Philip Kerr - Esau

Jameson walked back along the far side of the crevasse to the ladder bridge and waved to Ang Tsering.

‘Okay, throw me a line,’ he said.

The rope securing him during his first walk across the bridge had been used to haul the net over and then to position it inside the crevasse.

Tsering looked around the ground and then shouted to one of the Sherpas.

‘Dori kahaa chha?’

Looking crestfallen, a man named Nyima, walked back up the slope and disappeared over the top of the wall of the ice corridor.

‘He’s gone to fetch some more rope,’ Tsering explained.

Jameson nodded patiently, once again preparing himself mentally to cross the void.

A minute or two passed and then the Sherpa returned, bowed to the assistant sirdar, and said that there was no more rope. Tsering began to curse Nyima loudly and told him to go down to Camp One and fetch some.

‘Look, never mind,’ said Jameson. ‘There’s no time to go back down. I’ll have to do it without.’

Tsering looked appalled.

‘But, sahib. It is dangerous. Suppose you fall?’

Jameson picked up the rope that had been used to lower the ladder across the crevasse like a drawbridge, intending to use it as a makeshift banister, and placed a foot on the ladder.

‘Then I suppose I’ll have to try to hold on to this,’ he said coolly, and started to walk.

Gingerly, like a man stepping through a minefield, Jameson made his way across the ladder, pausing only once, to wait until a powerful gust of wind had died away.

Reaching the other side, he brushed aside Nyima’s apologies and Tsering’s continued praise for the ingenuity of his trap.

‘Yes indeed,’ said Tsering. ‘The yeti will get a real surprise.’

From his rucksack, Jameson removed a long cylindrical-looking object and began to attach it to one of the ropes supporting the net.

‘And what is this, sahib?’

‘This?’ Jameson grinned another manic-looking smile. ‘This might just turn out to be my early-morning wake-up call.’

Still paralyzed by the Ketamine. Jack lay listening to the chatter of the yetis, waiting helplessly for Number One to rip his guts out with his teeth and fingers. Chewing the control box investigatively, the yeti appeared to be in no real hurry, and Jack decided that his main hope of survival now lay in the taste of the plastic box. If Number One was persuaded that the rest of Jack’s body was equally unappetizing, then its late dinner might be cancelled.

Number One stopped chewing and broke the box into two pieces as if it had been a stick of bread. Appetite gave way to curiosity as the yeti began to pick the chips and wires out of the box.

Jack found small consolation in the sight. He felt like a teddy bear which at any moment might find its stomach ripped open by some inquisitive child in search of the source of its growl.

Another big silverback, the one Jack recognized as Bossman, walked stoopingly toward Jack’s supine body, eliciting a warning bark from Number One. Ignoring the obvious warning, Bossman sat down and began to tug at Jack’s boot. This time Number One flung the control box aside, strutted over, and, separated only by a small tree, sat down immediately beside Bossman and ignored him with studious care. But it seemed plain from the reaction of the rest of the group that something was going to happen, something violent: All the yetis fell silent.

Suddenly Bossman slapped down the tree between himself and Number One, tore off a useful-looking branch, and stood up, brandishing it like a club. Number One needed no more provocation. Roaring angrily, he too stood up, and Jack saw that not only was he at least a foot bigger than Bossman but also that he was armed with Jack’s ice axe.

It was fortunate for Bossman that Number One struck him with the shovel-like adze instead of the sharper and more lethal pick. The blow landed on Bossman’s shoulder, and instantly Bossman began to retreat toward Jack, screaming hysterically.

For several anxious seconds Jack thought he would find himself trampled to death by the huge feet of the defeated yeti. Instead his whole head was suddenly drenched with Bossman’s noxious-smelling urine as real fear caused the creature to lose control over its capacious bladder.

His eyes, ears, nose, and mouth filled with the yeti’s piss; Jack swallowed involuntarily — Ketamine allowed the normal pharyngeal-laryngeal reflexes — as Bossman fled downhill, far out of Number One’s way.

Number One turned to face the rest of the group, his crest and head hair erect, barking excitedly and still brandishing Jack’s ice axe as if seeking to draw out any other potential challenges to his leadership. A few seconds later he charged into the midst of the group, grabbed a young female by her neck hair as she knelt submissively in front of him and then, pig-grunting with annoyance, began to mate with her as if simultaneously demonstrating his dominance over the rest of his harem.

A minute or two passed, and then Number One sat down again, staring scornfully at the rest of the group, and began eating the leaves of a rhododendron bush.

Jack realized that Number One had forgotten about him. Reeking of Bossman’s urine, his eyes stinging from the acids it contained. Jack prayed for deliverance and tried to recall exactly how long the snow leopard had remained drugged after Miles Jameson had fired his dart. He thought it had been an hour. Yet he also had an uncomfortable memory of Jameson mentioning that recovery periods of as long as five hours were not uncommon. Jack decided that he must have been lying there for not much more than thirty minutes. Perhaps fifty minutes had passed since the first attack. He felt his eyelids flutter. Did that mean he was tired and wanted to sleep? Or that he was recovering the use of his muscles? He tried to blink and succeeded. He was recovering. His heart leaped within his chest. With it returned the pain in his ribs. And the big silverback.

Smacking his lips hungrily. Number One sat down beside Jack’s head and sniffed at him, apparently undeterred by the stench of urine. Then he reached inside the suit and curled a big walking-stick handle of a forefinger underneath the neck of Jack’s water-warmed underwear. Fascinated by the elastic collar and the way it snapped back against Jack’s chest every time it was released, the yeti managed to amuse itself for the best part of two or three precious minutes. With every passing second Jack was starting to regain feeling in his body. He wanted to maintain control until the very last possible moment. To obtain the maximum possible shock value. Because if the yeti thought he was dead, then maybe he could use that to his advantage. Seeing the corpse of a defeated enemy spring back to life might surprise Number One just long enough for Jack to make his escape. It wasn’t much of a plan, but it would have to do. Clenching his buttocks, flexing his calf muscles, wriggling his toes. Jack prepared to come back from the dead.

With bared teeth Number One leaned near Jack’s throat.

It would have to be now.

Jack scrambled to his feet, yelling at the top of his voice.

‘Bastard!’

Number One recoiled, voiding a stream of diarrheic dung onto the ground before running away through the undergrowth.

With a series of grunts, barks, and ear-piercing screams, the rest of the group followed him, crashing through the rhododendron forest, flattening small trees and breaking through bushes in their desperation to be away from whatever it was that had frightened a yeti of Number One’s power and status.

Unsteady on his feet and feeling nauseated again — he was uncertain if this was due to his injuries, the drug, or to the yeti urine he had swallowed — Jack staggered back up the gradient and through the forest to the ice cavern. Arriving laboriously at the top, he was violently sick, causing such a pain in his injured side that he collapsed onto the icy floor and almost passed out. On his hands and knees he forced himself to go on. There was no time to lose. Oddly he still felt warm although he could not see how the SCE suit could be working and attributed the continued heat of his body to the Ketamine. Perhaps, he reasoned, one of the side effects of Ketamine anaesthesia was heat production. He had no idea how long such a state might last, but with the air temperature already well below zero and still falling, it was now imperative that he keep moving. At least there was no wind to cope with inside the cavern.