Urkinmang Mountain, Nepal
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There was a strange blue glow, accompanied by a pins-and-needles feeling, and then there was cold.
Peter pulled his hands up to his chest, immediately shivering. Next to him, Sophie yelped and Marie muttered a string of curses in four languages. Only Miyamoto seemed fine with the temperature drop.
Well, not fine. He looked resigned.
It was night here; a full moon hung in the clear sky. Peter looked around at a landscape unlike anything he’d ever seen and wondered if he was still on Earth. The snow, ice and rock were so completely different from what he knew and had imagined. If someone told him they were standing on a new planet, he’d believe it.
“No use dying here,” Marie hissed. “It’s a race. Let’s go.” She stomped a few paces, stopped, and looked around. “We’re meant to go up, aye?”
“Yes,” Miyamoto said, following her. He pointed up the mountain, to where dark shapes were moving. “We follow them.”
“Th-that makes th-things easy,” Sophie said, her teeth chattering.
Peter stepped next to her as they followed the older members of the team. “I’d gallantly offer my poncho if you’re cold, but I think I’d turn into an icicle without it.”
She flashed him a smile, pulling her backpack around. “I’ll be fine once my blood is pumping, I’m sure.” After rummaging around a bit, she fished out the odd sock-like mask and slid it over her face. “I no longer find this thing funny-looking. It’s warm.”
Peter immediately found his mask and pulled it on, setting his new cowboy hat on top. Somehow the mask made his whole body feel warmer.
Marie turned to make sure they were following, saw the masks, and stopped to find hers. Miyamoto did the same.
When they were once again trudging upwards, Peter looked around. It was a breathtakingly gorgeous place; white snow covered jagged mountains that stretched off into the distance. There were no sounds to break the peace, and no creatures but hovering birds to distract from the view.
“Is snow supposed to feel like this?” Marie asked, watching her feet sink down with each step.
“Yes,” Sophie and Miyamoto answered at the same time.
Peter smiled. “Strange, isn’t it?”
“I thought it was like sand,” Marie said. “This is more like… water, but with a solid shape.”
Sophie giggled. “That’s exactly what it is.”
“Hush, girl,” Marie snapped.
“Sorry.”
Miyamoto looked up the mountain. “It may become slippery further up. I suggest we tie lengths of rope between us.”
Marie agreed. They spent the next few minutes arranging rope as they climbed upwards.
The climb quickly became steeper, with more rock showing through the snow. Peter was silent, watching his new leather boots crunch snow down. He was glad to have new clothes; Miyamoto had been right when he’d said Peter’s old things wouldn’t be enough for the cold. As it was, his lungs and ribs ached from the sharp air.
He focused on breathing for a few seconds, then cleared his throat.
“Am I crazy, or is it hard to breathe?” he asked.
“It is,” Marie said, glancing back at him. “I’m glad it’s not just my old lungs that feel it.”
“The air high on mountains is poisonous,” Miyamoto said. “Humans are not meant to be here; it is too close to the place of the gods. Breathing becomes easier after a few days if one is respectful.”
“What happens if one isn’t respectful?” Sophie asked.
“Death.”
There was a pause, then Marie let out a laugh.
“I’m glad we won’t be here more than a day, then,” she said.
Peter tucked the edges of his new sea-blue poncho into his belt as a gust of wind swept down the mountain. “Forget the air, I’d die from cold.”
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Sophie picked up an interesting rock and slipped it into one of her many pockets. Her new trousers, made of thick blue almost-corduroy, had six pockets. Her hooded coat, blue outside, red-orange inside, made of unknown materials, had four pockets. And her belt, red-orange leather, came with two small pouches and a knife sheath. She didn’t have a knife that fit yet, but planned on buying one as soon as possible.
While not pebble hunting, she watched the seven teams ahead of them. There was a sheer rock part coming up, where all advancement seemed to stop for a bit, then the mountain tilted to… She judged it to be 30 degrees. Halfway between the sheer bit and the peak it leveled out to somewhere around 40 or 45 degrees. And at the end there was a small vertical climb to the summit.
She was going to be dead by the end of the day.
Occasionally she glanced back. There was a team following them now; four black dots climbing through the sea of white. A hawk hovered exactly between them, and she could tell her team was slowly pulling ahead.
There was a muffled cry above them. Sophie looked up in time to see someone fall from the sheer rock. They hit the snow, sending a small white cloud into the air. Two teammates ran to check, while the one who’d already climbed shouted something down. There was a conversation, which she only heard as echoed concern. The teammate above yelled a command, and the two who could stand did. A blue glow surrounded the area, spiriting them away.
Peter cursed under his breath. Marie cursed out loud. Miyamoto glared at them.
“Respect,” he snapped.
“Sorry,” Peter said.
“I’m not sorry,” Marie said. “I hope that poor bastard is still alive. That was a damn long fall, and landing must have hurt like hell. My apologies to any spirits that are listening, but I’m not talking to them.”
Miyamoto sighed, starting to walk again. Sophie realized they’d all stopped, and ran a few steps before slowing to a walk.
There was only one team between them and the team that had vanished. That meant they had about an hour to prepare.
“When we get to the cliff, who will climb first?” Sophie asked.
Miyamoto glanced at Marie, then at her. “I believe it would be best if you and I climbed at the same time, with a rope between us. Then we can lower a rope down and pull Madam Marie and Mr Peter up.”
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“You sure you can lift us?” Peter asked. “No offense, but you two are the smallest.”
“A man can lift four times his weight with the proper leverage,” Marie said. She pulled a wheel thing out of her backpack. “We have pulleys. Slide the rope through, then Sophie can stand near the edge and hold it while Miyamoto hangs the rope over his shoulder and walks away. Not saying it’ll be easy, but it won’t be hard.”
“Is that what those are for,” Peter said, looking at the wheel. “I suppose you have hundreds of them on ships.”
“Not exactly, but close enough to be able to recognize what it is,” Marie shrugged, putting the pulley away.
Sophie debated asking if she knew what all the other things they’d been given were. Some things, like the mask and water canteen, were obvious. But there was a small, bent piece of metal with two holes in it that baffled her, and the teeth for shoes looked more like a weapon than climbing gear.
They should be on the 30 degree part by noon; Sophie decided to bring it up then.
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Razan stared up the cliff. He’d volunteered to climb it. Why had he done that? What suicidal part of his brain had thought this was a good idea? There was no way he could climb this.
Next to him, Sophie finished tying his rope to her harness and bounced a few times. “Ready?”
Razan felt that he would never be ready, but nodded.
Sophie laughed. “Race you to the top!”
She swung her ice ax into the wall of rock and pulled herself up with an ease Razan wouldn’t have thought possible two days before. He, with much more caution, set the toe of his boot on a tiny ledge and stepped up.
Sophie, her knees already at his head’s height, stopped. She looked down as Razan took a small step up.
“Drag your toe along the rock,” she said. “Rely on feel, not sight. Peter, may I borrow your ax?”
“Of course,” Peter said, moving to hand her his ice ax as Razan managed a third timid step.
“Thanks!” She adjusted her grip on it, shoved the tip into a crevice, and continued her climb.
Razan tried to keep up. He was hampered by stiff, cold fingers and a fear of falling, but at least he was moving.
Sophie got far enough ahead that the rope between them stopped her. She let go of an ax, dangling her right foot over nothing as she looked down.
“Come on, Miyamoto, this is a race!” she called, taunting.
Razan pushed himself up, his body hugging the cliff. “I’d rather not die, thank you,” he called back. “It’s better to be cautious and live.”
She laughed. “You sound like my mother.” She swung her foot back onto the cliff and climbed a few steps more.
Razan grumbled to himself that her mother sounded like a sensible woman as he tried to climb even half as quickly as Sophie. But he really, truly, did not want to fall.
He pushed his ax into a crevice and tried to pull himself up, searching for a new toehold. A piece of rock cracked off as he put his weight on it, the ax suddenly dropping. He stupidly let go, his foot slipping on sheer rock. With a yelp, he clawed at the cliff for any purchase. Razan felt himself start to fall.
Suddenly the rope went taught, pulling his harness up. He found a ledge to grab and dug his frozen fingers into the stone. Breathing hard, he finally felt his boot catch on something. He hugged the cliff, trying to melt into the rock.
“Still alive?” Sophie asked.
He glared at the rock pressed against his nose. “No.” The rope loosened, making him look up.
Sophie was untying the rope from around her waist. “Stay there!”
Razan wasn’t planning on moving until an earthquake shook his frozen corpse off the cliff, so he accepted this order without question or comment. He heard Peter yell something from below, but couldn’t decipher the exact words. The sound of his own breathing was too loud.
Minutes passed, or perhaps hours, or perhaps seconds, as Razan became one with the mountain. His heart slowed to a rate that wasn’t painful. His toes began to ache. His scalp itched. He made a few haikus about black rock.
Something bonked him on the head. He looked up to find Sophie dangling her rope off the top of the cliff. She’d tied an ice ax to one end; it was the ax that had hit him.
“Grab hold!” she called. “I’ll pull you up!”
It took every grain of logic in Razan’s soul to decide accepting the rope was better than spending the rest of his life pressed against a cliff. After drawing a few deep breaths for courage, he reached out and grabbed the rope just above where the ax was tied.
Soon he had the rope tied to his harness, the ax hanging off his belt, and both hands gripping a crack in the stone. He called to Sophie, and she started pulling.
It didn’t feel safer than how he had been climbing, but having someone constantly pulling him up forced Razan to move faster. It wasn’t long before he was laying safely on snow, panting.
“Having fun?” Sophie asked sweetly.
Razan tried to say something sarcastic, but it came out as a grumble.
“Excellent,” she replied. “Would you mind untying the rope so I can throw it to Peter and Marie?”
He tugged at the knot until it came loose. As she thanked him, he fell asleep.
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Marie climbed over the edge of the cliff with relative ease and knelt in the snow, breathing hard. Her lungs still ached. She closed her eyes for a few seconds, letting her old bones relax.
When she opened them, she saw Sophie sitting a few paces away, next to a sleeping Miyamoto. Marie motioned to the man, and Sophie shrugged.
Marie got up, moving away from the edge. “Come, sit here, hold the pulley for me.”
Sophie scooted down to where Marie indicated as Marie found the pulley in her backpack and handed it over. She took it without a word, her movements slow.
“Put the teeth on your boots,” Marie ordered. “Dig them into the snow so you don’t slide.”
The girl nodded, digging in her backpack for crampons. Marie took the rope out of her own backpack and tossed it down to Peter. As he tied it to his harness, Marie slid her end of the rope through the pulley.
“Ready?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Sophie said, gripping the handle tightly in both hands.
Marie put a hand on the girl’s shoulder. “You’re doing wonderfully.” She turned away and slung the rope over her shoulder.
Admittedly, Marie hadn’t worked this hard in years. The captain of a ship doesn’t haul lines unless something has gone extremely, terribly wrong. Still, she’d done her fair share of pulling ropes around in her youth, and her muscles knew what to do.
Her eyes focused on a spot about the right distance away, her feet and legs moved like pistons to get there, and her spine adjusted to the weight over her shoulder. An old, familiar duty.
Marie reached the spot and turned, checking if Peter was at the edge yet.
Not quite. His hand was on the snow, grasping for something. Sophie set the pulley down and grabbed his wrist, hauling him over the edge. Marie walked back to them as they collapsed into the snow.
“How long until noon?” Sophie asked, staring up at the stars.
Peter sat up, glancing at Miyamoto. “According to my stomach, about three minutes ago.”
Marie smiled, checking the watch on her backpack. “Forty minutes, I’m sad to say.”
Sophie groaned.
“We can’t afford to sit here that long,” Marie said. “We don’t have to move quickly, but we do need to continue.”
“May we have five minutes for a small snack?” Peter asked. Marie could tell he was smiling under his mask. “Putting something in our stomachs will make walking easier.”
“That I’ll allow.” She walked over to Miyamoto and gently kicked him awake. “Eat. Drink. We’re moving in five minutes.”
He sighed, but to his credit he didn’t complain. It took him a few tries to sit up, though.
They found their packets of fruit and nuts and silently ate, looking out at the horizon. Well, Peter and Miyamoto gazed blankly at the horizon. Sophie looked at everything, and Marie watched her team members.
Miyamoto had nearly fallen; fear made people tired. She couldn’t blame him for fainting as soon as he was safe.
But that meant Sophie had done most of the work in pulling three people up a cliff. The girl didn’t look particularly muscular, but she had more strength and energy than Marie would have ever guessed.
And Peter… He had good survival instincts. Marie was the type of person to push herself too far, but she got the sense he never would. He’d feel no shame in saying if he couldn’t do something. Once again, she wondered how many times he’d looked Death in the eyes.
“The footprints change,” Sophie suddenly said, staring up the mountain.
“The what now?” Peter asked.
Marie followed Sophie’s eyes, and understood.
“The footprints. We’ve been following seven teams all day, and the footprints have been the same. But here they’re all different,” Sophie said.
Miyamoto frowned. “What?”
Marie pointed to the teeth on Sophie’s boots. “It looks like all the teams are putting those on at this point.”
“Exactly,” Sophie said.
“Should we put them on, too?” Peter asked. “There’s a good chance they know something we don’t.”
Marie nodded. “Yes. Put them on, then we move.”
Miyamoto bowed slightly. “Yes, ma’am.”
“Oui, mon capitan,” Peter said, raising his hand to his forehead in a mock salute.
Marie raised her eyebrows at him. “Cowboy, if you ever attempt to speak French again, I will castrate you.”
Sophie pulled the mask down over her face, smothering a giggle.
“Yes ma’am, sorry ma’am,” Peter said, suddenly very busy with his backpack.
Miyamoto was staring at Marie in alarm. “You’re not joking. Why are you not joking? Is that something you’ve done before?”
Marie gave him an evil grin, slowly pulling her mask on.