The hemp climbing rope was three-quarter-inch mountain cord, stiffened with pine tar and crusted with coarse needles of hoarfrost. Seyun’s hands closed around the frayed tail six inches before it cleared the overhang. Then, Osen Tal had already fallen four feet below the lip. One hundred and sixty pounds of plummeting weight hit the line in a single violent jerk that felt as though a mule had kicked Seyun’s wrists out from their sockets.
Before Seyun’s thumbs could lock fully over his knuckles, a foot of the rough, tarred hemp ripped straight through his closed palms like a coarse carpenter’s rasp. The scorched linen bandages from Osen’s hearth—already sodden with serous fluid and blood from the upper climb—shredded instantly along the palmar creases. Beneath the torn cloth, the raw, blistered skin of his twice-burned hands took the full friction of the freezing cord. Searing heat, sharper and more sickening than the charcoal embers had been, shot from the flesh of his palms up both forearms into his collarbones.
Any normal pain reflex would have forced his fingers open to save the tendons. Seyun bit down on his lower lip until he tasted salt, rolled his wrists inward half a turn so the hemp bit across the tougher meat at the base of his thumbs and the outer heels of his hands, and dragged both elbows backward into a shallow chisel-groove carved into the shelf. He pushed the last leftover ember of his Flame breath down into his forearms. Not to…
