Unaware of Tavi’s desperate struggle on the valley floor, Len and Ivara reached the third switchback of the Star tower ridge.
The climb had cost Len dearly. With his left arm strapped tight to his chest inside the rigid canvas swathe, he had been forced to haul himself up the steep granite switchbacks using only his right arm and his jointed ash sounding pole. Every twenty paces on the thirty-degree grade, his boots slipped on the loose coarse grey rock clinker. It sent jarring shocks through his pelvis that tore at his shoulder. His breath came in ragged, whistling gasps that pushed his Long Breath to its total body limits.
Beneath the linen wrap, the bruised bone-skin of his left forearm bone throbbed with a heavy, sickening pulse that mirrored his heartbeat, streaming waves of dull nausea into his throat whenever his right boot came down hard on the rock. His balance point was warped. To compensate for the dead weight of his locked still limb, his Surefoot forced him to list three degrees to the starboard flank, overloading his right calf and hip abductors until the muscle fibers trembled with piled up muscle burn.
“Breathe through the nose, Len,” Ivara whispered from two paces ahead. She moved with the steady, unrushed economy of a veteran land-mapper who had spent thirty years measuring mountain grades. Her empty left sleeve was pinned flat to her wool coat, her single right arm swinging in a measured swinging weight that kept her torso…
