I scan the ridge, looking for other options.
“Maybe—” she starts, looking to the left, her body poised for movement but then Venna, just below us, calls out:
“Wait, not that way.”
Izabel pales.
“What is it?”
“Venna saw something I didn’t at first,” Izabel says. “See the way the light is hitting that patch of ice? It’s not thick enough there—wouldn’t take much for it to all come loose.”
Venna scrambles up past us and carves a route to the right, putting her superior climbing skills and instincts to use, taking the lead for a while. We follow after, carefully using the same hand and footholds that she did as we go.
Lee was right. I never would have made it half this far without allies, I think as I finally pull myself up to a larger shelf in the mountain’s face. Thank the goddess for that beautiful man and his advice.
When I behold the sheer icy wall in front of me, I shudder.
I’m not sure how much farther I’ll make it, period.
We all take a short rest, doing our best to ignore the mangled body of a climber that came before us toward the other edge of the frozen platform. I shove some of the hard-packed army ration in my mouth, and gratefully accept when Venna offers me something from her pack that looks like a meat jerky.
“Thanks,” I say, heartfelt.
She nods, efficient, then stands and holds out a hand. “Ice pick?”
“She’s going to show you how to use the picks,” Izabel clarifies for me. “And also good technique for this next section, now that we’re going to be climbing mostly ice.”
They spend easily twenty minutes showing me how to best use my crampons to lock a foot in before removing my ice pick; how to test the ice’s stability before giving it my weight. We bring out our rope and the twins show me what knots to use on my harness.
Sure hope they’re right about the knots. I can too easily imagine the harness giving way, the fast slip through icy air…
Acid fills the back of my mouth.
Ten minutes into our slow crawl up the face of the icy wall, and it happens.
I’m removing my right pick from the ice when my feet slip, and my stomach does a sickening flip as the world falls out from under me.
I’m in the air, out of reach of anything solid, for forever and no time at all, when my harness catches me, and my momentum swings the rope I’m on like a pendulum and slams me against the ice.
It takes all of my training from Igor to keep my cool and not let go of the precious ice picks.
My left shoulder screams from the impact and I lick my lips and taste blood—my nose must have smashed against the ice wall too.
I’m still attached, though. Still alive.
It takes me a few more breaths to tune into the advice Izabel is yelling down to me, properly reattach my crampons to the ice, leverage my picks, get back into the rhythm of climbing at least for a few feet to reduce the pull on Izabel and Venna’s harnesses—and the danger that the ice they’re clinging to for dear life might simply crumble from the pressure.
We shake off the panic and start to climb once more.
After the adrenaline leaves my body, exhaustion replaces it. I’m used to hard labor, used to being on my feet constantly,straining my muscles at work and training all day just to use them all night.
But even though it gets frigid down in the city, it’s nothing like the temperatures here. The ice wall bounces the wind back onto us, so that it lashes into us from all directions. My entire body is compressed by the tension of trying to retain heat, maintain control of what I’m doing, not let a shiver or a moment of tiredness turn into the fall that actually kills me this time.
Thinking about Saela helps me keep focus. Lee, too.Find my sister, return to him. It repeats over and over in my head like a religious chant.
I’m not sure how much time has passed when we finally crest the seemingly endless sheet of ice, pulling ourselves up onto a rock ledge that’s blessedly big enough to sit down on, even lie down on, without fear of tumbling off.
“Thank you,” I say, wincing at the helplessness I feel at the words. They should be so much bigger.
