Days of Blood and Fire - Katharine Kerr [192]
“We’ve got to get over them, that’s why. Look, you can just see the apex, rising behind the far cliff. The fire must have burst out partway up the mountain’s side first, and as for how long ago, I don’t know if we have a word big enough. Then it would have burst out on that other cone, a little closer to our own day.”
“And now we’ve got the peak itself to worry about.”
“Worry? I—er, truly. If that thing should blow while we’re here …”
They stood for a moment, staring at the peak with its scarf of gray mist, whether smoke or cloud, they couldn’t tell.
“If we need to be round, hadn’t we best just go round?” Rhodry said. “Not go down to the valley at all, I mean.”
“Use the cliff tops as kind of a road? You be probably right enough, but I don’t fancy camping out here tonight, clinging to this slope like a fly on a tankard.”
“Why not? We’ve slept on worse.”
Enj hesitated, staring up at the clear sky while he chewed on his lower lip.
“We’re dead tired already,” Rhodry said. “If we start down now, and slip or suchlike—”
Enj went on staring at the sky and said nothing. Rhodry waited in silence.
“I was just thinking,” Enj said at last. “Suppose the creature be out hunting, and here we be, out walking, where there be neither tree nor overhang for a good mile.”
Rhodry started to speak, then merely laughed. Enj winced.
“Ye gods, Rori, when you laugh like that it does creep my flesh. Now, if we head round to the west here for a ways,we might be able to take that slope down. See over there? There’s a fissure, like.”
In the direction of the fissure, the cliff top seemed to be sloping down somewhat, shortening the distance they’d have to climb, or so Rhodry hoped. Although he’d rested enough to keep going, he could feel his legs and feet aching in stripes of pain along every long muscle. Up in the lead, Enj suddenly cried out and threw up an arm for the halt.
“Now that do be what I call a dropoff! Come up and have a look.”
Down at the bottom of an enormous shaft lay a lake, at least a hundred yards across. The pit looked like a giant finger hole, poked by a god, perhaps, into wet earth that had then turned to rock round the poke and caught the rain. From the rim where they stood, cliffs of the usual dark gray stone fell straight as a plumb line down to the water, some hundred feet below. Wisps of steam rose and floated on the surface.
“Somewhat nasty lives in that, I’ll wager,” Rhodry remarked. “A demon, most like. A pack of evil spirits at the least.”
“We’re not going to hang about long enough to find out. Quick march.”
Once they reached the crack in the cliff face, the eroded slope within its walls did seem more forgiving, a possible though not gentle angle down. Enj studied it for a long moment, then turned to Rhodry.
“What do you think?”
“You’re the leader here.”
“I think we can manage if we start right now. It’s needful that we reach the valley floor before it turns dark.”
They did, but only just. They climbed roped, with Rhodry in the lead and the experienced Enj at the rear to anchor the team should he fall. Every yard gained was a matter of careful thought, of a long look down to gauge not only the possible hand — and footholds at the particular spot but whether or not other holds existed farther along the proposed route. They only had to retrace their route once, and even then, if Rhodry hadn’t been along, the dwarf might have managed to inch himself past the bad spot. As it was, with a cheerful “better delayed than dead,” Enj ordered them back and round to a safer, if slower, route. About halfway down they passed from sun into shade. By the time they stood safely on the flat, the valley floor lay in night, though the very tops of the caldera walls jutted into the gilding sun. Beyond them the volcano’s peak, just visible from this angle, shone gold tinged with pink.
“I see a stream over yonder,” Rhodry said. “Judging by all those trees. What are they, anyway?”
“I call them mountain larch, but I know not what a loremaster would say to that. I be ready to camp, I tell you. We might be able to scrounge enough