I didn’t reply; that small effort might draw away the last shred of strength from my arms. And of course, that’s when the girl came to again, and began to cry.
‘It’s all right,’ I whispered. ‘Go back to sleep.’
‘It hurts,’ she said. ‘I’m scared.’
‘I know, sweetheart . . .’
I started to pray to Saint Birgid-who-weeps-rivers, but of course she was dead and somehow praying to her successor felt odd since I was quite sure Ethalia wasn’t going to suddenly appear and save us. I hadn’t had much luck with Gods lately – although to be fair, they hadn’t had much luck themselves. Where are you, Valour? Too busy saving fucking alley cats to lend a hand?
The hells for Saints and Gods; I’ll do this myself. My hands were so cold, though – colder than they had any right to be. I tried to think about things that might inspire my body to be stronger. I thought about Aline, and Valiana. I thought about the mission ahead of me. I thought about Ethalia and what she would think if she knew I’d failed this child, and all these things went through my mind in the few seconds, the ticks of the clock, between near success and abject failure.
I was about to tell Kest that I couldn’t do it, that I’d try and slide back down and make the attempt again later, when my hands had warmed up and stopped shaking . . . But when I looked up to tell him, I saw the girl’s mother, barely more than a child herself, lying on her belly watching me, her face full of a thousand sorrows, already resigned to her daughter’s fate. What happened to hope in this damned country? When did we let go of all faith in ourselves?
I hated this woman lying there like a dead tree, so quick to give up on her daughter’s life. What was wrong with these people?
Maybe it was the momentary respite, or perhaps the muscles in my hands unlocked, but an angry fire seared my flesh, burning through the cold: a different kind of pain, and almost without my volition, the fingers of my right hand unclenched, reached up and wrapped themselves around the next length of coat and a hand’s-grip at a time, I made my agonising way up until, two feet from the top, I felt Kest grab one of my wrists and Brasti the other and the two of them hauled us the rest of the way.
I knelt there, unable to move, so Kest carefully undid my coat and took the girl. Her mother’s face was a mixture of desperate relief and terrible guilt as she looked at me and asked, ‘How will I carry her?’
*
‘Falcio, come on, we have to get going,’ Brasti said.
I was still on my knees at the edge of the cliff, so I think only a few minutes had passed, but it felt like a lifetime. There’s a strength when you’re exhausted that comes from beyond sore muscles and aching bones: it’s all in the heart’s need to keep beating. I kept reaching for that need.
‘You did a good thing there,’ the old man said.
It was a nice thing to say, but he wanted to see Aline dead. ‘You’ve seen our coats. You know what we are. If you tell the bordermen, I’ll kill you.’
Before the old man could reply, Kest said, ‘He won’t.’ He reached out and rested his hand on Clock’s shoulder. ‘Look at me. Falcio won’t kill you. He doesn’t have it in him to murder an old man. But I do.’
‘I believe you,’ Clock said, and walked on ahead.
I felt Brasti hauling me up. ‘Where’s Morn?’ I asked.
‘He splinted the girl’s leg and now he’s taking his shift carrying her and muttering about what an idiot you are.’
‘That’s fair.’
We stuffed the coats back into our packs – might as well try to keep anyone else from seeing them – then followed the path for another hour into darkness, until a shout from Morn brought Kest, Brasti and me running.
We found him lying on the ground, his leg twisted, holding Tillia – somehow he’d managed to fall without hurting her.
‘Is it broken?’ Brasti asked.
‘It wasn’t my fault,’ the girl said defensively. ‘He just slipped on a rock and fell.’
I reached out a hand to comfort her and she flinched. ‘It’s all right,’ I said, ‘we know it’s not your fault.’
Kest was examining Morn’s leg. ‘It’s not broken, but he’s sprained both his left knee and his right ankle. There’s no way he can walk.’ He glanced around us. ‘And there’s nothing to make a litter from either . . .’
Clock came back and joined us. ‘You’ll never get there if you try to carry him,’ he said pragmatically, ‘and there’s nobody will take turns humping him along.’
‘No one?’ I asked.
He shook his head. ‘Look around. Everyone’s exhausted – they’re all of them near the end of their strength and their supplies. There’s no room for charity now.’
‘Leave me,’ Morn said, his jaw tight. ‘I’ll camp here, join you when I can walk again.’
Clock leaned over him. ‘You’ll die out here, son. If the cold doesn’t get you, wolves or something worse will. Best your friends stay with you.’
‘No,’ Morn said, ‘I can take care of myself. I know how to stay alive in the mountains. Just go,’ he said firmly.
‘Is there anything you want from our supplies?’ I asked.
‘I’ve got my own – just get out of here.’
I exchanged glances with the others. ‘All right. We’d better do as he says.’
Clock looked surprised. ‘I thought you Trat— I thought you types . . . were all loyal to each other?’
‘It’s too cold for loyalty,’ I said, walking past him to rejoin the line.
*
We plodded along with the rest of the travellers for the next two hours, our way lit only by the moon above us.
‘Why aren’t we stopping?’ I called out to Clock at last.
‘No protection from the wind,’ he replied. ‘We’ll rest when we get to the base of the mountain.’ Despite our earlier threats, he smiled at me. ‘Tomorrow we go up the mountain, easy as can be.’
‘Are you mad? It’s hardly been steep until now and people are still barely making it – how in all the hells will they get up a mountain?’
He laughed. ‘Look,’ he said, and pointed.
It was too far for me to make out what I was supposed to be seeing but Brasti’s eyes are better than most.
‘Saint Brughan-who-chews-stone—’ he swore.
Kest looked at him. ‘Which one’s that?’
‘Saint of Mountain. Or rocks. I don’t know, I just made him up. It’s too much work trying to keep track of which Saints are still alive and which ones aren’t.’
‘What am I looking at?’ I asked him.
‘Ladders,’ Brasti replied. ‘There are ladders bolted onto the mountainside, and what looks like long sections of steps cut into the rock. And look there—’ He pointed to something else I couldn’t make out.
‘I’m not seeing it. Still.’
‘I do,’ Kest said. ‘Pulleys and winches – is that a platform?’
‘It is,’ Brasti said. ‘Looks to be at least fifteen feet square. How did they ever engineer all that?’