Master of Whitestorm (49 page)

Each noon the company halted for a meal of biscuit and sausage, chipped frozen from wrappings cracked to brittleness. The dwarves sat apart; between them and the Arrax men lay a rift no common cause might breach. And the mountain born with their tattoos and sullen silences mingled uneasily with king’s men.

Yet when the pitch of the slope forced the company to pair up, Korendir would tolerate no dissent. The safety of each life in the party was interdependent upon the others; only the dwarves were permitted to form separate teams, and these only due to practicality. A man who tumbled into a crevasse could not be saved if he dragged his partner along with him. Though tough and very strong, a dwarf weighed a great deal less than a mature human. To mingle the races on a perilous traverse would be folly, when the next step might bring a collapse of soft snow and a sliding fall into fissures that plunged to untold depths. A man might break limbs or spine, or jerk his unwary companion over the brink to lie mangled beyond reach of rescue.

The valley steepened and the glacier banked upward into a bowl of slashed clefts, capped by snowfields that bore the arrowed scars of avalanche. Worn already from fighting the drifts that mantled the foothills, the rescue party tightened crampons and checked ice axes, and cast doubtful eyes upslope.

The cloud cover had thickened. Indlvarrn the dwarf guide shook an irascible fist at the sky, his brow crinkled into a frown. “Storm moving in,” he observed in his gravelly voice. “Have to be under shelter by then, and not in those first few crevasses. Full of seracs, they are, and thaw-rotted-ice. To bivouac there would be begging to get ourselves crushed.”

“Seracs?” called one of the king’s men-at-arms. “What in Neth’s creation are they, that we should be frightened to shaking?”

Indlvarrn shoved his thumbs under the straps of his rucksack. “Ice peaks, are seracs, And frightened to shaking you will be.” The dwarf nodded his fur capped head at the soldier. “Best get on. Storms and nightfall won’t wait.”

The guide opened a pouch at his belt and selected an assortment of screws forged for purchase in ice. While he issued ropes, harnesses, and other gear, Echend appeared at his side. Under orders to set aside prejudice, he worked with the dwarf, while Korendir directed redistribution of stores from drag-sleds to packs that could be hoisted in pitches through the ascent.

Few men joked through the preparations. Threat of snow set a gloom on their mood; many were sobered further by awareness that from this point forward, their lives must be trusted to a whip-scarred dwarf who had no cause to love humans.

Korendir gave slackers short shrift. The lead team departed. Headed by lndlvarrn, their task was to choose the route, and flag loose footing and hand holds that following parties might proceed with speed and safety. Crags of jutting ice soon hid the three from view. Their progress became marked by puffs of wind-borne snow, and clattering falls of ice fragments; sometimes the acoustics of the mountain returned the clang of Indlvarrn’s hammer as he pounded home an ice screw, or the distinctive hiss of rope coils flaking down a precipice. The ends were caught and used to belay the trailing members of each team. Progress was slow. Rope-length by rope-length, the less experienced climbers followed to a staging camp on an ice ledge. There, under seracs that glistened with the dangerous beauty of swordblades, the same ropes were used to hoist the supply sacks, then the follow-up team gathered in gear and what pins they could recover without undue waste of stamina. After a restorative ration of chocolate, the process was repeated again, and yet again in failing light as snow began to whirl across the Graley.

Korendir anchored the trailing teams through the last pitch. By now the dark had thickened, and wind blasted the ice face in the fury of rising storm. Each hand and foot hold became agony to maintain, as muscles shivered and cramped, and fingers raw from abrasion suffered numbness from cold as well. When failing light marred judgment, and vertigo dizzied the senses, the slope seemed relentlessly sheer. Now was the moment when the nerve which sustained the stoutest hearts at daybreak faltered and threatened to fail.

The wind gusted, demon-shrill; its force gathered until it seemed determined to rip the climbers from the Graley and dash them upon the pressure ridges below. Loosened chunks of debris rattled down and battered a man from his grip. He tumbled, screaming, jerked short as the rope slammed taut. The soldier on belay snarled with strain as his fallen companion spun, whimpering, over an abyss of dark and rushing air. Roped to a ledge to oversee progress from the midpoint, Korendir reached out and grasped jacket. He jerked the man bodily back onto the face, and yelled encouragement as trembling hands scrabbled for new purchase. The rope eased as the man recovered. Above, the teammate who had held through his narrow escape cursed in ragged relief.

“Too close,” somebody exclaimed. “Keep on in these conditions, and people are going to start dying.”

“Then we’ll just have to make Indlvarrn’s camp,” Korendir called back. To descend would in fact be more dangerous, with the ascent screws removed and the snow silted deep in the hollows. The light had failed to the point where a man could not see to secure ropes.

No one argued the mercenary’s decision. All were impatient to press onward, except the soldier who whimpered, paralyzed with panic against the overhang. His partner could not continue until his shaken teammate regained his wits, and ahead, no ledge offered respite for a vertical ascent of thirty yards.

Korendir’s response was instantaneous, “Dalon,” he called crisply. “You’re on your own.” His next words commanded the man above to draw steel and cut the belay rope.

That the coward now blocked the only safe retreat from Korandir’s vantage point made no difference. Conditions were deteriorating rapidly; trapped between blizzard and darkness, the party could not delay without forfeiting a survival already in jeopardy.

“Move out,” snapped the mercenary to the man who led the team. “Don’t wait, and on peril of your life. don’t turn back.”

The climbers resumed their ascent. As ice chips loosened by their crampons rattled down, Dalon unabashedly started to sob. Voices and the scrape of boots became lost in the wail of the wind, and still, Dalon shivered and balked. Korendir made no attempt to cajole him, but waited, motionless in thickening drifts of snow. When the man failed to master his hysteria, he resumed his climb in grim silence, but over an outcrop Indlvarrn had avoided; no choice remained but to risk that route to regain the known upper trail. The bypass became a nightmare, unroped as Korendir was, suspended by torn gloves and determination over a chasm of storm-whipped air. The ice was unforgiving. It resisted the blows of his axe, sent the blade rebounding back against his hand. His palms chafed bloody as the shock of vibration passed down the oaken shaft. The times the blade caught firmly, Korendir hauled his weight from toe-hold to crumbling toe hold, utterly dependent on the grip of his lacerated hands. Almost, he welcomed the pain as distraction from hostile elements as he inched away from the nook where Dalon cowered.

“Soldier!” Timed between gusts, Korendir’s voice cut downslope through the storm. “There’s hot tea waiting topside, I promise you.”

Dalon returned no answer. With a heart that inwardly wept, Korendir reached upward, stabbed his axe into a crevice, and abandoned the man to his fate.

In an hour, the storm had worsened; blizzard whipped the Graley with near to annihilating force. Korendir advanced by slow inches, blinded by driven snow. His gloves froze to his axe haft; the feet inside his boots numbed until they dragged at his ankles like dead wood. Slipping from a precarious hand hold, he jammed his sole in an ice ridge. A quarter hour was lost as he worked to jerk himself free. By the time he succeeded, he was shivering and spent. His fingers slid from the cleft where he clung and caught, as if by miracle, on the screw that fastened a rope.

A fixed line had been left, set out of pity by the dwarf guide when he had ordered young Dalon cut loose. Korendir clung to solid, twisted hemp and gasped in exhausted gratitude. By now, the darkness was complete; without that rope to show the way, he could never have found the bivouac. He dragged upward, aching, but feeling discomfort much less in the encouragement of renewed progress. The gusts carried fragmented sounds of voices, then a flare of yellow torchlight; at most, safety and warmth waited twenty feet above. Korendir thought very little of the soldier abandoned behind. What resource remained he focused on that last, most precarious ascent, when strength was at lowest ebb, and impatience might drive him to carelessness.

But the storm and the dark did not triumph. A cheer went up as Korendir reached the ledge. Indlvarrn and Echend caught his wrists, dragged him like a brother over the brink. He was given a place by the coal fire, and hot tea, and chocolate. No one asked about Dalon. When the uproar died down, and tired men crawled under peg-secured canvas to sleep, Korendir waited alone. Wrapped in furs by torchlight, he remained until the snow thinned and stopped. Clouds broke; the silvery light of a half-moon bathed the Graley’s lofty heights. Korendir sat solitary under sky. In time his vigil was rewarded. The rope creaked on its peg. A wretched, shivering pair of hands clawed upward from the abyss, followed by a frost-bearded face.

Korendir arose, helped the half-frozen soldier to the ledge, and still without speech, poured hot tea. He stayed while Dalon drank, then offered food and shelter under blankets for rest. Of cowardice, he said no word, nor did any other man, when the camp roused at dawn, and the first to stir noticed the survivor asleep in their midst. Whatever his weakness, Dalon had found his measure by himself in the storm-torn dark. His triumph over fear had taught strength, and a humble, unfailing confidence. He was the first among the king’s men to offer to relieve Indlvarrn’s overtaxed lead team. Echend and another man from Arrax formed the core of the reserves that spelled the unflagging dwarves.

Days passed in wearing succession. Frostbite and torn skin became themes for rough jokes as men gained competence on the mountain. Ones with less gift for climbing attended the chores at each bivouac, checking ropes and equipment, or carefully rationing the food. The Graley taxed all to their limits. Some days were spent in huddled misery listening to the song of wind and storm; other times, in blinding sunlight, men carved steps and hand holds up cathedral towers of blue ice. Each pitch had its frustrations, its failures, its false trails, and its triumphs.

In the upper heights, the couloir narrowed. The glacier lay rucked into shards and blunt cornices, capped with spotless new drift. Clefts became traps to twist the ankles, and snow dislodged from bad footing could turn and roll, and kick loose grinding falls of ice. The climbers toiled on in the uneasy knowledge that their lives were precariously secured, and dependent upon the frailty of their companions.

The expedition crossed the cloud line and Indlvarrn advised caution. The snow pack on the summit ridge was unstable; but one team gave in to curiosity and strayed. Their footsteps carved faults in the drifts, and the bridge where they explored caved away. The storm-piled mass at the head of the couloir loosened and thundered downslope, sweeping all in its path with a roar. One man was milled under, never to resurface. The other had been roped to a belaying pin before the disaster began, and when the avalanche subsided to a clatter of scoured stone, the king’s men traced the line and dragged him free.

Indlvarrn watched with his mouth pursed tight in disapproval. “Better to be rid of that fool,” he concluded over the fuss as the survivor was checked for injury.

“You speak of a king’s man!” an offended companion shouted back. “Would you dare to mouth insults if the one needing rescue was a dwarf?”

“I’d do better,” snapped Indlvarrn. “I’d send him to his maker with my dirk, were any of my race born so stupid.”

The dead man’s brother bridled at this. Known for strength and quick temper, he rushed the cheeky guide with his hackles raised for a fight. His swing at the dwarf was stopped by the vise-hard grip of Korendir, whose tolerance did not extend to petty feuds; the mercenary looked angry enough to kill outright. He spoke instead, too softly for bystanders to overhear. But the brother’s aggression subsided. He retired, though dwarves watched his back with unfriendliness.

The king’s men clustered to organize spirit rites for the departed; Indlvarrn was informed of their intent while sorting out ropes for rappel lines. He sprang to his feet in agitation, but Korendir reacted first and took on the onus of intervention. This time his words carried to all of the waiting company. No time would be allowed for sentiment. The soldiers broke up disgruntled, somehow still blaming their misfortune on the dwarves. In
sullen knots, the men turned toward the valley and the ridge that remained to be crossed.

On the face behind the Graley, summits like upraised knives funneled the wind between ridges. Black banded rocks were stripped bare of snow and polished sheer by weather. Here the company unstrapped crampons and began their first abseil, dropping by stages into a valley swathed in cloud. Gusts set the lines swinging as men rappelled straight down through winter air. Hands still raw from the axe handle suffered rope burns as friction heated through gloves and wrappings and savaged the tender flesh beneath. Bared rock absorbed the sun’s warmth, causing melts that glazed a sheen across the crags. Refrozen to glassy hardness, such ice at times seemed bewitched; crampons pulled hastily from rucksacks screeched and skidded. The sharpened steel teeth left score lines, but gained no purchase. Men lost their balance and cracked heads and shoulders against the cliff face. They bruised and cursed and hoped their fellows on belay were prepared for trouble when they fell. As the last team reached the bowl of the valley, the talk swelled boastful and loud. Except for the misfortune of the avalanche, no man’s safety had been compromised.

The surrounding Hyadons soared upward with the magnificence of fortress spires; rocky spurs punched through mantles of sparkling ice, to rake clouds that plumed in the bitter cold of altitude. Ahead spread a snow-choked plateau and frozen lake. Vulnerable now to attack by the Corrigon, the men donned cloaks of white wool for camouflage. They clustered to listen while Indlvarrn sketched out their route with stubby, mittened hands. They must cross by night, preferably under cover of storm, when the Corrigon was likeliest to roost.