Mitchell Smith - Moonrise

He pulled off a mitten, reached over to Nancy's pack, and tugged loose the blanket-roll's ties… kept a careful grip as the wind flapped it open, then tucked the thick wool close around her, and under her fur-booted feet. Then he untied his own blanket, wrapped it around him – and saw Richard – already only a shadow – doing the same for himself and Errol.

Pulling his mitten back on, Baj found almost too much warmth in furs now wrapped in wool… Almost too much warmth, but only for a little while, until pitch-blackness absolute came down the Wall, and the wind gradually rose to howling, buffeting so they swung and swung with it, once thudding back against the sheer ice they were fastened to. Then, cold slid in like narrow knives, with slow and searching thrusts, so he put his blanketed arm around Nancy and hugged her, burrowing deep as he could in furs and wool, as if into safety from a monstrous world.

It seemed a storm extraordinary, so endlessly savage – though Baj supposed this was the storm of every night along the Wall. The wind, cold, and terror of the gulf below their frail web of woven leather line, seemed to gape to swallow them as if the nighthad sense malevolent… Their narrow sling swayed in the blasts of wind, shook – and Baj had visions of small steel hooks wrenched looser and looser from crumbling holds… of greased braided leather, frozen to fragile, suddenly snapping so they were spilled to fall endlessly… until even screaming faded to silence, and they fell quiet as if already dead.

There was no rest – any exhausted drift to dreaming was driven away by wind-noise screaming and continuous, and the sudden jolting of their seating as greater gusts came booming in, the storm battering at the Wall… That accustomed meeting of wind and ice seemed too important, too mighty a thing to share presence with living creatures.

Baj gave up his life several times as the night roared on… gave his up, but refused to part with Nancy's. He made her his jewel in the dark, his place of refuge and silence – too valuable to lose to anything. Though the cold, if it continued so bitter on the wind – furs and blankets become only wishes for warmth against it – would certainly kill all but her.

He held Nancy to him, clutched her blanket about her, made certain her feet were tucked in, her fox-face deep in furs – found an icy little ear, once, and covered it. She became his reason through the night, and he was certain no Jesus in the world would deny him.

The Shrikes, chewing frozen lumps of seal-blubber, hauled them from their sling at first light – handed out frozen portions of the same – then hurried them to roll their blankets, drink water from flasks their bodies had warmed through the night, piss out into empty air (Nancy and Patience squatting in the webbing). And those accomplished, hustled them onto vertical ice and climbing.

Annoyed at first, still weary, and frightened by what seemed casually dangerous rushing, Baj saw as they began that Dolphus-Shrike and his tribesmen intended them no time to freeze in fear… wanted them, as Warm-times had had it, to "hit the road." This road being all ice, and two miles high.

As they had roused them up and out, so the Shrikes harried Baj and the others along, kept each of them usually roped to one tribesman or another, but climbing, always climbing – hauled up, hoisted up, directed up and expected to do as directed – with only very short rests on rough ice ledges or clinging with handholds and the muk-boots' steel points to sheer verglas walls… They were not given time for consideration to become terror.

Dolphus-Shrike's orders to them, were all the Shrikes' orders to them. "Move."

Baj found, even so, that fear for Nancy had been growing in him like a crab-tumor despite the hurry, the agonized labor of clawing his weight and his pack's weight up… and up. Clinging to inches-deep frost, coating a height of blue-green ice adamant as leaded glass, he heard a Shrike's impatient snarl beneath him, and hastily swung his hatchets – picked the points in, first left, then right – and heaved himself up, muk-boot spikes kicked in for fragile supporting steps.

The Shrike climbing beneath him said something unpleasant in very poor book-English, and struck Baj's left boot. "Move the ass," the Shrike said, pronouncing that perfectly.

… Still, there were places – many places – where even the Shrikes took care, and cared for their clumsy companions with double roping, belayed to steel ice-hooks hammered in. There, where the glacier's wall had opened, or some massive block had fallen free, was… a space, a place entirely air, over which first one tribesman, then another, had to swing… swing back and forth, gathering momentum, swing sailing through gusting wind until he struck and held so tenuously that Baj felt his own gut grip to help the man hold on.

Then the ice-hooks were pounded in, a slender braided line knotted to them – and a second and third Shrike went hand over hand above two thousand feet of nothing… and beckoned first Richard (his weight sagging the thin rope), then Patience, then Errol – who went easily as the Shrikes had gone, unworried – then Nancy (while Baj closed his eyes). Then his turn.

… Slowly, through this second day, Baj became almost as interested as afraid. The Shrikes' every move was education in ice climbing. Consideration of the varying quality of the ice above all – rich blue-green to crumbling gray – the use of hatchet picks, roping and belaying, the use of muk-boot spikes to kick tiny steps to stand on… and occasionally even their javelins used butt to point as temporary bridging over vacancy. It was interesting even during exhaustion, muscle-wrenching effort, and fear of falling – and all the more interesting since only that education kept them alive.

Baj learned, and saw the others learning – though of course as children, compared to the Shrikes' veteran certainties.

And there were odors of ice – some clear as clear water, others dank as spoiled springs. Those odors, and the bitter cold that struck like willow switches, cutting at any exposed skin while the wind whistled, moaned, hissed past them on vertical pitches, tugging at their heavy packs to pull them out… away from their fragile holds into the perfect freedom of falling.

… Baj spent considerable effort, through a brutally effortful day, in avoiding looking down – but couldn't help it, sometimes. Then, the sunlit gulf, the sheer down-diminishing face of the Wall – shining in places blinding white, in others flashing reflected blues, greens, and diamond clears from broken battlements infinitely greater than any raised in stone by men or Persons – these all fell away beneath him to a singing emptiness that drew him down.

He avoided looking beneath them, and warned Nancy – climbing just above – against it.

Panting at a place, clinging with her hatchet-points, she'd turned her fur-hooded head and said, "I close my eyes." Then, "Oh, Baj… be careful."

And he was – was careful for both of them, constantly considering how he might catch her, reach out and grip her arm if she fell past him. Catch, hold her, and let go never,

… The notion of "catching" did suffer, as evening came after what seemed a week-long day. Baj – hugging a cracked ice-face (kissing it, nearly) – found it very difficult to raise either arm, very difficult to close his fists. His arms burned from fingers to shoulders; his left shoulder ached. The wounded cheek and side of his head felt as if snagged with fish-hooks.

The pain a blessing in a way, since it kept great heights from his thoughts.

Still, Baj missed the day, when the dark came down.

Higher on the Wall, the second night was worse than the first had been, the wind rumbling to crash against the ice cliffs like surf. Twice, almost asleep, Baj lurched alert in terror, sure a flailing anchor-line had worked free… and the fall begun.