The Blood Lance (3 page)

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.

She left some slack in the rope as she took it in either fist. She thought he was off to her right, not directly under her, but she couldn't be sure. She couldn't risk starting to slide. If she missed him nothing would stop her. She needed to know his position, but to do that meant she must expose her own. 'Please,' she whispered, hardly recognising her own voice. 'Don't hurt me.'

The assassin seemed to have been waiting for this and started up the pitch quickly. The moment he did, Kate had his position. With a hop she began her slide. The force of her impact let her sweep through his arms and come in hard against his legs. Once he had lost his footing, Kate looped her rope around his knees, and then rolled out from under him. She kept the rope taut and let her momentum send him into a slide. He shouted wildly, but Kate kept pulling, her own momentum failing as his built. When she finally let go of the rope his voice rose to a shriek.

She heard his body hit the glacier three or maybe four seconds later. Then there was only the wind.

Kate rose up on her hands and feet, calling out as she did, 'Robert!' She crawled down the ramp until she got to the ledge where she and her husband had been seated. 'ROBERT!'

Silence answered. They hadn't killed him, she told herself. They had not come up the mountain for that! No! They had wanted to kidnap him! He was tied up, gagged. . . somewhere. He was
here!
He
had
to be here! 'ROBERT!'

Kate slipped out along the dark ledge, but she found only two rucksacks and a pair of sleeping bags. She found a torch in one of the rucksacks and had a look about. Robert's gear was gone. She turned back, leaving the ledge and crossing the ramp. She turned the light here and there. She climbed farther, calling her husband's name again. Again, there was no answer. Kate told herself Robert was somewhere else, but even as she whispered the lie to help her endure the next few seconds, she knew there was no other place. If he were still alive he had to be here.
And he was not here!