Patrick Woodhead: The Cloud Maker (2010)

Rega moved farther on, away from the heat, his felt boots passing soundlessly over the stone paving. So far he hadn’t seen a single person, either soldier or monk.

Then he began to hear it: a thin, keening sound rising above the crackle of the fire.

Squatting behind one of the huge wooden columns that surrounded the main courtyard, Rega then saw dim silhouettes moving between the shadows. Most of the monks stood round the edges of the courtyard while in the centre, about thirty of the eldest or most infirm stood together, herded into a tight cluster like cattle.

Chinese soldiers stood in front of them, their black uniforms melting into the night.

About ten yards from the main entrance to the courtyard, a young novice monk had been blindfolded. He stood facing a blank section of wall, shoulders hunched. Rega looked more closely and saw a rifle hanging loosely from his hands, the muzzle hovering only an inch or so above the ground.

Suddenly the soldiers around him started shouting, thrusting their rifles into the air like clenched fists.

‘Shoot! Shoot!’

As the novice took a pace backwards, struggling to raise the barrel of the rifle towards the blank wall with trembling hands, two of the soldiers grabbed one of the older monks from the huddle in the centre and pushed him directly in front of the weapon. Invisible to the novice, the old monk stumbled in front of him, his face only a few feet from the gun barrel.

A high-pitched wail rose and echoed around the courtyard as the other monks bore witness to the scene.

‘ Shoot!Shoot! ’ shouted the soldiers once again. The novice paused, bewildered by the noise.

One of the soldiers closed in on him. He moved with the swagger of authority, his sleeves rolled up past his elbows. Epaulettes with gold insignia flashed in the firelight as he went to stand directly behind the novice. Rega could see that he was whispering something. Then the rifle cracked and the novice was sent staggering back, knocking into the officer behind him.

There was silence. The wail of the monks halted as the body of the old monk slumped on to the courtyard’s flagstones, his legs crumpling beneath him.

The bewildered silence was suddenly pierced by further shots, but this time it was the other soldiers, firing their rifles into the air and cheering.

The officer moved round in front of the novice and, taking the rifle from him, patted his shoulder reassuringly. The boy’s knees sagged and the officer reached forward to support him. For a moment they stood locked together, two figures set apart from the others.

Then, with practised movements, the officer swivelled the rifle in his hands and slammed the bolt action shut once again. Without turning to look at the huddled group of old monks, he shouted, ‘ Next!’

Rega watched, his mouth dry with horror as another man was shunted forward from the group. Why the old ones? Were they simply too much of a burden to take back over the mountain pass? Or was he witnessing an example of the senseless violence they had all heard was accompanying this so-called ‘Cultural Revolution’?

In the far corner of the courtyard he suddenly heard the sound of women screaming. It had to be the two nuns that had arrived as emissaries from Namzong nunnery. The temple doors were flung open and, through the gloom, he could see what a small group of soldiers was doing inside. For a moment he watched, revulsion rising like bile in his throat. Then a sudden surge of adrenaline unlocked the paraly-sis in his legs. He must get away from this place, get out, tell others.

As Rega went to turn away, he felt a sudden push from behind. The blow sent him sprawling forward on to the flagstones and Rega twisted round in time to see the grinning face of a soldier stepping out from the shadows.

He was a big man, with a jowly face and dark, gleeful eyes. He grabbed the neck of Rega’s tunic and pulled him up with one arm so that their faces were almost touching. The stink of stale tobacco was sharp on his breath.

‘You like watching?’ The fillings in his teeth gleamed in the dark. ‘We can fix that.’

Spinning Rega’s wiry body round, he slammed his knee into his back and pinned him to the floor, pressing the side of his face against the flagstones. Rega felt his mind empty. He didn’t say a word, but just stared past the columns of the courtyard at the flames leaping up to swallow the roof of the library. The blue and orange tongues of fire were iridescent against the black sky.

Above him, the soldier had untied the sling from his rifle and was quickly looping it into two knots, a few inches apart. He drew the sling in front of Rega’s face so that there was a knot in front of each eye socket. There was a pause, then Rega screamed as his whole head was yanked backwards with a violent jerk. The soldier twisted the sling round like a tourniquet, tightening the pressure with each turn.

Rega clawed behind him with useless hands, the scream dying on his lips. His cheeks tightened, trying to resist the immense pressure as the knots burrowed deeper and deeper into his skull. With another half-turn, the knots sank further still until his eyeballs imploded, a viscous, cloudy liquid streaming down his cheeks.

Rega let out a gurgling sound as he went limp on the floor.

Those beautiful, burning rooftops were the last thing he’d ever see.

Chapter 1

20 April 2005

It was six in the morning and dawn had just broken over the roof of the world. Tawny fingers of light filtered down past the jagged peaks of the Himalayas, lending a luminous glow to the orange tents staked down on the dark scree.

Luca Matthews unzipped his tent and, still in his thermal underwear, stepped out into the freezing mountain air. He was tall with a powerful back that stretched the fabric of his thermals as he unfolded himself from the tent. Scruffy, dark-blond hair fell across a face that was deeply tanned by the intense mountain sun. Only his eyes were ringed with paler patches from where he had been wearing his glacier goggles.

For a few moments he stood there, sipping coffee from a tin mug and savouring the feeling of being the first up. He only ever needed a few hours’ sleep each night and often found the morning’s silence one of the rare moments in the day when he felt truly calm. As he breathed in the tingling air, the heat from his mug eased the swelling in his knuckles. Peeling some dead skin off the pads of his left hand, he ran his finger gingerly over a cut that stretched all the way back to his wrist, and shook his head. Bloody climbing injuries. They just never seemed to heal in the dry mountain air.

Grabbing a sheepskin coat that he had bought for a few hundred rupees from one of the market stalls in Kathmandu, he weaved past the smouldering remains of the campfire, balanced his mug carefully on a rock, and urinated. When he was younger, his father had impressed upon him the importance of having a good view when taking a piss. Little did Luca know then it would turn out to be one of the only things that he and the old bastard would agree on.

Crooking his neck to one side, Luca yawned and massaged a shoulder blade. After five days of lugging provisions up to base camp, the straps of his rucksack had bitten deep into his back. No doubt about it, this was the most thankless part of the climb: effort without technique or reward, encouraged only by the sight of an occasional peak piercing the blanket of cloud overhead.

Hopping on to another boulder, he sat down and wrapped his arms round his legs, drawing his knees up under his chin in his habitual pose. His eyes followed the incline of the mountain as it curved up for two or three miles before hitting the first glacier, a snub nose of pitted ice gleaming brilliantly in the morning light. Beyond it, range after range of mountains extended back to the horizon, their pinnacles reaching high enough to be whipped by the ferocious winds of the earth’s Gulf Stream.