Powder Burn (Burn with Sam Blackett #1) (12 page)

“
How is he?” asked Sam. Moments before, the sun had dropped below the towering mountains, and in the half-light she could no longer make out Tashi’s face as he sat huddled against the rapidly deepening cold. Jortse squatted beside him, pouring the ground barley into the pan of boiled water that she had just handed him. He pulled a battered spoon out from the capacious pockets of his coat, and started to mix the tsampa. Without the yak butter the meal smelt inoffensive, but it made her freeze-dried risotto look positively appetizing.

“
OK” was Jortse’s eventual reply.

“
Just OK?” she asked. “We’re almost at the track that goes up the hill to the border, is he going to be ready for the ascent? We’ve come a long way, it would be terrible if he got sick again.”

Now Jortse looked up,
and she could feel the blank eyes fix on her. “Yes, he must be ready, there is no choice but to ascend.” The fork ground out a rhythm against the metal pot. Tashi didn’t move.

Sam turned
; Pete was at her shoulder.

“
I need a hand with the tent,” he said.

She nodded.
“We were just talking about Tashi, if he can make the ascent tomorrow.”

“
He has to make the ascent,” stated Jortse again.

Pete squatted down and put his hand on Tashi’s shoulder.
“How you feeling?”

Tashi looked up. Sam still couldn’t see his face.
“Tired,” he said, feebly.

“
It’s our decision, our risk,” said Jortse. “You have been helpful, but only Tashi and I can assess everything.”

Pete looked up at Sam, but it was too dark for her to make out his expression either.
“Give me a hand with the tent,” he said, and she followed him as he moved away.

Pete clicked a flashlight on, lighting up the deflated nylon.
“What do you think?” he asked.

“
He was pretty slow that last section,” she replied.

“
It’s been a long day and Jortse’s been pushing the pace a lot more.”

“
He’s still weak, and he’s still short of breath. I don’t think a doctor would recommend an increase in altitude,” she said.

“
No, not if he was already somewhere low enough to be stable and safe – but he isn’t.” He zipped up his jacket as he spoke. “It’s colder again, weather’s changing,” he said, turning off the flashlight and gazing up into the night. The stars were just beginning to creep out from under the cover of the fading daylight.

“
There are some clouds now,” she said.

“
We can’t afford to get trapped by the weather on this side of the border. We can’t get him significantly lower in altitude until we get him across.”

She shivered lightly, and followed Pete in zipping up her jacket to the top.
“It’s a question of balancing the risk, isn’t it?” she said. “If we wait and get stuck, he could get worse anyway in bad weather, or we could get caught by the Demagistanis – but if we try to get over and fail ...”

Pete nodded.
“Impossible to call it. If Jortse’s still adamant in the morning that we go over, I think we should. Ultimately, whatever we think, Tashi’s his responsibility. Let’s get it done.”

Sam nodded.
“I agree. Anyway, Jortse’s not someone I’m ever going to argue with.”

“
I’m with you there,” said Pete, with some feeling. He handed her the flashlight. “All right, let’s get this bloody tent up.”

Lens clenched both his hands hard around the ice axes and ran his tongue along his cracked lips – what the hell had he been thinking?
Let’s face it,
he thought,
I’ve got no idea what I’m doing. If I get out of this alive, I swear to all gods of all religions and denominations that I will never, ever again walk off and leave behind the most experienced climber on the expedition.
Pete had made the two previous crossings of the ice cliff look routine. On his own, Lens had turned it into a survival ordeal that he didn’t think he was going to survive.

Stuck to the ice by axe and crampon points, he thought he was about halfway across. In the darkness he had no way of being sure. The roped tied to his harness stretched out and disappeared into the blackness. The other end of the rope was tied to a rock at the start, and now he was trailing the whole lot across the cliff behind him. If there was a better way of arranging the limited gear he now carried so that it was safer, he hadn’t been able to figure it out. If he slipped, he was going to fall a long way before it went tight – and it was going to hurt. So long as the rope held and it actually went tight. If it didn’t ... well, then he’d find out how Vegas had felt.

It had seemed like a smart move to put as much distance between him and the accident as possible. When the matte-green helicopter had eventually appeared into view, he’d dropped into cover. It couldn’t get within a quarter of a mile of his height, so it had backed off and sat at a distance to search the slopes, but not for long – perhaps short on fuel, the chopper had quickly left. Lens wasn’t so optimistic to think that they believed Vegas had been alone. As soon as it was gone, he had set out across the snow to safety. He had realized too late that now there were two trails in the snow – in and out – indicating to the Demagistani army that the dead rider must have had a companion. There was nothing he could do about it except push on. By sunset, he was at the top, through the notch and onto the descent. The helicopter hadn’t returned, and with eleven and a half hours before sunrise, he had an opportunity to put some serious distance between him and ground zero of the search. He’d pressed on, anxious to get across the ice cliff before daylight. It had seemed like a good idea at the time.

He turned and looked out across the ice. How far was there to go? It was impossible to tell. The faint loom from the moonlight enabled him to see a few feet, nothing more
–
look on the bright side, at least you can’t see the drop.
Gently he eased the tip of his right-hand axe out from its grip on the ice and leaned his weight onto the crampon on his right foot, so he could stretch across and replace the axe. He tapped the axe into the ice and a shard cracked and fell off. A thump of a heartbeat, his tongue flickered back across his dry lips. He stretched a little further and swung again, this time the axe buried itself deep. He eased his weight onto it, and gently lifted off on his right foot. The crampon kicked in first time, and with his weight on three points, he pulled the left crampon out and moved that to catch up with the right. And so it went on, one move after another, tapping, feeling for grip, shifting the weight and moving across.

Until, moving onto the right crampon, he hit resistance from the rope tied off at his waist. It took him several moments to realize that it was the rope that had stopped him moving. It took a few moments more to replace his right foot back in a balanced position. He stood and tried to settle his harsh breathing.
What the hell?
The rope had been long enough when they’d come across before. Lens turned and looked backwards; it didn’t tell him much. He pulled the left axe off the ice and gave the rope a tug; it didn’t budge. He whipped the line up and down, sent a curl along it to see if he could flick it clear of whatever it was caught on – but it wouldn’t take much to flick it off the safety rock completely. So he pulled again instead. It certainly felt like he was pulling up against the knot – but that didn’t make any sense, how could the rope have got shorter?

Then it hit him, he must have picked a wider part of the ice field. He hadn’t paid that much attention when they’d crossed it previously. And in the dark he’d paid no attention at all to where he’d set the rope up. He could be some way from safety, and completely unable to reach it. Unless he untied the rope. He turned to the right and searched the darkness for any sign that he was close to the edge. Nothing. The bubble of barely controlled panic drifted towards the surface. His legs started to judder, threatening to shake the crampon points loose. Lens leaned into the wall, forehead and knees on the ice, and tried to get control, to think clearly.

If he could dump the pack, that would reduce the weight on his arms and legs a lot, and give him more time. But he couldn’t see how he could do that without taking both axes off the ice – no way was he going down to two points of contact. He knew he didn’t have the strength to retreat, and even if he could get back, he would then have to move the anchor point and try again. There was no guarantee that he’d pick a better starting point next time.

Or ... he could untie the rope and climb the remaining distance to safety. If he made a mistake or the ice cracked on a hold, then there was no second chance. He tried to swallow the lump in his throat
– however insane it seemed, this was the choice with the smallest number of unknowns, and therefore the greatest probability of success. The ice was in fantastic condition, the chances of a fall were very slim. And if he failed, it would at least be over quickly.

Lens took the right-hand axe off the wall and dropped it on the leash. Then he pulled the mitten off with his teeth. It was the work of moments to loosen and release the figure
-eight knot that held his umbilical to him. The rope snaked away across the ice with a hiss. Silence descended. He was alone, disconnected from the human world and any possibility of safety or rescue if he blew it.
That’s all in your mind,
he told himself.
Now focus on the climbing.
He dragged the mitten back onto his hand with his teeth, grabbed the haft of the ice axe, reached a couple of feet to his right and swung.

The first step was the hardest. He got everything set to move onto the new position, all he had to do was believe and transfer his weight. The moment of commitment. Had Vegas had this moment before his fall? No, it had all been too quick. Maybe at the top of the run. Maybe time to reflect during the fall.
Don’t think about that
...

It was too late, the panic finally broke the surface. He froze, just hugged the axes, his left cheek pressed into the ice. Then his left leg, carrying most of his weight as he hesitated over the right foot, started to shake and loosen. And suddenly there was no choice. He made the step. It held. It was a start
, and the second was a little easier. And then there was a third, and a fourth, easier still, working hard on his concentration –
forget the drop, ignore the pain, or you will surely die
.

Right axe, right foot, left foot, left axe, over and over, testing each one carefully before he weighted it. He didn’t know how far he’d moved when he looked up to plant the right axe and saw, glimmering vaguely on the edge of the limited light, a color too dark to be ice. He was almost there ...
No.
He forced himself to look away.
Just move and stay focused
–
forget the drop, ignore the pain and pretend the finish isn’t four feet away.

He managed one more set of moves, and only when he had got his weight balanced back on all four points did he let himself look. It was right there, the ice butted against a fissure of rock. There was a platform
; climb up a couple of feet and he would be able to step onto it with no more difficulty than getting off a subway train. The adrenaline was coursing through him, muscles quivering with lactic-acid burn.
Don’t make a mistake now, test the weight, check the ice.
He was so close. And then he wasn’t close at all. He was there. Lens collapsed onto the rock. Kissed the sweet solidity of the mountain. He was safe. He was going home.

Sam pulled her hood closer and tightened the drawstring as the wind whipped at her jacket. It was cold, the coldest it had been. She reckoned they were about halfway up the final climb back to the border, and they couldn’t afford to hang about in this weather. She dropped her face into her mittens and blew into them to get warm air flushing through the mask.

When she looked back up, she noticed blood on the back of the mitten. It had to be Tashi’s. She glanced over to where he and Jortse were huddled together. They had both tied rough multicolored scarves over the tops of their hats, folding the wide brims down over their ears. They had wrapped the rest of the scarves over their faces, so she couldn’t see anything of their expressions. The situation was pretty marginal, there was no question about that. There was some serious cloud gathering over the peaks. This was not good. She leaned in towards Pete, who was bundled up beside her. “What do you think?” she yelled into his ear.

He shook his head.
“We’re not going to make it over in this.”

“
Are you going to tell them, or am I?” she replied.

“
Come on.”

They both stood and struggled over to Jortse. Pete tapped him on the knee.
“We have to go back down,” he yelled. He pointed up. “It’s getting worse, Tashi won’t make it over the top. We have to go back down.”

Jortse’s face was still a mask of scarf and hat, but the shake of the head was firm enough.
“No. We are too close.”

“
We won’t make it,” Pete insisted.

Jortse just shook his head again.

“We have to go back down,” yelled Sam, her words whipped away by the wind.

“
We go up,” said Jortse, right in her face, the dead eyes boring into hers.

She just stared back at him.

“We go up,” he said again, and he started to haul Tashi to his feet.

“
Shit,” she muttered, and looked at Pete. He shrugged and turned to get his pack. Slowly, reluctantly, she followed.

It was the wind that woke Lens. Rippling his hood, crackling the fabric in his ears, startling him awake. At first he had no idea where he was, or quite why he hurt so much, in so many places. Slime lined his mouth, fur covered his teeth. His head was spinning, his gut somehow bloated, rumbling and empty. The nightmare of his solo ice climb started to come back to him. Then the long exhausted stumble downhill in the dark, until he couldn’t move any further.

His gaze roved over what little he could see from his sleeping bag. He was jammed under a perilously angled rock, inside the thin metallic-lined survival bag that they all carried. His sleeping mat was under him
, for insulation, and his pack forced into the angle between the rock and the ground, to provide a windbreak. Pete would be proud of him – he’d done a good job in his exhausted stupor. It was relatively calm and pleasant in the lee he had created, just a rogue puff had crept round the rock and woken him. But it was daylight.

And then the rest of it tumbled in on him
– Vegas, the helicopter, the search. His friend was dead, and he was a hunted man. It stirred him to wriggle his head out and have a better look around. There was fresh snow on the ground. He shuffled his head further out until he could see upwards; cloud was swirling over the top and hiding the notch, but the rope he had let go of last night was still visible – whipping around in the wind. The end was dangling some ten yards below the edge of the overhang. He had obviously crossed the ice cliff a lot lower than he should have. He would have died in a fall even with the rope still tied on – but very slowly, hanging on the end of it until he froze to death. It was another sobering thought, as if he didn’t have enough to work on.

He was still a good fourteen or fifteen
hours’ walk from the safety of the border, and the Demagistanis would come looking. The only thing in his favor was that conditions made it extremely unlikely that they could fly anytime soon. The cloud ceiling was getting lower as he watched, tumbling down the mountain, ripping apart and then reforming on the rocks. He had a good hiding spot. He was comfortable, sheltered from increasingly foul conditions and anything but a – highly unlikely – foot search. He was also exhausted, hungry and dehydrated. And he really needed a cigarette. Lens tapped his pockets for the nicotine gum, and came up with three pieces, all battered almost beyond recognition. There was more in his pack, there had to be. He lay back and chewed.

It was starting to make sense to stay put until dark. With some more sleep and plenty of food and water, he reckoned
he could make it back to the base of the border ridge in one night’s hard walking. And then he’d be so close to safety he could go for it as soon as conditions allowed. He made the decision, then pulled the backpack out of its corner and fished out the stove. The water bottle was empty. He was going to have to move to fetch some snow. With infinite weariness, Lens eased himself out of his cocoon, and took the first step towards recovering his strength.

Sam was on her knees, the snow up to her waist. The storm had come down on them with shocking ferocity. One moment it had been windy and cold and the clouds a little ominous. Now it was a full blizzard. Snow drove into her face, some melting on contact, seeping into any gaps around her hood and jacket, some gathering and freezing around her goggles and facemask. She couldn’t see anything, and she couldn’t make any progress upwards unless she crawled. This was insane, whatever Jortse thought, they couldn’t continue upwards towards the border. She felt a tap on her boot. She turned and looked behind her. Nothing, maybe dark shapes in the swirl of snow. Sam sat down, and inched back towards them.

They were only four or five feet behind her. Pete and Jortse, head to head over the bundle that was Tashi. She stuck her face in the middle, caught a couple of words,
down
and
now
, Pete’s voice. He grabbed her hand, pulled his face right up to hers and shouted in her ear.

“
We’re going down. Jortse agreed. Don’t get separated. You lead. Here.” He produced a short length of thin rope. Then he turned her around and tied one end to a loop on her pack. He attached the other end to the front of his jacket. The voice in her ear again: “One tug, go; three tugs, stop.”

Sam nodded her whole upper body to indicate that she had understood, and waited for the command. Behind her she could imagine them trying to get Tashi back on his feet. It was taking a while, she turned
– a shadow that she thought was Pete was trying to piggyback Tashi. Finally, the tug came and she started downhill. She plunged one foot into the waist-high mush; the snow whipped across her path by the gale was indistinguishable from the snow already on the ground, resisting every movement. She felt the rope come tight behind her almost immediately, and they played an awkward game of tug of war until she fathomed out a rhythm that Pete could copy. Even then, it wasn’t for long. Three tugs. She stopped.

Behind her, Pete had got as far as he could carrying Tashi. And he and Jortse started the swap, disconnecting the safety line, easing Tashi into the snow, changing places
, and then he helped Jortse to get Tashi on his back, hauling the pack up, and finally off again. Sam no longer had much sense of the passage of time, but she could tell the second set of steps was a lot shorter than the first when the triple tug came again. The wait was longer too, and this time she started to get cold. The fast-evaporating sweat from the uphill exertion was sucking the warmth out of her. Then, the single tug and they were off. Another smattering of steps, another triple tug. And so it went on, and each time Sam got colder and found it harder to get moving again. Another triple tug, another stop. This time she heard Pete’s voice, hoarse, in her ear.

“
This way,” he yelled.

If she hadn’t been exhausted, she might have wondered earlier why they had carried on so far when there was no way they could get back to the valley floor. Now she could see the reason
– they had happened on an outcrop of rock. To start with, it was just a loom in a slightly lighter swirl of snow, but as she followed the tug of the line connecting her to Pete, it became clearer. The horizontally moving wall of snow eased; instead, the wind screamed overhead, blowing vertical flurries of snow down off the rock. She couldn’t even begin to wonder how he had found this spot in the blizzard. It was the kind of trick her father used to be able to pull.

“
We’re going to camp here. Help Jortse with Tashi, get his hands and feet into your bodies, under your arms to warm them up,” Pete told her, as he untied the rope between them.

Sam nodded again, unclipped the waistband on the backpack and let it drop straight to the snow. Pete was pulling his lightweight avalanche shovel off his pack. Jortse had already dragged Tashi into shelter and was peeling his boots off. Sam crawled over to them and knelt beside him, grabbing both hands in hers and wrestling off the cold, wet leat
her gloves. She pushed the raw, unwieldy lumps inside her jacket, fingers swollen and stiff. Horrified, she realized that the scarf across his face was thick with half-frozen pink spittle. It was worse than before, and so quickly. When did he lose consciousness?

Then suddenly his eyes were open, red-rimmed, brown and beseeching. She moved closer, adjusting the bloody scarf
, thinking that might be what he wanted. His lips were moving. Sam leaned in, the words were almost inaudible. She pushed her hood away, watching his lips.

“
The sword ...” Tashi mumbled.

She pressed closer.
“What?”

“
The sword ... stop him ... stop him ... stay ... in ... Shibde ...” Then Tashi’s lips stilled, his eyes closed.

Sword?
What sword? And stop whom? He must be delirious,
she thought. Then Pete was beside her, shaking her shoulder, screaming in her ear.

“
Over here, drag him over here.”

She turned and saw that he had built a level platform, as close to the rock as he could get it, with his snowboard upturned to provide a flat surface. The packs were at one end, like pillows, pinning down one end of the tent
, which he now unrolled over the snowboard before laying one of the insulated mats down inside. With Jortse, she half carried, half pulled Tashi towards the camp. Getting him out of his sodden coat – crisp where it had started to freeze – and into the survival bag and tent was an exhausting, harrowing nightmare. When they had finally done it, at Pete’s instruction, Jortse stripped off his coat and boots and struggled in beside Tashi. Pete spread their bedrolls over them. Sam realized she was shaking uncontrollably. She sat, exhausted, on her pack as Pete clipped the tent poles together and threaded them into place.

“
Can you feel your hands and feet?” he asked. “I’ll have this up in a couple of minutes.”

She nodded.
“J-j-just,” she juddered, “they hurt like hell.”

“
OK, get your boots and the outer layer off, and then get in your sleeping bag.”

She started on her laces as he spoke, and after what seemed like another interminable struggle
, she slid into the tent beside Jortse and Tashi. Pete squeezed into the second survival bag with her, both already cocooned inside their own sleeping bags. She buried her head deep in the down, feeling some warmth start to come back now that she was out of the wind. She realized she still had her goggles and mask on, pulled them off and stuffed them to the bottom of the sleeping bag. Sounds filtered through – the shriek of the storm and Tashi’s labored, frothy breathing. She felt Pete’s arms close around her.

“
OK, any warmer?” he said, no longer having to yell.

“
Not much,” she mumbled.

“
All right, keep close to me while I get the stove started, we need some hot food.” Pete wriggled onto his stomach in the tiny space – the tent was small for two of them, it was jammed tight with four – and Sam leaned into his body. He pushed the two packs back into a protective wall for the stove, lit it and then shoveled snow into a pan. The hiss of heat was very comforting.

“
Not long now,” he said, “a nice cup of tea, or maybe some of that tomato soup you really love.”

Sam managed a smile, despite it all. She could feel the warmth from his body, it felt good.
“How’s Tashi?” she asked.

Pete’s face darkened
. “I’ll find out,” he said, struggling over onto his other side for a mumbled conversation that she couldn’t hear. “He’s not good,” he told her when he rolled back. “Unconscious. I think this time he has both cerebral and pulmonary edema. He didn’t black out before. There was just the coughing and breathlessness and the pink spit. But now he’s got all of that and he got very confused, just gave up on us before he slipped into unconsciousness.” Pete thought for a moment. “I’ve got some dexamethasone, which might snap him out of it, but I’m not sure if this is the moment to use it. If we get a break in the storm, that’s the time we need him on his feet.”

“
Dexamethasone?”

“
It’s a steroid, acts as an anti-inflammatory and immunosuppressant, everyone uses it for altitude sickness.”