The Destiny of the Dead (The Song of the Tears Book 3) (18 page)

She was quick, Nish had to grant her that. ‘There’s a
fissure near the end. I saw it with my clearsight, earlier. If I can get to it,
I might be able to send the ice
below
the fissure sliding off the Emperor’s er, Pizzle.’

‘How would you do that, Nish? It’s really thick there.’

He swung the serpent staff off his back. It felt warmer than
before; almost hot. ‘Remember how this glowed white-hot after Stilkeen embedded
it into the rock? Those fires still burn inside it, and once I set them free …’
If he could. Nish prayed he wasn’t taking Aimee and Clech up there for nothing.

She shivered and moved a little closer to Clech, who
swallowed. Few Gendrigoreans were comfortable with mancery, and there could be
no more deadly or unknowable power than Stilkeen’s.

‘All right,’ said Aimee. ‘I reckon I can get you up there.
And maybe you can lever off some ice with your hot snake, but how do we stop
the ice taking us with it?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Nish.

‘Or are you asking us to commit suicide?’

‘I would never ask that of anyone. You’re the climber
– tell me how we can do it, and survive.’

‘There are ropes and climbing irons in one of the enemy’s
supply tents,’ said Aimee. ‘There might be a way, but I won’t know until I get
there.’

‘You mean we’re going up onto the nose without knowing if
there’s any way down?’ said Clech.

‘Yes,’ she said softly. ‘Though a big dumb lump like you
could bounce all the way down on your head without doing any damage.’

He grinned. Clech wasn’t easily offended. ‘You can jump
after me and use my belly for a pillow.’

‘It’s doughy enough!’ she snapped, though Clech was all
muscle.

‘Is that a yes?’ said Nish.

‘Yes,’ said Aimee. ‘We’ll head up that cleft.’ She pointed
to it.

‘We’d better move,’ said Nish. ‘Try to keep out of sight. If
Klarm sees us up there, he might guess what we’re up to and pull his troops
back, out of danger.’

‘We’d be doing some good, then,’ said Aimee. ‘Let’s go.’

‘You’ll need a coat,’ said Nish, for Aimee, like the rest of
the militia, wore only a long-sleeved shirt, pants and boots. ‘It’ll be freezing
up there.’

‘I haven’t got one. No one wears coats in Gendrigore; it’s
too hot.’

‘And the enemy greatcoats would go around her four times,’
said Clech. ‘She can’t climb like that.’

‘Then we’d better be quick.’

‘I am quick,’ said Aimee, ‘but I’ll bet you won’t be.’

They gathered ropes, climbing spikes and hammers. Nish slung
the serpent staff over his back, and where its spirals pressed against him he
could feel the sluggish, churning heat. The warmth would have been welcome, had
it come from any other source, but how could anything left behind by Stilkeen
be trusted?

Besides, he still did not know how to liberate its heat
– assuming it was possible. He felt like a fraud. What would Aimee and
Clech think if they knew how little hope he had? And what if his clearsight let
him down again?

Though only mid-afternoon, it was almost as dark as twilight
and getting darker. As Aimee reached for the first handhold, it began to rain:
big, freezing drops with pellets of ice inside. Wisps of mist formed all across
the mountainside and the base of the clouds had moved steadily down during the
afternoon; it was not far above the top of the nose-shaped ridge now.

The mist would help to conceal them, but if the cloud base
dropped much lower they’d be feeling their way in fog. They might not reach the
ice sheet before dark, and certainly would not get down again.

The slope here was about fifty degrees, yet Aimee was
already three spans up and climbing like that gecko. Clech had been right
– she was light, agile and perfectly suited to this kind of work.

‘Not so fast,’ Clech called, looking more bear-like than
ever. He wiped his wet face on the back of his arm and followed, grunting with
the effort.

Nish was only a span up the slope when there came a roar
from the eastern side, and the furious clash of weapons. His heart jumped and
he turned to go down, for the defences could not be seen from here.

‘Flangers will handle it,’ Clech said quietly.

And if he did not, there was nothing Nish could do. He had
to put all other concerns aside and concentrate on his own job.

The first twenty spans were an easy climb, since the rock in
the cleft was broken and provided good foot-and hand-holds, though above the
cleft broadened and became shallower until it was just a crease in the side of
the mountain. Aimee was going up rapidly, clinging with fingers and toes to
handholds that Nish could not even see.

Clech was also moving steadily, but when Nish tried to climb
out of the cleft his body felt heavy, his arms and legs weak, and his blistered
feet shrieked. The serpent staff seemed to weigh twice as much as before, and
it was hot now. I’m not up to this, he thought. I’ll never get there.

But that’s why Aimee and Clech were with him. ‘I’m going to
need a hand,’ he called.

She came down to him. ‘Sorry, Nish. I keep forgetting you’re
a
gwishin
.’

‘A what?’

‘It means a foreigner and a flatlander,’ rumbled Clech, his
chest heaving as if he were holding back laughter. He exchanged glances with
Aimee and a small light danced in her dark eyes.

Nish suspected
gwishin
also had a rude meaning, for the Gendrigoreans were fond of vulgar jokes,
though if it did they would never tell him.

‘I wouldn’t exactly call myself a flatlander,’ he said. ‘My
homeland is rugged enough, though it’s in the far south and much colder than
here. No one would ever go climbing there for fun.’

Aimee stood up on the steep slope, not even holding on. Her
slender fingers were blue from cold. She rubbed them together and put them into
her armpits. ‘How could anyone live in such a miserable place?’

‘We lived well enough,’ said Nish. ‘I remember sitting by
the fire when I was little –’

‘Yes?’ said Aimee, when he did not go on.

‘It doesn’t matter.’

Nish hadn’t thought about his childhood in years and did not
want to now. He had been fond of his sister, who had died a long time ago, but
he had not got on with his hard, ambitious father nor his three older brothers,
also dead now, who had been just like their father. His mother had been cool
and distant, and had driven her children relentlessly.

Where was she now? She had abandoned Jal-Nish after he’d
been hideously maimed in a lyrinx attack thirteen years ago. Had that rejection
driven him to become the power-crazed loner who had hunted down the Profane
Tears, then murdered his own men so no one would realise he had them? Nish
often wondered what had turned his father from a hard, calculating man to a
thoroughly evil one. He also worried that, in trying to overthrow him, he might
end up as bad.

‘Nish?’ said Aimee.

‘Sorry, what did you say?’

‘You’d better take these.’ She had three metal spikes in her
hand, each with a ring on the end.

‘As soon as we start hammering spikes into the rock, they’ll
know we’re climbing, and it won’t take Klarm long to work out where we’re
going.’

‘What can he do about it?’ said Aimee.

‘A lot, with the air-sled.’

‘These aren’t normal climbing irons,’ said Clech. ‘They must
be specially made for the Imperial army.’

Aimee handed Nish one. ‘They’re split. You jam it in a
crack, wind the ring on the end, and it pulls tight.’

The climbing iron was beautifully made, which came as no
surprise. Nish’s father had always been fascinated with machines and devices,
and as God-Emperor he had the means to indulge that passion without limit. Nish
turned the ring, holding the spike tightly in his other fist, and the two split
pieces of metal moved outwards, forcing his fist open.

‘We tested them yesterday,’ said Aimee. ‘They’re easy to
tighten, and one spike can hold twice Clech’s weight when it’s seated in good
hard rock.’ She threaded a length of rope through three spikes, knotted it and
tied the other end tightly around Nish’s chest.

‘Put the rope over my staff,’ said Nish. ‘I wouldn’t want to
drop it.’

As she was doing so, he looked up the mountain and
swallowed. Even with irons it wasn’t going to be easy to climb up the bulge
above them. Distantly he could hear the clang and clash of weapons at the slot.
He should be down there, helping them. Nish was the most experienced fighter
they had, apart from Flangers, and if he fell the defenders would be
leaderless.

‘The best way to help them is to get this job done,’ said
Clech.

Again Nish wrenched his thoughts back to the here and the
now. Aimee, who was moving steadily up, called, ‘There’s a good crack here.’

Climbing was awkward with the serpent staff tied to his
back, but Nish heaved himself up to the crack and pushed in the first of his
irons. When he turned the ring, the split spike pulled so tightly against the
sides of the crack that no heave could budge it. There must be mancery in the
spike, or the most brilliant craftsmanship, he thought, ruefully remembering
his days as a barely competent prentice artificer.

Nish had used climbing irons before, the kind that one
hammered in, usually whacking one’s fingers in the process, and these were a
luxury. He inserted his three in a vertical line, stood on the middle spike and
stretched down to twist out the lower one, but could not quite reach. He’d put
the spikes in too far apart.

Unslinging the serpent staff, he went to poke the point of
its tail through the ring, but as he touched it the ring rotated, pulling the
split spike together, and it fell out of the crack to hang from his rope.
Another marvel.

He went up quickly after that, and within minutes had joined
Aimee and Clech at the top of the bulge, where a nodular protrusion was wide
enough to sit on, assuming one had no fear of heights. Nish wasn’t terrified of
heights but he had a healthy respect for them, so he pushed in a spike first
and tightened the rope around his chest.

The cloud base was just above their heads now, an undulating
layer of white cutting off all sight of mountains and sky. ‘I’m not looking
forward to going up through that,’ said Nish. ‘How are we going to find the
way?’

‘But you studied the side of the mountain from the pass,’
said Aimee. ‘Surely you remember where to go?’

‘I’m not good at that kind of thing.’

She looked at him pityingly. ‘Lucky you’ve got us.’

‘I give thanks for my good fortune every minute,’ he said
drily.

‘From here we head up to the right,’ she said, ‘around the
curve of the mountain towards the bridge of the nose. If the wind comes up and
blows the clouds away, anyone looking up will see us, so we’d better be quick.’

‘Rope together now,’ said Clech.

They did so. Aimee scrambled up through the cloud base and
they followed into a clammy white-out where Nish could barely see the rock he
was clinging to. The slope wasn’t as steep here, and there were more handholds,
but every surface was wet and it was very cold. He had not been really cold for
a long time – before he’d come to Gendrigore, certainly, six weeks ago.

The wind had dropped and it was only drizzling now, though
it was darker than ever and another downpour could not be far off. Nish tried
to move faster, but it proved impossible in the miserable conditions.

There was no sound save their heavy breathing, the click of
metal spikes on stone and, muffled through the fog, intermittent sounds of
fighting below at the slot. The rope running up from his chest faded into whiteness
within a span; he could see nothing save the moss-and lichen-covered rock.

There was no other sign of life, no sounds from above, and
after a while his mind began to play tricks on him. Was he heading up the
slope, or down it? His eyes told him down, even though the strain on his legs
proved he was going up, and now he began to doubt that there was anyone else on
the other end of the rope.

What if he reached the top and Jal-Nish was waiting there,
luring him to Stilkeen? The idea was absurd, but it would not go away, for
there was no end to his father’s cunning and he loved to set people up,
allowing them to think they’d won, just for the pleasure of bringing them down
and crushing them utterly.

He had sacrificed an army once so that Nish would think he’d
had a great victory, then mocked him for believing it. The revelation had been
shattering; only now was Nish recovering his self-confidence.

‘Clech?’ he said softly.

‘Is something wrong?’ Clech replied.

‘No, I just wanted to be sure you were there.’

‘Where else would he be?’ came Aimee’s high, scornful voice.

‘This mountain is an uncanny place,’ muttered Clech. ‘I feel
it too.’

They headed across an icy patch where Nish never felt
secure, despite the spikes. The mist was thinner here, Clech a lumbering shadow
a couple of spans ahead. Nish only saw Aimee fleetingly but he could hear her
teeth chattering, and once she must have dropped a spike for he heard the metal
ring off rock, and her muffled curses.

‘I’m level with the Emperor’s Warty Pizzle,’ she called
shortly, shivering in her thin clothing. ‘What now?’

Nish climbed up to her. A few spans to his right the rock
swelled into a broad, out-jutting ridge crusted with smooth ice – the
bridge of the nose. Nothing could be seen beyond that, though he knew that the
nose broadened further down before a knob of black rock at the tip, which acted
as a dam for the ice. Somewhere, way down there, was the flaw or fissure he’d
seen with clearsight, but unless it returned there was no way of telling where that
flaw was.

‘Down to the end. I’ll know the spot when I get to it.’ He
hoped. ‘I’d better go first.’

He edged across, only now appreciating what he was trying to
do. The bridge of the nose was about twenty spans across and ran down steeply.
The ice sheet was thin here but he’d seen from below that it grew ever thicker
towards the tip.