High Citadel

I

Rohde hacked vigorously at the ice wall with the small axe. He had retrieved it — a grisly job — and now it was coming in very useful, returning to its designed function as an instrument for survival. Forester was lying, a huddled heap of old clothing, next to the ice wall, well away from the edge of the cliff. Rohde had stripped the outer clothing from Peabody’s corpse and used it to wrap up Forester as warmly as possible before he pushed the body into the oblivion of the gathering mists below.

They needed warmth because it was going to be a bad night. The ledge was now enveloped in mist and it had started to snow in brief flurries. A shelter was imperative. Rohde stopped for a moment to bend over Forester who was still conscious, and adjusted the hood which had fallen away from his face. Then he resumed his chopping at the ice wall.

Forester had never felt so cold in his life. His hands and feet were numb and his teeth chattered uncontrollably. He was so cold that he welcomed the waves of pain which rose from his chest; they seemed to warm him and they prevented him from slipping into unconsciousness. He knew he must not let that happen because Rohde had warned him about it, slapping his face to drive the point home.

It had been a damned near thing, he thought. Another couple of slashes from Peabody’s knife and the rope would have parted to send him plunging to his death on the snow slopes far below. Rohde had been quick enough to kill Peabody when the need for it arose, even though he had been squeamish earlier. Or perhaps it wasn’t that; perhaps he believed in expending just the necessary energy and effort that the job required. Forester, watching Rohde’s easy strokes and the flakes of ice falling one by one, suddenly chuckled — a time-and-motion-study killer; that was one for the books. His weak chuckle died away as another wave of pain hit him; he clenched his teeth and waited for it to leave.

When Rohde had killed Peabody he had waited rigidly for a long time, holding the rope taut for fear that Peabody’s body would slide over the edge, taking Forester with it. Then he began to dig the ice-axe deeper into the snow, hoping to use it to belay the rope; but he encountered ice beneath the thin layer of snow and, using only one hand, he could not force the axe down.

He changed his tactics. He pulled up the axe and, frightened of being pulled forward on the slippery ice, first chipped two deep steps into which he could put his feet. That gave him the leverage to haul himself upright by the rope and he felt Peabody’s body shift under the strain. He stopped because he did not know how far Peabody had succeeded in damaging the rope and he was afraid it might part and let Forester go.

He took the axe and began to chip at the ice, making a large circular groove about two feet in diameter. He found it a difficult task because the head of the axe, improvised by Willis, was set at an awkward angle on the shaft and it was not easy to use. After nearly an hour of chipping he deepened the groove enough to take the rope, and carefully unfastening it from round his waist he belayed it round the ice mushroom he had created.

That left him free to walk to the edge of the cliff. He did not go forward immediately but stood for a while, stamping his feet and flexing his muscles to get the blood going again. He had been lying in a very cramped position. When he looked over the edge he saw that Forester was unconscious, dangling limply on the end of the rope, his head lolling.

The rope was badly frayed where Peabody had attacked it, so Rohde took a short length from round his waist and carefully knotted it above and below the potential break. That done, he began to haul up the sagging and heavy body of Forester. It was hopeless to think of going farther that day. Forester was in no condition to move; the fall had tightened the rope cruelly about his chest and Rohde, probing carefully, thought that some ribs were cracked, if not broken. So he rolled Forester up in warm clothing and relaxed on the ledge between the rock cliff and the ice wall, wondering what to do next.

It was a bad place to spend a night — even a good night — and this was going to be a bad one. He was afraid that if the wind rose to the battering strength that it did during a blizzard, then the overhanging cornice on the ice wall would topple — and if it did they would be buried without benefit of gravediggers. Again, they must have shelter from the wind and the snow, so he took the small axe, wiped the blood and the viscous grey matter from the blade, and began to chip a shallow cave in the ice wall.

II

The wind rose just after nightfall and Rohde was still working. As the first fierce gusts came he stopped and looked around wearily; he had been working for nearly three hours, chipping away at the hard ice with a blunt and inadequate instrument more suited to chopping household firewood. The small cleft he had made in the ice would barely hold the two of them but it would have to do.

He dragged Forester into the ice cave and propped him up against the rear wall, then he went out and brought in the three packs, arranging them at the front of the cave to form a low and totally inadequate wall which, however, served as some sort of bulwark against the drifting snow. He fumbled in his pocket and turned to Forester. ‘Here,’ he said urgently. ‘Chew these.’

Forester mumbled and Rohde slapped him. ‘You must not sleep — not yet,’ he said. ‘You must chew coca.’ He forced open Forester’s mouth and thrust a coca quid into it.

It took him over half an hour to open a pack and assemble the Primus stove. His fingers were cold and he was suffering from the effects of high altitude — the loss of energy and the mental haziness which dragged the time of each task to many times its normal length. Finally, he got the stove working. It provided little heat and less light, but it was a definite improvement.

He improvised a windshield from some pitons and pieces of blanket. Fortunately the wind came from behind, from the top of the pass and over the ice wall, so that they were in a relatively sheltered position. But vicious side gusts occasionally swept into the cave, bringing a flurry of snowflakes and making the Primus flare and roar. Rohde was glum when he thought of the direction of the wind. It was good as far as their present shelter went, but the snow cornice on top of the wall would begin to build up and as it grew heavier it would be more likely to break off. And, in the morning when they set off again, they would be climbing in the teeth of a gale.

He prayed the wind would change direction before then.

Presently he had melted enough snow to make a warm drink, but Forester found the taste of the bouillon nauseating and could not drink it, so he heated some more water and they drank that; at least it put some warmth into their bellies.

Then he got to work on Forester, examining his hands and feet and pummelling him violently over many protests. After this Forester was wide awake and in full possession of his senses and did the same for Rohde, rubbing hands and feet to bring back the circulation. ‘Do you think we’ll make it, Miguel?’ he asked.

‘Yes,’ said Rohde shortly; but he was having his first doubts. Forester was not in good condition for the final assault on the pass and the descent of the other side. It was not a good thing for a man with cracked ribs. He said, ‘You must keep moving — your fingers and toes, move them all the time. You must rub your face, your nose and ears. You must not sleep.’

‘We’d better talk,’ suggested Forester. ‘Keep each other awake.’ He raised his head and listened to the howls of the wind. ‘It’ll be more like shouting, though, if this racket keeps up. What shall we talk about?’

Rohde grunted and pulled the hood about his ears. ‘O’Hara told me you were an airman.’

‘Right,’ said Forester. ‘I flew towards the end of the war — in Italy mostly. I was flying Lightnings. Then when Korea came I was dragged in again — I was in the Air Force Reserve, you see. I did a conversion on to jets and then I flew Sabres all during the Korean war, or at least until I was pulled out to go back Stateside as an instructor. I think I must have flown some missions with O’Hara in Korea.’

‘So he said. And after Korea?’

Forester shrugged. ‘I was still bitten with the airplane bug; the company I work for specializes in airplane maintenance.’ He grinned. ‘When all this happened I was on my way to Santillana to complete a deal with your Air Force for maintenance equipment. You still have Sabres, you know; I sometimes get to flying them if the squadron commandant is a good guy.’ He paused. ‘If Aguillar pulls off his coup d’état the deal may go sour — I don’t know why the hell I’m taking all this trouble.’

Rohde smiled, and said, ‘If Señor Aguillar comes into power your business will be all right — he will remember. And you will not have to pay the bribes you have already figured into your costing.’ His voice was a little bitter.

‘Hell,’ said Forester. ‘You know what it’s like in this part of the world — especially under Lopez. Make no mistake, I’m for Aguillar; we businessmen like an honest government — it makes things easier all round.’ He beat his hands together. ‘Why are you for Aguillar?’

‘Cordillera is my country,’ said Rohde simply, as though that explained everything, and Forester thought that meeting an honest patriot in Cordillera was a little odd, like finding a hippopotamus in the Arctic.

They were silent for a while, then Forester said, ‘What time is it?’

Rohde fumbled at his wristwatch. ‘A little after nine.’

Forester shivered. ‘Another nine hours before sunrise.’ The cold was biting deep into his bones and the wind gusts which flailed into their narrow shelter struck right through his clothing, even through O’Hara’s leather jacket. He wondered if they would be alive in the morning; he had heard and read too many tales of men dying of exposure, even back home and closer to civilization, to have any illusions about the precariousness of their position.

Rohde stirred and began to empty two of the packs. Carefully he arranged the contents where they would not roll out of the cave, then gave an empty pack to Forester. Put your feet in this,’ he said. ‘It will be some protection against the cold.’

Forester took the pack and flexed the blanket material, breaking off the encrusted ice. He put his feet into it and pulled the drawstring about the calves of his legs. ‘Didn’t you say you’d been up here before?’ he asked.

‘Under better conditions,’ answered Rohde. ‘It was when I was a student many years ago. There was a mountaineering expedition to climb this peak — the one to our right here.’

‘Did they make it?’

Rohde shook his head. ‘They tried three times — they were brave, those Frenchmen. Then one of them was killed and they gave up.’

‘Why did you join them?’ asked Forester curiously.

Rohde shrugged. ‘I needed the money — students always need money — and they paid well for porters. And, as a medical student, I was interested in the soroche. Oh, the equipment those men had! Fleece-lined under-boots and thick leather over-boots with crampons for the ice; quilted jackets filled with down; strong tents of nylon and long lengths of nylon rope — and good steel pitons that did not bend when you hammered them into the rock.’ He was like a starving man voluptuously remembering a banquet he had once attended.

‘And you came over the pass?’

‘From the other side — it was easier that way. I looked down over this side from the top and was glad we did not have to climb it. We had a camp — camp three — on top of the pass; and we came up slowly, staying some days at each camp to avoid the soroche.’

‘I don’t know why men climb mountains,’ said Forester, and there was a note of annoyance in his voice. ‘God knows I’m not doing it because I want to; it beats me that men do it for pleasure.’

‘Those Frenchmen were geologists,’ said Rohde. ‘They were not climbing for the sake of climbing. They took many rock samples from the mountains around here. I saw a map they had made — published in Paris — and I read they had found many rich minerals.’

‘What’s the use?’ queried Forester. ‘No one can work up here.’

‘Not now,’ agreed Rohde. ‘But later — who knows?’ His voice was serenely confident.

They talked together for a long time, each endeavouring to urge along the lagging clock. After a time Rohde began to sing — folk-songs of Cordillera and later the half-forgotten German songs that his father had taught him. Forester contributed some American songs, avoiding the modern pop tunes and sticking to the songs of his youth. He was halfway through ‘I’ve Been Working on the Railroad’ when there was a thunderous crash from the left which momentarily drowned even the howls of the gale.

‘What’s that?’ he asked, startled.

‘The snow cornice is falling,’ said Rohde. ‘It has built up because of the wind; now it is too heavy and not strong enough to bear its own weight.’ He raised his eyes to the roof of the ice cave. ‘Let us pray that it does not fall in this place; we would be buried.’

‘What time is it?’

‘Midnight. How do you feel?’

Forester had his arms crossed over his chest. ‘Goddam cold.’

‘And your ribs — how are they?’

‘Can’t feel a thing.’

Rohde was concerned. ‘That is bad. Move, my friend; move yourself. You must not allow yourself to freeze.’ He began to slap and pummel Forester until he howled for mercy and could feel the pain in his chest again.

Just after two in the morning the snow cornice over the cave collapsed. Both Rohde and Forester had become dangerously moribund, relapsing into a half-world of cold and numbness. Rohde heard the preliminary creaking and stirred feebly, then sagged back weakly. There was a noise as of a bomb exploding as the cornice broke and a cloud of dry, powdery snow was driven into the shelter, choking and cold.

Rohde struggled against it, waving his arms in swimming motions as the tide of snow covered his legs and crept up to his chest. He yelled to Forester, ‘Keep a space clear for yourself.’

Forester moaned in protest and waved his hands ineffectually, and luckily the snow stopped its advance, leaving them buried to their shoulders. After a long, dying rumble which seemed to come from an immense distance they became aware that it was unnaturally quiet; the noise of the blizzard which had battered at their ears for so long that they had ceased to be aware of it had gone, and the silence was loud and ear-splitting.

‘What’s happened?’ mumbled Forester. Something was holding his arms imprisoned and he could not get them free. In a panic he began to struggle wildly until Rohde shouted, ‘Keep still.’ His voice was very loud in the confined space.

For a while they lay still, then Rohde began to move cautiously, feeling for his ice-axe. The snow in which he was embedded was fluffy and uncompacted, and he found he could move his arms upwards. When he freed them he began to push the snow away from his face and to plaster and compress it against the wall of the cave. He told Forester to do the same and it was not long before they had scooped out enough space in which to move. Rohde groped in his pocket for matches and tried to strike one, but they were all wet, the soggy ends crumbling against the box.

Forester said painfully, ‘I’ve got a lighter,’ and Rohde heard a click and saw a bright point of blinding light. He averted his eyes from the flame and looked about him. The flame burned quite still without flickering and he knew that they were buried. In front, where the opening to the cave had been, was an unbroken wall of compacted snow.

He said, ‘We must make a hole or suffocate,’ and groped in the snow for the small axe. It took him a long time to find it and his fingers encountered several other items of their inadequate equipment before he succeeded. These he put carefully to one side — everything would be important from now on.

He took the axe and, sitting up with his legs weighed down with snow, he began to hew at the wall before him. Although it was compacted it was not as hard to cut as the ice from which he had chopped the cave and he made good progress. But he did not know how much snow he had to go through before he broke through to the other side. Perhaps the fall extended right across the ledge between the ice wall and the cliff edge and he would come out upon a dizzying drop.

He put the thought out of his mind and diligently worked with the axe, cutting a hole only of such size as he needed to work in. Forester took the snow as it was scooped out of the hole and packed it to one side, observing after a while, ‘We’re not going to have much room if this goes on much longer.’

Rohde kept silent, cutting away in the dark, for he had blown out the small flame. He worked by sense of touch and at last he had penetrated as far as he could with the small axe, thrusting his arm right up to the shoulder into the hole he had made. He had still not come to the other side of the snow fall, and said abruptly, ‘The ice-axe.’

Forester handed it to him and Rohde thrust it into the hole, driving vigorously. There was no room to cut with this long axe, so he pushed, forcing it through by sheer muscle power. To his relief, something suddenly gave and there was a welcome draught of cold air. It was only then he realized how foetid the atmosphere had become. He collapsed, half on top of Forester, panting with his exertions and taking deep breaths of air.

Forester pushed him and he rolled away. After a while he said, ‘The fall is about two metres thick — we should have no trouble in getting through.’

‘We’d better get at it, then,’ said Forester.

Rohde considered the proposition and decided against it. ‘This might be the best thing for us. It is warmer in here now, the snow is shielding us from the wind. All we have to do is to keep that hole clear. And there will not be another fall.’

‘Okay,’ said Forester. ‘You’re the boss.’

Warmth was a relative term. Cutting the hole had made Rohde sweat freely and now he could feel the sweat freezing to ice on his body under his clothing. Awkwardly he began to strip and had Forester rub his body all over. Forester gave a low chuckle as he massaged, and said, ‘A low-temperature Turkish bath — I’ll have to introduce it to New York. We’ll make a mint of money.’

Rohde dressed again and asked, ‘How are you feeling?’

‘Goddam cold,’ said Forester. ‘But otherwise okay.’

‘That shock did us good,’ said Rohde. ‘We were sinking fast — we must not let that happen again. We have another three hours to go before dawn — let us talk and sing.’

So they sang lustily, the sound reverberating from the hard and narrow confines of the ice cave, making them sound, as Forester put it, ‘like a pair of goddam bathroom Carusos.’

III

Half an hour before dawn Rohde began to cut their way out and he emerged into a grey world of blustery wind and driving snow. Forester was shocked at the conditions outside the cave. Although it was daylight, visibility was restricted to less than ten yards and the wind seemed to pierce right through him. He put his lips to Rohde’s ear and shouted, ‘Draughty, isn’t it?’

Rohde turned, his lips curled back in a fierce grin. ‘How is your chest?’

Forester’s chest hurt abominably, but his smile was amiable. ‘Okay. I’ll follow where you go.’ He knew they could not survive another night on the mountain — they had to get over the pass this day or they would die.

Rohde pointed upward with the ice-axe. ‘The cornice is forming again, but it is not too bad; we can go up here. Get the packs together.’ He stepped to the ice wall and began to cut steps skilfully, while Forester repacked their equipment. There was not much — some had been lost, buried under the snow fall, and some Rohde had discarded as being unnecessary deadweight to carry on this last desperate dash. They were stripped down to essentials.

Rohde cut steps in the fifteen-foot ice wall as high as he could reach while standing on reasonably firm ground, then climbed up and roped himself to pitons and stood in the steps he had already cut, chopping vigorously. He cut the steps very deep, having Forester in mind, and it took him nearly an hour before he was satisfied that Forester could climb the wall safely.

The packs were hauled up on a rope and then Forester began the climb, roped to Rohde. It was the most difficult task he had faced in his life. Normally he could have almost run up the broad and deep steps that Rohde had cut but now the bare ice burned his hands, even through the gloves, his chest ached and stabbing pains pierced him as he lifted his arms above his head, and he felt weak and tired as though the very breath of life had been drained from him. But he made it and collapsed at Rohde’s feet.

Here the wind was a howling devil driving down the pass and bearing with it great clouds of powdery snow and ice particles which stung the face and hands. The din was indescribable, a freezing pandemonium from an icy hell, deafening in its loudness. Rohde bent over Forester, shielding him from the worst of the blast, and made him sit up. ‘You can’t stay here,’ he shouted. ‘We must keep moving. There is no more hard climbing — just the slope to the top and down the other side.’

Forester flinched as the ice particles drove like splinters into his face and he looked up into Rohde’s hard and indomitable eyes. ‘Okay, buster,’ he croaked harshly. ‘Where you go, so can I.’

Rohde thrust some coca quids into his hand. ‘You will need these.’ He checked the rope round Forester’s waist and then picked up both packs, tentatively feeling their weight. He ripped them open and consolidated the contents into one pack, which he slung on his back despite Forester’s protests. The empty pack was snatched by the wind and disappeared into the grey reaches of the blizzard behind them.

Forester stumbled to his feet and followed in the tracks that Rohde broke. He hunched his shoulders and held his head down, staring at his feet in order to keep the painful wind from his face. He wrapped the blanket hood about the lower part of his face but could do nothing to protect his eyes, which became red and sore. Once he looked up and the wind caught him right in the mouth, knocking the breath out of him as effectively as if he had been punched in the solar plexus. Quickly he bent his head again and trudged on.

The slope was not very steep, much less so than below the cliffs, but it meant that to gain altitude they had that much farther to go. He tried to work it out; they had to gain a thousand feet of height and the slope was, say, thirty degrees — but then his bemused mind bogged down in the intricacies of trigonometry and he gave up the calculation.

Rohde plodded on, breaking the deep snow and always testing the ground ahead with the ice-axe, while the wind shrieked and plucked at him with icy fingers. He could not see more than ten yards ahead but he trusted to the slope of the mountainside as being sufficient guide to the top of the pass. He had never climbed this side of the pass but had looked down from the top, and he hoped his memory of it was true and that what he had told Forester was correct — that there would be no serious climbing — just this steady plod.

Had he been alone he could have moved much faster, but he deliberately reduced his pace to help Forester. Besides, it helped conserve his own energy, which was not inexhaustible, although he was in better condition than Forester. But then, he had not fallen over a cliff. Like Forester, he went forward bent almost double, the wind tearing at his clothing and the snow coating his hood with a thickening film of ice.

After an hour they came to a slight dip where the slope eased and found that the ground became almost level. Here the snow had drifted and was very deep, getting deeper the farther they went up. Rohde raised his head and stared upwards, shielding his eyes with his hand and looking through the slits made by his fingers. There was nothing to be seen beyond the grey whirling world in which they were enclosed. He waited until Forester came abreast of him and shouted, ‘Wait here; I will go ahead a little way.’

Forester nodded wearily and sank to the snow, turning his back to the gale and hunching himself into a foetus-like attitude. Rohde unfastened the rope around his waist and dropped it by Forester’s side, then went on. He had gone a few paces when he turned to look back and saw the dim huddle of Forester and, between them, the broken crust of the snow. He was satisfied that he could find his way back by following his own trail, so he pressed on into the blizzard.

Forester put another coca quid into his mouth and chewed it slowly. His gloved hand was clumsy and he pulled off the glove to pick up the quid from the palm of his hand. He was cold, numb to the bone, and his mouth was the only part of him that was pleasantly warm, a synthetic warmth induced by the coca. He had lost all sense of time; his watch had stopped long ago and he had no way of knowing how long they had been trudging up the mountain since scaling the ice wall. The cold seemed to have frozen his mind as well as his body, and he had the distinct impression that they had been going for several hours — or perhaps it was only several minutes; he did not know. All he knew was that he did not care much. He felt he was condemned to walk and climb for ever in this cold and bleak mountain world.

He lay apathetically in the snow for a long time and then, as the coca took effect, he roused himself and turned to look in the direction Rohde had gone. The wind flailed his face and he jerked and held up his hand, noticing absently that his knuckles had turned a scaly lizard-blue and that his fingers were cut in a myriad places by the wind-driven ice.

There was no sign of Rohde and Forester turned away, feeling a little surge of panic in his belly. What if Rohde could not find him again? But his mind was too torpid, too drugged by the cold and the coca, to drive his body into any kind of constructive action, and he slumped down to the snow again, where Rohde found him when he came back.

He was aroused by Rohde shaking him violently by the shoulder. ‘Move, man. You must not sit there and freeze. Rub your face and put on your glove.’

Mechanically he brought up his hand and dabbed ineffectually at his face. He could feel no contact at all, both hand and face were anaesthetized by the cold. Rohde struck his face twice with vigorous open-hand slaps and Forester was annoyed. ‘All right,’ he croaked. ‘No need to hit me.’ He slapped his hands together until the circulation came back and then began to massage his face.

Rohde shouted, ‘I went about two hundred metres — the snow was waist-deep and getting deeper. We cannot go that way; we must go round.’

Forester felt a moment of despair. Would this never end? He staggered to his feet and waited while Rohde tied the rope, then followed him in a direction at right-angles to the course they had previously pursued. The wind was now striking at them from the side and, walking as they were across the slope, the buffeting gusts threatened to knock them off their feet and they had to lean into the wind to maintain a precarious balance.

The route chosen by Rohde skirted the deep drifts, but he did not like the way they tended to lose altitude. Every so often he would move up again towards the pass, and every time was forced down again by deepening snow. At last he found a way upwards where the slope steepened and the snow cover was thinner, and once more they gained altitude in the teeth of the gale.

Forester followed in a half-conscious stupor, mechanically putting one foot in front of the other in an endless lurching progression. From time to time as he cautiously raised his eyes he saw the dim snow-shrouded figure of Rohde ahead, and after a time his mind was wiped clean of all other considerations but that of keeping Rohde in sight and the rope slack. Occasionally he stumbled and fell forward and the rope would tighten and Rohde would wait patiently until he recovered his feet, and then they would go on again, and upwards — always upwards.

Suddenly Rohde halted and Forester shuffled to his side. There was a hint of desperation in Rohde’s voice as he pointed forward with the ice-axe. ‘Rock,’ he said slowly. ‘We have come upon rock again.’ He struck the ice-glazed outcrop with the axe and the ice shattered. He struck again at the bare rock and it crumbled flakes falling away to dirty the white purity of the snow. The rock is rotten,’ said Rohde. ‘It is most dangerous. And there is the verglas.’

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?’

‘Seven hundred feet, maybe,’ said Rohde.

‘Yes, we slipped about two hundred feet by coming back.’ Forester yawned. ‘Christ, it’s good to be out of the wind; I feel a good hundred per cent warmer — which brings me up to freezing-point.’ He pulled the jacket closer about him and regarded Rohde through half-closed eyes. Rohde was looking vacantly at the flaring Primus, his eyes glazed with fatigue.

Thus they lay in their ice shelter while the wind howled about them and flurries of driven snow eddied in small whirlpools in that haven of quiet.

IV

Rohde dreamed.

He dreamed, curiously enough, that he was asleep — asleep in a vast feather bed into which he sank with voluptuous enjoyment. The bed enfolded him in soft comfort, seeming to support his tired body and to let him sink at the same time. Both he and the bed were falling slowly into a great chasm, drifting down and down and down, and suddenly he knew to his horror that this was the comfort of death and that when he reached the bottom of the pit he would die.

Frantically he struggled to get up, but the bed would not let him go and held him back in cloying folds and he heard a quiet maniacal tittering of high-pitched voices laughing at him. He discovered that his hand held a long, sharp knife and he stabbed at the bed with repeated plunges of his arm, ripping the fabric and releasing a fountain of feathers which whirled in the air before his eyes.

He started and screamed and opened his eyes. The scream came out as a dismal croak and he saw that the feathers were snowflakes dancing in the wind and beyond was the wilderness of the glacier. He was benumbed with the cold and he knew that if he slept he would not wake again.

There was something strange about the scene that he could not place and he forced himself to analyse what it was, and suddenly he knew — the wind had dropped. He got up stiffly and with difficulty and looked at the sky; the mist was clearing rapidly and through the dissipating wreaths he saw a faint patch of blue sky.

He turned to Forester who was lying prostrate, his head on one side and his cheek touching the ice, and wondered if he was dead. He leaned over him and shook him and Forester’s head flopped down on to his chest. ‘Wake up,’ said Rohde, the words coming rustily to his throat. ‘Wake up — come on, wake up.’

He took Forester by the shoulder and shook him and Forester’s head lolled about, almost as though his neck was broken. Rohde seized his wrist and felt for the pulse; there was a faint fluttering beneath the cold skin and he knew that Forester was still alive — but only just.

The Primus stove was empty — he had fallen asleep with it still burning — but there was a drain of kerosene left in the bottle. He poured it into the Primus and heated some water with which he bathed Forester’s head, hoping that the warmth would penetrate somehow and unfreeze his brain. After a while Forester stirred weakly and mumbled something incoherently.

Rohde slapped his face. ‘Wake up; you cannot give in now.’ He dragged Forester to his feet and he promptly collapsed. Again Rohde hauled him up and supported him. ‘You must walk,’ he said. ‘You must not sleep.’ He felt in his pocket and found one last coca quid which he forced into Forester’s mouth. ‘Chew,’ he shouted. ‘Chew and walk.’

Gradually Forester came round — never fully conscious but able to use his legs in an automatic manner, and Rohde walked him to and fro in an effort to get the blood circulating again. He talked all the time, not because he thought Forester could understand him, but to break the deathly silence that held the mountain now that the wind had gone. ‘Two hours to nightfall,’ he said. ‘It will be dark in two hours. We must get to the top before then — long before then. Here, stand still while I fasten the rope.’

Forester obediently stood still, swaying slightly on his feet, and Rohde fastened the rope around his waist. ‘Can you follow me? Can you?’

Forester nodded slowly, his eyes half open.

‘Good,’ said Rohde. ‘Then come on.’

He led the way out of the glacier and on to the mountain slopes. The mist had now gone and he could see right to the top of the pass, and it seemed but a step away — a long step. Below, there was an unbroken sea of white cloud, illumined by the late afternoon sun into a blinding glare. It seemed solid and firm enough to walk on.

He looked at the snow slopes ahead and immediately saw what they had missed in the darkness of the blizzard — a definite ridge running right to the top of the pass. The snow cover would be thin there and would make for easy travel. He twitched on the rope and plunged forward, then glanced back at Forester to see how he was doing.

Forester was in the middle of a cold nightmare. He had been so warm, so cosily and beautiful warm, until Rohde had so rudely brought him back to the mountains. What the devil was the matter with the guy? Why couldn’t he let a man sleep when he wanted to instead of pulling him up a mountain? But Rohde was a good joe, so he’d do what he said — but why was he doing it? Why was he on this mountain?

He tried to think but the reason eluded him. He dimly remembered a fall over a cliff and that this guy Rohde had saved his life. Hell, that was enough, wasn’t it? If a guy saves your life he was entitled to push you around a little afterwards. He didn’t know what he wanted, but he was with him all the way.

And so Forester shambled on, not knowing where or why, but content to follow where Rohde led. He kept falling because his legs were rubbery and he could not make them do precisely what he wanted, and every time he fell Rohde would return the length of the rope and help him to his feet. Once he started to slide and Rohde almost lost his balance and they both nearly tumbled down the slope, but Rohde managed to dig his heels into the snow and so stopped them.

Although Rohde’s stiff leg impeded him, Forester impeded him more. But even so they made good time and the top of the pass came nearer and nearer. There was only two hundred feet of altitude to make when Forester collapsed for the last time. Rohde went back along the rope but Forester could not stand. Cold and exhaustion had done their work in sapping the life energy from a strong man, and he lay in the snow unable to move.

A glimmer of intelligence returned to him and he peered at Rohde through red-rimmed eyes. He swallowed painfully and whispered, ‘Leave me, Miguel; I can’t make it. You’ve got to get over the pass.’

Rohde stared down at him in silence.

Forester croaked, ‘Goddam it — get the hell out of here.’ Although his voice was almost inaudible it was as loud as he could shout and the violence of the effort was too much for him and he relapsed into unconsciousness.

Still in silence Rohde bent down and gathered Forester into his arms. It was very difficult to lift him on to his shoulder in a fireman’s lift — there was the steepness of the slope, his stiff leg and his general weakness — but he managed it and, staggering a little under the weight, he put one foot in front of the other.

And then the other.

And so on up the mountain. The thin air wheezed in his throat and the muscles of his thighs cracked under the strain. His stiff leg did not hurt but it was a hindrance because he had to swing it awkwardly sideways in an arc in order to take a step. But it was beautifully firm when he took the weight on it. Forester’s arms swung limply, tapping against the backs of his legs with every movement and this irritated him for a while until he no longer felt the tapping. Until he no longer felt anything at all.

His body was dead and it was only a bright hot spark of will burning in his mind that kept him going. He looked dispassionately at this flame of will, urging it to burn brighter when it flickered and screening out all else that would quench it. He did not see the snow or the sky or the crags and peaks which flanked him. He saw nothing at all, just a haze of darkness shot with tiny sparks of light flaring inside his eyeballs.

One foot forward easily — that was his good foot. The next foot brought round in a stiff semi-circle to grope for a footing. This was harder because the foot was dead and he could not feel the ground. Slowly, very slowly, take the weight. Right — that was good. Now the other foot — easy again.

He began to count, got up to eleven and lost count. He started again and this time got up to eight. After that he did not bother to count but just went forward, content to know that one foot was moving in front of the other.

Pace... halt... swing... grope... halt... pace... halt... swing... grope... halt... pace... halt... swing... grope... halt... swing... something glared against his closed eyes and he opened them to stare full into the sun.

He stopped and then closed his eyes painfully, but not before he had seen the silver streak on the horizon and knew it was the sea. He opened his eyes again and looked down on the green valley and the white scattering of houses that was Altemiros lying snugly between the mountains and the lesser foothills beyond.

His tongue came out to lick ice-cracked lips stiffly. ‘Forester,’ he whispered. ‘Forester, we are on top.’

But Forester was past caring, hanging limply unconscious across Rohde’s broad shoulder.