Moonrise

by Mitchell Smith

  He pulled off a mitten, reached over to Nancy's pack, and tugged loose the blanket-roll's ties... kept a careful grip as the wind flapped it open, then tucked the thick wool close around her, and under her fur-booted feet. Then he untied his own blanket, wrapped it around him — and saw Richard — already only a shadow — doing the same for himself and Errol.

  Pulling his mitten back on, Baj found almost too much warmth in furs now wrapped in wool.... Almost too much warmth, but only for a little while, until pitch-blackness absolute came down the Wall, and the wind gradually rose to howling, buffeting so they swung and swung with it, once thudding back against the sheer ice they were fastened to. Then, cold slid in like narrow knives, with slow and searching thrusts, so he put his blanketed arm around Nancy and hugged her, burrowing deep as he could in furs and wool, as if into safety from a monstrous world.

  It seemed a storm extraordinary, so endlessly savage — though Baj supposed this was the storm of every night along the Wall. The wind, cold, and terror of the gulf below their frail web of woven leather line, seemed to gape to swallow them as if the night had sense malevolent.... Their narrow sling swayed in the blasts of wind, shook — and Baj had visions of small steel hooks wrenched looser and looser from crumbling holds... of greased braided leather, frozen to fragile, suddenly snapping so they were spilled to fall endlessly... until even screaming faded to silence, and they fell quiet as if already dead.

  There was no rest — any exhausted drift to dreaming was driven away by wind-noise screaming and continuous, and the sudden jolting of their seating as greater gusts came booming in, the storm battering at the Wall.... That accustomed meeting of wind and ice seemed too important, too mighty a thing to share presence with living creatures.

  Baj gave up his life several times as the night roared on... gave his up, but refused to part with Nancy's. He made her his jewel in the dark, his place of refuge and silence — too valuable to lose to anything. Though the cold, if it continued so bitter on the wind — furs and blankets become only wishes for warmth against it — would certainly kill all but her.

  He held Nancy to him, clutched her blanket about her, made certain her feet were tucked in, her fox-face deep in furs — found an icy little ear, once, and covered it. She became his reason through the night, and he was certain no Jesus in the world would deny him.

  * * *

  The Shrikes, chewing frozen lumps of seal-blubber, hauled them from their sling at first light — handed out frozen portions of the same — then hurried them to roll their blankets, drink water from flasks their bodies had warmed through the night, piss out into empty air (Nancy and Patience squatting in the webbing). And those accomplished, hustled them onto vertical ice and climbing.

  Annoyed at first, still weary, and frightened by what seemed casually dangerous rushing, Baj saw as they began that Dolphus-Shrike and his tribesmen intended them no time to freeze in fear.. . wanted them, as Warm-times had had it, to "hit the road." This road being all ice, and two miles high.

  As they had roused them up and out, so the Shrikes harried Baj and the others along, kept each of them usually roped to one tribesman or another, but climbing, always climbing — hauled up, hoisted up, directed up and expected to do as directed — with only very short rests on rough ice ledges or clinging with handholds and the muk-boots' steel points to sheer verglas walls.... They were not given time for consideration to become terror.

  Dolphus-Shrike's orders to them, were all the Shrikes' orders to them. "Move."

  Baj found, even so, that fear for Nancy had been growing in him like a crab-tumor despite the hurry, the agonized labor of clawing his weight and his pack's weight up... and up. Clinging to inches-deep frost, coating a height of blue-green ice adamant as leaded glass, he heard a Shrike's impatient snarl beneath him, and hastily swung his hatchets — picked the points in, first left, then right — and heaved himself up, muk-boot spikes kicked in for fragile supporting steps.

  The Shrike climbing beneath him said something unpleasant in very poor book-English, and struck Baj's left boot. "Move the ass," the Shrike said, pronouncing that perfectly.

  ... Still, there were places — many places — where even the Shrikes took care, and cared for their clumsy companions with double roping, belayed to steel ice-hooks hammered in. There, where the glacier's wall had opened, or some massive block had fallen free, was... a space, a place entirely air, over which first one tribesman, then another, had to swing... swing back and forth, gathering momentum, swing sailing through gusting wind until he struck and held so tenuously that Baj felt his own gut grip to help the man hold on.

  Then the ice-hooks were pounded in, a slender braided line knotted to them — and a second and third Shrike went hand over hand above two thousand feet of nothing... and beckoned first Richard (his weight sagging the thin rope), then Patience, then Errol — who went easily as the Shrikes had gone, unworried — then Nancy (while Baj closed his eyes). Then his turn.

  ... Slowly, through this second day, Baj became almost as interested as afraid. The Shrikes' every move was education in ice climbing. Consideration of the varying quality of the ice above all — rich blue-green to crumbling gray — the use of hatchet picks, roping and belaying, the use of muk-boot spikes to kick tiny steps to stand on... and occasionally even their javelins used butt to point as temporary bridging over vacancy. It was interesting even during exhaustion, muscle-wrenching effort, and fear of falling — and all the more interesting since only that education kept them alive.

  Baj learned, and saw the others learning — though of course as children, compared to the Shrikes' veteran certainties.

  And there were odors of ice — some clear as clear water, others dank as spoiled springs. Those odors, and the bitter cold that struck like willow switches, cutting at any exposed skin while the wind whistled, moaned, hissed past them on vertical pitches, tugging at their heavy packs to pull them out... away from their fragile holds into the perfect freedom of falling.

  ... Baj spent considerable effort, through a brutally effortful day, in avoiding looking down — but couldn't help it, sometimes. Then, the sunlit gulf, the sheer down-diminishing face of the Wall — shining in places blinding white, in others flashing reflected blues, greens, and diamond clears from broken battlements infinitely greater than any raised in stone by men or Persons — these all fell away beneath him to a singing emptiness that drew him down.

  He avoided looking beneath them, and warned Nancy — climbing just above — against it.

  Panting at a place, clinging with her hatchet-points, she'd turned her fur-hooded head and said, "I close my eyes." Then, "Oh, Baj... be careful."

  And he was — was careful for both of them, constantly considering how he might catch her, reach out and grip her arm if she fell past him. Catch, hold her, and let go never,

  ... The notion of "catching" did suffer, as evening came after what seemed a week-long day. Baj — hugging a cracked ice-face (kissing it, nearly) — found it very difficult to raise either arm, very difficult to close his fists. His arms burned from fingers to shoulders; his left shoulder ached. The wounded cheek and side of his head felt as if snagged with fish-hooks.

  The pain a blessing in a way, since it kept great heights from his thoughts.

  Still, Baj missed the day, when the dark came down.

  Higher on the Wall, the second night was worse than the first had been, the wind rumbling to crash against the ice cliffs like surf. Twice, almost asleep, Baj lurched alert in terror, sure a flailing anchor-line had worked free... and the fall begun.

  Nancy had whispered in his ear, her breath the only warmth in an everything savagely cold. "Even if we die here, we're together."

  "We won't die here, sweetheart," Baj said, and kissed her, as if saying and kissing must make it so.

  ... By morning light, it was seen that Henry-Shrike had fallen. Only unraveled webbing and a swaying guyline's end — worn through where it had rubbed and rubbed on an ice edge in the dark —
were left behind.

  The smiling Shrikes were smiling no more, silent as they hurried their weary charges to climb.... And as he began hacking, kicking his way up, just beneath Nancy — no tribesman helping him now — Baj tried to avoid imagining that death, the shocked wakening at the line's parting, then the sickening long fall... down and down through darkness so complete there'd be no knowing when the impact would come.

  If a Shrike could fall — so could any.

  Baj minded his hand-holds (kept mittened when he could), and used his hatchets very carefully, left and right, to pick his way up — all the while watching Nancy climbing above him... intending to catch her, or fall with her if that proved impossible.

  For whatever reason — perhaps believing Henry-Shrike was sacrifice for all of them — he paid less attention to his own mortality, and found he was climbing better, discovering rhythms to it, an odd affinity for the ice and its different sounds when his steel struck it, ringing or rotten dull.... Their height now was such that it no longer seemed a height at all, but a fixed emptiness with only the rule of not-to-fall.

  They'd hardly slept, been eaten by exhaustion and fear the day before — fear confirmed by Henry's death — but Baj saw that he and the others were climbing better, learning, as Warm-time copybooks had it, "in a hard school."

  .. .By sun-straight-up, Patience, having tried the morning air — and sunk slowly away, down and down — had struggled back up to them, sitting cross-legged, eyes closed in effort — and swung in to stay. From then, her scimitar strapped to her pack, she climbed fairly well, with a Shrike beside her.... Errol, of course, still scrambled the ice like a squirrel a tree, as if he'd been born to it.

  Sun-warmed, the Wall began shedding its great pieces, and those murmured, whistled, moaned past as they fell. The Shrikes, their brief mourning apparently over, sang along with those missiles' sounds... made little songs of them, dying away as the sounds of falling died away. So the long day was passed in great effort and risk, to those cheerful tunes... and to a night as dreadful as before.

  * * *

  ... But the next morning brought the pleasures of survival, and introduced a good day, climbing — as if deep exhaustion (occasional visions vibrating in colors unnameable), with trembling arms and legs, freezing hands and feet — were just what was required to rise on great ice. Roped occasionally to be hauled up by a snarling tribesman — but still not quite as helpless as before, Baj began to imagine himself a climber, at least becoming competent on high ice, so he swung his pick-hatchets with a will, while chewing a mouthful of frozen blubber.

  This imagined competence lasted only until a small cornice broke away under his right-hand point — and he fell several endless soundless feet before striking with his left-hand hatchet into an inch of salvation ice. It was a grateful... grateful Baj, then, and he said thanks to everything, looked up, and saw Nancy — her face still a mask of horror, staring down.

  "Don't," she called to him. Meaning "Don't fall, don't die, don't let me see you fall and die. Don't leave me.... Don't be such a fool!"

  "I won't," Baj called up to her, and became careful being careful.

  Still, it was a good climbing day — bitterly cold in still air, though dazzlingly sunny, so the Shrikes saw to it they wore their leather eye-slit masks tied round their heads. Still, the light blazed through, reflecting off wind-polished ice in rainbow colors, shimmering bright as the sun and impossible to look at directly. So, in certain places, it became blind climbing... spiking steel into pillars of ice by touch and balance... listening to the Wall's resonance to hatchet blows, muk-boot spikes kicked in. Listening to others' grunts of effort, and to the murmurs of the Shrikes, conversational.

  They climbed, gasping-in freezing breaths, hauling themselves up by wooden aching arms — and once, slowly up through an immense chimney of ice blue as sapphire jewelry, where even the slightest breeze sounded through in a breath-flute's soft uncertain notes. Here, Baj did look down — and was sorry — since the gleaming tunnel, diminishing hundreds of feet below to a tiny circle of sunlight, seemed to call and call to him. "Decide.. . Loose your hold and fall, to be changed from what you are to something else entirely, imperishable."

  He looked up — saw Nancy's fur-trousered bottom, her scrabbling muk-boots as she struggled for a higher hold — and climbed to set his shoulder beneath her, let her rest on it for a moment.

  He took a shallow breath, called out, "Adventure . .. !" and heard her laugh. Heard Patience laugh above her.

  ... Though it had been frightening while they were in it, the chimney was the sort of climbing Baj and the others had almost become used to. When, late in after-noon, the Shrikes led over the abyss on a narrow wind-sculpted snow bridge of rotting compact — mealy, pocked, mottled gray — they found their last days' fears of hard ice cracking were great comfort beside depending on surface that was no surface, but only fragile possibility.

  Richard, passing over it, nearly stepped clear through that ruined stuff into empty air.... And here, with the Shrikes now silent, fear returned redoubled, so Baj and the others moved slowly, uneasily as if in a fever dream... and forgot any Jesus, forgot Lady Weather and Lord Winter, and prayed only to the narrow, delicate corruption beneath their cold-numbed feet and red, chapped, wounded hands — unmittened for desperate gripping.

  Baj began a prayer for Nancy as she inched across, panting. Then he stopped praying, afraid it would only bring attention, would remind reality that it could let her fall. The prayer unfinished . .. she crossed safe as all the others.

  Baj, climbing last, started across crouching as if that made him lighter, less a burden to this span of spoiled snow and frost-feathers. He wished — as he had wished many times, climbing — to reach over his shoulder, loosen the rawhide ties of his awkward bow, his awkward quiver, his dear awkward sword, and let them fall so as not to hinder him. He wished, but didn't do it... and went on, crouching, muk-boots sinking deep, so he felt the gulf waiting just beneath them.

  He thought the snow bridge trembled. Wasn't sure, but thought he felt it — and out of sympathy, out of a sort of understanding, as if the bridge's difficulty were his, shared by both of them, he went carefully to his knees and lay down, lay full-length on his belly in the worst place — what he was sure must be the worst place, since here the bridge certainly trembled beneath him, eager to let itself go, fall, dissolve into vacancy.

  On his belly, he began a sort of slow swimming motion in crumbling snow across the span, gentle as a fish in easy currents. A Shrike had snaked out a line for him to take as the others had taken it to be helped across the last of the bridge... hauled up where a great spike of hard ice — blessedly glass-green — was belay.

  But something, perhaps a shift in the shallow spoil beneath him, perhaps a faint sound he hadn't known he'd heard... something advised him not to kick and lunge to take the braided leather lying only feet away.

  Baj accepted that advice while the Shrike — one of the nameless ones — clicked an impatient tongue (exactly like Errol) such a short safe distance above him. A distance greater than to a star.

  Baj didn't even shake his head "no." He continued his odd slow swimming — felt absolutely a tremor beneath him — swam on as if he were delicate, clotted, and gray, the same sort of stuff exactly. Swam on... did not attempt the rope-end when he came near it... and was then surprised to come at last where a knife-edged ridge of sound ice rose a little above his left hand.

  In sudden panic, he reached out, gripped it — and as he hauled himself up, clinging to that shelf, heard a groan just behind him... then a soft thump and great hissing, rushing noise as the snow bridge fell away.

  Perched to the side on muk-boot spikes while coiling the line, the nameless Shrike shook his head at beginner's luck.

  "Baj . ..!" Higher, Nancy had looked back and seen the bridge Baj smiled, tried to call back, "Adventure..." but found his throat closed to speech.

  ... That night, hanging suspended in blizzard, they all d
ozed — to come awake, frightened, when their sleeping sling thrashed hard to the gale... Baj and Nancy clinging close, wrapped in stiff ice-crusted blankets over freezing furs.

  * * *

  Toward morning — at least what seemed toward morning, the storm slowly eased, rumbled away east, and was replaced by a silence that seemed as loud.

  In that frigid stillness, awake, Nancy murmured to Baj the story of her mother's suffering... of the barely remembered breeding-pens of Boston town, when she was a little girl and kept a pet rat named Dandy before they took her away, as they took all children from the mothers.... Then of being assigned to the Companies at her first bleeding-between-the-legs. Of being protected from the worst by Richard, a kind lieutenant.. . then captain. And, after three years, fleeing with him following the stabbing, and his trouble with Major Donald-Fishhawk.... Errol, the mess-cook's bruised chore-boy, trailing along.

  Then, WT weeks of wandering... until, one late-winter day, Patience had sailed down to them out of a gray sky, stumbled a little on landing, and said, "I've been watching for two days. And it seems to me, that you foolish lost ones might have something better to do than journey in circles, and cook squirrels for supper."

  ... Kisses from Baj, then, to comfort her.

  Dawn had barely marked the east, when a cheerful Dolphus come sliding down out of darkness on braided leather to kick their swaying nest. "Oh, what a treat we have for you brave climbers!"

  "What?" Richard grumbled, hoarse.

  " 'What?'" Dolphus reached out to grip the netting and shake them alert. "A day of rest is what! You five have nothing to do but loll in your net, chew delicious seal-blubber, sleep, and pee down the Wall. A day of rest — a gift, though it slows us."

  "Thank Frozen Jesus," Richard said, as Patience roused, and Errol, yawning, clambered out of the sling to explore.

  Baj shoved a stiff-frozen blanket aside, and kissed Nancy good morning. "I think they're concerned they'll lose us."