Chapter 21
Rhian took a deep breath, readied her ice axe, and aimed at the ice just above her shoulder. She put as much swing and force into the blow as she could generate, but the tip of the axe merely glanced off the rock-hard ice face and skidded away, refusing to take hold. The precarious purchase her crampons had on the slick surface shifted and released under the movement of her weight, and she was once again dangling on the end of a rope. Meltwater was raining down over her head to further complicate matters, and the roar of water tunnelling through the ice cavern below only added to the fear.
Jayden’s account of climbers dying after encountering such moulins had not helped. The thought of being swept away by the rushing water and drowning in the icy chambers of the heart of the glacier made her palms sweat and her fingers tremble. It didn’t seem to matter that she knew that two people were anchoring her rope to the surface. Nor did it matter that this was a drill. She looked down the hole into the blue, then black, heart of the ice, and her mouth went dry.
Stay calm, Jayden had told them in the briefing. Your greatest weapon is your brain, not your muscles.
“Brains don’t do you much good if you don’t use ’em.” With her eyes closed and her fists wrapped around the rope, she caught her breath. When she finally opened her eyes, she touched the impenetrable surface and watched a water droplet roll down—gravity and the slick plane of ice doing their work. Then it hit her: gravity. She needed a better way to fight gravity than trying to plant her grip against something that just wouldn’t give.
She glanced up the rope, her lifeline to the world, and realised it was her best way out of the watery chasm. She just needed a realistic way of climbing it.
Jayden had only allowed them to do this exercise carrying what they normally carried when walking on the ice. She’d told them that being able to self-rescue when you had all the right gear was great, but what did you plan to do when you got caught without the best gear to hand?
“Die, most likely,” Rhian said as she left the ice axes dangling from the straps about her wrists and searched her pockets to see what she had to hand. Trying to get to the gear in her backpack was a last resort. It would cause her to shift her balance, and the chances were good that she’d lose her bag and kit to the moulin. Besides, getting it on and off again while dangling on the end of a rope was probably more difficult than trying to pull herself up the rope hand over hand would be.
She had an idea, but to make it work, she needed a piece of cord she could make a loop out of, and nothing in her pockets would do. Her boot, however, looked promising. She kicked her leg up and planted it against the ice. She used one hand to hold herself against the rope, to keep herself in a seated position rather than lying back, and used her right hand to loosen the crampon buckle, then untie her shoelace. She quickly pulled the long bootlace through the eyelets and tightened the buckle on her crampon again. It would keep the boot on her foot. She hoped.
She doubled the lace and tied a flat overhand knot to secure the two ends together. Her head was freezing. She could hear her teeth chattering, even if she could no longer feel her jaw working. Her fingers began to feel clumsy and heavy, like sausages on the end of her hands, not the nimble digits she was used to. She flexed them, opening and closing a fist quickly for a few seconds to get the blood flowing and to give her a little more dexterity. She put the shoelace between her teeth and rubbed her hands together in the hope of generating a little friction heat. It wasn’t much, but it was just enough.
She used the shoelace to create a Prusik knot, wrapping it around the rope several times before feeding it back through on itself and creating a sliding knot she could slide up the rope but that would not slide down on its own. She carefully fitted her booted foot through the loop, avoiding touching the sharp edges of her crampon against the fairly thin cord her lace had made. Slicing it in two would, well… That would be bad. When she had her foot in place, she shifted her weight and used the loop as though it were a rung on a ladder and stood up as tall as she could. Using the rope and her left hand to hold her body weight, she slid the knot upwards until it was above her knee, then stood up again.
The rim of the crevasse already looked so much closer. The exertion was getting her blood going, and she was feeling warmer. She smiled. She was getting out of this frozen hellhole. It didn’t take long for her to make her way up the rope and get her hands over the lip of the ice, but she carried on grabbing at the rope. She lifted the Prusik knot one last time to get her shoulders and torso over the edge and allow herself greater leverage to get out of the hole.
She fell onto the ice and rolled onto her back, panting and spread out like a snow angel. She chuckled and reached for the hand being offered.
Jayden was grinning and pointing down at her boot. “Shoelace Prusik?”
Rhian nodded and scrubbed her hands through her hair to try to ruffle out some of the ice water. “Couldn’t find anything else to make a cordlette without going into my pack.”
“It’s a great idea. Easy to reach, less chance of losing your gear, and a shoelace is just as good a tool as anything else. Especially when you make your bootlaces out of five-millimetre paracord. Well done,” she said and led Rhian to the cooking burner Miguel was using to make coffee. The warm drink that was pressed into her hands was welcome, as was the towel Jayden draped over her head.
“Well done?” Brooke sneered. “It took her fifteen minutes to drag herself out of there. If this was a real survival situation, there wouldn’t be a towel or a hot drink. She’d be dead.”
“Enough, Brooke,” Jayden said. Her voice had a cold edge, and her eyes dimmed from the warm enthusiasm of Rhian’s success to the ice blue of the moulin she had just escaped. “Rhian did what I asked her to do.” Jayden’s gaze never shifted from her face, and Rhian wondered what she was looking for. Signs that she wasn’t doing okay? “She used her brain to get herself out of the situation. If she hadn’t, we’d have hauled her up and discussed techniques she could have implemented to help herself. She didn’t need that. Some people would have done it quicker, others slower. Had it been a real-life situation, Rhian is still capable of functioning and would’ve been able to take care of her needs.” She smiled at Rhian. “Wouldn’t you?”
Rhian nodded and sipped her drink. The warmth seeped back into her body as it crept back into Jayden’s eyes.
“You’re only saying that because you’re fucking her. You wouldn’t let any of us off that easy.”
Brooke spoke so quietly, Rhian could barely make out the words. Apparently, Jayden’s hearing was much better than hers. She whirled around and strode into Brooke’s personal space.
“I’ve already sent one prick home because of his attitude. You looking for a quick exit too?” Brooke’s eyes were open wide as she shook her head. Jayden stepped back and signalled Santiago. “Let’s see how you like the moulin. And since you think it’s such a race, we’ll put you on the clock, shall we? Miguel?”
“Sí?”
“Get your watch handy. If Brooke isn’t over the edge in fifteen minutes, she gets to make her own coffee.”
“Sí.” Miguel turned away from them all in what Rhian recognised as an attempt to hide a smirk. She was pretty sure everyone else had caught it too. But at least he tried.
“Let’s go, then,” Jayden said. “Oskar, Luiji, I want you two anchoring the rope this time, please.” The guys nodded and set about attaching themselves to belay devices, MBD’s—or manual braking devices—and the bolts and ice screws that had been set up to make this exercise as safe as possible. And it was still potentially fatal. A flaw in the rope or a poor swing from an axe cutting through it and there would be nothing they could do to help the climber fifteen metres below them.
While they were all busy, Rhian put her hand on Jayden’s arm and tugged her gently to one side. “You didn’t need to do that.”
Jayden frowned. “Do what?”
“Stand up for me like that. She had a point.”
Jayden chuckled. “No, she didn’t. You were still functioning—”
“I meant the other bit. That you were standing up for me because of our supposed relationship. Are you sure it’s a good idea to antagonise her? Setting her a challenge like that? Showing her up in front of them all—”
“She’s showing herself up.”
Rhian nodded. “I know that, you know that, and everyone else in the camp knows that. Except Brooke. Right now, she thinks we are the only people responsible for making her look foolish.”
“I see your point, but if I didn’t stand up for you, then she wouldn’t believe in our supposed relationship. You want to go back to fending her off?”
Rhian shook her head.
“Didn’t think so. Second, if I let that go after everything that happened with Killian, then it makes his discrimination case stronger again because I let a woman get away with the kind of behaviour I pulled him up on, in front of witnesses.”
“Killian was kicked off for attacking me.”
“Yes, but I still called him on his bad attitude. Just like I’m doing with Brooke. She can argue that it’s because of you, but the rest of the team need to see that my behaviour is consistent with all of them. And this is me being consistent, not me playing the overprotective girlfriend.”
Rhian scrubbed the towel over her head. “Christ, this is all getting so complicated.”
Jayden chuckled. “Isn’t that what relationships are? Complicated.”
“Guess that means you’re not the romantic type, then.” Rhian smiled up at her.
“Guess you’ll just have to wait and see.” She bent forward and kissed her cheek. “Now, I better go and check on the kiddies, make sure they don’t kill themselves and all that.”
“Okay,” Rhian whispered to her retreating back as she covered her cheek. Brooke’s gaze met hers across the ice field, and a sneer curled the corner of her lips. How was this situation getting so out of control? And how much worse was it going to get?