Bonus Content

The tips of his fingers stung as if he’d just run them over a sheet of industrial-strength sandpaper. His muscular biceps spasmed and trembled as he used every sinew and ounce of energy to cling onto the face of the sheer slab of rock. The deltoid muscles of his shoulders screamed at him to release the untenable strain, but he couldn’t grant them the relief they craved. Easing his grip, even by a mere fraction, would lead to the inevitable consequence of a falling. Perspiration poured from his deep-lined forehead and streamed into his eyes, stinging his retinas and blurring his vision. He blinked the saline away as best he could, refusing the will of an instinctive urge to release the rock with one hand so he could wipe his painful eyes clear.

Daniel Sawyer clung to the face of the thirty metre high gritstone rock of Bamford Edge. Which it did. He refused to let go as his life teetered on the brink, driven only by the primal desire to survive. An agonising grimace creased his stubbled and sweat-drenched features into deep furrows. He pressed the sore tips of his fingers into narrow fissures in the solid rock, formed millions of years ago by the grinding and gouging of ancient glaciers and inland seas.

He chanced a glance over his shoulder, catching what should have been a stunning vista, the shimmering surface of the Y-shaped Ladybower Reservoir nestling in it green, steep-sided valley.