by Bill Etem
Chapter 3. The South Face of Mt. Desolation
`What will save us is this rising wind,’ Valmyristarsis was saying, as Al stirred himself from sleep not far from the campfire. `It was dead still an hour ago but notice how it whips up the snow so that we can see any no trace of the footsteps left by Helio and Cassie 2 minutes ago. If it doesn’t die down again it ought to erase all signs of our passage.’
We can set off down the mountain, behind the arête to our right,’ said Casilevatates, and elude the patrol easily enough.’
`But do we want to go up or down?’ asked Mirabrasantes. `What will we do down in that valley when daylight catches us there tomorrow? We can descend from here swiftly enough. But can we traverse those treeless lowlands far beneath us, and then climb the high pass before sunrise? If we don’t have the strength to do that, then anyone looking out over the valley will be sure to spot us. We’ve been over this a hundred times, haven’t we? We might not get the kids over that distance unseen.’
`Yes, we’ve been over it a hundred times,’ agreed Misevasundia. `But will those who fear the South Face listen to us? Of course not.’
Al Mancini thought he might as well add his two cents. He hadn’t been over it a hundred times with anyone, as he appeared in camp of the warrior women not all that long ago. `I say we retreat to the fixed ropes and descend the South Face. Then we can re-ascend the mountains some place closer to the Krull Republic. We can sort of make an end run of things, and get to Menzies via the Krull backcountry.’
`Well, that Hibernian patrol will no doubt locate our latrine down there. And then it will all become a huge mystery to them,’ Seraphinaria was saying. `We can’t lose by descending the fixed ropes on the South Face, assuming no one falls thousands of feet to their death. It’s really only fear, and a rather irrational fear at that which prevents some people from seeing the obvious solution.’
`Fine,’ said Sevaladelia. `We’ll concede the issue because there’s no time to argue, not that it makes any sense to think it is impossible for one of the adults or one of the kids to slip and fall of off a vertical mountain wall. Irrational fear my ass!’
`Ok you kids! Listen up children!’ exclaimed Martha Manning as she began opening the flaps on the various tents. `It’s time to get up. It’s time to get out from under those blankets. An enemy patrol is coming this way. Hurry up and move. Use the latrine whether you have to or not. You know in ten minutes you’ll need to use it.’
The other women helped to get their kids out of their blankets and sleeping bags. Al took a hand in getting Jasmine and Jocelyn, Barb and Curt, Marla and Brent etc., etc., out of their blankets and into their coats. The littlest kids were fretting a little, because Martha started in with her usual scare tactics, talking about what the Hibernians and their tigers would do to any little kids that they caught loitering on the mountainside. At least Martha’s scare tactics got the kids attention.
By the time everything was packed up and the company was ready to start marching, Heliomirabellisima and Casilevatates estimated that the enemy patrol was still 1,000 vertical feet below them, which translated to over 3 miles in horizontal distance, which meant, given the depth of the snow one had to walk through, this enemy patrol was roughly a 3 hour’s march away from them, and they knew they were more or less the same time away from the top of the wall, and the beginning of the fixed ropes. Furthermore, though the snow reflected and magnified what moonlight and starlight there was, they would be hidden from the sight of the enemy patrol because the curve of the mountain would conceal them. So, considering these facts, they had every reason to believe they would easily escape unseen. Still it was fresh in everyone’s mind what might happen if they got over-confident. If they thought they were home-free when in fact they were surrounded, things might not end well at all. Martha was telling all of this to the little kids to get them to hurry up. But you can only remind a kid so many times of what being thrown into a cage full of tigers really means before a kid just can’t take the pressure any longer. The terror overwhelms him. And when he’s overwhelmed, half of his brain is telling him to hurry up, to flee the hungry tigers, while the other half of his brain is telling him to just sit down and give up. After all, once you’re been eaten by the tiger, all of your worries and fears and anxieties are over. Once you’re dead there’s no more cold and hunger and fear to be dealt with on a daily basis. It’s over. You can rest. So, on the one hand, the thought of being eaten by ferocious tigers doesn’t feel so great. But then, on the other hand, if you are sick of being cold, and sick of being hungry, and sick of living in fear, and you just want to get it over with…
The enemy was still 3 hours away, and it only took 10 minutes to get all the tents down and stowed in packs, and then it only took another 10 minutes to get all their other gear stuffed into packs and loaded on to people’s backs. In 20 minutes everyone was marching uphill, steering a course toward the precipitous sections of Mt. Desolation. Soon they would be looking out over the moon-lit plains of Avallonia again. Soon they would be threading the fixed ropes through their descendeurs and repelling down terrifying South Face of Mt. Desolation.
`You sort of remind me of a young Deborah Kerr,’ Al was saying to Debra, the 9-year-old Luke’s 14-year-old girlfriend, or ex-girlfriend – the issue was still undecided last Al had heard - as the three of them trudged up the mountain. I suppose the similarity of your names seems a frivolous connection between the two of you, save that is not the only connection that I can find. `She got sort of dowdy and frumpish later in life, Deborah Kerr that is - I wonder how you’ll turn out, Debra - but just look at her in I See a Dark Stranger’ – Luke and Debra were trying their best to comprehend the idea of motion pictures. `There was this scene where she’s listening to her old man tell lies in an Irish tavern about how he once helped the Irish fight the British, and Deborah Kerr looks really gorgeous in that scene. Deborah Kerr was really something to look at, at one time, and you remind me of her when she was in her prime. There’s a famous scene where she and Burt Lancaster are rolling around in the waves on some beach in Hawaii, but by then she was well into her dowdy and frumpish years, but as I say, if you want to see Deborah Kerr at her best, don’t watch From Here to Eternity, and don’t watch The Naked Edge, that film where Gary Cooper played her husband, and she thinks he murdered a man because lots and lots of circumstantial evidence say he murdered man to grab his cash – they stop by the White Cliffs of Dover no less, and there she’s thinking he’s going to snatch her up and toss her over, all because of these tons and tons of circumstantial evidence which point to the conclusion that the husband played by Gary Cooper is a murderer. Well of course it turns out he isn’t a murderer, as if that was any big mystery. I mean who would ever believe that Gary Cooper is some killer? – But, anyway, to see Debra Kerr in her prime you have to see her with Trevor Howard in I See a Dark Stranger. That’s weird how you always make a mistake and saying Deborah CARE even though you know it’s Deborah CAR. The Gary Cooper film that I like is the one where he stars with a young Charlton Heston and a young Richard Harris in The Wreck of the Mary Deare. I won’t spoil it for you by telling you the ending, in case you ever get a chance to watch it, I mean in case the universe I’m from ever succeeds in transporting its motion pictures into the universe we are now in, but it’s a drama set on the high seas, and there is some skullduggery and there are some nasty villains in it, though an innocent man does get his day in court. I probably ought to wander over to those kids lagging behind. They might need some water to drink, or perhaps I need to drag their spent little bodies through these snow drifts. Lord knows they’re small enough for me to drag up this mountain. This is the damnedest sight I ever saw, all these little kids struggling, fleeing, running, gasping for breath, stumbling along, fighting for their lives, trudging up this huge mountain, though of course we’re on the side with the gentle slope. The incline here is so gentle it wouldn’t even make a good ski
run. Has your universe invented skiing yet? No? That’s good. For a second there I was think you might have absolutely no clue what I was talking about. I really missed you kids, I mean all these kids. That was perhaps one of the reasons I left Jennifer, though she was really getting on my nerves toward the end there, bossing me around as if I was her slave. I hate it when people remind me I was once a slave. I wonder if she started to treat me like a slave because I was once a slave, I mean, Debra, as Luke knows, I was once owned by these warrior women. I don’t know. All I know is that if a woman gets overbearing you shouldn’t slap her around or try to knock some sense into her brains by beating her. Just get the hell away from her. These words are true and profound though I don’t profess to be a philosopher. That’s why I once had to escape from these warrior women, and more recently from Jennifer. I did love Jennifer in some ways. She could be so cute. But she got so bossy toward the end there. People think they can discriminate against me because I’m a stranger from a parallel universe. I know I’m not the first person to be the victim of prejudice and narrow-minded hypocrisy, but, all the same, the injustice of it all sort of smacks you upside the head.’
`Can we count on you to stay with us, and protect us, and not run away again in the future?’ asked Debra.
`I like to think that everyone now has a better understanding of my feelings and my emotional needs,’ said Al. `But if not, if I meet up with insensitivity and narrow-minded thinking again, then I just might have to go my separate way again. I’m a survivor. Hell, half these kids you see around us might end up dying in the wilderness, or die by being fed to tigers, but I’m pretty sure I’ll survive.’
`Don’t get overconfident though. Don’t assume you’re rounding third and the outfielder hasn’t even picked up the ball yet, don’t assume that you’re easily home-free,’ said Luke as Al moved off to help some little kids.
`Let’s rest here for a minute,’ said Al to Valmyristarsis and her four kids – the adopted Jasmine, along with Heather, Hugh and Hamilton, also known as Buddy. Al said the same to Navorrasicaa, and her two children, Barb and Curt. Al had to raise his voice almost to a shout to be heard above the howling wind. The gentle breeze might be back sometime but it was gusting again at the moment. The kids had their heads down, hidden in the hoods of their coats, so that Al couldn’t see their faces. But by the way they held themselves, the way they slumped and dragged their little feet, they gave Al the impression they were all done in, as if they were about ready to lay down and die, which was rather alarming to Al because he really wasn’t tired in the least. The slope was nothing, though the snow was rather deep, especially for a little kid, and they had only been climbing for half an hour. Al crouched down on one knee and looked into the eyes of the 4-year-old Curt. He was weeping and at the same time struggling to get air into his lungs. Al shouted to the others to stop for a few moments to let the kids catch their breath and to drink some water. He reminded them that it really wasn’t necessary to make a sprint to the fixed ropes which were 500 vertical feet above them. They only had to climb slowly and take rests when they needed them. They would yank out the fixed ropes as they descended the South Face, making pursuit impossible if their pursuers didn’t bring their own ropes. Katie didn’t want to guarantee anything, but she never heard of a patrol which carried sufficient ropes to follow a party such as theirs down the thousands of vertical feet which made up the South Face. As they rested the adults had to calm the kids by insisting they were in no imminent danger, and yet, if a second patrol was to suddenly emerge from behind a ridge, the race would be on, and they would have to pace themselves intelligently to get to the ropes before the patrol got to them. Al threw his huge pack on his back; then he picked up the two youngest kids, the 3-year-old Jay-Jay and the 4-year-old Curt, and then the three of them started up the slope. By walking for a minute and then resting for a minute, then walking for a minute and resting for a minute, repeating the formula over and over, Al carried the two kids up 300 feet. No Hibernian patrol emerged from behind any ridges during that time. Soon enough, when they looked back and down over the slope, they could barely but nevertheless distinctly discern the Hibernian patrol far beneath them. After a 20 minute rest they were ready to make another supreme effort through the deep snow and the howling winds. They walked and walked, nearly dead on their feet, dragging their exhausted selves onwards until at last slope fell away to the south, and, far beneath them, thousands of feet beneath them, lit up in the light of the moon, they saw the wonderful sight of their homeland: the northern plains of Avallonia.
Before clipping into the fixed ropes they made sure they were well rested and fully prepared for what was required to descend a huge rock wall without making a slip. They watched as the wind erased the last of their footsteps in the snow on the mountain. Perhaps the Hibernian patrol never saw them on the slope, and never saw them as they made their escape down the South Face.
