The problem was, the plan that was slowly forming in my head required that I keep every single bit of rope for myself. Because I wasn’t going to be with them when they came back this way.
But then I realized something: who said they had to return back this way after they had rescued their fellow tribeswomen?
The plan suddenly came together all at once. It was a thing of beauty.
Could it actually work? Who the hell knew. But there was a chance, and it was the only feasible option I saw.
I anchored one of the ropes in my backpack to the cliff and let it drop. It dangled down almost all the way to the ground below.
Good…
I pulled the rope back up, tried my knotted rope with the stone on it to the end, and let it drop again.
The stone disappeared into the deep snow 60 feet below.
Perfect.
I used the first section of rope to rappel down the cliff. Then I climbed down the last 20 feet of knotted rope and dropped into waist-high snow.
Then, after putting on my snowshoes, I padded into the forest in search of Lelia and the others, leaving the rope still fastened to the cliff behind me.
29
I found the women after about an hour – or rather, Lelia found me. One minute I was snowshoeing through the forest; the next, I heard Lelia whispering, “Jack!” from behind a snow-covered fir.
We kissed, and then she took me back to the others.
“I found them,” I said to the women. “Three of your people.”
“They are alive?!” Fieria asked, her voice rising in pitch. The others looked both relieved and overcome with emotion.
“Yes.”
“But… only three? Not five?”
I could hear the grief in her voice.
“No. There could have been other women I didn’t see, but… I think there’s probably only three.”
The women looked at each other, tears in their eyes.
Two of their friends were most likely dead. It was a dark moment.
Finally Fieria broke the silence.
“Tell us what you saw,” she said somberly.
I built up a model on the ground, creating a fort and holding pen out of sticks, and mountains out of snow.
“The bad guy is in here,” I said, pointing at the fort.
“Bad guy?”
“The bad vaklik. Your friends are in here,” I said, pointing at the holding pen. “And there are 30 skiris all around.”
The women looked shell-shocked – like How the hell are we supposed to fight that many?!
“I have a plan,” I explained, and walked them through what I had in mind.
At the end, they were all semi-enthusiastic – except for Lelia.
“No,” she said grumpily.
“Babe, it’s the only way.”
“We will not let you go away from us!”
“We’ll meet up again, I promise. But I’m going to have to distract them and draw off the skiris and the vaklik. There’s no other way.”
“No,” she said, shaking her head, on the verge of tears.
I took her by the arms and looked deep into her eyes. “You have to trust me, okay? We can rescue your friends and stop the skiris from coming after you – but to do that, I have to do my part, too. And if I don’t do it, there’s no way to rescue your friends, and the skiris will just keep coming and coming until they either kill us or capture us. This is the only way.”
Lelia sobbed as I took her into my arms.
Fieria said something to her in their own language. Lelia wiped away the tears from her cheeks and nodded reluctantly.
“What did you say?” I asked Fieria.
“I…” Fieria said, but strained to find the words.
“She said you were sent here to help us,” Lelia murmured. “And that you are being brave and not selfish. And that it would be bad if I do not trust you and believe you.”
Wow.
That was a hell of a ‘Come to Jesus’ speech on Fieria’s part.
“I’m coming back to you, okay?” I said with a smile as I put my finger under her chin. “I promise.”
She looked at me sadly through teary eyes. “I’m scared.”
“Don’t be. I’ve got this. It’ll be okay.”
I sounded a lot more confident than I was. Actually, I was way more nervous about their part of the plan than mine. If I didn’t draw away the skiris and the guy with the red beard, the plan was fucked.
As I held Lelia to me, Fieria asked, “What do we need to do?”
“First I need to take you there,” I answered.
We set off for the cliff where I’d left the rope dangling from the cliff. Once we got there, the women handily climbed the rope up to the overhang – apparently, they all had that amazing grip strength.
Me, I used my ice axes and crampons.
Once I got to the top, I pulled the rope back up, took out the anchor, and put everything in my backpack. Like the ancient Greeks on the shore of Troy, I was burning the boats. No turning back now.
Then I led them down the goat path (or whatever passed for a goat in their world) until we reached the giant snowdrifts overlooking the fort.
By that time, the sun was going down, and it was harder to see – but the women in the pens were still easily visible. As were all the skiris.
Hala cried out, and started to move forward – a purely unthinking reaction to seeing her friends so horribly abused.
Fieria caught her and held her back.
“No,” she cautioned, and said something in their language.
I looked at Lelia, who translated: “It would be death to go down there now.”
“Suicide,” I agreed.
Lelia frowned. “Suicide?”
“Where a person kills himself.”
Lelia looked horrified. “Why would he do that?!”
Why indeed.
I didn’t want to get into depression and all the reasons that might lead someone to go down that road, so I simply said, “Exactly. There’s not a good reason to go down there right now.”
Lelia nodded, then murmured to herself, “Suicide…”
Then I started telling them the plan.
Since they could see the
