Far, Far The Mountain Peak

by John Masters

  Peter returned and bent over the body of the man with the theodolite, searching quickly through his pockets and his rough haversack. He was furious with Gerry, because the man with the tripod had seen them and soon the Austrians would be out looking for them. The man would insist that it was not partisans who had ambushed him. The only thing to do was hope that he would not be believed, and steal whatever was of value off the corpses--and the rifle, of course--to make his tale seem still less likely.

  Gerry was staring at Peter, the pistol swinging in his hand. He said: ‘I couldn’t shoot him. I thought I was ready to kill after last night, night before--but I can’t.’

  ‘Put that thing away or you’ll shoot me,’ Peter said shortly. The surveyor had some maps and a blueprint trace. Peter took the other’s rifle and cartridges, both men’s watches, a pair of rings, some money.

  ‘Come on,’ he said.

  Now it was south, fast, on the east side of the valley, the side away from the cart-road. Soon he hid the loot from the dead Austrians. He had not had time to study the surveyor’s papers, and knew that he must find time, and quickly, to look at them and explain to Gerry what they told. Otherwise, if he was killed, they would have thrown away their luck in getting them. He stopped and decided to look at them immediately.

  Nothing much. The cart-track was being improved only to the foot of the pass. Some houses or huts shown in that area. The blue trace was of a hut; it looked very simple and could hold about twenty men--a barrack, then. A company was a lot of men to put in this remote place--but not earth-shaking. Why the blank cartridges?

  He told Gerry, and Gerry said yes, he understood. They went on.

  Peter struck up diagonally left-handed into the forest, climbing away from the valley floor. Round the next corner, or the next, if they had stayed down there, they would have run into the huts, or soldier-defaulters laying white stones along the edges of the path, guarded by a glum armed sentry. Sooner or later, this hour or next, the man whom Gerry had let live would reach a post and tell what he had seen. Peter decided then and there that any dreams he had had of carrying Gerry to military glory must be abandoned. Gerry would have to be a doctor, though Peter could not help wondering what he would do if he had to kill a baby to save its mother, or vice versa. Still, if the worst came to the worst, Emily or he could decide for him, and bear the moral weight. Besides, Gerry would probably have so concentrated his mind on the saving part that he could face the killing. Back there with the Austrians he saw only the killing because the saving was not actual and present, being concerned with soldiers miles away and still alive, and boys not yet out of school.

  He had forgotten something. ‘Wait here,’ he flung over his shoulder. ‘I’m going down to cut the telegraph line.’

  He hurried back down the three hundred feet or so that they had climbed, sliding and stumbling on the carpet of wet pine needles, and reached the valley. The telegraph poles were low-- not more than twelve feet high, most of them, and not many even that. For the most part the line was strung along between pine trees at the edge of the forest. He found a good place, dragged down the wire, used his carbine as a lever to break the cable, and then carefully fastened the ends together in a narrow knot and tied that against a tree. Now only men following the wire in a good light would see where the break was. He trudged back up the hill, his head swimming and the trees beginning to sway in their places.

  He had left Gerry there, by that fir with the fork near the ground and a big grey rock on its right. He wasn’t there. Peter moved behind another tree, restlessly searching all around, up the streaming hill, down to the streaming valley floor, along to right and left. If Gerry had gone, something must have made him--something, someone he had seen. But there was no one. He was suddenly sure that there was no one else on that dripping mountainside at that time. Then Gerry had imagined he’d seen someone. Or he had suddenly decided he must move on, the same as he had decided he could not shoot when he had the man with the tripod, unsuspecting, over the barrel of his pistol. Perhaps a blind panic had fallen on him and he’d begun to run. Gerry was not a coward as people use the word, as Count Fraschelli was, but he was near his limit. He had a map, but he would not stand much chance of getting back alone. Nor would he himself.

  Where would he have gone? Not back, surely? He wasn’t mad. On then, probably on the line they had been following when he remembered the telegraph wires. He stumbled up the hill.

  After ten minutes he had seen no sign of Gerry. He reached a place where a step in the sweep-down of the mountain offered alternative paths, on up towards the crest, or along, on the level. Which way would he have gone? He must be running like a stag that has seen the hunters. Put himself in Gerry’s place-- he would have gone up. But Gerry?

  Peter turned right and ran along the side of the hill. Five minutes later he saw the shadow rushing through the pine trees ahead. He could make him hear now if he called loud enough, but that would be dangerous. He held his pace and saw that he was gaining. Gerry never looked over his shoulder. Then, when he was no more than ten yards behind and Gerry must have heard the crunch and thud of his boots, he called softly: ‘Gerry!’

  Gerry drew up slowly and at last turned. Peter was up to him then, his arm out to grip his shoulder. ‘It’s you,’ Gerry said. ‘I--I---‘ His eyes were big, with the same large, excited look Peter had seen once before, on the Needles of Meru, two years ago.

  ‘I heard a shot and saw men moving through the forest,’ Gerry said. ‘I thought they’d got you.’

  That was a palpable lie. Gerry would never have left him if he believed he was in trouble. Peter said: ‘I’m all right. They didn’t get me. Where’s your pistol?’

  ‘I don’t know--I must have lost it somewhere. I had it.’

  Peter said: ‘It doesn’t matter. Well, what about pushing on?’ Gerry nodded. He had collected himself; he too was going to pretend that what had happened had not. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Lead on.’

  ‘ . . Macduff,’ Peter prompted. That was an old catch-phrase of theirs from Cambridge days. He hadn’t thought it very funny at the time. Now Gerry didn’t. He only groaned and prepared to follow.

  Peter swung into the lead and did not look round, though he listened all the time to be sure that the footsteps were at his heels. Now--they should be on the side of the hill above the head of the valley. If they went down a few hundred paces to the right they should be looking down into the cirque or alp or moraine or whatever there was under the north slope of the Michele Pass. That much more they must do at all costs.

  He turned down and went more cautiously, peering through the trunks of the trees ahead until they fell away, and then crept on very carefully to the lip of a last sharp slope. The rain still fell; clouds blew about the face of Monte Michele and its summit was completely shrouded in them; but in the gaps of the clouds, looking down, he could see. He told Gerry to go back a bit and keep a lookout to the rear. Then he leaned against the trunk of a tree and began to examine what he saw.

  There were the huts shown on the surveyor’s blueprint. Three extra ones--no, four. Not marked, probably because they weren’t the surveyor’s responsibility. A row of eight target frames on the hill-side not far below him. Firing points built out from the hill at one, two, three hundred metres, and probably more. Something in the trees, hard to make out--a log cabin-- two. Something reminiscent about the neatness of the whole-- jogging at his memory.

  Manali. Lower Manali. The 13th Gurkhas’ permanent manoeuvre camp.... This was a training camp. This was where the Austrians trained their men in mountain warfare. It was rather close to the battlefront for a training area, but on the other hand the troops here would also serve as an adequate protection against any light raid over the Michele--if they were not raw recruits. An N.C.O.s’ training camp, probably.

  A hot anticipation burned away his fatigue. Suppose it was not a light raid that came over the Michele Pass, but an attack by two or three battalions of Bersaglieri supported by mounta
in artillery on pack mules? The road to the rear, to the Saraco, had been improved. Such a force could do a far more decisive job in cutting off the whole Upper Saraco than the proposed shallow ‘hook’ over the Julio. Cammarota said that the approaches on the Italian side were impossible. They must be bad, or the Austrians would never allow men to wander around here with blank ammunition, carrying out manoeuvres. . . . Then those approaches would have to be made possible. This way the attack could succeed.

  It had to be done. Men, thousands of labourers working at night to gouge out a path, hiding by day in the forests . . . Speed, secrecy, then--drive over the Michele, overwhelm these Austrians in the night, under a moon, and then burst down into the Saraco!

  He had to get back into Italy at once.

  No sign of activity down there. One sentry standing under a neat shelter outside one of the log cabins. Peter looked hard but could not see the pass. It was certain, though, that it would be guarded--lightly, but lightly was too much for him and Gerry. Nor could they move back, cross the valley, and try to enter Italy through the jagged tangle of mountains beyond the pass. For one thing, they were off his map; for another, the distance was too great.

  It had to be Monte Michele itself, looming up there right ahead. So be it. He glanced at his watch. Half-past four in the afternoon. July, but it would soon be dark enough, in this weather, to risk moving up the bare ridge which led from where he stood towards the north wall of Monte Michele.

  He swung round. Gerry was crouched, pointing back along the hill. He seemed almost glad; there was no sign of alarm or despair on his face. There were men moving in the forest back there, back the way they had come--five or six. The men had not seen them. They might not even be looking for them.

  He beckoned to Gerry, and they dropped over the lip of that last slope, where the convexity prevented the men from seeing them, and hurried southward towards Monte Michele. Now they were in full view from the encampment, and would be for several minutes--it was hard to guess for exactly how long in this murk and driving mist.

  After half an hour, without being shot at, they reached the shelter of tumbled piles of rock at the foot of Monte Michele’s gigantic north face. Peter sank down, dragging Gerry with him. Gerry was looking back almost longingly.

  The next problem began to pound away at him. The crossing of Monte Michele was going to be a difficult feat of mountaineering, because of the weather and their fatigue. From the climbing point of view it would be best to start now and climb as fast and as far as they could while the dim light lasted. The rock was wet here; above, there would be new, wet snow. A few yards up there began two hundred feet of steep cliff. As far up as he could see it offered small but adequate holds--an hour’s hard work, probably the hardest technical piece of climbing on the mountain. By night it would take three, four hours, and possibly failure or a fall. But in daylight, during the hour on the cliff, they would be completely at the mercy of anyone who came along under the cliff to look for them.

  It wouldn’t do. They’d have to go over by night, all the way. He got out the map and began to study it with a concentration that amounted to frenzy.

  ‘Aren’t you cold or wet, Peter?’ Gerry asked him. Gerry was sitting down beside him, watching as he worked with mind at full stretch to correlate the map with what he saw and what little he had ever heard about Monte Michele.

  Gerry spoke so softly--tenderly, almost--that the curt answer died away in Peter’s mouth. He said: ‘Of course I am,’ and gave Gerry a smile, only it probably looked more like a snarl, he was so clenched and cold. But looking at Gerry warmed him again and gave him his second wind--fifth or sixth, by then. Whatever he had done before in the way of lifting men above themselves was going to be nothing to what he must do if he was to get Gerry over Monte Michele tonight, and that he was going to do. The power to do it flowed into him as the darkness fell. He had not brought Gerry to this point through any selfish motives. He would have done it again--but now he must and he would lead Gerry over the mountain and into a safe and happy place. He would himself take him to Edinburgh and tell Dr McVeigh that Gerry could be a great physician--a surgeon, perhaps; a leader of the profession, a--humble doctor in a small Punjab town.

  It didn’t matter. Gerry wanted it. So be it. He’d go back too, when the war was over. He couldn’t live without Gerry.

  He heard the distant echo of a voice, answered by another. There were men on the ridge, then. Nothing to do. Gerry was keeping a look-out.

  From here, five thousand feet to the crest, three thousand if they crossed the shoulders. But the easiest--least hard--way was straight up. There was no ‘official’ route up this face. Hadn’t Staldi said someone had done it in ‘06? The ‘proper’ approach was from the Michele Pass, ‘an easy climb for a lady.’ This was rather more than that, but nothing extreme--a good day’s climb for a good man. They ought to come back here after the war, he and Gerry, and do it properly. Christ.

  It was almost dark. Visibility, not more than fifty yards. ‘Rope up.’

  Thirty.

  Twenty yards. ‘Unroll the blankets. Leave them.’ Like sodden corpses, they looked.

  Ten. Good enough.

  They faced the cliff.

  The black rocks among which they had been sheltering, four and eight and ten feet high, had become blurs that might have been men. To right and left they seemed to move, though Peter knew it was the mist and the night that flowed past them, while the rocks stood silent, like rocks in a river.

  He led. He took the first pitch at a steady pace, weaving across the face of the cliff to find easy holds, and making each run-out small so that Gerry never had to stand long alone before coming up to him. This was climbing, he thought with a grim lift of the spirit, such as no climber could face without a feeling that madness was in the air that it should have to be done. It was climbing, war, and rescue, all together.

  In darkness, on an unknown mountain, he had to force into existence and instantly bring to full flower capabilities and knowledge that he had not possessed. He found that it was not his brain that guided him up the cliff as much as some inwardly felt knowledge of and communion with mountains. He had spent a large part of his energy and will-power, carefully concentrated for the purpose, on conquering mountains. Except for Meru, he had conquered them. Now he reached out in the flowing blackness and found a rugosity under his hand, just where it should have been. He felt a non-material contact with the rock, an actual spurt of friendship, as though it were human and gave him now the touch of a friend and passed him a word of greeting because he came to it in the night. It was a friend and had put a lamp in the window for him.

  Feeling this for the first time, he knew that he had hated the mountains while he conquered them. Why, then, were they responding to his need tonight? Was it for Gerry’s sake?

  He searched left and right, like a hound on the trail. He walked, quick and light, across the face of the rock, hardly touching it. He guided Gerry up with voice and rope, and love and curses and sheer strength. When Gerry stood spreadeagled against the slope, shaking, half unconscious, he told him he’d shoot him. When Gerry groaned up to a finger-hold he told him Emily was waiting for them with tea and crumpets, on top. For forty feet, on an easier stretch, he dragged him.

  At last there was no further way up but by chimneying. A vertical fissure began in the rock level with his waist, to the right, and led up into the dark beyond the farthest reach of his fingers. It was about the right width, a little narrow at first. When Gerry joined him on the shelf where he stood, he said: ‘We’re going up this crack here. Here, feel it.’ He took Gerry’s hand and made him gauge its width.

  Gerry said: ‘It’s narrower than King’s Chapel, Peter.’

  Peter went up. Gerry followed, but his muscles failed when he was half-way up, and Peter brought him the rest of the way on the rope. Then Peter fainted, and when he came round it was eleven-twenty and they had surmounted the cliff, and Gerry was in a kind of delirium but fully conscious.
They rested another hour, ate a scrap of bread, roped up. He led on.

  Four hours of agonizing step-by-step slogging--shale--smooth rock--snow and rock--one or other or both of them falling down every few moments. The rain turned to sleet and then snow. At two o’clock, at the foot of the final rampart of nevé, and nothing but lead and pain in him, he stopped and lay down again. ‘Wrong, wrong,’ he whispered. ‘We should go on.’ He couldn’t.

  He awoke at five, feeling worse. He began to cut steps. The wind was dying down, and he could see a jumping, swaying line, white below and grey-green above--the summit slope.

  The clouds still eddied about them. He was thankful, remembering the men with rifles. An hour later, full light but no sun, and they stood among clutching tendrils of cloud, cloud low overhead, snow beneath their feet.

  ‘We’ve done it,’ Gerry croaked. His eyes shone, almost as of old. ‘We’re there, Peter.’

  ‘Got to get down first,’ he said. ‘Not done till then.’

  Over to the right, beyond Gerry, there was something, half-man, half-cloud, snow and light and moving shadow. Peter unslung his carbine; he couldn’t speak. Gerry had turned but saw nothing where he was looking, down into Italy; Peter couldn’t, daren’t shout. His hands were bitter cold, and snow clogged the bolt. The cloud slid back from a soldier, the soldier saw Gerry, his rifle was ready in his hand. A hard, blue-eyed mountain man he was, a guide, corporal, like Carana, but enemy. He fired at Gerry, and Peter fired at him.

  Gerry swung round to Peter. The thin smoke still twisted from the muzzle of Peter’s carbine.

  Peter fired again; Gerry’s blank eyes were on him, the face deep-cut and falling away, his eyes filling, swaying. ‘Peter,’ he said. ‘Oh, Peter.’ He fell. Behind him the mountain guide with the corporal’s badges fell on his face. Behind again there was shouting, muffled and from everywhere in the cloud. No one else had seen Peter. Even then he could think of that, while Gerry lay on his side, unarmed, the tears frozen in their course, his lips apart.