Instead, it seems to go straight up.
We’re already behind; signs of boots and crampons and poles and picks mark the way. Big chunks are ripped out of a tree trunk at one of our resting points, and we all gaze at the scars on the wood, silent.
In less than half an hour, any semblance of a path disappears, replaced by a wall of mottled gray stone speckled in ice.
Venna and Izabel are mirror images of each other as they both drop their packs on the ground and begin removing gear—harnesses, ropes, and a pair of small pickaxes each.
“Well, fuck,” I say, watching. “I brought some rope, but I didn’t expect to need a harness or ice picks…” Lee probably didn’t even think of it, since there was no reason I’d be going up the mountain the hard way.
Venna’s mouth quirks in a smile. She roots around in her pack, then unearths another harness, holding it out. “No problem.”
“We brought an extra,” Izabel explains. “We’ve heard that, well… sometimes the fastest way to beat someone up the mountain is to mess with their gear.”
I accept the harness cautiously. “But the picks?”
“We’ll trade off,” Izabel assures me. “Venna can start without. She’s like a spider when she climbs. Her free climbing is insane. You’ll see.”
Venna removes a pair of supple leather gloves from her pack, pulling them on like a second skin.
“If you’re sure…” I grab the axes from Izabel’s outstretched hands, tie them to my pack where I can reach them if need be, then look dubiously up at the slabs of rock and jagged boulders above, punctuated by patches of slick black ice. “I just don’t see how anyone could climb that, equipment be damned.”
Venna laughs, the sound surprising in the bleak landscape. “It’s honestly not even the hardest part of this. The hardest part is going to be?—”
Something large falls from above, dangerously close to us, and we all flinch to the left. I hear a gruesome wet thud.
A body.
The broken remains of a person are less than three feet away from us. There’s something warm and damp on my face, and I realize that in the impact, blood from the person’s wounds splattered up in a grisly fountain, landing on me and Venna’s furs, and painting Izabel in lines of red.
We all stare.
The corpse looks almost fake, the angles of its body twisted and unnatural, like a statue of a person made by a being that’s never seen one of us before. Blood oozes from a massive wound in his chest, and seeps out from his head and mouth, which is still open in a final scream.
I recognize him, I realize. He’s the boy from the fire last night, the one who was too young to even grow in his beard.
“That’s the hard part,” Izabel finishes Venna’s sentence finally. “The bodies. Watching out for the bodies.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
Far above us, we hear a scream, then yelling and the sounds of something crashing down further to our right.
I’ve seen violence. I’vedealtviolence. For sport, for money, sometimes for my own satisfaction.
But this is unlike anything I’ve ever experienced. This—this—is the noble tradition that our Bonded warriors ceremonially endure?
This is what those entitled Bonded families willingly send their loved ones to do each time there’s a Bonding Trial?
Another scream echoes off the rock and ice. Then another. And another.
I grit my teeth and begin to climb.
Izabel forges our path, to start. “We’ll trade off who’s scouting and who brings up the rear,” she explains casually as we get going. “Both have their challenges. Although to be frank,” she says, slowly and steadily moving up the rock face, “Venna is definitely the better climber of the two of us. I mean, look at her.”
We both glance down at Venna. Her special climbing gloves allow her to find handholds in the smallest indents in the rock. Clambering up after us, she looks almost inhuman in her grace.
“She’ll lead when we get to the trickier parts.”
Trickier parts?I think, already breathing heavily from the exertion of the climb.Great.
