by Ronan Frost
Every step took more strength from his legs than the one before, with the buildup of snow on the ground making it hard going. His calf muscles and thighs ached from dragging his boots out of the virgin snow time after time after time. The thin air and his shallow breathing had him convinced his heart was on the verge of seizing every time he drew in another icy breath.
There was no banter between the team.
The conditions demanded their full focus.
The savage terrain was only made worse by the snowstorm as the blizzard gathered in around them, the wind driving the flakes into Rye’s face whenever he lifted his head to see where he was going. Most of the morning was spent looking at his feet and the yard or so of snow-covered ground ahead of him as he trudged wearily on.
His pack felt heavier with each mile.
It was as much about will as it was endurance.
All four of them shared the same core stubbornness that kept them moving forward. Always forward. But it wasn’t easy. Visibility was reduced to nothing, the churning snow whipping up into their faces all the time. They knew that the twin peaks of the pass that Carter had identified as a choke point were up ahead, but where was anyone’s guess.
All they could do was walk on.
Carter turned to look at him, the sun reflecting off the oily surface of his sunglasses. He didn’t look happy. He said something, but the wind whipped away his words. He gave up trying to communicate, and leaned into the storm, trudging on.
There were no signs of the snow leopards on the slopes, or any other creatures.
The sense of isolation was absolute.
They might have been the last four survivors of a broken world.
An unblemished blanket of snow rolled out before them. Behind them, their footsteps were the only scars on the white landscape, carving a line of least resistance from where they’d started the day toward where they were going to end it. The fresh fall would erase all signs of their passage soon enough.
Over the next hour the winds worsened, making it a physical effort to move forward. Each breath became more and more labored. Rye couldn’t feel his face. Any skin exposed to the elements had frozen to the point that it felt as though it was burning beneath the chill. He put his hand over his mouth, letting the warmth of half a dozen exhalations thaw his cheeks, but the second he took his hand away the bitter cold stole in worse than before.
They needed to find shelter.
There was no way they could keep forcing themselves to go on, not when somewhere up ahead was a wire rope bridge over a gaping chasm, where, in these conditions they’d be dead before they were halfway across.
Not that they’d make it halfway across.
Rye scoured the endless white for anywhere they might be able to take shelter: ideally a cave set into the side of the sheer slopes but failing that some sort of overhang they could shore up with part of the ruined tent to offer shelter to see out the worst of the snowstorm. Of course, that was working on the theory that it couldn’t last.
Maybe it could.
This high up, the mountains didn’t just have their own ecosystem, they had their own climate and weather patterns.
Reading his mind, Vic pointed off to somewhere he couldn’t see because an icy blast whipped up a snow devil that swarmed in a gyring tornado-like vortex as it churned a path across the mountain before it blew apart, scattering across the rocks.
Head down, Rye forced himself to walk on, following the general direction of Vic’s arm until he saw what the big man had seen; a slight hollow in the cliff face. It wasn’t much, but it was better than nothing as part of the rock would shield them from the worst of the wind. Out there on the mountain the wind was the killer.
He dumped his pack, and along with the others, used them to build a windbreak that extended the natural shelter the rock offered. Vic took a pair of the walking poles and drove them into the frozen ground, using them as struts to support the ripped tent cloth, and within five minutes, with a lot of improvisation and no little frustration, they’d erected a very crude lean-to shelter.
Iskra used some of the bamboo she’d hacked away from the forest down below, and firelighters, to get a small fire going. The heat from the flames barely touched their skin, but as with the bags and the tent sheeting, it was more about building a barrier to keep the elements at bay than it was about building a proper fire.
The close confines forced them to huddle together, but that also allowed them to talk for the first time in hours.
“How far to the bridge?” Vic asked, rubbing at his cheeks to get the blood circulating through them properly.
The thief shook his head and shrugged a “how long is a piece of string?” shrug. “We’re well out of my element here, big guy. I’d guess it depends how much ground we’ve covered this morning. Gut feeling? We might not make it all the way before nightfall.”
“I don’t want to be stuck on this side of the chasm when the sun goes down, given what happened last night. The more distance between us and the snow leopards’ hunting ground, the better.”
“It would have been much easier if we could just fly in,” Carter agreed.
“Bubbles in your bloodstream, brains leaking fluid, choking on the shit in our own lungs, yep. Easier. But dumb.”
“I know, I know, but still, a boy can dream. You’d think there’d be some sort of tech Rask could buy. I dunno, a big decompression chamber or something?”
“It only works if we know where we’re looking and can get in and out fast. We’ve got no idea where the stone is. It could take us days up there to find it, and we wouldn’t have the time to look. Fly in without acclimatizing and every minute you spend at extreme altitude the risk of edemas and embolisms increases to the point of certainty. I don’t know about you, but given the choice between this and that, I’ll take the discomfort of a long cold walk through a blizzard every time.”
“You’ll not catch me arguing with that,” the thief agreed. “And seeing as we can’t fly, let’s be realistic. We could push on, but there’s not much to be gained by breaking our necks in the process.” Carter offered a surprising voice of reason. “We can’t see where we’re putting our feet, and somewhere out there there’s an accident waiting to take one of us. I say we wait out the worst of the storm, eat now, and hope the conditions improve in a few hours.”
“Pretty boy makes a lot of sense,” the Russian said from the edge of the shelter. She had her back to them and seemed to be peering out into the heart of the storm. She was watching their back for followers—but who or what could follow them through that? Nothing and no one, Rye thought.
He hunkered down and pulled a ration sachet from the pocket of his pack, rehydrating it with snow that melted quickly in a pot. The meal tasted like shit and had a basic consistency of congealed mashed potato. Whatever the packet promised, it was not steak and fries. But it filled a gap, and the four of them ate, waiting out the storm.
They didn’t talk about what they’d found in the Shrine of the Black Sun. It was almost as though by deliberately not talking about the unearthly skeleton it simply didn’t exist.
For two hours the blizzard showed no signs of relenting. Indeed, if anything, it worsened. The howling winds tore across the savage frontier. The closeness of their bodies and the shelter of the packs lessened the windchill; sitting still for so long brought their core body temperatures down far more than the relative drop of the windchill factor, meaning the cold wormed its way into the layers of air beneath their heavy-duty gear, the sweat turning cold against their skin.
They needed to move every few minutes to keep from freezing, but they were dressed for the elements, thick down-filled parkas and quality fleeces meant minus twenty wasn’t any great hardship once the snow wasn’t being driven relentlessly into their eyes and mouths as they struggled to breathe and battled for each step.
Long before the storm abated, they needed to move on. Rye found it hard to argue, least of all because they couldn’t make a pro
per camp here no matter how alluring the seductive embrace of the shallow overhang was. They had to pray they would find better shelter closer to the pass. Even if they didn’t brave the wire rope bridge, they needed to get as close to the choke point as possible before darkness came.
The uncomfortable truth was that the cold was sapping away their strength, and every day longer on the slopes reduced their chances of coming home again. They were on limited resources, with enough ration packs to get them through twelve days in the mountains, six out and six back again.
That was the cold hard math of the situation.
And that wasn’t factoring in a lot of time for the search itself.
But desperation wasn’t getting them through that pass before nightfall.
They followed another narrow gorge carved by glacial creep millennia ago. Where the snows had fallen away from the steeper sides red raw rock had been exposed.
The endless rise of the last few days into the snowcapped peaks was broken by a sudden sharp decline, which promised to take them down a thousand feet or more in a tight corridor of rock that went so far down the fresh scents of jasmine rose up to meet them again.
The climb down took them below the most ferocious teeth of the storm, the highest peaks sheltering them more effectively than the lean-to had.
As the snow thinned enough for them to see a fair distance, the twin peaks of the pass were a jagged cut across the fading sun. The red sky revealed a number of channels and gullies cut directly into the cliffs, each offering a different way to die—even though they promised the same ultimate end: a body broken against the bed of stones all the way down by the riverbed, thousands of feet below.
Rye stood as close to the edge as he dared, looking down at the rushing waters. The bridge was five thick wires stretched taut across the five-hundred-foot-wide chasm. Thin slats of wood had been threaded between the wires to form steps, though the distance between each slat was an uncomfortable stretch from the last, with the river raging away quite visibly between every step. Two thicker cables were strung across the gorge to form guide rails for them to cling to as they traversed the wickedly swaying wire bridge.
Below the bridge, an expanse of bare rock caught Rye’s eye. A honeycomb of two dozen small caves appeared to have been hollowed out of the rock. The sunlight didn’t penetrate more than a foot or so into the hive of caves. The mountains weren’t about to willingly surrender their secrets—at least not so easily.
“What do you think?” he asked Vic as the big man joined him at the edge.
“Home sweet home,” Carter answered for him.
Iskra joined them at the edge.
“Assuming we can make it to the other side.”
“And there’s a good half mile of almost vertical climbing waiting for us if we do,” Rye said.
“You really know just what to say, my friend,” the thief said.
“So, who’s going first? I would say ladies, but I don’t want to get slapped for my casual chauvinism.”
“Age before beauty,” Iskra suggested.
“So, you then? Great.”
SIXTY
The first step was the most daunting.
The wooden plank gave slightly as Rye put his weight on it. The entire wire structure lurched wildly beneath him as his weight unbalanced it. The amount of sway, even this close to the anchor points, was terrifying. He didn’t want to imagine what it was going to be like out in the middle.
Unfortunately, he wouldn’t have to.
The second step put all his weight on the wire cords.
“What’s it like?” Carter asked from the safety of terra firma.
“Why don’t you come and find out for yourself?”
“I’m good. I’ll just wait to see if you make it all the way across first,” the thief said.
Rye knew he was joking, but that didn’t help much as Carter’s smart mouth pretty much echoed his own internalized sarcastic bastard who had plenty to say on the matter. An internal monologue ran through his head, concentrating mostly on stuff like nice and steady, watch where you’re putting your feet, don’t trust the wooden slats, they’re too thin, gently, gently, it’s not a race, and other gems of a newly frightened mind. Ten steps out into the gulf, too far to leap back if something went wrong, he hesitated. That hesitation turned into paralysis. There was nothing in it. A couple of seconds. But suddenly, he couldn’t put his best foot forward.
He was frozen.
You know why, don’t you? that internal bastard mocked, like he knew a secret and he couldn’t wait to tell. It’s the first time since Hannah. That drop, it’s nothing. A thousand feet at best. You’ve been higher. But this is the first time since her murder that you’ve had to face your fears. New fears. But they’re yours just the same. You can’t do this.
“I can,” he said, but what he really meant was he had to. That was different.
“You okay?” Carter called.
He looked down at his hands.
They were locked around the steel wire.
You’re going to have to answer him, the bastard mocked. If you don’t, he’s just going to come out here after you, and two people’s weight on the cables changes the dynamic. Every step becomes a swing, every swing becomes a curve that snakes all the way back to the mountain, working away at the anchors. Enough swings and it’ll be like you’re trying to cling onto the back of a writhing serpent. And eventually something’s got to give. He’ll put a foot wrong, or you will, and if you’re lucky you catch your balance, if you’re not you slip between the cracks, and then what? By some miracle you manage to grab onto his hand and you’re holding him, you’re the only thing between him and that thousand-foot drop to the rocks and the raging river below. And we all know what happens then. So, answer him. Tell him you’re fine. Tell him you’re admiring the view. Tell him anything, just don’t let him come out here.
“Loose plank,” he called back. “I’m good.”
And he realized he was. All it took was one step to break the paralysis, and he could do that. Couldn’t he? One step?
Yes.
He could.
Rye forced himself to let go with his right hand, transferring his weight onto his front foot, and stepped out across the two-foot gap to the next wooden slat. It was supple under his weight, threatening to give way, but it would hold. It might be different for Vic, he probably had fifty pounds on him. That might make a difference. “This one’s rotting,” he called back, “so watch yourself.”
The next one was better.
By the time he reached the middle, they had maybe thirty minutes of sunlight left before darkness, and they all needed to be across.
The thing about the Himalayan night was that it fell, it didn’t creep in like back in the cities.
It went from light to dark in a matter of minutes, and when that darkness came, it was absolute.
No one wanted to be tackling the wire bridge by flashlight. No one.
SIXTY-ONE
There was a narrow ledge stepping down the side of the cliff to the honeycomb of caves.
Rye led the way, moving carefully, his back pressed to the rock wall as he descended.
Again, the thoughts kept running through his head: Who would build such a construction? Because one thing the narrow steps proved beyond any possible coincidence, was that these caves were a man-made feature of the mountain. There was only one option that made any sense, and given what the last construction they’d done entailed, he was in no hurry to see what Kiss’s expedition had left behind in the mountains.
“Careful,” he told himself as much as the others as the sole of his boot scraped across loose shale. His head whipped around reflexively, making the beam from his head flashlight rove out across the chasm.
It was hard to believe they’d only been on this side of the divide for five minutes and already the night was absolute.
He took the last three steps down to the ledge and edged his way inch by inch into the first of the caves.
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br /> It was cramped, but still considerably bigger inside than he’d expected, and went deeper into the mountain than his flashlight could properly illuminate.
He moved inside to allow Vic to follow him in.
The air was a little warmer in here than outside.
He put that down to the lack of wind. Rye pushed his hood back. The interior was maybe thirty feet across, a little over six feet high, meaning Vic had to stoop. At first, he thought the cave was empty, but toward the rear there appeared to be three wooden boxes.
Curiosity got the better of him.
He crouched beside the first one and tried to work the lid off. It had been nailed shut. He unclipped the ice ax from his belt and worked the blade into the crack where two panels of wood met. The wooden side of the box splintered at the first sign of pressure, cracking the container open like an egg—though it wasn’t a yolk that spilled out.
Rye wasn’t immediately sure what it was, but as he cleared away the debris it became obvious that he was looking at some half-mummified skeleton of a deformed child, though that deformation was almost certainly exacerbated by the way its tibia had fused to its rib cage making it appear almost fetal.
“What you got?” Carter said from behind him.
He realized that none of them could see the child’s remains, so he held the body up. He knew he must have looked like some weird shamanic priest offering up a human sacrifice, but the image made damned sure and certain that the others didn’t mistake what was in his hands.
“There are two more,” he said by way of explanation.
“What is this place? Some sort of prehistoric burial chamber?”
“More modern than that, judging by the nails they used to seal the coffins.”
“And there are two dozen caverns like this carved into the cliff face. That’s a mausoleum. An entire tribe could bury their dead here. Generations of them, even.”
Rye nodded.
“This isn’t right,” Carter said. “Hold on.” He dropped his pack from his back and rooted around inside for his cell phone. It took him a moment to power it up, and then find the images Byrne had sent through, but when he did they confirmed his misgivings. “The burial site he’s marked is still half a day from here.”
