her, they toiled upwards, but their progress was even slower than it had
been the day before. Nicholas was forced to pause and rest at shorter
and shorter intervals. On the easier pitches she dismounted and hopped
along on one leg beside him, steadying herself with one hand on his
shoulder. Then she would collapse, and he had to lift her to her feet
and pull her up on to his back once again.
The journey descended into nightmare, and both of them lost all sense of
the passage of time. Hours blended with hours into a single unremitting
agony. At one stage they lay beside each other on the path, sick and
nauseated with thirst and exhaustion and pain. They had emptied the
water bottle an hour ago, and there was no more on this section of the
path - nothing to drink until they reached the summit and were reunited
with the Dandera river.
'Go on and leave me here, she whispered hoarsely.
He sat up immediately and stared at her. 'Don't be silly. I need you for
ballast.'
'It can't be much further to the top,' she insisted. 'You can come back
with some of Boris's men to help carry me.'
'If they are still there, and if Pegasus doesn't find you first.' He
stood up a little unsteadily. 'Forget it. You are coming along on this
ride, all the way.'And he hoisted her to her feet.
He made her count aloud every step he took, and at every hundredth he
paused and rested. Then he started the next hundred, with her counting
softly in his ear, clinging with both arms around his neck. The whole
universe seemed to shrink in upon them to the ground directly at his
feet. They no longer saw the rock cliff on one side nor the deep void of
space on the other. When he lurched or jolted her and the pain shot
through her knee, she closed her eyes and tried not to let her voice
betray it to him as she kept counting.
When he rested, he had to lean against the cliff face, not trusting his
legs to get him up again if he lay down. He dared not lower her to the
ground. The effort of lifting her again would be too much. He no longer
had the strength for it.
'It's almost dark,' she whispered in his ear. 'You must stop here for
the night. It's enough for one day. You are killing yourself, Nicky.'
'Another hundred, he mumbled.
'No, Nicky. Put me down!'
For answer he pushed off from the rock wall with his shoulder and
staggered on upwards.
'Cound' he ordered.
'Fifty-one, fifty-two,' she obeyed. Suddenly the gradient altered so
sharply under his feet that he almost fell.
The path had levelled out, and like a drunkard he reached up for a step
that wasn't there.
He staggered and then caught his balance. He stood teetering on the
brink of the precipice and peered into the dusk ahead of him, at first
unable to credit what he was seeing. There were lights in the gloom, and
he thought that he had begun to hallucinate. Then he heard men's voices,
and he shook his head to clear it and bring himself back to reality.
