The Destiny of the Dead (The Song of the Tears Book 3) (19 page)

Clech anchored the rope to a spike, tested it and nodded.
Nish moved down onto the ice, which felt rough beneath his boots though it
looked smooth further down, where the wind swept across the top of the ridge.
Aimee stopped at the edge of the ice sheet and waited.

He continued slowly, choosing each step with care. ‘I can’t
see any cracks. We’ll have to hammer spikes directly into the ice.’

‘They’d want to go awful deep,’ said Aimee, and for the
first time he could hear tension in her voice. ‘Solid rock is one thing, but
trusting our lives to brittle ice is quite another.’

‘They’ll hear us hammering,’ said Clech. ‘Can we scramble
along the side of the nose?’

Nish’s throat tightened at the thought. This side was almost
sheer and the dark granular stone was partly covered by overhanging ice like
the roof of a thatched cottage, with down-thrusting icicles as long as
javelins. ‘That would take forever, and I’m already worried about the time.
We’ll have to risk the bridge of the nose.’

He headed down the ice. The first few steps were secure
enough, where the surface was corrugated, but beyond that point the ice was
glassy where it had partly melted and refrozen, and there were no crevices in
it. Taking a hammer from his pack, Nish bent to tap a spike into the ice and
his feet went from under him.

He landed on his back, banging his head painfully, then slid
over the edge, and there was nothing he could do about it. He tried to jam the
spike into the ice but he was moving too fast.

‘Brace!’ cried Clech, but Aimee did not have time; Nish’s
weight pulled her off the ridge and they fell together, separated by a span and
a half of rope.

The rope pulled tight around Nish’s chest and he stopped
with a jerk that snapped his head backwards. Above him, Aimee cried out as his
weight tightened the rope around her chest. If Clech lost his footing his
massive weight could rip the climbing iron out of its crack.

He grunted, and Nish saw him being pulled forwards, but
Clech bent his knees to absorb the shock and slowly stood up. ‘I’ve got you.
Don’t struggle or swing on the rope; it’s slippery underfoot.’

Nish revolved on the end, the rope so tight around his chest
that he could hardly breathe, and one of the hot curves of the serpent staff
was gouging into the middle of his back. His head swam; he closed his eyes
until it passed and, when he opened them again, Clech was pulling himself
backwards until his boots were on firm rock. He heaved on the rope and Aimee
gasped.

‘What’s the matter?’ he cried, peering anxiously at her.

‘Think I’ve broken a rib,’ she said in a high voice. ‘Don’t
jerk the rope like that.’

‘Sorry.’ He began to draw in the rope smoothly, hand over
hand, watching her all the while.

Nish could see the strain on her face, the spasms that
wracked her with every movement, no matter how careful Clech was, and it could
not be otherwise with Nish’s weight pulling the rope crushingly tight around
her little frame. If the broken rib punctured a lung she would die.

He shook off the morbid thoughts. There was nothing he could
do to ease her pain save to keep as still as possible.

‘Hurry it up, you big oaf,’ said Aimee, her voice cracking.
‘Slow is nearly as bad as fast.’

Clech pulled her up, tied her to a spike and she lay on her
back while he recovered Nish, then unfastened her chest rope. Nish undid his
own; his ribs were aching and he could feel a groove around his sides where the
rope had cut into him.

Aimee pulled up her shirt. Clech flushed and looked away.
‘Don’t know nothin’ about healing,’ he mumbled.

Nish crawled across. ‘I’ve seen plenty of broken ribs on the
battlefield.’

Her ribcage wasn’t much bigger than a large turkey’s. One
rib, low down under her left breast, was clearly broken, and the surrounding
flesh was bruised and swollen, though he did not think there was any internal
damage – so far. He managed to bend the broken end of the rib out a
little. She clenched her teeth, and tears formed in her eyes, but she did not
cry out. Nish knew he would have.

‘Is that the only broken rib, Aimee?’

‘How would I know?’ she snapped.

‘I’ll have to check …’

Her cheeks went a ruddy colour, then she pulled her shirt up
above her little breasts. ‘Get on with it.’

He traced the ribs along, one by one, and she winced several
times, though she made no sound.

‘Nothing else broken,’ said Nish, binding her chest with
strips of cloth torn from the tail of his shirt, to immobilise the rib as much
as possible, ‘though you’re going to be sore –’

Aimee whipped her shirt down again. ‘We came to do a job, so
let’s get on with it.’

 
FOURTEEN

We can’t risk the ice again,’ said Clech. ‘And the rock
on this side looks solid all the way along. I don’t see anywhere we can put in
a spike.’

‘Then we’d better go to the other side,’ said Nish. Having
come this far, he was determined to find a way.

Another round of sword blows echoed up from the slot –
or were they coming from the western side of the pass? He could not tell, but
if the militia were being attacked in force from the western side as well, it
must surely signal the final onslaught.

They roped together, though this time Clech fashioned rope
harnesses which would distribute the strain more evenly if they fell. Nish did
not want to contemplate that. They would not be so lucky a second time.

‘I’m not sure about this crutch rope,’ he said. Whichever
way he moved it, it lay across a sensitive part of him. ‘If I fall, it’s really
going to hurt.’

Aimee smirked, which in the circumstances he had to ignore.

‘This time
I’ll
go
first,’ she said pointedly. ‘You’re not a good enough climber to go along the
side of the nose. Stay here until we get back.’

‘I can’t,’ Nish said tersely, for his chest hurt more every
minute, and he wondered if he might not also have broken a rib. ‘You don’t know
where the flaw in the ice is –’

‘You said it was near the end of the nose.’

‘That’s a big area. Besides, you don’t know how to shift the
ice.’

‘How are
you
going
to shift it?’ said Clech.

‘With the serpent staff.’ He hoped. It had grown hot when
he’d first seen the fissure in that flash of clearsight.

Aimee gave an audible gulp. Clech’s eyes flicked nervously
away.

‘All right. Follow me,’ she said. ‘Clech, don’t move until
Nish is spiked down, and whatever you do, don’t fall. We’d never haul your
great mass of blubber up again; we’d have to cut you loose.’

The joke fell flat, for they all knew it to be true. Her
eyes glistened, then she turned away abruptly and began to move along the outer
curve of the nose, just before it dropped away almost sheer. The ice sheet
formed a thick curved cap over the top and overhung the sides, ending in a
ragged fringe of icicles, many as thick around as Nish’s thigh.

‘If we climb in underneath the ice we might find it easier,’
said Aimee.

Nish doubted it, but he wasn’t the mountaineer, so he nodded
stiffly.

‘Fix on tight,’ she added. ‘I’ll swing in.’

He fixed a spike in a crack, checked it twice and said,
‘Go.’

Aimee lowered herself over the edge, between a pair of
icicles, and began to swing back and forth, a spike ready in her right hand.
The rope tightened on Nish’s harness, digging into his chest and groin. He
could hardly bear to watch as she moved in and out between the icicles, and
could not see how she would get a grip on the steep rock behind them, halfway
down the side of the nose.

The rope tightened and she didn’t come out.

‘Aimee?’ he called, his voice cracking. If she fell, he
would not know until her weight came onto his line.

After a long pause she said, ‘Fixed it good and tight. Come
down.’

He glanced up at Clech, who nodded. ‘Ready.’

Nish looked over the edge, not liking the thought of hanging
over that terrible fall again, with just a rope between himself and oblivion,
especially since it could all be for nothing. What if he got to the flaw in the
ice and could not unleash the fire in the serpent staff?

What if clearsight failed him again? He unclenched his jaw,
which he’d clenched so tightly that his back teeth were aching, and began to go
down.

Shortly he was hanging on the line, looking in underneath
the ice. Aimee was standing up on a narrow ledge, holding the rope for him.

‘Swing in between the icicles,’ she called.

He swung his legs back and forth, though it did not move him
inwards measurably. He swung harder, to no effect. ‘Sorry, I’m just not a
mountaineer.’

‘I’ll have to pull you in,’ sighed Aimee, rolling her eyes.

She gave a great heave on the line just as Nish swung
forwards, legs wide, and he tilted over and slammed, groin first, into an
icicle the width of a flagpole.

‘Aaahh!’ he roared, then cut off the involuntary cry,
praying that it had not been heard. Tears welled in his eyes; he doubled up as
the pain rang right through him, and began to revolve on the rope.

‘Sorry,’ said Aimee, turning him the other way until the
rope untwisted, then pulling him between the icicles, under the lip and onto
the ledge.

Nish lay there with his knees drawn up, for the pain was so
bad that he could not move. By the time it began to diminish, Clech was down
and onto the ledge without incident.

‘We’ll leave that spike in place,’ said Aimee, ‘so we can
get out again.’ She looked down at Nish, evidently deciding that he was all
right and it was time to get her own back. A mischievous light danced in her
round eyes. ‘Do you want me to check, in case you’ve broken something?’

Clech chuckled.

Why was a blow to the male groin so damned amusing? ‘No
thanks,’ Nish said curtly. ‘Can we get on?’

‘It looks like an easy climb from here down to the knob of
the Emperor’s Pizzle,’ said Aimee, still grinning. ‘We can follow this ledge
most of the way, then step down onto a lower ledge for the last bit.’

The ledge sloped outwards, was icy and at no point was more
than Nish’s foot’s length across, yet, compared to what they had done already, it
would be an easy path. He could just make out the lower ledge in the drifting
mist, but not where it led to.

With the marvellous split spikes securely embedded in the
rock he felt relatively safe negotiating the upper ledge and then the lower
one, until it petered out at the side of the knob. Here the mass of ice
overhung so thickly that, even when Aimee swung well out from the ledge on her
rope, she could not see the side.

‘It’s worse than I’d thought,’ she said, swinging back. ‘I
don’t know how we’re supposed to get up on top from here. Where was the flaw in
the ice sheet, Nish?’

‘It can’t have been far from here …’
I hope
. ‘Keep looking. I’ll try my clearsight again.’

‘While you do, we’ll go under and check the other side.’

Clech and Aimee spiked on and made their way under the tip
of the nose out of sight, leaving Nish alone on the ledge. He checked that his
spikes were tight and his rope secure, and closed his eyes the better to use
clearsight.

It didn’t come but he was not unduly concerned – he often
had to fight to get anything out of it. He’d always supposed that was due to
his clearsight being created by his father’s Profane Tears – and they
would not want to help him unless he was in the most dire peril.

It was miserable here, for the overhanging ice seemed to be
radiating cold down on him, while the icicles reminded him unpleasantly of the
bars of his stinking cell in Mazurhize prison, where he’d spent ten agonising
years, aching with grief for Irisis, fighting his father, and failing every time.
The wind had picked up and began to shake the transparent tips of the icicles,
fetching brittle notes out of them.

He strained until his heart pounded and he felt it skip a
couple of beats, but the cursed clearsight told him nothing. A shriek echoed up
from the slot, someone dying in agony. How many of his militia were left, out
of the five hundred who had set out from Gendrigore in such high spirits a few
weeks ago? Fifty? Forty? Thirty? At this rate they’ll all be dead by sunset,
Nish thought. I gambled with their lives and lost.

The wind was hissing between the icicles now, generating a
mournful humming like a hymn for the dead. The mist whipped around him, then
thinned until he could see, as though through a strip of gauze, the enemy
advancing steadily up the gully towards the eastern entrance. The line appeared
to extend down for half a league, and they were moving with a deadly purpose.
Had the pass fallen?

He could not tell, for a patch of mist clung to the slot. He
strained to see through it, heart hammering, then it blew away and he made out
his proud, exhausted defenders, standing in an arc behind the blocked entrance,
ready to reinforce the men holding it when they fell, or became so exhausted
that they could no longer wield a sword. Tears stung his eyes. He tried to
count the defenders but could not complete the tally, for they kept moving.
Certainly less than fifty, though.

And the enemy? Nish could tell, without counting, that there
were three or four hundred on the upper track, while the blur of red uniforms
extending down the gully and spreading across the lower mountainside to their
encampment must contain thousands of men.

They did not matter, though. The hundreds on the upper track
were sufficient to finish the job, and even if he could wipe a few dozen out
with some falling ice, it would amount to no more than a punch in the nose for
Klarm. The end was no longer in doubt.

I don’t suppose it ever was, Nish thought wearily. Did I
ever
really
hope to defend the pass
and hold the enemy back? Only around the camp fire on the first few days, when
the wine was flowing and the Gendrigoreans were treating the affair as a great
adventure, a walk in the mountains and then a triumphant return, unscathed.