Десмонд Бэгли - High Citadel

Suddenly Peabody lost his nerve and got up on to his hands and knees and scrambled towards the end of the bridge. ‘Get down, you goddam fool,’ Forester yelled.

Suddenly he was enveloped in a cloud of snow dust and Peabody cannoned into him, knocking him flat. There was a roar as the bridge collapsed into the crevasse in a series of diminishing echoes, and when Forester got to his feet he looked across through the swirling fog of powdery snow and saw Rohde standing helplessly on the other side.

He turned and grabbed Peabody, who was clutching at the snow in an ecstasy of delight at being on firm ground. Hauling him to his feet, Forester hit him with his open palm in a vicious double slap across the face. ‘You selfish bastard,’ he shouted. ‘Can’t you ever do anything right?’

Peabody’s head lolled on his shoulders and there was a vacant look in his eyes. When Forester let him go he dropped to the ground, muttering incomprehensibly, and grovelled at Forester’s feet. Forester kicked him for good measure and turned to Rohde. ‘What the hell do we do now?’

Rohde seemed unperturbed. He hefted the ice-axe like a spear and said, ‘Stand aside.’ Then he threw it and it stuck into the snow in front of Forester. ‘I think I can swing across,’ he said. ‘Hammer the axe into the snow as deep as you can.’

Forester felt the rope at his waist. ‘This stuff isn’t too strong, you know. It won’t bear much weight.’

Rohde measured the gap with his eye. ‘I think there is enough to make a triple strand,’ he said. ‘That should take my weight.’

‘It’s your neck,’ said Forester, and began to beat the ice-axe into the snow. But he knew that all their lives were at stake. He did not have the experience to make the rest of the trip alone — his chances were still less if he was hampered by Peabody. He doubted if he could find his way out of the glacier safely.

He hammered the axe into the snow and ice for three-quarters of its length and tugged at it to make sure it was firm. Then he turned to Peabody, who was sobbing and drooling into the snow and stripped the rope from him. He tossed the ends across to Rohde who tied them round his waist and sat on the edge of the crevasse, looking into the depths between his knees and appearing as unconcerned as though he was sitting in an armchair.

Forester fastened the triple rope to the ice-axe and belayed a loop around his body, kicking grooves in the snow for his heels. ‘I’ve taken as much of the strain as I can,’ he called.

Rohde tugged on the taut rope experimentally, and seemed satisfied. He paused. ‘Put something between the rope and the edge to stop any chafing.’ So Forester stripped off his hood and wadded it into a pad, jamming it between the rope and the icy edge of the crevasse.

Rohde tugged again and measured his probable point of impact fifteen feet down on the farther wall of the crevasse.

Then he launched himself into space.

Forester saw him disappear and felt the sudden strain on the rope, then heard the clash of Rohde’s boots on the ice wall beneath. Thankfully he saw that there was no sudden easing of the tension on the rope and knew that Rohde had made it. All that remained now was for him to climb up.

It seemed an age before Rohde’s head appeared above the edge and Forester went forward to haul him up. This is one hell of a man, he thought; this is one hell of a good joe. Rohde sat down not far from the edge and wiped the sweat from his face. ‘That was not a good thing to do,’ he said.

Forester cocked his head at Peabody. ‘What do we do about him? He’ll kill us all yet.’ He took the gun from his pocket and Rohde’s eyes widened. ‘I think this is the end of the trail for Peabody.’

Peabody lay in the snow muttering to himself and Forester spoke as though he were not there, and it is doubtful if Peabody heard what was being said about him.

Rohde looked Forester in the eye. ‘Can you shoot a defenceless man — even him?’

‘You’re damned right I can,’ snapped Forester. ‘We don’t have only our own lives to think of — there are the others down at the bridge depending on us; this crazy fool will let us all down.’

He lifted the pistol and aimed at the back of Peabody’s head. He was just taking up the slack on the trigger when his wrist was caught by Rohde. ‘No, Ray; you are not a murderer.’

Forester tensed the muscles of his arm and fought Rohde’s grip for a moment, then relaxed, and said, ‘Okay, Miguel; but you’ll see I’m right. He’s selfish and he’ll never do anything right — but I guess we’re stuck with him.’

Altogether it took them three hours to cross the glacier and by then Forester was exhausted, but Rohde would allow no rest. ‘We must get as high as we can while there is still light,’ he said. ‘Tonight will weaken us very much — it is not good to spend a night in the open without a tent or the right kind of clothing.’

Forester managed a grin. Everything to Rohde was either good or not good; black and white with no shades of grey. He kicked Peabody to his feet and said tiredly, ‘Okay; lead on, MacDuff.’

Rohde looked up at the pass. ‘We lost height in crossing the glacier; we still have to ascend between five and six hundred metres to get to the top.’

Sixteen hundred to two thousand feet, Forester translated silently. He followed Rohde’s gaze. To their left was the glacier, oozing imperceptibly down the mountain and scraping itself by a rock wall. Above, the clean sweep of snow was broken by a line of cliffs halfway up to the top of the pass. ‘Do we have to climb that ?’ he demanded.

Rohde scrutinized the terrain carefully, then shook his head. ‘I think we can go by the cliffs there — on the extreme right. That will bring us on top of the cliffs. We will bivouac there tonight.’

He put his hand in his pocket and produced the small leather bag of coca quids he had compounded back in the camp. ‘Hold out your hand,’ he said. ‘You will need these now.’

He shook a dozen of the green squares into Forester’s palm and Forester put one into his mouth and chewed it. It had an acrid and pungent taste which pleasantly warmed the inside of his mouth. ‘Not too many,’ warned Rohde. ‘Or your mouth will become inflamed.’

It was useless giving them to Peabody. He had relapsed into his state of automatism and followed Rohde like a dog on a lead, obedient to the tugs on the rope. As Rohde set out on the long climb up to the cliffs he followed, mechanically going through the proper climbing movements as though guided by something outside himself. Forester, watching him from behind, hoped there would be no crisis; as long as things went well Peabody would be all right, but in an emergency he would certainly break, as O’Hara had prophesied.

He did not remember much of that long and toilsome climb. Perhaps the coca contributed to that, for he found himself in much the same state as he imagined Peabody to be in. Rhythmically chewing the quid, he climbed automatically, following the trail broken by the indefatigable Rohde.

At first the snow was thick and crusted, and then, as they approached the extreme right of the line of cliffs, the slope steepened and the snow cover became thinner and they found that under it was a sheet of ice. Climbing in these conditions without crampons was difficult, and, as Rohde confessed a little time afterwards, would have been considered impossible by anyone who knew the mountains.

It took them two hours to get above the rock cliffs and to meet a great disappointment. Above the cliffs and set a few feet back was a continuous ice wall over twenty feet high, surmounted by an overhanging snow cornice. The wall stretched across the width of the pass in an unbroken line.