I sat there for a moment, breathing heavily, my legs dangling over the side of the cliff I had just scaled. The sun would rise within the hour; the horizon was lightening and the stars were beginning to fade. The view was immense, too much for my exhausted brain to take in. I took a drink from my canteen and ate a few bites of dried yak meat. Ragtooth hopped onto my lap and accepted a small piece of cheese. Biter settled next to me, his feathers puffed out against the wind. He turned up his beak at my breakfast, but accepted a drink from the water I poured into the palm of my hand.
Once we had finished our meager meal, I tucked myself against the boulder on that barren ledge, drew my hood over my face, and was instantly asleep.
I woke to sunlight spilling over the horizon. For one disoriented moment, I was convinced I had sleepwalked out of my bed and up to the snowy heights above Azmiri village. Then I blinked, remembered, and started upright so quickly I hit my head.
It was several minutes before I was able to force down my involuntary panic and think clearly. How long had it been since I had left Azmiri? I thought about three weeks, but my muddled brain couldn’t be more specific. The days blended together like farmers’ fields under a carpet of snow.
Rubbing my temple, I took stock. My hands, which I had stupidly failed to tuck inside my chuba before I fell asleep, were cramped with cold, the blood from my cracked nails frozen and crusted. My arms were so tired I could barely feel them, and there was an ache in my side—the side that had slammed into the mountain—that was worryingly sharp, and could mean a broken rib. My throat ached from the cold and the ice crystals I couldn’t help inhaling; every breath felt like swallowing sandpaper. I had no food left, and very little water, and I was no less exhausted for having slept for an hour—it was too cold, the air too thin, for rest to properly revive me. I had slept not because I had wanted to, but because I had been incapable of maintaining consciousness.
All things considered, my chances of making it to the summit of Raksha were not good. The chances of me making it down the mountain again, however, were almost nonexistent. Descending a mountain was always more dangerous than climbing it, and this had never been more true than it was for me now. I couldn’t even imagine tackling the punishing rock face and its violent weather in my current state.
A wave of sadness welled up in me. It wasn’t sadness for myself. It was sadness for Tem and Lusha, who would have to accept, as the hours passed and I didn’t return to camp, that I was never going to return.
Ragtooth nudged my knee, letting out a squeak.
“You’re right,” I said, wiping my eyes. “Let’s not think about it.”
The fox shook himself, stretching. He was shivering with cold, and moved more slowly than usual, but he trotted ahead before I could put him in my pack, thereby lightening my load.
I followed the ledge cautiously, the path underfoot uneven with ice and pebbles. Looming ahead of me was a long, snowy slope, treacherously steep but still walkable. I readied my ax just in case.
Once I had reached the brow of the slope, however, I froze. The ax slipped from my hand, impaling itself in the snow.
“What is that?” I murmured.
Before me lay a long, jagged ridge of spiny rock that punched up through the snow, which misted off the mountainside in the fierce gale. The entire ridge was barely wide enough for a single person to walk along, and in places, it did not even appear wide enough for that. The ground fell away in a miles-long, snowy arc toward the valley on one side, and the lower slopes of Raksha, pierced with boulders that could have been grains of sand, on the other.
I sank to my knees. I could not stop staring at the ridge; I felt as if I could blink and it would be gone, merely a figment of my imagination. After what I had just endured, I had come to this? The mountain was no less than a series of nightmares, each darker than the last.
I looked at Ragtooth. The fox looked back at me. I groaned, my head sinking into my hands.
“How is it possible?” But even as I said it, I began to notice the telltale signs of another person’s presence. The snow along the ridge was rippled in places, as if by footsteps that had not yet been worn by the wind. Close to where I sat, a few threads of rope fiber were caught on the sharp edge of a rock. Someone had traversed the ridge, perhaps only a few hours ago.
“Thanks a lot,” I muttered, following this with a string of curses that I wished with all my heart River could hear.
Gritting my teeth, I lowered myself onto the ridge. Ragtooth was already creeping along ahead of me, his back hunched, his bushy tail flicking back and forth. The wind was even stronger here than on the rock face, pummeling my body as if its sole desire was to push me to my death. My chuba flapped madly, and my hair loosened from its knot and floated around my face, making my vision flicker.
The first few steps were more terrifying than anything I had experienced. I had no fear of heights, but this was not simply a matter of heights. The terrain was treacherous; mounds of snow concealed slippery, uneven rock, or sometimes nothing but crevices and empty air. Each step required calculation and testing—not an easy thing, in my exhausted state. Biter flew ahead, or rather, tried to—the wind buffeted so fiercely that he was often forced to fly far to the side of the ridge.
As furious as I was with River, I couldn’t help marveling at his gumption in even attempting a route like this. River had Azar-at, though. I had nothing but a fox and a raven.
The sun rose higher, and the shadows shrank. As I walked, I didn’t look ahead. I didn’t want to be discouraged by how far I had to go. In some places, the ridge was so thin that it was like walking along a branch. I had to wait for a break between gusts before even attempting these sections, and then dash across them as quickly as I could. This took time—not because of the wind, but because I kept losing my nerve at the last moment, and having to spend several minutes sitting in the snow with my head between my knees.
I had just crossed one of these rock branches, and stood breathing heavily on the other side, when the snow gave way beneath me.
I fell with it—over the side of the ridge.
I swung my ice ax desperately and somehow, somehow, managed to wedge it into a crevice. I hung there, my feet scrabbling uselessly at the snow-blanketed wall of the ridge, as far below me clouds drifted over the landscape.
I found my voice and screamed. I gripped the ax with both hands, my entire body shaking. I dared not look down again. I could not breathe or think. I could feel the distance below me, the skeletal nature of the air at this height.