He looked up – saw Nancy's fur-trousered bottom, her scrabbling muk-boots as she struggled for a higher hold – and climbed to set his shoulder beneath her, let her rest on it for a moment.
He took a shallow breath, called out, "Adventure…!" and heard her laugh. Heard Patience laugh above her.
… Though it had been frightening while they were in it, the chimney was the sort of climbing Baj and the others had almost become used to. When, late in after-noon, the Shrikes led over the abyss on a narrow wind-sculpted snow bridge of rotting compact – mealy, pocked, mottled gray – they found their last days' fears of hard ice cracking were great comfort beside depending on surface that was no surface, but only fragile possibility.
Richard, passing over it, nearly stepped clear through that ruined stuff into empty air… And here, with the Shrikes now silent, fear returned redoubled, so Baj and the others moved slowly, uneasily as if in a fever dream… and forgot any Jesus, forgot Lady Weather and Lord Winter, and prayed only to the narrow, delicate corruption beneath their cold-numbed feet and red, chapped, wounded hands – unmittened for desperate gripping.
Baj began a prayer for Nancy as she inched across, panting. Then he stopped praying, afraid it would only bring attention, would remind reality that it could let her fall. The prayer unfinished… she crossed safe as all the others.
Baj, climbing last, started across crouching as if that made him lighter, less a burden to this span of spoiled snow and frost-feathers. He wished – as he had wished many times, climbing – to reach over his shoulder, loosen the rawhide ties of his awkward bow, his awkward quiver, his dear awkward sword, and let them fall so as not to hinder him. He wished, but didn't do it… and went on, crouching, muk-boots sinking deep, so he felt the gulf waiting just beneath them.
He thought the snow bridge trembled. Wasn't sure, but thought he felt it – and out of sympathy, out of a sort of understanding, as if the bridge's difficulty were his, shared by both of them, he went carefully to his knees and lay down, lay full-length on his belly in the worst place – what he was sure must be the worst place, since here the bridge certainly trembled beneath him, eager to let itself go, fall, dissolve into vacancy.
On his belly, he began a sort of slow swimming motion in crumbling snow across the span, gentle as a fish in easy currents. A Shrike had snaked out a line for him to take as the others had taken it to be helped across the last of the bridge… hauled up where a great spike of hard ice – blessedly glass-green – was belay.
But something, perhaps a shift in the shallow spoil beneath him, perhaps a faint sound he hadn't known he'd heard… something advised him not to kick and lunge to take the braided leather lying only feet away.
Baj accepted that advice while the Shrike – one of the nameless ones – clicked an impatient tongue (exactly like Errol) such a short safe distance above him. A distance greater than to a star.
Baj didn't even shake his head "no." He continued his odd slow swimming – felt absolutely a tremor beneath him – swam on as if he were delicate, clotted, and gray, the same sort of stuff exactly. Swam on… did not attempt the rope-end when he came near it… and was then surprised to come at last where a knife-edged ridge of sound ice rose a little above his left hand.
In sudden panic, he reached out, gripped it – and as he hauled himself up, clinging to that shelf, heard a groan just behind him… then a soft thump and great hissing, rushing noise as the snow bridge fell away.
Perched to the side on muk-boot spikes while coiling the line, the nameless Shrike shook his head at beginner's luck.
"Baj…!" Higher, Nancy had looked back and seen the bridge Baj smiled, tried to call back, "Adventure…" but found his throat closed to speech.
… That night, hanging suspended in blizzard, they all dozed – to come awake, frightened, when their sleeping sling thrashed hard to the gale… Baj and Nancy clinging close, wrapped in stiff ice-crusted blankets over freezing furs.
Toward morning – at least what seemed toward morning, the storm slowly eased, rumbled away east, and was replaced by a silence that seemed as loud.
In that frigid stillness, awake, Nancy murmured to Baj the story of her mother's suffering… of the barely remembered breeding-pens of Boston town, when she was a little girl and kept a pet rat named Dandy before they took her away, as they took all children from the mothers… Then of being assigned to the Companies at her first bleeding-between-the-legs. Of being protected from the worst by Richard, a kind lieutenant… then captain. And, after three years, fleeing with him following the stabbing, and his trouble with Major Donald-Fishhawk… Errol, the mess-cook's bruised chore-boy, trailing along.
Then, WT weeks of wandering… until, one late-winter day, Patience had sailed down to them out of a gray sky, stumbled a little on landing, and said, "I've been watching for two days. And it seems to me, that you foolish lost ones might have something better to do than journey in circles, and cook squirrels for supper."
… Kisses from Baj, then, to comfort her.
Dawn had barely marked the east, when a cheerful Dolphus come sliding down out of darkness on braided leather to kick their swaying nest. "Oh, what a treat we have for you brave climbers!"
"What?" Richard grumbled, hoarse.
" 'What?'" Dolphus reached out to grip the netting and shake them alert. "A day of rest is what! You five have nothing to do but loll in your net, chew delicious seal-blubber, sleep, and pee down the Wall. A day of rest – a gift, though it slows us."
"Thank Frozen Jesus," Richard said, as Patience roused, and Errol, yawning, clambered out of the sling to explore.
Baj shoved a stiff-frozen blanket aside, and kissed Nancy good morning. "I think they're concerned they'll lose us."
She peered out of ice-powdered wool and fur to look out where day's first light poured into vacancy. "I think they wouldn't mind if we all fell. They've already lost one of their own, and we hinder them."
"Whatever their reason…" Baj stood in his parky (balancing carefully on springing netting), breathed-in air as thin and edged as a knife blade, and stretched, feeling muscles easing down his back. "Whatever, I'm grateful."
"And here's more to be grateful for." Marcus-Shrike, overhearing, sailed swinging by them, trailing frosting breath, a muk-boot resting in a loop of narrow line. He tossed short sticks of frozen blubber to them as he went.
"Only seal?" Patience sat up in the netting. "Nothing else at all?"
"Those people," Nancy said, as the Shrike climbed his rope like a southern spider, back onto the wall. "- People who don't mourn their dead." She tucked both pieces of blubber beneath her blanket, and sat on them to thaw.
"Better melt your drinking water as well, Lady… under that pretty bottom." The Shrike, calling from high above.
"Savages," Nancy said.
"And what's worse," Baj said, "full of very good advice." He found the water flasks among their covers – one chilled to granite, the other only rattling with ice when shaken – grimaced, and tucked them under him.
"Two chicken-birds," Nancy said, "sitting on eggs," and began to giggle.
Richard turned his massive head. "I find no reason, in such a place, for laughter."
"Thaw your water, Captain of the Guard," Baj said, "and become wise."
… Feeling oddly secure in their netting roost, that once had seemed so frail, so insubstantial, Baj and the others – except Errol, who climbed here and there, encouraged by the tribesmen – Baj and the others sat at ease, only standing to stretch, through the day's empty hours.