73 - Like a Stink-Tight

Kyrus senior waved his hand up toward the pennant on the top of the spire.  “This is your assignment.  The four of you have to figure out how to get that down, before you can head back to the school to get cleaned up.  I did say figure out.  I also want you to put your plan into action.  No running back to get equipment.  No recruiting anyone else to help you.  You have what you need right here.  Make a plan.  Carry it out.  Bring the pennant back to the school with you.” His eyes, over his beard, were sharp on them as he let them think about it.  “I’ll see you all later at dinner, then.”  He nodded at them, still a little grim from the yelling he'd gotten from Nasera Oash, and left them standing there.

Nobody said anything for a while after he left. Ky felt like he was just blinking like a new-hatched chick, his head swivelling between the road where his Da had walked away and the white pennant snapping in the wind on top of the spire.

“Well,” Ver said at last.  “I never thought great warriors and teachers ever thought crap like that about themselves.”

“Don’t be an idiot,” Werfas snorted.  “They don’t quit being human, and most of them are decent humans, so they must have low times too.”

As Haraklez drew breath, Verpiccaus cut in, hastily.  “Of course, of course anybody could be low... especially with awful commanders and really bad situations – You know,” he continued right on in the same breath, “I could melt ‘cline holes in the rock but that would take me all day to come up with a precise enough command code.”

“Um... I... um,” Kyrus stammered.  “I suppose I could take the rock you’re clining and build hand holds, but that would take me just as long and we’d both be wiped out at the end.”

“Yes, he said us, too.  Obviously he wants us to work as a team.” Haraklez said, as Werfas nodded.

“How much strength would it take to make climbing gear for all of us?” Werfas asked.

Haraklez waved a hand around at short meadow grass and bare rock around them. “Too much. To mander rope out of so much short green grass would be crazy.”  They knelt looking at their target. “Free climbing might do if we can find a crack to start.”

“No.” That was Werfas and he sounded totally serious.  “Just, no.  You can’t free-climb tsingy.  I got cut up that way.  Nearly bled out.  Just... no.” So that’s how he got his scars. It was worse than just bleeding I think. Kyrus didn’t look at his wing-brother.  There’s a ragged slash right across your spine that looks like it nearly cut you in half.

“What if...” Ky paused.  “You know how Stink-tights walk up walls and over ceilings?” I haven't seen one in Milar.  I wonder if they have them.

“No,” Haraklez said, just as Ver asked “What’s a Stink-tight?”

Ky waved his hands.  “Little red lizards... well, not so little.  They can get up to man-size in the lower canyon and they walk up smooth polished walls and across ceilings even when they are big like that.  If you bug them, they spit a stink on you that sticks... and leaves burns.  But they eat peacock snakes and glass-bugs which are worse than just stink, so people in the Basin say they’re good luck.”

“How is this little biology lesson going to get us showered and to dinner?” Verpiccaus asked.

“What if we... you and I made pitons like stink-tight feet, for all of us?  That’s four things smaller than our hands, for each of us.  Surely we can work together to make them?  Climb up and get that darn flag?”

“If you could make sure that these sticky pitons didn’t let go on us half way...” Ver looked dubious and Werfas said “I’m pretty big...”

Haraklez just said, “See if you can make them at all, and I’ll test them.  I’m in a cooling sweat and getting hungry.  Let’s do this. Hey, he said the four of us had to work as a team, he never said all four of us had to climb.  That means climbing gear for one of us and I'm the lightest.”