by Ian Graham
His eyesight blurred, the goat flickering in front of him.
Swearing, Ballas lowered the bow. He was tired. So tired that his eyes couldn’t focus clearly. He hadn’t slept properly, not for a long time. Every night, hedid fall asleep. Yet he never woke refreshed and renewed—only exhausted. The dreams of stone persisted. Their contents were a mystery. He couldn’t recall anything about them—except that, in some way, they were about stone. He had expected that, after a few days on the mountains, they would have stopped. But it seemed he would have to endure them indefinitely. And the climb would pass in a haze of weariness.
Yet his desire to find Belthirran was undiminished. More than ever, it filled his thoughts, possessed him, forced his heart to beat, his muscles to keep working.
He aimed at the goat.
The first arrow pierced the animal’s upper leg; the second, its throat. Using his dagger, Ballas cut out some slabs of meat and a few edible innards. Then he pitched the remains into a gully.
Thunder tolled, shaking the mountains. At first, the rain was almost too light to feel: it was detectable only by grass stalks trembling and stones darkening. Then it gained strength, crashing down as if the clouds were flinging fistful after fistful of iron nails. After a few moments the rain became hail. The grassland was bombarded with icy white pellets. They bit at Ballas’s face and rattled upon his cape. As he jogged to the camp, lightning flashed.
Laike had returned. ‘On the Garsbracks,’ he said, over the noise of hail drumming on the tarpaulin, ‘a storm is the herald of winter.’
There was more thunder, fresh lightning.
‘The Fierce Season has found us,’ said the explorer. ‘Now our struggles begin.’
Chapter 19
And the Pilgrims cast out
Asvirius, but the Lectivin did not submit
Gently, and a battle struck the Mountain …
… The sky blackened, the waters rose,
Birds fell dead from the air …
Not since Creation had such magick crackled
Through the world of substances …
‘Pilgrims’ blood,’ said Ballas, as he woke.
His body shook. His eyes felt raw, as if they’d been scraped with sand. In his throat, bile swirled; he felt tired, sick, and half-frozen to death. Once more, he had dreamed of stone. Once more, the meaning of the dream eluded him. As always, though, waking was uncomfortable—and this morning, it was worse than before. He felt feverish, more or less.
An ague, he thought. I’ve got winter sickness—or something.
He rubbed his face. His hands were cold upon his cold skin. Cursing, he sat upright, and looked around the camp. Heresh was already awake, eating a piece of goat meat that had been cooked the night before. But Laike was nowhere to be seen.
‘Where is the explorer?’ said Ballas, thickly.
‘You look ill.’
‘Where’s the bloody explorer!’ snapped Ballas.
‘Outside,’ replied Heresh. ‘Everything … everything has changed.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Look for yourself.’
Rising, Ballas stepped outside. All night, after the hailstorm, rain had fallen. Now, every grass stalk and stone was sealed in ice. A hundred yards away, a waterfall was frozen solid, its foam white, its depths a glowing blue. A wind blew—it played over his skin like a razor blade fashioned from ice. In such sudden cold, Ballas groaned. Then he hugged himself.
‘Beautiful, is it not?’ said Laike, gesturing.
‘I am bloody dying,’
‘I remember when I saw these high slopes in winter. In my memory, I see them now: there is nothing, in all Nature, to compare with it. Does it not move you, Ballas? Does it not make you grateful to be alive?’
‘Alive? Are you stupid, Laike? This ice could kill us. The ledges are covered in it. Or don’t you remember that part?’
‘I remember,’ said Laike mildly. ‘And I have taken precautions.’
In the camp, Laike took two roughly oval-shaped metal frames from his rucksack. On the undersides, inch-long spikes protruded. On the upper sides were two sets of leather straps, each with a buckle stitched to it.
‘Crampons,’ said Laike, handing them to Ballas. ‘They fasten over your boots. They’ll help you grip the ice.’
Ballas strapped them on; Laike took out his own pair, and did the same.
‘A fine invention,’ said the explorer. ‘Far better than merely driving nails through one’s boot soles.’ Laike lifted a knuckle to his mouth. ‘Of course. Forgive me, Heresh: but I did not expect you to be joining us. I have only two pairs, and each is of a size too great for your feet. But all is not lost. Take a rope, and tie one end to yourself and the other to myself or Ballas. If you slip, you will not fall—at least, not too far.’ He offered the woman a rope.
Heresh took it, then paused.
‘Well,’ said Laike, ‘who is it to be: myself or Ballas?’
Heresh glanced at Ballas, then at Laike. ‘You,’ she told the explorer.
‘Ballas is far stronger than me,’ he said. ‘Heavier, too. If you suffer a mishap, he is best equipped to save you.’
‘I won’t place my life in the hands of someone I mistrust. Not if I can help it.’
‘Very well. There is also another matter,’ continued Laike. ‘That of your clothing. The mountains are far colder today than yesterday. Your cape offers little protection. Ballas and I must each give you some of our clothing. Otherwise, you will freeze.’
‘I am unwell,’ said Ballas, scowling. ‘I’m sick.’
‘Laike,’ said Heresh, touching the explorer’s forearm, ‘I shall be fine as I am. A bit of cold air will not harm me—’
‘Nonsense! Here: have my coat.’ Laike started untying the garment.
‘Wait,’ said Ballas, angrily. ‘Take my coat. Go on.’ He tore off his furs, then flung them at her. ‘Put it on. Stay warm. And my over-trousers.’ He tugged off the thick leggings, exposing the thin woollen ones beneath. ‘Have them as well!’
Heresh glanced at Laike, uncertain.
‘It is not necessary,’ said the explorer, ‘for you to give up every warm—’
‘Have you forgotten what you are, Laike? You’re an old man. You will freeze if you are not careful. And if you freeze, what happens? Pah!’ Ballas hurled the leggings at Heresh. ‘Wear them. I will do well enough without. Whisky—that’ll warm me.’ Snatching a flagon from Laike’s rucksack, he stumped outside. The wind swirled over him—yet he hardly felt the cold. His anger warmed him. He uncorked the whisky, and took a sip: it warmed him far more.
With the mountains ice-coated, their progress was slow. Over grassland, they moved at a near-normal pace. But the ledges, looping over gullies and chasms, required caution. Ballas’s crampons sank into the ice; as Laike had promised, they improved his grip. Yet they were not perfect. Sometimes, Ballas slipped; sometimes, heaving the spikes from the ice, he overbalanced. Even Laike seemed perturbed. But this, Ballas thought, was Heresh’s fault—and Heresh’s fault alone. In smooth-soled boots, she found it almost impossible to walk.
Eventually, Laike said, ‘This is no use—no use at all. Every slither of your feet is a summons for death to come and bear you to the Forest.’
The explorer suggested a different way of moving. Heresh was to kneel on all fours, and crawl; in her right hand, she would grip a dagger, which she would sink into the ice with every forward motion. To Ballas’s ears it seemed preposterous. Yet it worked. They moved faster in this way; and Ballas took a grim amusement at Heresh’s predicament—at the way she was forced to plod on, like an animal.
Sometime after midday, on a thin ledge, Heresh slipped. The ledge tilted slightly to its left, towards a gully. Heresh’s knees slewed from under her and she fell on to her side. She began sliding, and tried in vain to sink the knife into the ice. As she neared the edge, Ballas sprang forward. Grasping her arm, he hauled her out of danger. She looked up, and their gazes met. It seemed that she might sp
eak—might offer thanks. But she turned away, and continued crawling. Ballas realised she understood him. She was roped to Laike; and it was the explorer’s life Ballas had saved, not hers.
More precisely, it was his own.
As evening approached, they stopped at a rock face covered with a network of ledges. Its height was impossible to estimate: it slanted slightly backwards from the travellers, thus concealing its higher reaches. As far as Ballas could tell, it could have gone on up as far as the sun.
‘We’ve got to climb it, have we?’
‘It is the last great barrier before the summit,’ said Laike, touching the rock face.
‘Are we almost there?’
Laike nodded. ‘Of course, it is not the last barrier you will have to cross, if you are to reach Belthirran. There is the rock wall, that—’
‘Don’t speak of it,’ said Ballas, sharply.
‘It troubles you?’
‘It bores me.’
‘It seems perverse that a man can be bored by that which might destroy him. Obstacles, like one’s enemies, should kindle interest.’ Laike paused, frowning. ‘If it truly does bore you, that is a bad sign.’
‘Oh yes?’
‘It means that you have no reason to be interested in it. It means you think it is hardly a threat at all—which, in this case, is supremely arrogant; and failure is the harvest of arrogance. Or … or it means that you do not believe you will ever overcome it. It bores you because there is no reason to be interested: no reason to think about it, for no amount of thought will help you. You imagine … you believe that the rock wall cannot be overcome. It … it is the way, with certain things. If a man knows there is nothing he can do, he loses interest …’
The explorer rubbed his palm across his mouth. He breathed heavily, for a moment.
‘Come,’ he said. “We must make a start.’
‘It’d be wiser,’ said Ballas, seeing the first tints of evening in the sky, ‘if we pitched camp. Then we’ll have all tomorrow to make the climb.’
‘You imagine a single day will be enough?’
‘It’ll take longer?’
‘There are places further up,’ said Laike, ‘where we can make an easy camp. Do we have firewood?’
They didn’t; Ballas hacked branches from a couple of rowan trees. Then he killed and gutted another goat, storing the meat inside a leather pouch.
‘Is everything ready?’ asked Laike as Ballas returned.
Ballas said it was.
‘Then let us bring our journey to an end.’
For three days, they climbed the rock face, following the ledges. At first, Ballas found himself surprised by its size—its seemingly never-ending skywards progress. Then he grew bored. The rock face annoyed him: every part of it looked like every other—it was nerve-numbingly monotonous, like sailing eternally upon a sea untroubled by waves. Through the day they walked; at night, they camped in the caves in the rock face. The repetitiveness of their surroundings, as much as the travellers’ slowness, made Ballas impatient. He started to feel that Laike had tricked them—had led them, inexplicably, on a journey without end.
Then, on the morning of the third day, tired, still haunted by dreams of stone, Ballas began to find the rock face an unreal place—somewhere dislocated from the world he knew, somewhere governed by different rules and subject to different principles. It was a world of isolation: the lights of Druine couldn’t be seen and nothing was visible except other mountains, all immeasurably tall, yet all dwarfed by the rock face. It was a world of dull stone and gleaming ice. And a world of bone-splitting cold: the winds pierced Ballas’s flesh, he felt chill-sickened, and he gazed with increasing anger at Heresh, clothed in his furs.
On the third afternoon, clouds crawled into the sky: a few at first, each onyx-black and heavy. Then more came, and soon the sky was a sky no longer: just a ceiling of pulsing blackness. The wind ebbed, the air stilled. Snow began to fall—each flake twisting languidly, then settling on the ledge. They alighted on Ballas’s shoulders, and in his hair. Soon the air was full of fluttering white. A breeze blew up, skirling over the ledge, whipping the the snowflakes into a frenetic dance. Then a gust of wind struck, slamming Ballas against the rock face. He cursed; the wind caught Laike and he stumbled but remained upright.
A blizzard had begun.
Everything turned white: the ledge, the air, the rock face, the mountains. Ballas’s field of vision shrank to a few feet. Somewhere ahead Laike shouted, ‘A hundred paces, and we shall be safe!’
Head bowed, Ballas forced himself onward. The big man had stopped shivering: the snowflakes were so cold that they burned, seeming to singe his flesh like heated cinders.
Following Laike, he ducked into the stillness and shelter of a cave. Upon the floor was a small pile of charred firewood; beside it nestled animal bones. Ballas felt a touch of alarm. Was this the Lectivin’s campfire? Had Nu’hkterin somehow overtaken them? Was it ahead somewhere—concealed, waiting?
Then Ballas noticed a pelt of discoloured, moisture-rotted fur. The animal had been slaughtered, and skinned, years ago.
Kneeling, Laike touched the remains of the campfire. ‘I know this cave,’ he said, smiling. ‘This is my fire; this—’ he fingered the fur ‘—was my final meal before reaching the summit. Mountain fox. It had made this cave its home. It was old, and when I arrived it was too slow to run, too weak to fight. I killed it quickly, and ate well.’
‘Your final meal,’ said Ballas. ‘We’re almost there, then?’
‘Another day’s climb, if the weather treats us kindly.’
‘When do you reckon the blizzard will stop?’
‘Spring,’ replied Laike, flatly.
Ballas glowered.
‘Only in the new year will the snows recede and a thaw begin,’ the explorer continued. ‘Before then, there will be lulls. We will have to make do with these. But they ought to be sufficient. Now, let us make a fire, yes? I am cold.’
Ballas did as the explorer asked. While Heresh cooked the goat meat, Ballas took off his thin coat and leggings and put them by the fire to dry. A soft, smoky warmth filled the cave. They ate their meal in silence. To ease the pain of her ribs, Heresh drank a little whisky. Soon after, she went to the back of the cave and fell asleep.
Ballas and Laike remained by the fire. Outside, the blizzard raged, the snowflakes as animated and dense as a locust swarm.
‘Is there much whisky left?’ asked Laike.
Ballas held the flagon to the firelight. ‘This one is three-quarters full.’
‘We might as well empty it. At this hour tomorrow we shall be in Belthirran, drinking whatever is favoured there.’
‘You don’t believe that.’
Laike shook his head. ‘No. I do not.’
Laike took a mouthful from the flagon. Ballas watched him closely. In Laike’s sightless eyes a contented—almost happy—light flickered. Yet, over the past few days, he had grown distant. As if his thoughts lay not on the climb but on something else … something less tangible.
‘You are staring, Ballas,’ said the explorer.
‘How can you tell?’
‘Your silence. Your stillness. And—’ he lifted his eyebrows ‘—you are ignoring an offered flagon.’ Laike was holding out the receptacle and had been doing so for a few moments. Ballas had not noticed.
‘Something troubles you,’ said Laike, as Ballas took the flagon.
‘I’m part-way up Druine’s highest mountain, in a blizzard— of course I am troubled.’
‘It is not that,’ said Laike.
Ballas was silent a moment. ‘Why are you helping me? Days ago, I reckoned you wanted an adventure … or something. But now? I don’t think so. This isn’t an idle pleasure, is it? You could perish here. You knew it would be dangerous. You knew there would be blizzards.’
Laike held his hands out to the fire. ‘I have not been honest with you. I said I decided to guide you because I wanted a climbing companion, someone to assist me no
w and again when things got difficult. I told you no one else was willing to do so.’
‘So you did,’ murmured Ballas.
‘Untrue,’ replied Laike. ‘There are many foolhardy men, many greedy men, who would have done my bidding. But … I was frightened.’
‘Frightened?’
‘Of the mountains. In my youth, I was reckless. I did not understand my own fragility. Or, rather, I understood but did not care. The pleasures of adventure excited me—so much so that I loathed anything that dulled them. Caution, forethought—these are invaluable, upon the Garsbracks. Yet I shunned them. I treated the mountains as if they were an oak tree, and I was a child scrambling up for fun. But now—now I am old, and blind, and fearful. I loved the mountains; yet they terrified me.’
‘On our first evening,’ said Ballas, ‘you leaped over a gully, on to a ledge. You ran, and hurled yourself into black space. That isn’t how a fearful man behaves.’
‘What choice did I have? The gully had to be crossed.’
‘But you didn’t hesitate. You simply sprinted off, without any planning, without making sure you were in exactly the right place.’
‘If I had paused,’ said Laike, ‘I would never have jumped. My nerve would have vanished. I would have found some reason to stay where I was. Then what would have remained but to abandon the journey? And I did not want that.’
‘So why are you here? Are you testing yourself? Is this some contest of will?’
‘I am here,’ said Laike, ‘to die. Pass me the whisky, please.’
Ballas did as the explorer asked. Laike took a long gulp, then gasped.
‘Last spring, I became unwell. In my guts, there was a pain, a hot pain, a pain like fire upon flesh. It was extraordinary in its severity. My nights were feverish, my days given over to a type of tormented lethargy … I am a rich man, Ballas: but I did not wish to see a surgeon. Such men swear an oath of secrecy; yet they also drink, and grow loose-tongued, and speak of their patients’ ills. I did not want anyone to know that I was ill. In Dayshadow, I was not well-liked. The quarrymen hated me, for I made them work hard. Those who hold the quarrying rights to the western and eastern parts of the Garsbracks hate me, for I possess the areas of the finest stone, and a few mines, too, from which diamonds can be taken. I did not want them to know that I was suffering, because it would have pleased them. I am a stubborn man, Anhaga Ballas.
