The day was cruelly cold, but clear as the best silvered mirror. Clinging to ice, Baj turned his face from the Wall to see, two miles below, the rest of the earth lying inconsequential… What had been boulders and ice blocks, immense, immeasurable, had now become grains of sand – which, with those infinite lakes reduced to puddles, now made a map of miniatures. What appeared only a patch of tundra, green and brown, seemed to stretch a few feet to little hillocks, whose ranges might be stepped over by a child… And past those, the definite, gentle horizon-curve of the round world itself.
"Worth it," Baj said, his breath frosting.
"What?" Nancy carefully turned from watching the Shrikes' preparations.
"All worth it, to see that."
She followed his gaze… dung looking out as Lady Weather might, above and over the earth. "Almost," she said, "- except for losing Henry-Shrike."
There was stirring among the tribesmen… a releasing of holds, and changing stances on ice vertical. Then one, Christopher – heavy pack and possibles left hanging from a hammered hook on the Wall's face, his hood thrown back, his mittens off and dangling from sleeve strings – reached out and up to the great ceiling overhead, while two men belayed a line knotted around his waist.
He leaned far out… took a small ice-hook from his bandoleer, placed it up against the overhang, and using the flat of his hatchet, hammered it in, listening for the sharp notes of firmly-set. Then he reached back, caught the tossed end of a second line, and fed it through the hook's deep curve, where the steel nearly closed upon itself.
… Christopher drew that slender rope through and along, then pulled himself up it to hammer in a second hook, and slipped a loop of his belay line through that. – Then he swung free… dangling now farther out with the second line draped over his shoulder. Baj saw the Shrike take a breath, then begin to swing with purpose, back and forth, as the other tribesmen clung to their holds, gripping both lines fixed to anchoring ice-hooks and steel circlets.
Christopher swung out, struck up into the ice ceiling with his hatchet to pick a hold – and failed, the hatchet rebounding as if it struck stone. He swung back, swung forward… swung back… forward, and struck up for a hold again. The hatchet's pick snagged a place, held, then broke free, and Christopher swung back and away… used that momentum to swing forward again, struck up at the ice ceiling a third time, and the pick held.
Dangling in vacancy, he reached up with his free hand to twist a hook shallow into the ice – and hanging from one hatchet, took his second from his belt, hit the ice-hook three hard blows. Then he set and hammered in another.
Tugging for slack, he looped each his lines side by side through this second pair of hooks.
As Christopher swung away, a hook broke – its steel snapping clean with a crack – and he fell, seeming slowly… almost drifting down, until yanked to a hard halt at his line's end, the belaying Shrikes grunting at the shock.
Christopher spun slowly one way, then the other, his ice hatchets swinging on their cords. Only a worn leather line, slender as a finger, held him above two miles of air.
Nancy said, "No… no… no."
"The cold," Richard said from his place. "The fucking cold brittles the steel____________________"
Christopher – Baj saw the Shrike's eyes were closed – swayed back and forth with the wind, the rope knotted tight around his waist so the brown fur of his parky was gathered in.
Then the tribesman opened his eyes, gestured "up" with a thumb, and as the other Shrikes heaved and hauled together from precarious perches, rose in surges up… up… and up, took another hook from his bandoleer, hammered it in, then gripped and hung from it to gain slack to pass his line through.
Swinging back, then forward from that second set of ice-hooks, he reached out and up, caught a hold with his hatchet's pick… then hammered in a third pair, ran the lines through them.
"Brave man," Nancy said. "Brave man…"
Laboring, Christopher-Shrike swung to place his fourth pair of hooks. And having traveled that distance along his slender two strands – the free line running through its hooks in parallel with his belay – he swung on above emptiness, to extend his highway.
… It seemed to Baj to take a great while for Christopher to reach the edge of the overhang. Once there, out so far, the Shrike hung suspended in air, mirrored beneath its blue ceiling, with both running ropes now knotted to him. He lay there a time to rest.
"Frozen Jesus…" Nancy lisping the Jesus. "Not worth it."
"I don't think," Richard said, "that it will hold me."
"It will hold you," Patience said. "We won't lose you now."
As they watched – even Errol, above them, attentive – Christopher-Shrike, having rested enough, and with both ice hatchets in his hands, crouched precarious at the overhang's edge, a booted foot supported in a rope-loop taut with strain… Then, very quickly, he reached up, drove a hatchet-point into the ice – and hanging from it, lines now sagging – hauled himself up, kicked in boot-spikes, and climbed, swinging his hatchets left and right, onto the overhang's face and out of sight, the ropes feeding after him.
Patience said, "Marvelous…" The perfect old word – and the more powerful since Patience Walked-in-air (though no longer high as she had) and was familiar with heights.
… Then there was only waiting, and the slow periodic paying out of braided lines through six pairs of hooks as Christopher climbed the Wall's crest, unseen.
The sun had slid lower to the west, when both lines drew taut… and there was the faintest shrill whistle, that might have been an eagle's but for its ascending note.
Dolphus-Shrike leaned far out to reach the lines, hauled hard to test them – then swung aside against the Wall, and gestured Paul-Shrike and one of the Nameless to climb out and on them.
Those two unmittened, and swung out hand over hand, swaying from one rope to the other as monkey-animals were said to do in the forests of South Map-America. Hand over hand – and those hands nearly frozen, chapped and cut from cold and climbing.
"I will not be able to do that." Richard shook his head.
Dolphus heard him, and laughed. "We'll haul you over and up like a killed walrus, Captain. You'll wallow, but you'll go."
Another Shrike clambered up to Errol, tapped the boy's nose for attention, then handed him down to the others. Dolphus-Shrike lifted Errol up to the lines – saw him take his grip on each – then let him loose.
Nancy called "Don't," but no attention was paid. And none needed, since Errol – apparently enjoying himself – swung along the lines as if the ground lay only just beneath his feet… swung out and along the slender ropes to the overhang's edge, then climbed up them as they ran out of sight.
"The rest of you," Dolphus said, "- will be bundles, with short rope-ties hooked to each line. It will be a pleasure trip."
… And so it was. Baj and the others became packages, relieved of responsibility. Short lengths of rope were knotted around them, then hooked right and left to the twin lines running out under the ice ceiling, so they had only to draw themselves across, hand over hand, lying on their backs – the blue ice, two feet above their faces, reflecting weariness as they hauled themselves along, supporting the hanging weight of their packs and weapons.
They each trundled across, with a Shrike waiting to transfer their short-rope hooks around the ceiling hooks as they reached them. – Richard first, while a tribesman watched the rig for strain, then Patience, then Nancy… and Baj last. It was their easiest time on the Wall.
And remained easy at the overhang's lip. There – still a bundle – each was met by a Shrike on one of two thicker lines lowered from above, ropes hanging down the cresting shelf's great face, a hundred-foot vertical… the ice, wind-polished, blazing white in the sun.