Jaetheiri stared at our creations. “They are horrifying to behold, my prince.”
“Well, it’s a good thing they attach to your boots then,” Yethyr said breezily. “You won’t have to look at them.”
And it indeed was a relief that was true. The creations that Yethyr, Wes, and I had made looked like they came straight out of Hell. Fused to the soles of seven pairs of boots, bird talons contorted at an odd, unnerving angle.
But they did what we designed them to do.
When pressed into the rock face with the right force and at the right angle, the talon would sink into the cliff face and stick. So long as you held onto a rope, you could more or less walk up the cliff face.
Wes had made additional rope anchors from bird beaks. The deathsong woven into them sank into the rock and held their weight.
Armed with such tools, the plan was straightforward.
Mandorias climbed ahead. Now that he was dead, the old man was ironically the strongest among them, which seemed to baffle, alarm, and delight the scholar in equal measure. He was charged with throwing rope anchors into the rock face above him, climbing up to the anchor, throwing a new one, and then doing it all again.
Behind him, everyone followed in a line, attached to one another with the rope. Kettir followed second because he was the second strongest. Then came Ruzar because he was the heaviest, and few wanted to pull his weight. Nisari came next because she refused to be below Wes. Jaetheiri went ahead of Yethyr because, of course, she did, and Wes brought up the rear. His skeleton was the only one Yethyr felt he was strong enough to hold up.
Ordered like that, if one of them fell, the other six should be able to hold them up.
I didn’t know enough about climbing to judge if it was a good plan, but I was stressed regardless. If Yethyr fell, there was nothing I could do to save him. I suppose if he survived the fall, I could try to heal him, but I remembered the smashed bodies of those birds Kettir had shot down and found that very unlikely.
No, I was completely helpless. Yethyr took step after careful step up the cliff, and I swung uselessly from his hip. All I could do was feel Wes’s weight tugging below and watch Jaetheiri above.
Jaetheiri did not like that Yethyr was behind her. She called it a “severe security risk.”
“You call any time I’m beyond your line of sight a security risk,” was Yethyr’s reply.
Jaetheiri had not disagreed, and through our bond, I could feel that she was still fretting about it.
Several times a minute, she would glance down to make sure he was still there. Yethyr noticed, but said nothing.
He figured it would be a waste of breath, and he needed his breath.
Walking normally was a challenge for him. Walking up a cliff face with another person tugging at his frame was nearly impossible.
The Prince did not want to admit that. He never wanted to admit such weakness. He endured his agony in silence for 100 feet, 200 feet, but I could feel him giving out.
I urged him to call on my strength. It would save his pride; it would make him look strong. No one would know. All these reasons and more, I whispered to him.
“Use the sword,” I urged in his voice, and oh, how he longed to obey.
He knew it was dangerous; he knew I could not be trusted; he knew there was a price to pay when using me.
He warred with that knowledge as his hand began to slip.
Come on, come on. I pushed him a little more. He was so close to relenting.
And yet…
“Wesed,” he gritted out.
“My prince?” Wes answered from below.
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“I no longer have the strength to puppet you and my body at the same time. I need the Datrean spirits singing your composition for myself.”
I deflated. He had found a way to avoid using me.
“Ah.” Wesed was thoughtful. “I suppose I have a sack I could put myself into. Then, when you silence my composition, you'll carry me to the top as a sack of inert bone fragments and then reanimate me once we reach the top.”
“You understand my plan exactly,” Yethyr panted, relieved he did not have to waste breath explaining.
“Aye, I do. Doesn’t mean I’m especially excited about it,” Wes grumbled as he dutifully started to unroll a sack and latch it on the rope.
Demons below! I almost had the Prince again! Perhaps I pushed too hard and made Yethyr stubborn. He did seem to have a tendency to insist upon doing something the moment anyone suggested he could not.
Ah, well. It was something to keep in mind. I could probably use that bullheadedness to my advantage later...if he didn't fall because of it in the next minute, that is.
Once Wes was safely in a sack, Yethyr released the composition holding him together.
“Ugh!” Wes’ deathsong voice continued even with the collapse of his body. “That’s a disconcerting sensation.”
“It won’t be for very long,” Yethyr assured him. His voice was already stronger, and so was his grip.
It took a massive amount of power to puppet Wes’ fragmented body. Most of the Datrean spirits locked in Yethyr's pendant went into the enterprise. With those thousands of voices suddenly free, they bolstered Yethyr instead.
His steps smoothed out, and he found that he could hold onto the rope more easily.
He was strong enough to continue.
Which was annoying for my purposes because it meant I needed Wes. If I managed to get rid of him, Yethyr would be free to use the voices in the pendant for himself and would no longer need to rely on me. But if Wes stayed and practiced his craft with Yethyr for much longer, they together would be able to dominate me, at a much grander scale than when they commanded me to open the Heart of the Forge back in Datrea.
I was damned if Wes stayed; I was damned if I sent him back to Hell.
But that was a conundrum to deal with after we had reached the top of this cliff face.
The Prince put one foot in front of the other, Wes’s bone sack dangling behind him.
Yethyr calculated that they had 1000 or more feet to climb, but he was steady; he was pacing himself; he could do this.
They fell into a rhythm, slow but continuous. The ground shrank beneath them, and I tried very dearly not to think about the fall.
Then I heard a piercing shriek and the beat of wings.
Yethyr looked up at the skyline to see six fast approaching shapes swooping down from the white peaks.
Rocs. Same as the giant birds that had harried them on their journey to Flazea. That had been weeks of river sailing away, on the night after the fall of Datrea, and yet, superstitiously, the Prince believed them to be the same birds.
“I knew I should have just killed them,” Yethyr hissed.
He had let Nisari blow the rocs away with her windsong horn last time, but she could not do the same now. She had lost that horn in the shipwreck, and her hands weren't free to try even if she had her tools.
Everyone had their hands full with climbing. This was the worst possible time to be attacked.
Yethyr squinted up the cliffside, his heart sinking. 300 feet at least. There was no way they would all reach the top in time.
Kettir clearly had the same thought. Unlike Mandorias, who was trying to climb faster, Kettir stopped altogether, unhooked his boots from the cliff, and wrapped his thighs around the rope itself, freeing his hands to reach for his bow. Mandorias grunted from the strain, but he kept up his panicked climbing without pause, dragging Kettir behind him in a state of constant motion.
It was an impossible shot, Yethyr thought. No one could hit a moving target against the sun while dangling from an ever-rising rope.
And yet, Kettir nocked his arrow as calmly as if it were target practice, and let it fly as immediately as an exhale.
Suddenly, that arrow was through the roc’s eye, and it plummeted into the mountainside below.
Ruzar had been right. Kettir was the best shot he had ever seen.
And then he did it again. And again.
“Tezem,” Jaetheiri hissed, knocking Yethyr from his awed daze. She had unsheathed her dagger, awkwardly holding it in one hand and the rope in the other. “Kill them!”
Three more rocs careened closer, and Kettir was still reloading.
Yethyr uncoiled the deathsong writ deep within himself, making it as precise as possible to avoid hitting everyone else.
“Die.”
Two rocs crumbled at his word. The third must not have heard him; it still came at them. Kettir tried to fit another arrow to his bow, but there wasn’t enough time.
It dove beneath the archer and snatched Ruzar in his beak so fast the cook barely had time to scream.
It swooped onward, carrying both Ruzar and the rope he was attached to with it.
Nisari, who had been immediately below Ruzar, was tugged off the cliff face with an undignified yelp.
And Jaetheiri had a split second to act or be pulled off the cliff as well.
She cut the rope.
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Do you think these are actually the same rocs they fought in Chapter 33?
