Have you ever climbed a mountain in full armour? That's what we did,
him going first the whole way up a tiny path into the clouds, with
drops sheer on both sides into nothing. For hours we crept forward
like blind men, the sweat freezing on our faces, lugging skittery
leaking horses, and pricked all the time for the ambush that would tip
us into death. Each turn of the path it grew colder. The friendly
trees of the forest dropped away, and there were only pines. Then they
went too, and there just scrubby little bushes standing up in ice. All
round us the rocks began to whine the cold. And always above us, or
below us, those filthy condor birds, hanging on the air with great
tasselled wings....Four days like that; groaning, not speaking; the
breath a blade in our lungs. Four days, slowly, like flies on a wall;
limping flies, dying flies, up an endless wall of rock. A tiny army
lost in the creases of the moon.”
― Peter Shaffer, The Royal Hunt of the Sun
