“He is a good man,” Smyslov murmured over the rush of the wind.
“Probably better than you or I or anyone else on this island.” A wistfulness crept unbidden into her reply. “He’ll die being a good man one of these days. Well, we’ll be back with you shortly. I do hope you won’t mind hanging around for a bit.”
She edged back down the ledge to the glacier interface, the bergschrund, as Smith had called it. Then she remembered his final instruction. She went back to the gear cache for a second piton. Returning to the glacier face, she dropped to her knees on the ledge, searching for a belaying point. It wasn’t easy; her light source was feeble, and the ledge seemed a solid slab of stone. Finally she found a narrow crack near the lip of the ledge, and she took care to drive the piton in as deeply as possible. Not wanting to unhitch herself from the safety rope, she hooked a snap carabiner through the piton ring and latched a loop of the line through that, leaving herself enough slack for free movement. Standing once more, she moved below the glacier face and gave the main rope a signal tug.
At the top of the glacier, she saw the ball of green luminance that marked Jon Smith start its bounding descent down the ice extrusion.
Not long now and he would be with her. A hundred feet to go…seventy…fifty…
Valentina heard a creaking groan, the yielding of inorganic matter on a massive scale, followed by a series of explosive cracks. She threw herself back against the cliff face, pressing spine to stone just as the entire vertical edge of the glacier fractured and dissolved into a thundering cascade of tumbling, grinding ice.
Val was aware of the strike and brush of ice fragments, none of them quite large enough to bludgeon her or carry her away. The big stuff, the car- and truck-sized slabs of glacier, were tipping outward, their weight and momentum carrying them beyond the shelf of rock. Then a streak of green light plummeted past en route to oblivion, and she dimly heard her own scream of denial over the grating roar of the icefall. Then something seized her with irresistible force, snatching her off her feet and hurling her to the ledge. Her head slammed into stone; white light blazed behind her eyes; then blackness took her.
Consciousness returned with the sound of an accented voice calling her name. She found herself lying facedown on the rock shelf, unnervingly near the edge, and with something stabbing uncomfortably into her stomach. Her head rang with the blow she had taken, but her thick parka hood had kept her skull from fracturing. She didn’t think she’d been unconscious for long, but the cold of the stone and the wind were already creeping into her. Groggily she tried to stand but found she couldn’t. It was as if she were glued down on the ledge. A moment of befuddled exploration revealed why.
It was the safety line, and the thing that was prodding her so uncomfortably was the piton and carabinier that she had looped it through. Drawn taut, the line ran from her climbing harness, through the carabiner, and over the lip of the ledge. Valentina’s last few seconds of memory returned, and she recalled the avalanche and Smith’s chem light falling past her.
“Jon!”
There was no answer from the black void beside her. The lifeline hung rigid, a dead weight hanging suspended from its end. She pushed and writhed, trying to draw back from the edge against the merciless drag of the rope, only to find she couldn’t gain even an inch.
It was futile. Under ideal circumstances she might have been able to lift the hundred and eighty-odd pounds dangling at the end of the rope, at least for a short distance, but conditions were far from ideal. Sprawled on an ice-glassy slab of rock, there was nothing to give her leverage or purchase. She was hopelessly pinned.
Again she heard her name being called. A dozen yards farther down the ledge she could see Smyslov leaning back against his restraints, trying to see what was happening.
“I’m here, Gregori, and from the look of things I’m not going anyplace.”
“What has happened?”
She hesitated for a moment, then realized her list of available assets and allies was ominously short. In a few terse sentences she described the situation.
“You should not have secured the lifeline like that,” he said.
“Do bloody tell,” Valentina grunted, again straining against the drag on the rope.
“Is the colonel all right?’
“I don’t think so. He hasn’t answered me and I don’t feel any movement at the other end of the line. I’m hoping he was just knocked out by the icefall.”
“You must get him up and out of there, Professor,” Smyslov called back.
“I know it, but I can’t get enough slack on the safety line to tie it off! If I cut loose, he’s gone!”
“Then you must drive in a second piton and secure your climbing harness to it. You will then be able to unharness without losing the colonel.”
Valentina gave up on fighting the lifeline. “That’s an excellent idea. Only I don’t have a second bloody piton!”
“Then use the spike of your rock hammer.”
She looked around within the arc of her reach and the glow of her light stick and swore again. “I managed to lose that, too.”
“Professor, he could be injured or dying!”
“I know that, damn it!”
Smyslov said no more. Panting, Valentina rested the side of her head against the frozen stone. They would all die if she didn’t do something. Trapped here, the storm and the inevitable, invasive cold would finish them all.
There was an answer, of course, obvious, simple, and easily done.
She could free herself by cutting the safety rope.
But as Jon had phrased it, that was an option she was not yet ready to consider.
She had her knives, three of them: the utility blade at her belt and her two throwing knives in the slip sheaths strapped to her forearms. Maybe she could use one of them as an ad hoc piton. But she lacked a hammer to drive the blade in solidly, and the hilts weren’t meant for the task. One slip or fumble, and Jon would be dead-granted that he wasn’t already.
That left Smyslov, the man she had quite been prepared to kill. But how had Jon phrased it? “I’m not sure if he’s an enemy yet, Val.”
Logic would indicate that he must be. But logic also indicated that her only alternatives were to cut Jon’s safety line or allow all three of them to perish on this mountainside.
“Gregori, how good a judge of human nature do you think the colonel is?”
“A very good one, I should think,” the Russian replied, puzzled at the question.
“I hope you’re right. I’m going to throw you a knife.”
It was going to be a task easier said than done. Combatant knife throwing was one of the most difficult of the martial arts to master. Were belts awarded for it, Valentina Metrace would easily be a red-belt master. Yet even the legendary William Garvin would have been challenged by this scenario: high gusting wind, miserable lighting, a bad throwing angle, and thick, hampering clothing. Most critically, there was nothing to sink the blade into.
The best bet would have been to skid the knife across the surface of the ledge to Smyslov’s feet, but given the way she’d tethered him to the cliff face, he couldn’t reach down to collect it.
Valentina peeled off her overmittens and gloves. Lying on her side, she pivoted around the piton to face Smyslov, the move putting her legs over the cliff edge from the knees down. She slid the utility blade out of its belt sheath, judging its throwing balance. “Here’s how it’s going to work, Gregori. I’m going to try to put this knife on the cliff face just above your head. You’re going to have to catch it as it slides down past you. Got it?”