partner excitedly, but there was no answer. Hanging by one hand, her knife gone, Kate looked up, but she could see nothing other than the sky and dark shadows of the rocks. She reached below the ledge with her free hand and found a ridge. She took it and slipped off the ramp entirely, now hanging against the side of a vertical wall with only four fingers.

  Above her the second man's shadow cut away the stars as his crampons scratched the rock where her hand had been. If he saw her now she was dead.

  Kate's hand began to tremble, but she waited, not daring to search for a better hold.

  'Jörg!' the man called as he walked above her, the teeth of his crampons just inches from her fingers. He was moving slowly, careful to keep his balance.

  When he was lost in the shadows, Kate risked bringing her second hand into play and began probing for a toehold. She breathed quietly, slowly, resisting the instinct to gulp air.

  'Jörg!' he called.

  Kate caught a vertical crack and tucked part of her boot sole into it and pushed up until her chest and hips had cleared the rim. She settled quietly on her hands and toes, her belly inches above the surface. Each step came gently but, as quickly as she could, Kate ascended the steep pitch. She stayed in the blackest shadows close to the boulders. She needed to get above the man. She needed the momentum of a long slide to equalize the difference in their size and weight.

  The Austrian called his partner's name again, but his tone had changed. He was a man alone on a mountain and maybe, for the first time, just a little afraid. Kate visualised the contours of the ramp. She could not see him or hear him. She tried to gauge the distance between them but he had suddenly quit making any sounds. Was he still close to the edge? Was he coming up toward her so quietly she could not hear him? Or was he just standing somewhere, careful to keep his balance and listening to be sure he was really alone?

  He might imagine they had both gone over, but he had to know it was possible she was still here. She began to move laterally and heard him turn as if alerted to a sound. She froze, waiting. A step and then nothing. How close? She had her hands and feet and face pressed against the pitch. Her back was to the assassin. She turned as slowly and quietly as possible, leg over leg, arm over chest. Now face up, she stared past the shadows of her belly and knees.

  She pulled the length of rope she had saved from her pocket and loosened the knot with her teeth. The man still did not move. He must be sure she was above him - somewhere. He apparently did not intend giving away his position before he had to. If she had to guess, she thought they were ten or fifteen feet apart. Both of them blind, both suddenly, perfectly still, both completely aware that they were about to meet.