The Sheer Ascent

Chapter summary

• Core event: Mounir collects his advance provisions and climbing kit from Yasir, noticing the poisoned garrison water and infected sentries, before tackling the treacherous lower pitches of the Razor Crevasse.
• Continuation: Follows the aftermath of the granary crash as Mounir begins the vertical ascent toward the fallen six-winged titan.
• Closing hook: Steppe hawk-riders drop out of the dense cloudbank, their shadows sweeping across the exposed rock face right above Mounir's narrow perch.

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A sack of salt mutton weighs twenty pounds on level ground, but by the time you haul it three hundred feet up a frozen chimney, every pound feels like a personal insult from the gods.

I hauled the heavy burlap bundle through the low stone arch of the lower vaults, tossing it onto the wooden bench beside my climbing rig. The air down in the sub-cellars smelled of damp limestone, mildewed straw, and old tallow.

Yasir al-Nader sat behind a rough plank table, his ledger propped open beside an iron scale. His dark tunic showed fresh sweat rings under the armpits despite the morning chill. Across the room, slumped on an empty grain tub, was the young sentry from the granary. The boy had thick linen compresses tied tight around both ears, but the cloth was already stained with crusty, dark-red circles where the dead beast’s resonance had ruptured his drums. The lad sat staring at the floorboards, rocking slowly back and forth without making a sound.

\"Sign the requisition, Skinner,\" Yasir said, his voice clipped and dry as old parchment. He shoved a clay inkpot and a frayed reed pen toward my hand. \"One sack of cured mutton, two pecks of winter barley, four flasks of clarified tallow. If you break your neck on the north shear, I am sending three pikemen to drag this food back before sunset.\"

\"Always a comfort to know how much you care for my well-being, Yasir,\" I said, dipping the reed into the soot-black ink and scratching my mark on the tally sheet.

I picked up one of the clay tallow flasks, uncorking it to sniff the fat. It was clean enough, rendered thick for greasing climbing ropes and sealing iron pitons against the freezing mountain fog. Beside the inkpot sat a pewter cup half-filled with clear water. I reached out to take a sip to wet my throat, but Yasir slapped his palm flat against the wood.

\"Do not drink that,\" the quartermaster snapped.

I paused, my hand hovering an inch from the rim. \"Rationing well-water now?\"

\"The fourth cistern feeds that tap,\" Yasir muttered, lowering his voice until it barely carried past the table. He glanced toward the dazed sentry on the tub. \"The run-off from the granary roof drains into the upper conduit. The water came out of the pipe tasting like copper shavings and old lamp grease. Two cooks drank a ladleful at second bell. Both are puking black bile into the scuppers.\"

I drew my fingers back from the cup. The celestial blood was already seeping through the mortar into the fortress veins. Kaddour wanted cold fire to shatter trebuchets, but the dead were poisoning the well before the siege engines even reached the trench line.

\"Tell the cooks to boil water from the deep spring,\" I said, strapping the four tallow flasks into the leather loops of my climbing vest. \"And tell Kaddour that if he brings down another vulture, he will be ruling a fortress of corpses.\"

\"Tell him yourself when you bring back the titan’s marrow,\" Yasir said, dipping his head toward the ledger. \"Get out of my cellar. The wind is rising on the north face.\"

I hoisted the sack of mutton, carrying it down the damp corridor to my quarters beneath the third-tier bastion.

My room was little more than a narrow niche hacked into the mountain rock, furnished with a straw pallet, a charcoal brazier, and an iron chest. I slid the mutton and barley into the chest, locking the padlock with the iron key I kept strung around my neck. Then I reached under the pallet, running my calloused fingertips over the heavy oilskin harness concealed beneath the loose slats.

One hundred prime down-feathers were tucked into the inner quilting, cool to the touch and humming with faint, sleeping power. If I harvested the six-winged bull lodged in the crevasse, I would have more than enough plumage to finish the second wing. Once the wings were stitched, Kaddour could fight his war with whatever ghosts he pleased. I would step off the south pinnacle and ride the thermals over the siege lines into the southern scrub.

I pulled my climbing gear from the wooden pegs on the wall: twelve forged iron pitons, a short-hafted steel hammer, three pairs of bronze ascender hooks, eighty yards of plaited hemp rope soaked in grease, and my broad butcher’s cleaver. I bound my wrists with strips of oiled calfskin to keep the shale from shredding my skin, checked the iron teeth on my climbing boots, and headed for the north sally-port.

The iron gate groaned as two guards levered it open just wide enough for a man to slip through.

The wind hit me like a wet hide.

Freezing air tore through the gap, carrying the reek of burning pine from the steppe camp eight hundred feet below. Beyond the narrow ledge of the sally-port lay nothing but empty space and the vertical north wall of Jebel-Assani. The mountain dropped straight down into the mist, a wall of black basalt streaked with rotten shale and pale veins of quartz.

To my left, the mountain folded into the Razor Crevasse—a jagged vertical split in the rock, barely twelve feet wide, that cut straight up through the cliffs toward the upper peaks. Somewhere two hundred paces above, the six-winged bull titan was wedged in that throat, bleeding its cold fire into the howling gusts.

I hooked my first piton into a hair-thin crack three feet above the ledge, driving it home with two solid blows of the hammer. The iron rang true, singing into the stone. I snapped my guide-ring into the eyelet, slung the rope across my chest, and stepped off the ledge into the open air.

Gravity grabbed my boots, but my arms took the weight instantly.

Climbing on rock this rotten was a conversation with the stone. You did not force a grip; you listened for the hollow thump of loose shale and looked for the dark, greasy sheen of true basalt. I moved upward using a three-point rhythm: hook, foot, hammer. I jammed the bronze hook into a seam, pulled my chest to the wall, found an edge for the iron toe-cap, and hammered the next wedge into place.

Fifty feet up, the rock sheared away into a blank overhang. A strip of loose gray shale ran across the gap, crumbling to powder under my knuckles.

I hung in my harness, calves burning, frost crusting the stubble on my chin. The wind battered my ribs, trying to peel me off the rock like a dead moth. Above me, the overhang jutted six feet out, blocking the direct line up the chimney.

I leaned back against the tension of the rope, studying the fissure. The main crack was rotted by winter ice, but four feet to the right, a blind seam of black basalt ran straight up the belly of the protrusion.

I unslung a curved anchor wedge from my hip. Swinging my body with the sway of the gust, I drove the wedge hard into the blind seam. It bit with a dull, iron crunch. I pulled twice on the line to test the purchase. The metal held firm.

With a sharp kick off the loose shale, I launched my body across the void, swinging under the belly of the overhang. My left hand caught the rim of the basalt shelf. The stone was slick with frost, but I dug my fingers into the lip, hauling my shoulders over the ledge with a ragged grunt.

I rolled onto a narrow roost of solid basalt, barely wide enough to sit with my knees drawn up. My lungs burned from the thin, biting air, but the anchor was set. I was past the lower chimney.

Above me, the upper gorge narrowed into a shadowy cleft where faint blue light pulsed against the clouds. The dying titan was up there, its massive carcass wedged tight between the cliffs, venting pale streamers of cold vapor into the storm.

I reached for my water flask, ready to rest my forearms before the final pitch.

A high, piercing screech tore through the clouds.

It was not the cry of a beast, but the bronze whistle of an aerial scout.

A dark shape plunged out of the upper cloudbank, its broad wings carving through the mist. It was a giant steppe war-hawk, its feathers dyed crimson and soot-black. Astride the predator’s neck sat a steppe hunter in boiled leather, holding a hooked lance. A second bird swept down beside the first, banking hard in a wide, hunting circle.

Their shadows swept directly across the exposed rock face, freezing right over my ledge.