"Yeah, but it works," Gronningen said as he surreptitiously attached a clip to the sergeant's descent harness. The combination of his voice and the night wind concealed the tiny sound it made as it clicked home ... and then he pushed Julian off the cliff.

There wasn't a thing Julian could do—the blow to his back was too unexpected. He was thrown well out from the cliff, and found himself almost automatically shifting into a delta-track, a sky-diving position for maneuvering. His brain ran frantically through a list of ways to survive the drop, but nothing came to mind, nor could he understand why one of his best friends had just succeeded in killing him.

* * *

Macek spun in place, his bead rifle level, but Gronningen held up one hand with a screaming spider reel in it. It was obvious that the other end of the wire was attached to Julian.

"What the pock are you doing, Gron?" the corporal snarled. "You've got about two seconds to explain!"

"Just this," Gronningen said, with a rare smile. He attached the reel to the wall with a mag-clamp and laid on the tension. "I mean, now we know it works, right?"

* * *

Julian gazed down at the battlements, a hundred meters below him. He'd been observing them fairly carefully for the last several minutes, since the spider-line had slowed him to a halt. There wasn't much else he could do; the line had him suspended almost head-down.

He heard a faint rattle of rock, and then Gronningen appeared next to him, fully inverted.

"Gronningen, what are you dicking around at?" Julian asked with deadly menace.

" 'I love you, too, man,' " the Asgardian quoted. "You remember in Voitan, I said 'You gonna pay'?"

"Oh, you son-of-a—"

"Ah-ah!" The Asgardian grinned. "I pull this clamp, and it's really gonna smart when you hit the top of that thing."

"Oh, you son-of-a ..." Julian stopped and sighed. "Okay. You got me. Jesus, did you get me. I promise, no more jokes. Just ... don't do something like that again, okay?"

"You should have seen Geno," Gronningen said with another grin, as he handed a fresh spider-spool across to the squad leader. "I think he nearly burst a blood vessel."

"Well, I'm proof positive that you don't die of fright on the way down," Julian said. "Jesus. This isn't a truce, though. I'm gonna get you. Just you wait."

"I tingle with anticipation," the Asgardian told him with a chuckle. "You got a good grip on that reel?"

"Yeah. Why?"

"Good," Gronningen said, and flicked off the clamp that was holding the sergeant suspended.

Julian tried not to scream as he dropped into empty air again.

* * *

Macek looked around the top of the battlements with an expression of disbelief. Except for the eternal sighing of the wind, there wasn't a sound to be heard, and there was no one in sight.

"Okay, I'll bite," he whispered. "Where's the guards?"

"I don't know," Julian said. "Not here."

The top of the gatehouse was about thirty meters across, with a trap door at either end. The gate filled the pass from side to side. On the southeast side, a narrower walkway led to the top of the secondary keep, apparently a barracks or headquarters. Gronningen walked back from there, shaking his head, while Macek grimaced.

"Don't tell me they don't post sentries," he said. "That's ... insane."

"It's freezing," Julian pointed out. "I mean, it's only about ten degrees out here. If they were out in this, they'd be catatonic, maybe dead."

Gronningen consulted his toot, then nodded with a remote expression.

"Fifty or so, Fahrenheit, yes?" he said. "Not cold, but brisk."

"More than just brisk for scummies, man," Julian said.

"So they just don't guard at all?" Macek asked. "Still not too smart."

"They're used to fighting Shin," the squad leader replied, "and I don't think they can move in this, either. Look at the Vashin. They're all huddled around fires being torpid. This kind of cold can kill Mardukans."

"So they're all inside waiting to hit us on the heads as soon as we stick 'em in there?" Macek asked. "It's a clever plot to lure us to our deaths?"

"No, that was the recruiter who got us to join the Marines," Gronningen said. He walked over to the nearer trap door and pulled at the handle. The door was outsized, designed for Mardukans, and Gronningen was probably the only man in the company who could have lifted it. It didn't even quiver, though, and he knelt down to examine it more closely. Light seeped up around the edges, and he grunted as he found the darker shadow where a latching bar cut across the light.

"Not a problem," Julian said, kneeling beside him. The sergeant slipped a device from his belt and slid the incredibly sharp, flexible ribbon-blade into the crack. It sliced through the half-meter ironwood bar as if it hadn't even been there.

Gronningen was ready, and air hissed in his nostrils as he heaved upward. The door rose a few centimeters, and Julian got under it and threw his own weight against it. Between them, they raised it shoulder high, and Macek propped it up with a piece of wood.

There was no ladder, but it was a simple enough proposition—after climbing the mountain—to lower themselves into the room below. The chamber was about fifteen meters on a side, with a high, domed ceiling, and a stairway in the west corner. It, too, was deserted, with a dead coal fire in a hibachilike affair in the middle of the room.

"That's a quick way to asphyxiate," Macek observed in a whisper.

"Out?" Gronningen murmured, pointing to a door on the east side. "Or down?"

"Down," Julian whispered back promptly, although his expression was puzzled.

The spiral stairs led to a passageway—high for the humans, but low and narrow for Mardukans—that went both right and left, towards the gates and the barracks, respectively.

"Right," Julian said, and led the way.

The passageway turned, apparently following the shoulder of the hill, and opened onto a large room with barred windows through which a cold wind blew. The room was at the base of the gates, and stairs disappeared upward into the gloom where the gate controls were presumably located.

Other than some litter in one corner, the room was empty.

"This is getting silly." This time, Macek didn't bother to whisper.

"We'll try the barracks," Julian said. "There has to be somebody around here."

They followed the same passage back in the opposite direction, towards the barracks. They had to deal with two more barred doors along the way, but finally they entered the main hall of the keep. It was a vaulted monstrosity, with a huge fire pit in the middle and the ubiquitous cushions that served Mardukans for chairs scattered around the pit.

No one was using any of the cushions, however. Instead, the middle of the pit was filled by a group of Mardukans, arranged in a fairly neat pile. Half-burned logs and ash had been dragged out of the center and pushed to the side. Obviously, the Mardukans had set a fire in the pit during the day so that they could sleep on the warmed rock underneath at night.

And every one of them was in the semi-hibernation torpidity that extreme cold induced in their species.

"Oh, puhleeease! " Macek exclaimed in disgust. "This is it? I rode all the way up here, played mountain goat, and then jumped off a damned cliff for this?"

"I think these guys must've taken the short airbus to school," Julian said. "The Vashin at least try to keep one guy per squad awake. This is idiotic. Geno, get up to the roof and signal the prince. Tell him we've taken the 'fortress.' "

"Will do," Macek said with a sigh. "But this really bites."

"What? You wanted a fight?" Gronningen asked, looking at the heaped Mardukans. The entire garrison's weapons were stacked neatly along one wall, and all of their armor was laid out in ranks. Obviously, they were ready to get up in a few hours, when things warmed up, and start banging horn with the best of them. "I think this is great," the Asgardian announced.