The Salt Road (16 page)

A chunk of quartzite the size of a house brick came away beneath my leading foot and down I went, tumbling over and over against the rock, too fast even to yelp or fully register the pain as I knocked, hard, an ankle here, my cheek there, nose, hip, knee, forehead … There was a disembodied cry, sharp and hallucinatory: from far below me, or was it inside my head? I had no way of telling. I waited for the plunge into space as the rock ran out beneath me, but then, with a jolt that nearly dislocated my hip, the fall was halted. I was hanging sideways, looking down the mountain. How bizarre. Surely if the ropes had caught me, I’d be facing in, or out, not sideways at this odd angle. I looked up. The ropes, two garish pink and blue snaking things, lay flaccidly along the rock high up against the deep red of the quartzite, unconcerned by my fate. I hung where I was, afraid to move, hardly daring to breathe. So it wasn’t the rope that had held me but my harness. Probably one of the gear loops had snagged a spike of rock. Panic flared up again: gear loops weren’t made to resist a shockload; any moment now whatever held me would snap and I’d be hurled down off the cliff, and that would be that.

Slowly, I moved my head to examine what had stopped me. My vision was blurred; my head rang from the knocks it had taken. For several woozy moments I couldn’t trust my eyes. Impossibly, it looked as if the amulet had wedged itself inside a crack and that I was hanging from its narrow leather thong, clipped with a mini-karabiner on to a gear loop. I stared at this unlikely combination of cause, effect and sheer uncanny luck, unbelieving. Then, compulsively, I twisted to get my feet and hands back on to the rock and take my weight off that fragile point of contact. A decent foot-ledge; a handhold. Thank God. And just as I breathed out, the leather thong holding the amulet snapped. I pressed my face against the rock, my heart beating so hard it felt as though its hammering might propel me off my precarious hold on the mountain.

Danger soon steadied my swimming head. Swiftly, I fiddled a piece of gear into a crack, ran a sling through my harness loop and back again and clipped it; did up the karabiner’s gate. That gave me the courage to stare at the amulet again. There it was, wedged across its broadest point, the sun winking off the silver. It looked positively smug, as if it had been designed for this very moment in time. But the force of the fall had deformed it: I could see how it was bent and awkward-looking. It was probably never going to be shifted. I would have to leave it behind as a sacrifice, a thank you to the Lion’s Head, which had once again extended its legendary protection to a woman. I reached out to it, brushed my fingers over its outside edge as if in farewell; and it fell into my hand.

Shaking, I slipped it into a pocket in my climbing pants and zipped the pocket closed over it. Then, fiercely pushing away my fear, I removed the gear and climbed towards Miles with my heart thudding like a trapped bird’s. Going up was a whole lot easier than going sideways. When I appeared over the lip of rock where he had made the belay he was still taking in rope at speed. ‘Slow down,’ he said. ‘I can hardly keep up with you.’ He huffed and puffed as he clipped me into the belay, then looked at me properly for the first time.

‘Christ, look at you, what happened?’

I put my hand to my face and it came away covered in blood. I realized suddenly that various bits of me were hurting, quite badly.

‘Ah …’ The words would not come. I looked down, my head throbbing with the effort. Blood was seeping through the knee of my climbing pants, but, though the kneecap smarted, I knew instinctively that I had a worse injury. Now that the adrenalin of the fall and the desperate need to reach the safety of the belay had worn off, I could feel a dull, foreboding pain in my left ankle. Gingerly, I pulled up my trouser leg to examine the damage. The ankle was swollen, flesh spilling grotesquely over the top of my climbing shoe. Abruptly, I found it would not take my weight. I thought I might vomit.

Now Miles looked horrified. ‘Jesus, what have you done? How the hell did you climb that pitch like that? Can you move it?’ He stared at the ruined joint but made no attempt to examine it more closely. Instead, I saw his gaze slide away down the rock towards the long, rugged expanse of mountain beneath us, and I knew he was already anticipating the difficulties of the descent while hampered by an injured woman. He ran a hand over his face, a gesture that said quite articulately,
This
was not what I signed up for
.

‘I’ll strap it up,’ I said briskly, angry at myself for allowing this ridiculous situation to have occurred at all, angry to have put myself at the mercy of a stranger. ‘I’ll bind it and put my walking boot on to support it.’

Miles pulled at his lip. ‘I’m not sure about that.’ He looked at a complete loss. Then he readjusted his belay and picked his way across the shield of rock to where he would have a view of the progress of the other team. Where he should have taken the belay in the first place, I thought savagely, so that he could keep a proper eye on his second. But there was no point in apportioning blame: it was my own fault for falling. I hadn’t checked the crucial foothold before trusting my weight to it, despite all the caution I’d employed right up to that fateful moment. In climbing you soon learn to take responsibility for your own mistakes and live with the consequences. It was one of the things I most liked about the sport: cause and effect was clear-cut, the way life should be but rarely was.

Miles returned to the belay looking relieved. ‘Jez’ll be up in a few minutes.’ Then he sat down and mutely fiddled with his gear, rearranging it on his rack, head bent to avoid eye contact, and not another word passed between us.

Time ticked leadenly by. About fifteen minutes later Jez’s blue-bandanaed head appeared over the lip of the ridge. He was grinning from ear to ear, clearly loving the sensation of the Moroccan sun on his back, the warm rock under his fingers, the gulf of air beneath his feet, the delicacy of the moves. When he saw the state of me, though, the grin faded. ‘Fucking hell, Izzy, what have you done?’

I waited until he’d made himself safe on the belay and gave him a carefully edited version of events. No point in mentioning Miles’s failure to protect his second; or his lack of patience or communication. Jez whipped off the bandana, wet it with some water from his pack and made to clean my face. I pushed his hand away, took the cloth from him and dabbed at my nose.

‘Not broken?’

I shook my head.

‘It’s her ankle,’ Miles said flatly, staring out across the landscape. If we were on Everest, I thought, he’d be consigning me to my fate, leaving me behind in the death zone, every man for himself. But Jez came from different stock. He ran a practised hand over the mass of bruised and fluid-filled flesh, and I tried unsuccessfully not to wince. ‘Can you move it?’ I couldn’t, and the attempt elicited a moan. ‘Bloody hell, Izzy, I think it’s fucked.’ Even as my mouth opened in shock, he took the edge off this by winking. ‘That were a technical term. You just sit back and leave it to the doctor.’ With a swift gesture he ripped the bandana in half, spliced the ends together and soon had the ankle expertly immobilized.

‘I was going to put my walking boot back on to stabilize it a bit more.’

Jez looked dubious. ‘I worry you won’t be able to get it off again. Let’s have a look.’ A couple of minutes later he had removed my 5.10, clipped it to the back of my harness by its pull-on loop, modified the lacing on my Salomon mountain boot so that it would fit over the ruin of my ankle, then laced it up as hard as he could without my fainting. When he saw my colour, he patted me kindly on the shoulder. ‘We’ll get you off, don’t mither yourself.’

‘I’m really sorry,’ I said, though the apology came hard. ‘Not the best start to your climbing holiday. Hope you don’t believe in omens.’

Miles said nothing. Jez shrugged. ‘Accidents happen in climbing. That’s why we love it, eh?’ He paid out a loop of rope, twisted a figure-eight knot into it and secured it to his harness, then downclimbed to where he could belay with Eve in sight. I watched him give her a thumbs-up and wondered how she would cope with the traverse, but when she eventually appeared over the top, her eyes huge with concentration and panic, I saw that her gear loops were festooned with runners: Jez had clearly protected the pitch all the way for her. The two of them shared a swift, quiet conversation that I couldn’t quite catch and then Eve came padding up to the belay ledge and clipped herself in.

‘God, Iz, I’m so sorry. Jez says he thinks it’s broken.’

That was not what I’d wanted to hear. Shit. Now I was really in trouble. I forced a grin. ‘Maybe. Ah, well, an excellent chance for us to practise our rescue techniques, huh?’

Miles put Jez on lead and off he went out towards the arête, armed with gear and slings and a ferociously purposeful expression. Some while later he headed back again, crabwise, across the slab. ‘Right,’ he said, ‘we’ll get you across this section and from the edge I reckon we’ve got enough rope to lower you into the upper reaches of the gully. Then Eve can abseil down to be with you while Miles and I clear the gear and finish the top pitch, and we’ll make it down the col to you, OK?’

‘I’ll be fine,’ I said firmly. ‘If you can get me into the gully, I can get down to the car, even if it takes me a week on my bum. Finish the climb, Eve: get it ticked. Don’t worry about me.’

She looked appalled. ‘I can’t do that. I won’t leave you.’

‘Honestly, I’d rather deal with it on my own; no need to ruin everyone’s day, eh?’ I said, sounding a lot braver than I felt.

The setting up of the abseil ropes seemed to take an age. No one would let me do anything: at a stroke I’d gone from experienced climber to invalid, a burden to be lowered off over the edge of the route. I seethed inwardly and tried not to think about what lay ahead: the descent; the seeking of medical attention; and, if it really was broken, spending the rest of the holiday as useless, and deeply bored, baggage.

With a mixture of hops and slithers I made it to the stance and looked over the edge. It was a long way down. I hoped the sixty-metre ropes would reach the ground, but it would be impossible to see precisely where they landed from here, since the line of the cliff bowed out and away before cutting back in again. The only way to find out would be to make the ab. I leant against the hot rock, sweating as I watched Jez make knots in the ends (it seemed he was thinking the same thing), then coil them expertly and hurl them out into space. We both held our breath, listening for the sound as they hit the ground, but at the crucial moment all we heard was the cry of a goat. Jez grinned at me. ‘Ey up, sounds like I just killed our supper!’ He handed me the loops from the belay. ‘One thing I don’t understand,’ he said, lowering his voice, ‘is how come you didn’t fall all the way. I saw Miles hadn’t protected the traverse.’

I wouldn’t tell him about the amulet. What had happened seemed unreal now, too strange to have actually occurred. ‘My harness,’ I said brightly at last. ‘It caught on the rock, pulled me up short.’

He gave a low whistle. ‘You’re lucky to be alive.’

I really didn’t want to discuss it any more. My head was swimming in waves of pain now, the specific agony of the ankle pulsing up my thigh and into the core of me. I felt alternately nauseous and faint, then horribly present, a boiling bag of nerves and blood beating against the rock. ‘Right, then,’ I said briskly. ‘Better get going.’

‘Just find some shade and wait for us. We won’t be more than an hour or so.’ He leant across and checked my harness buckles, the descender and screw-gates. ‘I’ll look after Eve,’ he said suddenly.

‘Eve can take care of herself.’

‘Sure, I know. Independent modern woman and all that. Still, it’s just, well, I really like her.’ The lazy eye was suddenly wide and alert to my reaction, his whole being focused on my response. What was he waiting for: my blessing?

I mustered a grin. ‘Good luck with that.’

I manoeuvred myself to the edge and let the ropes take my weight. Abseiling has always terrified me – that initial step into space, like the Fool in the Tarot pack, trusting everything to chance, and a decent anchor – but once I was started it wasn’t so bad. I hopped the first twenty metres SAS-style while contact with the rock was still possible, then I was dangling in clear air like a spider on its line of silk.

Down I went by increments, trying not to overheat the descender, surveying the surroundings, looking for a likely landing spot. I couldn’t quite make out the ends of the ropes against the bright colours of the ground; then with a jolt of realization I understood why. The ends were hanging free at a distance of five metres off the ground where the gully fell suddenly away into what looked like the dry course of a waterfall. My head started to throb and swim. Was I concussed? That was all I needed. Damn. There was no way I could jump that last section, not with a damaged ankle. I made a hitch in the ropes and clipped them back into the harness system so that I could stop and think. Jez wouldn’t be able to see me now that I had vanished under the angle of the cliff. I looked down: could I swing myself further up the gully? I thought not: it would probably mean a punishing drag and fall back into the cliff …

‘Hoi!’

It was a voice, somewhere below me. I spun round, stared down. Two figures in native robes, with dozens of little black goats and some scrawny-looking sheep milling around them, and a dark brown burro laden with panniers. The man who had shouted shaded his eyes and called something again in a language I couldn’t understand. Then, quite clearly he shouted, ‘
Voulez-vouz de l’aide?
’

Well, yes: but what could he do? Here I was hanging on a rope! ‘
Oui, merci!
’ I shouted back, largely because it seemed polite.

The man came clambering further up the gully and called in French, ‘Can you see the ledge there?’ He pointed to a place above him on the cliff, and when I looked down I could see that about ten metres or so below me was a wide ledge with a cave behind it. The rope might just get me there: but the cliff was undercut, and swinging into the ledge would be hard, but I called down, yes. The man ran back to the donkey, rummaged in its packs and returned a moment later with a short rope weighted with a stone. Then he shrugged off his robe, revealing jeans and a T-shirt underneath, and monkeyed up the rock to the ledge with the rope slung over his shoulder. When he turned his face up to me, grinning, I could see that he was indeed one of the local Berbers, despite the polish of his French accent. Under the grubby white turban he wore he had the deep walnut-brown skin and sharp cheekbones of the region, the bright black eyes. ‘Can you come down more?’