They came to the foot of an apron of loose stones and shale and she paused and glanced back over her shoulder.
“How are you making out?” she said anxiously as he joined her.
He managed a grin. “Let’s say I’m not as young as I was.”
“You must be careful from now on,” she said “The1 going is treacherous.”
She started to climb, slowly and easily, testing every grass, every shrub, every rock, and Lomax followed her. After a while he forgot about the men who followed them, forgot about the danger as a strange exhilaratioa coursed through him.
Once, he heaved strongly on a boulder and it tore itself free and he swung quickly to one side. It bounced and crashed its way down the mountainside and the sound of it echoed away into the night.
There was a moment’s breathless hush before Katina’s voice drifted quietly down the slope. “Are you all right?”
“Only just,” he called back softly, and started to climb again.
A moment later the ground sloped away and he found himself standing on the edge of a broad plateau. He= turned and gazed down into the shadows of the valley, but could see no sign of their pursuers.
Katina moved beside him. “They have taken the easy way over,” she said. “Remember the track we used on, that first night when I guided you to the villa?”
“And where do we go from here?” Lomax said.
She turned and pointed across the plateau to the great rock wall that faced them. It was splashed with moonlight, fissures and cracks branching across it like dark fingers, and Lomax whistled softly. “Are you sure it can be done?”
She nodded. “Oh, yes, I climbed it several times as a girl. It isn’t anything like as formidable as it looks.”
She looked up at him anxiously and he grinned. “We don’t have much choice, do we?”
She turned and led the way across the plateau, picking her way between great boulders. When they reached the base of the rock Lomax saw that it wasn’t actually perpendicular, but tilted back slightly in great slabs, most of which were split and fissured into a thousand cracks.
Katina started to climb at once and Lomax followed her. He didn’t look down until he had climbed forty or fifty feet. For a moment he appeared to be floating in space and a giant hand seemed to be trying to pull him away from the face of the rock. He breathed deeply and closed his eyes. When he opened them again, everything ùwas all right.
He didn’t look down after that, but climbed steadily and strongly. Five minutes later, he came over the edge of a wide ledge which was partly sheltered by an uptiked slab and found Katina waiting for him.
“Are you all right?” she said.
Now that he had stopped climbing, he was conscious that his limbs were trembling slightly, but he nodded confidently. “Are we stopping here?”
She shook her head. “We can’t afford the time. Even this way, we’ll be lucky to reach the temple before the best of the mountain men using the track.”
She started to climb again quickly. Lomax followed her, trying to forget his aching limbs, concentrating on the rock, and a wind moved in from the sea, cutting through the woollen sweater, and thunder rumbled again, but much nearer this time.
He moved over the edge of the last great tilted slab of rock and found Katina waiting for him. Above them a perpendicular wall of rock lifted a hundred feet into the night and Lomax craned his neck, gazing up at it, the sweat on his face beginning to dry in the cold wind.
She turned and indicated a dark chimney that cut its way straight through the solid rock to the top of the cliff. “It looks bad, but it’s the easiest part of the climb.”
He found it an effort to smile. “I’ll take your word for it.”
He waited until she had disappeared into the darkness above him before following. He hung the Winchester around his neck and used the common mountaineering technique, bracing his back against one wall and feet against the other, resting every fifteen or twenty feet, his body firmly wedged.