My foot slipped, and I hung by the hands, from the rocky ledge. Then I had my footing again.
The sun struck the cliff. My fingers ached. My feet were cold from the ice, the snow. But the upper part of my body sweated.
“Move only one hand or a foot at a time,” said Ivar.
It was now the twelfth hour, two Ahn past the Gorean noon. I would not look down.
A rock struck nearme, shattering into the granite of the mountain, scarring it. It must have been the size of a tarsk. Startled I almost lost my grip. I tried to remain calm. I heard a Kur climbing below me.
The Torvaldsberg is, all things considered, an extremely dangerous mountain. Yet it is clearly not unscalable, as I learned, without equipment. It has the shape of a spear blade, broad, which has been bent near the tip. It is something over four and a half pasangs in height, or something over seventeen thousand Earth feet. It is not the highest mountain on Gor but it is one of the most dramatic, and most impressive. It is also, in its fearful way, beautiful.
I followed, as closely as I could, the Forkbeard. It did not take me long to understand that he knew well what he was dolng. He seemed to have an uncanny sense for locating tiny ledges and cuts in the stone which were almost invisible from even two or three feet below.
Kurii are excellent climbers, well fitted for this activity with their multiple jointed hands and feet, their long fingers, thelr suddenly extendable claws, but they followed us, nonetheless, with difficulty.
I suspected why this was.
It must have been about the fourteenth Ahn when Ivar reached down and helped me to a ledge.
I was breathing heavily.
“Kurii,” he said, “cannot reach this ledge by the same route. ‘
“Why?” I asked.
“The hand holds,” said he, “are too shallow, their weight.
“Hand holds?” I asked.
“Yes,” said he. “Surely you have noticed their convemence.”
I looked at him. More than once I had almost slipped down the escarpment.
“And you have noticed how they have become shallower?”
“I noticed the climbing was more difficult “ I admitted. “You seem to know the mountain well,” I told him.
Ivar smiled.
It had been no accident that he had seemed to have an uncanny knack for locating an ascent path, where none seemed to promise.
“You have been here before,” I told him.
“Yes,” he said. “As a boy I climbed the Torvaldsberg.”
“You spoke of hand holds,” I said.
“I cut them,” he said.
It then seemed to me no wonder that he had moved with such confidence on the escarpment. I had suspected earlier that he knew the mountain, this facilitating our ascent, and that this explained why the pursuing Kurii, natively better climbers than men, could do little better than keep our pace, if that. I had not suspected, however, that the Forkbeard was taking advantage of a previously wrought path, and one which, in part at least, he had made for himself in years past.
The Forkbeard leaned back, grinning. He rubbed his hands. His fingers were cold. We heard, some sixty feet below us, a Kur scraping with its claws on the mountain below us, feeling for crevices or chinks.
“This ledge,” said the Forkbeard, “is a Kur trap. In my youth I was hunted by a Kur in this vicinity. It had trailed me for two days. I took to the mountain. It was sufficiently unwise to follow me. I chose, and cut, a path which it might follow, to the last twenty feet; for the last twenty feet I cut shallow holds in the surface, adequate for a man, climbing carefully, but too shallow for the fingers of a Kur.”
Below us I heard a snarl of frustration.
“As a boy, thus,” said Ivar, “I slew my first Kur.” He rose to his feet. He went to a corner of the ledge where, heaped, there were several large stones. “The stones I then gathered are still here,” he said. “I found several on the ledge, some I found higher.”
I did not envy the Kur below.
I looked over the edge. “It is still climbing,” I whispered. I drew my sword. It would not be difficult to prevent the animal from reaching the ledge by any direct route.
“It is stupid,” said the Forkbeard.
Behind the first Kur, some feet below, was a second. Two others were far down the slope, where it was less sheer. The two closest to us had left their weapons below, with the others.
The first Kur was some eight or ten feet below us when, suddenly, it slipped on the rock and, with a wild shriek, scratching at the stone, slid some four feet downward and then plunged backward, turning in the air, howling, and, some five Ihn later, struck the rocks far below.
“The hand holds,” said Ivar, “were not cut to be deep enough to support the weight of a Kur.”
The second Kur was some twenty-five feet below. It looked up, snarling.
The rock hurled by Ivar struck it from the almost vertical wall of stone.
It, like its confrere, fell to the rocks below.
The trap, laid for an enemy by a boy of Torvaldsland many years ago, was still effective. I admired Ivar Forkbeard. Even in his youth he had been resourceful, cunning. Even as a boy he had been a dangerous foe, in guile and wit the match even for an adult Kur.
The other two Kurii crouched below on the slopes, looking up. They carried their shields, their axes, on their back.
They made no attempt to approach us.
Our position was not, now, a desirable one. We were isolated on a ledge. Here there was not food nor water. We could, with some climbing, obtain ice or snow, but there was no food. In time we would weaken, be unable to climb well. As hunters Kurii were patient beasts. If these had fed well before taking up our pursuit, they would not need food for days. I had little doubt they had fed well. There had been much available meat. There was little possibility of leaving the ledge undetected. Kurii have superb night vision. Furthermore, it would be extremely dangerous to attempt to move on the Torvaldsberg in the night; it was extremely dangerous even in full daylight.
I rubbed my hands together, and blew on them. My feet too, were cold. The sweat in my shirt, now that Iwas not climbing, was frozen. The shirt was stiff, cold. In the night on the Torvaldsberg, even in the middle of the summer, without warm garments, a man might freeze. The wind then began to rise, sweeping the ledge. From where we stood we could see the black ruins of Svein Blue Tooth’s hall and holdings, the desolated thing fields, the sea, Thassa, with the ships at the beach.
I looked at the Forkbeard.
“Let us continue our journey,” he said.
“Let us descend and meet the Kurii, while we still have strength,” I said.
“Let us continue our journey,” he said.
Moving carefully, he began to climb. I followed him. After perhaps half an Ahn, I looked back. The two Kurii, by a parallel route, were following.
That night on the Torvaldsberg we did not freeze.
We huddled on a ledge, between rocks, sheltered from the wind, shivering with cold, miserable, listening for Kurii.
But they did not approach.
We had chosen our ledge well.
Twice rocks rained down to the ledge, but we were protected by an overhang.
“Would you like to hear me sing?” asked Ivar.
“Yes,” I said, “it might drive the Kurii away.”
Undeterred by my sarcasm, brilliant though it was, Ivar broke into song. He knew, it seemed, a great many songs.
No more rocks rained down to the ledge.
“Song, you see,” said Ivar, “soothes even Kurii.”
“More likely,” I said, “they have withdrawn from earshot.”
“You jest delightfully,” acknowledged the Forkbeard, “I had not thought it in you.
“Yes,” I admitted.
“I will teach you a song,” he said, “and we shall sing lt together.” The song dealt with the problems of a man attempting to content one hundred bond-maids, one after the other, it is rather repetitious, and the number of bondmaids decreases by one in each round. Needless to say, it is a song which is not swiftly dispatched. I have, incidentally, a very fine singing voice.
In singing, we little noticed the cold. Yet, toward dawn, we took turns napping. “We will need our strength,” said the Forkbeard.