But if I was an ancient occultist about to carry out a diabolical ritual summoning a host of beings from another realm I’d want more security than a mere padlock on a gate.
Billi unbuckled her sword-belt and handed it over to Faustus, along with the binoculars. “Wait here. I need to have a better look.”
“Look at what?”
She didn’t answer but instead slipped down the slope a few metres to the underside of the bridge. Balancing on a diagonal support Billi reached out and took hold of one of the horizontal supports and shuffled along.
The moonlight slipped down between the floorboards and bounced off the sea, giving Billi enough light to make her way along to the next scaffolding pole and with her toes just balanced on the frame built into the cliff.
You tricky bastard, Reggie.
Billi slid back and a few moments later was beside Faustus, buckling on her belt. “We can’t cross the bridge. He’s undone all the support clamps. We wouldn’t get halfway across before the whole thing would come crashing down.”
“Then what are we going to do? There’s no other way into the castle.”
“There is.” Billi gazed out towards the black, ragged cliffs. “But you’re not gonna like it.”
CHAPTER 26
“You are shitting me. I am not going up that way,” said Faustus as he gazed up the seaward cliff-face. “It’s suicide and you know it.”
“Come on. It’s barely a V4.”
“A what?”
She stood beside him, appraising the black, rain-swept rock. She sucked her teeth as she saw how the cliff evolved the higher it rose. “It’s a way of grading climbs. What we’ve got is a very severe. Maybe hard very severe around that outcrop in the middle.”
He looked more frightened than ever. “You know how to climb? Dumb question. Of course you do. You want to go up that way, don’t you? Is this an ego thing?”
“Didn’t you come to our climbing week at the Lake District? The Eskdale crags were waaay worse than this.”
Faustus went from frightened to sour. “I’d quit by then. And I haven’t brought any rope or a grappling hook or whatever you guys use nowadays.”
“This isn’t a game of Dungeons and Dragons, Faustus.”
He laughed joylessly. “Sure it is. You’re the high level knight and I’m the very low level wizard who’s wishing he’d never left the tavern.” He gestured back to the village. “I say we try the path up.”
“You got a cloak of invisibility? There are lights and cameras. We have one advantage and you know it. Reggie and his little band think I’ve drowned. They’ll be off guard and that’ll give us our chance to get Ivan and disrupt... this ritual.” She shook her head. “Frankly this sounds more like a game of Dungeons and Dragons the more I talk about it.” She adjusted the Templar sword across her back. “Right down to the accessories.”
She didn’t want to admit it but the climb looked... tricky. It would have been a challenge in the day, but at night, in the rain? They’d be crawling up slick granite blind. But Ivan was up there and it was this or nothing.
Oh, and there was a cosmic apocalypse to halt. So there was that too.
“Just follow me,” she said as she kicked the damp sand off her boots and flexed her fingers. The wind off the North Sea already carried the promise of winter and they had a hundred metres to climb. “Let’s get started. Now watch me. You’ll be surprised how strongly you can hang on when your life depends upon it.”
“Do not remind me.”
Billi pointed up a stone nub half-way up. “We’ll aim for that. Catch our breath for a minute, then go up the last pitch.”
They climbed over the rocks further out over the water. The wind was picking up and throwing sheets of spray over them. The cliff face had been battered hard by the elements so gave her the roughest surface to grip onto, though the most exposed. Faustus cursed as he stumbled along behind her. Eventually she found a good route up, as far as she could tell. Plenty of handholds, ledges and cracks. Just overrunning with water so it looked like they were climbing up a waterfall. She balanced her right foot upon a narrow ridge of granite and dug her fingers into cracks. She pushed off —
And slipped.
She glanced back at Faustus and smiled. He looked horrified. “Best get that out of the system, eh?”
“You are insane.”
She had a pithy reply, but held it between her lips. Up close the climb looked a lot worse than it had from the beach. The granite wasn’t porous, all that sea spray and rain formed a thin film over it, you couldn’t rely on friction and when it came to climbing you relied on friction a lot. Like all the time. This was going to be a very different climb with a lot fewer options than usual. She had no idea what lay over the next ledge, the route to the top was all guess work and, what she hadn’t admitted to Faustus, she’d never climbed without a rope. Nor had she actually led. That had been Arthur or Bors. She’d always promised herself she’d lead the next one but each time they’d come up to one of the crags she’d stared at it, eyes wide and palms sweating. She tightened the strap across her chest, making sure the sword was fixed firmly in place. The last thing she wanted was it slipping off her shoulder half-way up a slab.
She put her foot back on the ridge and gently hauled herself up. She jammed her left toe into a slot in the
