Philip Kerr - Esau

Swift did not disagree. Her headache was no better, but not wishing to take any more acetazolamide, she had decided to try to walk through the pain. Keen to be returning to Camp One and a lower altitude where her headache might improve, she retreated from the lip of the crevasse and then turned too quickly, spiking her other crampon’s binding.

‘Let me do it,’ said Jack. Momentarily pausing in his attempt to rebuckle the harness, he bent forward to free her binding, but Swift had already automatically lifted one foot clear of her boot and, tired, simply lost her balance. The next second, both feet had disappeared from underneath her and she hit the ice, landing heavily on her hip.

She felt no pain. What little discomfort there was became instantly absorbed by the realization that she was still sliding. Failing to hear what Jack shouted to her, she turned instinctively onto her stomach, which merely seemed to accelerate the speed of her descent, and as she perceived that she would fall into the crevasse, she felt her heart leap back up the slope, as if by its very motion it might help to propel her forward again.

The scream leaving her chapped lips became instantly amplified as she found herself swallowed up in a great blue-black void of snow and ice.

Marching into the ill-equipped little camp, Cody, Jutta, and Ang Tsering were met by a dog — not the kind of cur that Cody had grown used to seeing in Nepal, but a reasonable-looking animal wearing a proper collar. Upon hearing the dog bark, a powerful-looking Asian emerged from one of the dirty-looking tents. Ang Tsering pressed his hands together in a courteous way, bowed slightly, and began to speak to the man.

‘Namaste, aaraamai hunuhunchha?’

The man said nothing.

‘Tapaai nepaali hunuhunchha?’ said Tsering, bowing once more. When the man shook his head, Tsering added, ‘Tapaaiko ghar kahaa chha ? Where do you come from, please?’

The man grunted and said, ‘Chin.’

‘Achchhaa.’

Tsering turned to Jutta and Cody. ‘He is Chinese.’ Then he shook his head. ‘I don’t speak Chinese.’

‘I speak a bit,’ said Cody, and stepping forward, he tried a little Mandarin.

‘Ni hao,’ he said, smiling. ‘Nin hao Byron. Wo Xing Cody. Nin gui xing? ’

‘Wo xing Chen,’ growled the Chinese, still none too friendly.

‘Wo shi meigno,’ said Cody. ‘Ni zuò shénme gõngzuò?’ What do you do?

The Chinese frowned and thought for a moment.

‘Wo bu dong,’ he said finally. I don’t understand. ‘Qing ni zài shuo yibiàn?’ Would you say that again, please?

‘Keyi,’ said Cody. Sure.

Other men had appeared now. Cody counted four. Three of them regarded Tsering and the two Westerners with obvious suspicion, but the fourth advanced and bowed politely.

‘Nin hao,’ said the fourth man. ‘Yes, I speak English. Welcome.’

‘Excellent,’ said Cody. ‘We’re scientists. We’re based farther up the glacier, near Annapurna.’

‘We are also scientists,’ said the Chinese. ‘Make weather prediction.’ He struggled to add, ‘Meteorology, yes?’

‘Is that so?’ said Cody. ‘One of the members of our expedition is a meteorologist. This is Dr. Henze.’

Jutta smiled and said, ‘Would you like some American cigarettes?’ She opened her jacket and offered a pack of Marlboros.

‘Xiangyan,’ breathed the English speaker with keen appreciation. ‘Yes, please. We have run out.’

‘Sure,’ said Cody. ‘Xiangyan, y’know?’

‘Keep the pack,’ said Jutta.

‘That is very kind of you,’ said the English speaker.

The other men came nearer and shyly accepted Jutta’s cigarettes, which she lit with a storm-proof lighter.

‘We thought we were the only people up here,’ said Cody. ‘How many of you are there?’

‘Just small team. Six of us is all. You like cha ?’

‘Cha,’ said Jutta. ‘Cha would be good.’

They stayed drinking tea for about half an hour before making their excuses, promising to come again with whisky and more cigarettes and their own party’s meteorologist.

‘It’s nice to know we’re not the only ones up here,’ said Cody as they waved goodbye.

‘What do you make of them?’ Cody asked Tsering as they walked back to MBC and the place where they would turn west in the direction of ABC.

‘They have no Sherpas,’ said Tsering.

‘Yes, I wondered about that,’ said Jutta.

‘If they had hired Sherpas, I would have heard about it. In which case, they may be in my country without proper permission. The border with Tibet is less than forty kilometres to the north. I think they are Chinese army soldiers.’

‘Deserters, maybe?’ suggested Jutta. ‘I didn’t see any guns.’

‘Deserters don’t normally have a satellite dish,’ said Cody.

The second that Swift disappeared over the edge of the crevasse, Jack threw himself onto the ice before the rope could yank him after her. He was hardly surprised that she should have been unable to stop her slide. He had yelled at her to lie on her back and dig in with her crampons and her ice axe, but self-arrest was not an easy technique to master. Like most mountaincraft, it needed practice. As a young climber he had learned ice-axe braking on a concave slope, with a safe run-out and sufficient time to perfect the skill. He fell feet-first, on his back, and rolled toward the hand holding the axe head rather than toward the spike. As he started to bring his own weight to bear on the pick and to spread his legs, trying to dig the toes of the crampons into the ice to add to the braking effect of the axe. Swift hit the end of the rope.

Jack gritted his teeth as the sudden impact of her weight threatened to snatch the ice axe out of his grasp. With arms at full stretch, he pressed his face against the ice and prayed that the muscles in his arms and shoulders would take the strain. And that the unbuckled chest harness would stay on — it was only his rucksack that had stopped the harness being torn off his shoulders when Swift fell.

When at last he stopped moving and risked looking back over his shoulder he saw that his feet were just under a metre short of the crevasse. Another second and they would have both been dead.

From inside the crevasse he heard Swift’s screams grow quieter as she struggled to gain control of her fear. He took a deep breath and called out to her.

‘Swift? Are you okay?’

There was a long pause until finally she said in a nearly inaudible voice:

‘Yes, I think so.’

Jack cursed his own stupidity, telling himself he should never have unbuckled the harness without first having secured them both to a separate rope anchor and that he should never have made her walk up from the Rognon. It would have been better to have taken Miles or Mac. She had been more tired than he had thought.

He looked under his chest, searching for the radio to call for help from the other two at Camp One. But the radio was gone. He had been about to call them at Camp One when she fell and he must have dropped it. Looking desperately around he saw that it had fallen on the ice several metres away, next to Swift’s own ice axe, and well out of reach.

He would have to pull her up by himself. Now if the harness could only hold long enough for him to be able to get the rope securely in his hands... as if awakened by this very thought, the karabiner holding the rope began to slip over his shoulder, pressing down the padded strap of his rucksack.