Десмонд Бэгли - High Citadel

Forester forced his lagging brain into action. ‘How far up do you think it extends?’

‘Who knows?’ said Rohde. He turned and squatted with his back to the wind and Forester followed his example. ‘We cannot climb this. It was bad enough on the other side of the glacier yesterday when we were fresh and there was no wind. To attempt this now would be madness.’ He beat his hands together.

‘Maybe it’s just an isolated outcrop,’ suggested Forester. ‘We can’t see very far, you know.’

Rohde grasped the ice-axe. ‘Wait here. I will find out.’

Once again he left Forester and scrambled upwards. Forester heard the steady chipping of the axe above the noise of the wind and pieces of ice and flakes of rock fell down out of the grey obscurity. He paid out rope as Rohde tugged and the hood about his head flapped loose and the wind stung his cheeks smartly.

He had just lifted his hand to wrap the hood about his face when Rohde fell. Forester heard the faint shout and saw the shapeless figure hurtling towards him from above out of the screaming turmoil. He grabbed the rope, turned and dug his heels into the snow ready to take the shock. Rohde tumbled past him in an uncontrollable fall and slid down the slope until he was brought up sharply on the end of the rope by a jerk which almost pulled Forester off his feet.

Forester hung on until he was sure that Rohde would go no farther down the slope. He saw him stir and then roll over to sit up and rub his leg. He shouted, ‘Miguel, are you okay?’ then began to descend.

Rohde turned his face upwards and Forester saw that each hair of his beard stubble was coated with rime. ‘My leg,’ he said. ‘I’ve hurt my leg.’

Forester bent over him and straightened the leg, probing with his fingers. The trouser-leg was torn and, as Forester put his hand inside, he felt the sticky wetness of blood. After a while he said, ‘It’s not broken, but you’ve scraped it badly.’

‘It is impossible up there,’ said Rohde, his face twisted in pain. ‘No man could climb that — even in good weather.’

‘How far does the rock go?’

‘As far as I could see, but that was not far.’ He paused. ‘We must go back and try the other side.’

Forester was appalled. ‘But the glacier is on the other side; we can’t cross the glacier in this weather.’

‘Perhaps there is a good way up this side of the glacier,’ said Rohde. He turned his head and looked up towards the rocks from which he had fallen. ‘One thing is certain — that way is impossible.’

‘We want something to bind this trouser-leg together,’ said Forester. ‘I don’t know much about it, but I don’t think it would be a good thing if this torn flesh became frostbitten.’

‘The pack,’ said Rohde. ‘Help me with the pack.’

Forester helped him take off the pack and he emptied the contents into the snow and tore up the blanket material into strips which he bound tightly round Rohde’s leg. He said wryly, ‘Our equipment gets less and less. I can put some of this stuff into my pocket, but not much.’

‘Take the Primus,’ said Rohde. ‘And some kerosene. If we have to go as far as the glacier perhaps we can find a place beneath an ice fall that is sheltered from the wind, where we can make a hot drink.’

Forester put the bottle of kerosene and a handful of bouillon cubes into his pocket and slung the pressure stove over his shoulder suspended by a length of electric wire. As he did so, Rohde sat up suddenly and winced as he put unexpected pressure on his leg. He groped in the snow with scrabbling fingers. ‘The ice-axe,’ he said frantically. ‘The ice-axe — where is it?’

‘I didn’t see it,’ said Forester.

They both looked into the whirling grey darkness down the slope and Rohde felt an empty sensation in the pit of his stomach. The ice-axe had been invaluable; without it they could not have come as far as they had, and without it he doubted if they could get to the top of the pass. He looked down and saw that his hands were shaking uncontrollably and he knew he was coming to the end of his strength — physical and mental.

But Forester felt a renewed access of spirit. He said, ‘Well, what of it? This goddam mountain has done its best to kill us and it hasn’t succeeded yet — and my guess is that it won’t. If we’ve come this far we can go the rest of the way. It’s only another five hundred feet to the top — five hundred lousy feet — do you hear that, Miguel?’

Rohde smiled wearily. ‘But we have to go down again.’

‘So what? It’s just another way of getting up speed. I’ll lead off this time. I can follow our tracks back to where we turned off.’

And it was in this spirit of unreasonable and unreasoning optimism that Forester led the way down with Rohde limping behind. He found it fairly easy to follow their tracks and followed them faithfully, even when they wavered where Rohde had diverged. He had not the same faith in his own wilderness path-finding that he had in Rohde’s, and he knew that if he got off track in this blizzard he would never find it again. As it was, when they reached where they had turned off to the right and struck across the slope, the track was so faint as to be almost indistinguishable, the wind having nearly obliterated it with drifting snow.

He stopped and let Rohde catch up. ‘How’s the leg?’

Rohde’s grin was a snarl. ‘The pain has stopped. It is numb with the cold — and very stiff.’

I’ll break trail then,’ said Forester. ‘You’d better take it easy for a while.’ He smiled and felt the stiffness of his cheeks. ‘You can use the rope like a rein to guide me — one tug to go left, two tugs to go right.’

Rohde nodded without speaking, and they pressed on again. Forester found the going harder in the unbroken snow, especially as he did not have the ice-axe to test the way ahead. It’s not so bad here, he thought; there are no crevasses — but it’ll be goddam tricky if we have to cross the glacier. In spite of the hard going, he was better mentally than he had been; the task of leadership kept him alert and forced his creaking brain to work.

It seemed to him that the wind was not as strong and he hoped it was dropping. From time to time he swerved to the right under instruction from Rohde, but each time came to deep drifts and had to return to the general line of march. They came to the jumbled ice columns of the glacier without finding a good route up to the pass.

Forester dropped to his knees in the snow and felt tears of frustration squeeze out on to his cheeks. ‘What now?’ he asked — not that he expected a good answer.

Rohde fell beside him, half-sitting, half-lying, his stiff leg jutting out before him. ‘We go into the glacier a little way to find shelter. The wind will not be as bad in there.’ He looked at his watch then held it to his ear. ‘It is two o’clock — four hours to nightfall; we cannot spare the time but we must drink something hot, even if it is only hot water.’

‘Two o’clock,’ said Forester bitterly. ‘I feel as though I’ve been wandering round this mountain for a hundred years, and made personal acquaintance with every goddam snowflake.’

They pushed on into the tangled ice maze of the glacier and Forester was deathly afraid of hidden crevasses. Twice he plunged to his armpits in deep snow and was hauled out with difficulty by Rohde. At last they found what they were looking for — a small cranny in the ice sheltered from the wind — and they sank into the snow with relief, glad to be out of the cutting blast.

Rohde assembled the Primus and lit it and then melted some snow. As before, they found the rich meaty taste of the bouillon nauseating and had to content themselves with hot water. Forester felt the heat radiating from his belly and was curiously content. He said, ‘How far to the top from here?’