IT WAS A LONG WAY DOWN. Errol ignored the sick feeling that his feet were coming up through his intestines and the urge to curl into a ball to prepare his bones for impact. The towers were a blur in the falling snow. His wrists were still bound.
He could never climb fast enough to remedy the problem of—what had the guard called it?—a fatally long line. Still, with the wind whipping, he dropped the navaja into his bound hands, from behind his breastplate. He cut the binding on his wrists and slashed pieces of his tunic and stuffed them into his mouth and into his helmet, to brace his spine.
The street was coming up at him, coming so fast, looking impossibly small—tiny white pools of moonlight spilled on brown wetness. He closed his eyes.
It took so long to fall. There came a colossal screaming in the rope, and he felt the crushing force of the harness on his ribs and heard himself yell out, the air punched from his lungs. And then he was flung upward, weightless, thrown at the sky. Now he was plunging again, and then again back up. Finally the line was still. He dangled five strata over the street, shaking, his mouth thick with blood.
The problem was ironic. The rope had not been too long, but too short.
The line jerked. Errol flailed. Far above, the regnat’s guards had begun to wind the rope up. He rose till he was eight strata from the earth and rising fast. If he came back to the roof alive, they would drop him with no line.
His hands shook as he fumbled for the rope over his head. Sawed and hacked and yelled until finally a few strands of frayed hemp held his weight, and he slashed those. He plummeted ten strata, staring up into the sky. At some unbearable speed, he hit the earth.
The world spun. He watched the rope and harness twist above him, the clips clinking, disappearing up and up into the falling snow. In a moment the rope reappeared, and he knew they had cut it. It was falling like a great serpent attacking from the sky. He knew if it had landed fully upon him, it would crush him. His last conscious act was to hurl himself out of its way.