- this time next year, this will be like a Sunday afternoon stroll! And anyway, I'll have you on a rope - this time. So for now, why don't you just sit there and watch while I get the gear ready? I'll be a minute or two, that's all.'
She shrugged out of her pack, turned her back on him, and went down on one knee.
Harry wandered off around the base of a chimney that rose half-way to the summit. Out of sight of B.J., he spoke to his friend in the cemetery in Dalkeith. How about it?
The other looked out through his eyes, answered: Damn me, but ah've climbed here before! Ben Vorlich, am I right?
Absolutely.
Well, are ye ready?
Harry peeped around the base of the stack. B.J. was still busy with her pack, her back still turned to him. Yes, why not?
Off we go then. A piece o' cake. Just you leave it toe me, Necryscope.
And the Necroscope left it to him - but not entirely. He felt what the dead climber felt, every nuance of the climb.
And of course he learned as they went; for it was his arms and muscles taking the strain, easing him up, ever up within the cleft of the chimney; his eyes scanning the way ahead, taking in each and every detail of the route; his brain, recording it all for later. And the old-timer's narrative to guide him all the way;
That crack there - a good wee hand hold, three fingers at least. And that split opposite: ye can getye're toe in there - but mind ye dinnae twist ye're foot! and that wee ledge, Necryscope: aye, park ye're arse right there a moment... but on'y a moment! And alwiz keep moving - on and up! And breathe, laddie, breathe! For it's the air that powers ye. Breathe easy, Harry, in and oot. Ah! And see there: a piton! But dinnae ye touch it! That's cheatin'!
They were through the chimney and onto the outer face, and Harry felt like he was actually haring for the high horizon of the topmost rim. Then he scuffed loose a pebble that went clattering all the way down the sheer face, until it hit the scree and bounced up between B.J.'s legs, where she'd just that instant straightened up from her pack. Laden with a rope, hammer, pitons, she frowned, turned, saw a trickle of dust from above. And she looked up.
Then ... she would have called out - in astonishment if for no other reason - but was afraid to do so in case she distracted him. The idiot!
But 'the idiot' was hauling himself up onto the rim, to sit there with his legs dangling, waving down at her! And B.J.
too sat down, with a bump, on the scree, stared up at Harry and for the first time in as long as she could remember felt dizzy - from the angle of her neck, and from the thought of Harry's 'solo' climb: the speed of it!
Then anger replaced her astonishment. The clever bastard! Letting her think he was new to all this!
Quickly, she shed her gear, grabbed her pack, set off back the way they had come. Thus she failed to see Harry reeling on the rim, and almost falling before he could regain his balance. Except it wasn't him but his guide: the fact that the old climber's mind had seemed suddenly to go blank, so that the Necroscope had been left alone, as it were, on a knife-edge of vertiginous rock.
Following which ...
... The way down took a deal longer, and Harry could feel something of a tremble in his guide's suddenly uncertain mind. At the bottom he asked him: 'What was all that about?'
A sick spell, the other lied. That's what stopped me frae climbing, Necryscope: dizzy sickness. Er, vertigo? Aye, and it got me in the end, sure enough. Ah got dizzy once too often ...
'You fell?' Harry's jaw fell open. He couldn't believe it.
So ah did. But it's how ah lived; ah cannae complain it's how ah died, too.
And Harry sighed deeply, closed his eyes and thought: Now he tells me! But he kept the thought to himself.
Likewise his guide. He, too, kept his thoughts to himself. The fact that he now knew something of what Harry's Ma had been talking about. For in fact his 'attack' had come when Harry had looked down at Bonnie Jean. The old climber had seen her, too - through the Necroscope's eyes - that