The Fall
A Novel
Chapter One
The weather was good for the Snowdon area. The rain had held off all day, and
there was enough of a breeze to keep the rock dry. Damp could not have been a
contributory factor. There was even the occasional shaft of sunlight cutting
down through the varied cloud to brighten up the cwm, but no direct sunlight on
the fluted walls and boilerplate slabs of the crag itself. This is a north face.
Someone shouted: "Hey, look!" It was one of the group of walkers. Climbers would
not have made a noise about it. Someone shouted and stood up and pointed toward
the East Buttress. "Hey, look at him!"
There was a lone figure climbing. He was about twenty feet off the ground. The
man who shouted had been watching for a little while, but at first it had not
been clear that the figure was truly alone until he, the climber, had reached
twenty feet up the great, blank central wall of the East Buttress. The wall is a
smooth, slightly curving sheet of rhyolite, a beaten metallic shield that, to
inexpert eyes, appears unclimbable.
"Look at 'im. Bloody idiot or what?" "Isn't he doing Great Wall?" "N ... read full excerpt from The Fall: A Novel ebook
