The Viper's Fangs (Book 2) (6 page)

Angus nodded, found a grip for his left hand and another for
his right.

“Foothold about six inches from your right foot and down
about a foot,” Giorge said. “It’s a bit small; use your toes.”

The instruction continued for several minutes, with Giorge
telling him where to put his hands and feet, and by the time their safety ropes
began to tauten, Angus was feeling confident about what he was doing.

“There’s a handhold to your right,” Giorge instructed, but when
Angus gripped a very small indentation, one barely deep enough for his
fingertips, Giorge hastily added, “Not that one! That’s for experts. There’s a
beginner’s grip about eight inches further right and a little lower. You’ll be
able to get your whole hand around it.”

Angus tilted his head to look at Giorge. He half-smiled and
lowered himself until he found a thin purchase with his right foot. It wasn’t
much of one, but it would work well enough. He continued lowering himself until
the safety rope prevented him from going any further.

“You’ve done this before,” Giorge accused as he joined him.

Angus shrugged and his left hand nearly lost its grip before
he remembered where he was. “Like you said,” he said, “If I fall, the harness
will catch me.”

Giorge nodded slowly, but continued to watch him. “Let’s see
how far you can go on your own, then,” he said. He lifted his head and shouted,
“Give us another ten feet of slack!” Once the ropes were dangling behind them
again, Giorge quickly descended as far as they would allow.

Have I done this before?
Angus asked himself as he
sought out handholds and toeholds.
It feels like I have, but when?
His
left hand found a strong purchase, and he shifted his right to a thin crack and
squeezed his fingertips into it. There was a larger handhold a little higher
up, but he ignored it. His left foot was next, and it floundered around until he
found a gap large enough to wedge his toes into it, and then he lowered his
right foot. There was a shallow, barely noticeable depression, and he twisted his
foot and applied pressure against the instep, leveraging his weight to keep in
contact with the cliff face. By the time he reached Giorge, the young thief was
staring at him and shaking his head.

“I have never seen anything so strange in all my life,” he
said. “You look like you can climb like a spider one moment, and in the next, you
almost fall from a simple perch.”

Angus shrugged. “It worked, didn’t it?”

Giorge shook his head again. “I don’t know if I would say
that,” he said. “But you are here, and you haven’t fallen.”

“It would be easier if I didn’t have to struggle with the
harness. It’s getting in my way.” He paused and asked, “When we get to that
aerie, would you loosen the straps so I can take it off?”
Why would I want
to do that? Without the harness, I’ll plunge to my death if I slip.
He
frowned. His left foot was beginning to cramp up where his toes were clinging
too hard to the crack.

Giorge shook his head. “No,” he said. “You are not taking off
that harness. I’m an expert climber, and I wouldn’t risk it unless I had no
choice.”

“If you’re such an expert climber,” Angus suddenly snapped,
“why did you put the harnesses on backwards?”

Giorge raised his eyebrows and opened his mouth. “What?”

Angus scowled, frowned, and wondered why he had said that.
He didn’t know anything about climbing, so how would he know the harness was on
backward? But he had said it, and the way he had said it made him believe it,
and so he repeated it. “The harnesses are on
backward
,” he said. “The
rope is supposed to be in the
front
. Why do you think these thigh straps
don’t fit right? They’re turned around.”

Giorge’s frown deepened as he asked, “You think they go on
the other way? The guy I got them from—”

“Of course they do,” Angus interrupted. He didn’t know why
or how he knew they were backward, but he was certain of it. “You’ve never seen
the egg hunters in action, have you? If you had, you would have seen them wearing
these harnesses the other way around and hanging onto the ropes as they repelled
down the cliff face. It would be easier, faster, and safer than having the
ropes tied to our backs where we can’t reach them.”

“Repelling?” Giorge asked. “How do you do that?”

Angus stared at him. “You’ve never repelled down a wall?”

Giorge shrugged. “I don’t think so.”

“And you call yourself a thief,” Angus said, shaking his
head. “I thought all thieves knew how to repel down walls.”

Giorge shrugged again. “Maybe I have,” he said. “Tell me
what it is, and then I’ll know.”

Angus shook his head. Did he know how to repel down a cliff?
He certainly sounded like he did, but he couldn’t remember ever having done it
before. Maybe he had read about it and forgotten? Or was it part of the past
buried inside him? Whatever it was, he knew he was right. He said, “Turn the
harness around, and I’ll show you how it’s done.”

Giorge shook his head. “Not down here.”

The fingers of Angus’s left hand were sore; he had been
gripping the stone too hard. He tried to ease the pressure, but his fingers slipped.
He quickly redistributed his weight to avoid falling, and then said, “All
right, then; I’m going back up to turn this harness around.” He reached for a
new handhold.

“Not yet,” Giorge said. “We’re about level with that first
aerie. It won’t take long to look at it, and if the crack is deep enough, we
might be able to switch them around in there.”

“Fine,” Angus said. “But if it isn’t, I’m going back up.”

It took ten minutes to move sideways to the aerie. It was in
a narrow vertical crack that was barely wide enough for Giorge to squeeze into,
and the aerie covered the bottom two or three feet of it. It was made from interwoven
grain stalks cemented with mud, and feathers lined the gourd-shaped interior.
But it held no eggs.

“It must be a young one,” Giorge said. “The crack is too
narrow. It will be difficult for it to roost in here when it fully matures. A
more mature bird would need at least another two feet to land.”

“All right,” Angus said as he turned away and started
climbing up the cliff. He didn’t bother to wait to see if Giorge followed, but
a few moments later, he heard Giorge yell “Reel us in!”

It wasn’t until after he had reached the top and Ortis was
helping him out of the harness that he realized he had had no trouble climbing
up the cliff face, despite using many of the footholds and handholds Giorge
would have said were for experts. But it didn’t matter. He was going back down
the way they should have gone down in the first place, and they wouldn’t need
the handholds and footholds anymore.

After Ortis had him out of the harness, he turned around and
slipped it on the other way, with the large ring in the middle of his belly and
the clasps for the chest strap facing him. He tied the rope to the ring with a
very secure knot, one that was unlikely to come undone accidentally, and then
tightened the chest strap until it was secure but not uncomfortable. The
harness fit much better and didn’t pinch anything that he didn’t want pinched. When
he was satisfied, he moved to the edge of the cliff and said, “Reel in most of
the slack, Hobart. Then set the brake lightly, so the winch will spin slowly on
its own. I want the rope to have tension and not much slack. If it starts
dropping too fast, set the brake hard, but otherwise let it go.”

Hobart looked at him but didn’t move to comply until Giorge
said, “Let him try it. I want to see what happens.” Hobart shrugged and tried
to do what Angus wanted.

When Angus was satisfied with the give in the rope, he
nodded and moved to the edge. Then he jumped off, dropped about four feet, and braced
himself against the cliff face. The rope slackened, and he walked down the
cliff at a steady, slow pace to match its descent.

Giorge watched him for only a few more seconds before
telling Hobart to reel him back in.

Angus frowned—he had intended to go down as far as the
second aerie, the one that might be a cluster—and easily walked up the cliff
face until he reached the top and scrambled over. Giorge was already out of his
harness and turning it around.

“Why did you bring me back up?” Angus asked. “I could have
checked that other aerie if you had let me.”

“I’m going with you,” Giorge said. “Our ropes have to move
at the same pace. We also need to establish some kind of signal system for
moving up, down, and stopping.”

“Stopping is simple,” Angus said. “We grab onto the cliff
and stop walking. The winch will stop with us. If we want some slack in the
rope, we pull on it. If we want to go down, it will unwind on its own. If we
want to come back up, we’ll start climbing and the rope will go slack and stay
that way. When
both
ropes go slack,” he added meaningfully, “Hobart can
reel them in. That’s the only tricky part, since we’ll be in control of
stopping and going down.”

“I can work with that for now,” Hobart said, “but don’t go
out of shouting distance until after we get it sorted out. There isn’t any need
to, anyway; there’s less than an hour before the fletchings return, and you
need to be back up here when they do.”

Angus watched Giorge struggling with his rope and said, “Let
me do that.” He walked over, untangled the mess Giorge was making with the rope,
and carefully tied the same knot he had tied for himself. He quickly explained how
it would come undone easily if Giorge pulled on two loops at the same time so
he could avoid doing it, and then they walked down the cliff face until they saw
the aerie and worked their way over to it.

When they reached the crack the aerie was in, it was barely
eight feet high and almost six wide. Its walls were smooth, as if they had been
polished by wind and rain—or something else. The base of the crack was flat,
and the aerie was a large one that covered much of the front of the opening. “This
isn’t a natural formation,” Giorge said as he studied it. “Natural ones are
rough and they never—well, almost never form perfect shapes like this archway.”

“It looks like an adit,” Angus said.

“A whatsit?” Giorge asked.

“An adit,” Angus repeated. “Miners use them for ventilation,
drainage, or an entryway.”

“Really?” Giorge asked, perking up a bit. “Maybe it’s a gold
mine!” He rapidly worked his way through the opening, carefully avoiding the
empty aerie covering its base, and dropped down behind it. “It’s best not to
disturb the aerie,” he said as Angus followed after him. “They might abandon
it.”

Once Giorge had helped him settle into place behind the
aerie, they both turned to see how far the crack went into the cliff face. They
were disappointed; the back wall was in shadow, and what they could see curved
rapidly downward not far from where they were standing.

Then Giorge stepped further back and grinned. “You may be
right, Angus,” he said, pointing at the base of the back wall. “There’s a small
opening at the bottom of the back wall. It looks like a tunnel.”

“Let me see,” Angus said, moving in beside him. But there
was little to see. The tunnel entrance was a square with sides barely a foot
across, and its interior was pitch black.

“I don’t suppose you have that spell primed,” Giorge asked,
“the one that makes that ball of light.”

“Lamplight?” Angus said, bringing the magic into focus and
reaching for one of the strands of flame. There weren’t many such strands here;
most of them were from earth and sky, and the ones that were available were all
fairly weak. That suited his purpose well; the Lamplight spell would last
longer with a weak strand than a more powerful one. It was more difficult for
the weak strands to break free from the knots. The light flared in his palm, and
he knelt down to look into the small tunnel. It was too small for him to squeeze
into, but it opened up into a larger chamber or tunnel after about five feet.
Even with the Lamplight spell, he couldn’t see any more than that.

“Can you do what you did at the Angst temple? Attach that
thing to my shoulder?” Giorge asked. “I think I can squeeze through this
opening.”

“What good would it do for you to go in there?” Angus asked.
“The rest of us won’t be able to fit.”

Giorge grinned. “All the more reason for me to go,” he said.
“We won’t find out what’s over there any other way, will we?” Giorge reached up
to loosen the straps of his harness. “I won’t go far and I’ll tell you all
about what I find.” He was out of the harness now and turned expectantly to
Angus. “Well?”

Angus shrugged and attached the Lamplight spell to the back
of Giorge’s shoulder, and then he watched the small man squeeze into the small tunnel
and squirm forward. There was almost no room to spare, but he didn’t have far
to go. Once on the other side, he stood up, looked around, and said, “This is
disappointing. It’s a small room, barely six feet across and six feet long.
There are no doors or tunnels. Why would someone build a room like this in a
cliff face? There has to be something else here, doesn’t there?”

Angus frowned. Giorge was right; it would be quite strange to
find an empty room here that led nowhere—but then again, it wouldn’t be that
much stranger than finding one that led
somewhere
. But they
had
found the room, and someone
had
built it into the cliff face. There had
to be some purpose behind it, and they were not seeing it. “Are you looking for
secret passages?” Angus called down the tunnel.

A moment later, Giorge looked back at him and said, “Oh, no,
I never would have thought of that.” He rolled his eyes and disappeared again. A
few minutes later, he came back to the opening and said, “I found something.
It’s a keyhole in the floor. There’s a barely perceptible seam around it that
forms a square about the same size as this tunnel. It may be a trapdoor into
another one, or it might just be a treasure chest. That’s what I think it is.
After all, how would someone lock it from this side if it were another tunnel
going somewhere else? They would have locked it from the other side after they
closed it, wouldn’t they?”