Land became temporarily level, but the view was now a disorientating white-out. Blinding snowflakes blanketed the way above and below; there was no escaping this slow death.
Kat scratched the ice from his stubble and the frost from his hair. I expected orders to rest during the blizzard, but it never came. Instead, he paused before me, bending to his knees.
'What are…you doing?' I asked, stuffing hands into my armpits.
The side of Kat's face was like a block of solid ice, and removing his sword with a click from its sheath, he lowered himself further.
'Kat?' I said, bemused. 'Is everything all — '
Suddenly, with an angry grunt and flash of steel, Kat sliced his katana at the blustery air.
THUNK!
Something substantial, like a chunk of flying butcher meat knocked me flat on my back and near unconscious. Stunned, I lay still for the first minute, hearing the growls of Kat mixed in with the snarling of some starving animal.
Tentatively raising my head, I witnessed a raging bag of white hair and black spots beyond my toes. Clearing my eyes, I gasped — it was a mountain lion of some kind, larger than a Volvo, and wrestling and cutting into something underneath it. I heard the snap of its teeth and the grind of its jowls; then all of a sudden, a gruesome crackle came from inside its ribcage, followed by the animal's guttural howling at the falling snow. Terrified, I shuffled back as the beast flopped lifeless.
Exhausted, Kat pushed his way out from underneath the beast, deep teeth marks embedding his forehead, and a ghoulish river of blood leaking from it. Emotionless, Kat pressed a handful of snow to his wound and smeared aside any blood blocking his vision.
“Shit man!” I yelled. “You're a mess!'
“I will heal.”
“What is it?” I asked, standing to jab my foot into that bulbous bag of hair and teeth.
'Snow leopard,' he said, removing his katana from its ribs. 'I've killed larger…'
Finally, as the last of the breath exhaled from the animal's lungs, we took our rest against the warm, dead thing.
***
The sky was like a storm at sea, a fury pelting snow and rain the like I'd never seen before. Sleet flowed down the ascending stone like a garden water feature, making slush of the road and every step treacherous. We slipped continuously as the upward scale increased, until eventually; we climbed on our hands and knees, grasping fingernails into wobbly rocks to advance us, footholds and handholds of equal importance.
Kat kept up the gruelling pace — impossible for me to live with. Still I dug deep, finding enough to keep going, if not keep up. Onward — onward — onward! Push and pull — push and pull!
'How much longer?!' I screamed at his back, my sound suppressed by the almighty gale. 'How much… longer?'
Degrees grew steeper still, and I realised why rest here was so perilous. Mere feet to our left, a rolling boulder the size of a two-story house passed us by. A sure and silent killer, and if we had been in its path we would've been pulverized underneath it. Hence getting up this slope as fast as possible was our maxim — there would be no lack of attention, and no more rest.
The breath of God attempted to blow us down this mountain, and with our rope constantly strained taut now, Kat was almost dragging me up the side of it; his tugs squeezing the knot unbearably around my gut. It was only when my clothes were drenched through, when my face, my ears, my neck and my hands were pelted raw by pills of ice, did I snap. Give up. At the end of my tether. The end of this fucking rope.
'No more!' I screamed and screamed. 'That's it! I am done! Done!'
Kat pressed on regardless, and with my body at a standstill, the abrupt yank at my waist pulled me forward to smash my face on a rock. Knocked out of his resolute world, Kat looked back, but expressed no concern for me. He simply pulled on our rope, cursed my limp body and demanded that I follow orders — to be more careful — to be on my feet.
I strained a look at him through the lashing rain, blood dribbling down my cheek. 'I can't! It's too much! No more!'
Kat’s eyebrows crossed like attracting magnets. He threw down his rope then marched, puffy cheeked and livid toward me. Temporarily shielding me from the hail, he grappled me by the skin of the neck.
'Up!'
Maddeningly, I beat my arms against his clenched hand.
'Don't! Fucking! Touch me! Don't ever lay a hand on me again you cock sucker! I'm going back! I'm going back right fucking now! If you don't come with me, I'll go alone! I don't need you! I don't care!'
The wind howled like that dying snow leopard, and Kat's palm rubbed over the katana hilt like a magic lamp.
'Say another word,' he suddenly bawled; 'and I will cut your head off!'
Lightning smashed the mountain slope and a boom of thunder shook the sky. I was not angry any-more, but flabbergasted. In the soulless stare of the samurai warrior, I saw that my defender, my sword and shield was a hundred percent serious: he would cut my head off. Maybe he wanted to.
'Just — another — word!' he repeated, teasing the hilt and himself, waiting and wanting…
I did not speak. Not a mutter. Instead, I rose to my feet, and tasting a combination of water and blood on my lips, I stared into the soaking hard face of Kat, our private storm lasting a full sixty seconds.
'I can't believe they sent you to help me!' I cried. 'Why you?! Who the fuck are you?!'
'I have seen Hell!' he roared back. 'Lived it for two hundred years! Two hundred! If you cannot go on now — you may as well lose your head! You may as well!'
I slunk beaten, while Kat readied himself for his kill. I did not have the strength or belief for this mission, but urgently needed to find it. I searched inside for inspiration — it had to be there, deep in the dusty attic of my heart — and it was. Kathy, my wonderfully bright star was expecting her Father, and I've kept her waiting long enough.
'Get up, Danny!' begged Missy, her young voice so clear in my head. 'Get up that mountain right this minute! Don't make me come down there!'
I placed pressure on my cheek with a sleeve, and with resolve, determination and the will to survive, I passed Kat and carried on up the slope; until it was his turn to feel that wretched tug of rope.
***
Morning.
We recuperated on a ledge some miles up the mountain. Jaded and sore all over, I could hardly imagine the distance left to the summit; a feat far beyond my forty-one year old body. Fortunately, there was no more climbing left to be done — we had reached our destination.
I got a slight lift now, a proud sense of achievement when I glanced over our ledge. We were hundreds of feet from the ground. Curvy cloud formed a sheet of whisked cream over the landscape, hiding everything but the pointed tops of other mountains.
'Heaven,' I said, dabbing the new scab at my cheek. 'Must be what Heaven looks like, eh?'
'I wouldn't know.'
Not the view sort, Kat didn't stop to enjoy it. No, the samurai was a problem solver, and facing him was one needing to be solved. He crouched, rubbing at his mouth and surveying the dilemma. Cut into this mountain was a curious rectangle entranceway, with a gloomy corridor inside it. The surrounding mountain stone was a rugged sandy brown, but the corridor was of marble white, perfectly smooth with foreign symbols painted on the walls. I felt like an explorer now, discovering an ancient tomb, this grand hallway surely leading to the king himself.
'Come on Kat!' I complained. 'It's been an hour already!'
He swat a hand at my voice like a mosquito in his ear, so I bent to collect a handful of stones. One by one, I threw them off the cliff edge, making many dimples into the multicoloured cloud below.
Inside the marble corridor — positioned in the centre of the floor — was a circular seal of gold. A substantial image, it depicted a half man, half horse: A Centaur riding the back of a fire-breathing dragon. Beyond that seal was something even stranger — a rippling wall of gas, as if a bubbling cloak draped over a door we could not see. It was difficult to make out or understand the symbols on the walls from this position; and judging by Kat's puzzled frown,
