Short story - King of the Mountain

Tuesday, June 17, 2025

He’d felt watched, but there was nobody there to watch him.

He lifted a single eyelid and checked his cycle was still leaning against the bench. The French village square was scorching in the afternoon sun, and empty, apart from a scatter of long-parked cars and the small village shop in one of the corners. The shop, he had discovered, sold rich cold ice cream which had scorched his tongue as he bit into it.

He closed his eye and lay back on the cool stone wall round the edge of the fountain, enjoying the faint scatter of spray blowing over his face in the afternoon heat. He felt his breathing and heartbeat return to resting rate, and his muscles start to stiffen. The sweat saturating his expensive cycling top cooled against his skin.

His bike – his very expensive bike – was leaning a couple of metres away, locked with his gratifyingly expensive lock, but if there was one place in the world where thieves would understand it was worth stealing, it would be a small village in the south of France that came alive once a year when the Tour de France passed through it. The kind of village where the Tour was the only outlet for its cycling obsession, now the days of local professional racing cyclists were over.

He sat up. He needed to stop dozing and do his socials. The Tour connection had been exactly why he’d suggested the holiday to the rest of the boys in his cycling club – ‘the boys’, who were staving off middle age with lycra and over-priced cycling equipment. They’d been keen until they’d seen the hills and the temperatures of southern France in July, and suddenly it became very hard for them to find dates they could get away from work. Unwilling to back down, as usual, he’d announced he’d do it anyway: a solo trip, in the hope of goading at least a couple of them to come with him. But nobody had taken the bait, and now here he was all by himself, struggling slowly up the steep valley sides, and taking ever more frequent breaks in village squares. Not that this could ever be admitted to ‘the boys’, so he had increased the number of upbeat selfie shots and updates on the group app favoured for their humble-bragging. He could tell from the response numbers on the app that they were reading them, and he wasn’t going to admit defeat.

Pushing himself to his feet, he pulled out his phone from the pocket in the back of his lycra top and sized up the potential backdrops for another photo. The fountain? He’d had two of those already, in other village squares. The shop? Insufficiently primal. On the opposite side of the square, there was a statue of a young man in old fashioned cycling gear and with one of those frail, heavy looking pre-war touring cycles they used in the early Tours. Perfect. He strolled over to the statue, masochistically enjoying the aching in his legs, and tried to decode the words on the plaque underneath it.

‘A la mémoire de Jean Garmin, né dans cette ville, et champion cycliste, héros de la Résistance, 1921-43. Un homme d’honneur’.

Nicely heroic and masculine. And Garmin was a good in-joke for the boys. Everyone in the club had one of the Garmin GPS monitors on their handlebars or on their wrists, reporting back location, speed, heart rate and pretty much everything else to the club app. The boys loved setting their stats competitively against each other.

He turned his back on the plaque and lined up the shot on his phone camera – the statue behind him in the frame. He lifted the lens a little above his eyeline, tilted down at his face. He wasn’t getting any younger and jowly wasn’t a good look when you’re trying to be heroic and virile.

He held up a palm to trigger the selfie countdown and glared heroically at the lens. He quickly tweaked the image with a couple of filters and tapped in a short caption:

‘This soldier’s name is Garmin! IYKYK. Cyclist and resistance martyr. Puts my 150km on 30% inclines on the hottest day for years into the shade! #sohumbled’.

He was pleased with the implicit identification with heroism, neatly undercut with the hashtag. He gave the photo one last check before posting it and – shit, he’d nearly missed that. Tucked in the corner of the photo was the empty pot of ice-cream he’d bought from the tiny little shop in the square. He cropped out the evidence of unmasculine indulgence, and satisfied that he was showing himself living his best life, hit ‘post’.

“You ride, then?”

A very ancient, very French looking man was looking up at him from a mobility scooter. The man glared at the little computerised display on his handlebars. “These days, everybody has these… machines.” His lip curled a little.

“I like people to know my numbers.”

“Do the numbers tell them whether you enjoyed your ride, too?”

“Ha. Well, no.”

“This knowledge comes only from inside.”

“I suppose.” He held up his phone again and manoeuvred to get a better angle for the selfie.

The man’s voice floated up to him again. “The satisfaction must be earned by work.”

The bloody man was some kind of Gallic version of Yoda. The cyclist tried to change the subject. “Is it far to the top, past the flat section?”

“Depends on your route.”

“They’ll all be up hill.”

The man nodded to himself, as though confirming a private unspoken opinion. “If I told you about way over the hill without the sacrifice, would you take it?”

“Why wouldn’t I?”

“Work is good for the soul.”

More bloody Yoda. “Who’s to know?”

“Your machines, perhaps.”

“So is there a way? Without sacrifice?”

“About six miles up the hill, there’s an entrance to track, just off the road. Not a smooth road, but your bike will cope. The track will take you over the top of the hill and down into the valley. That way, it is all downhill.”

“How can it be, over the top of the hill?”

“Who do you believe? Your machines or a man who’s lived here all his life? It’s how it is. Your choice. Your consequences.” The old man turned the scooter away and whined slowly away across the hot square.

The cyclist returned to his bike leant by the fountain, and refilled his two water bottles, wedging them back in the cages on the frame underneath his saddle, feeling the sun already burning through his top as he bent over. He stood the bike up, hitching his leg over the frame and felt the saddle in the soreness between his legs as he sat down. He clipped one shoe back into the cleat on his pedal and pushed off, and as the bike moved forward, he twisted his other foot onto the other pedal’s cleat so they were both firmly attached, clicked securely into place. Attaching your feet gave that extra bit of power as you pulled up the pedals on the rear half of each revolution, complementing pushing down on the front. Every extra joule of energy helps. As he pedalled out of the square and left the centre of the village, the buildings petered out until he was back on the quiet, narrow road heading up the side of the valley. He clicked up through he gears and found his rhythm for the next phase of the climb. It would be steep and relentless before he reached the top and could plunge down the other side.

Five miles out from the village, his whole body was covered in a layer of sweat, and he felt as though he was poaching in his lycra. His core was heating up – that was just biochemistry. When the time finally came for him to cool down, splayed out in the shadow of a wall somewhere, it would take an age. He imagined laying still, feeling his breathing slowing at an almost imperceptible rate, until he slowly realised he was no longer struggling to pump enough oxygen around his body, his heart was no longer pounding. But that moment had to hold off. The Garmin figures could only be massaged so far and the boys were watching.

But soon black tunnel walls were closing round his vision, and he could hear nothing. Even in the carless green tunnel created by the overhanging trees, he could easily lose his balance, keel over, his feet held tight in the pedal cleats, and end up bruised on the road. He tried to focus but realised he was weaving left and right, his head swimming. He tried to push on, but he knew the top of the hill was miles away just yet. His legs were weakening. Was this heat stroke? Acute dehydration? He didn’t have the strength in his legs to push forward.

Swearing and annoyed at himself, he freewheeled to a stop. He twisted his ankles to unclip his shoes, and got off the bike. He lent heavily on the crossbar, grabbing for breath.

At the top of this stretch of hill, there was a half-moon of flat, grassy bank, a natural lay-by, shady and dark, and beyond that a few hundred metres of flat road. Even in the longest climb there were sections where the road seemed flat, or even downhill, for a precious few hundred metres of a long, relentless hill. And yet, over all, you were still ascending, despite your muscles seeming to relax downhill. When you or anyone else checked the Garmin numbers it looked near enough like a constant ascent, hiding those moments of relief when you could freewheel and exult in the break from the uphill drag.

He could make it up the hill to that flat stretch, and his heart rate subside and his muscles calm a little. He could take a drink and cool down a little.

Step by step, he slowly dragged himself up to shade of the lay-by. He leant his bike against a log, yanking one of the water bottles from its cage and unscrewed the top, already feeling the cool of the grass through the soles of his shoes. Surely there could be no harm in laying full length on it for a few minutes to let his breathing shallow and muscles relax. He wouldn’t have to admit his failed heroics. If it showed up on the Garmin, it would just look like a puncture. Who would know. He lay down and tipped the water over his face till the bottle ran dry.

The baking sun broke through the canopy of trees and he felt the heat on the back of his neck, and the cold sweat on his skin. So much for their expensive sweat dispelling properties.

He took his bike from the log and slowly pushed it back to the road. Laying down had only made the throbbing in his thighs worse, and as he swung his leg over the saddle, he could feel his muscles tighten. Pushing down on the pedals, he twisted his shoes into the clips, fastening his feet on to the bike, and willed himself forwards. The length of road looked flat, but as he cycled, it felt imperceptibly up hill. He had to keep to low gear, and the numbers on the Garmin stayed embarrassingly low.

As he rounded the corner and saw the road steepen in front of him, he noticed the gap in the trees the old man had described, and as he’d described it, the track leading from it headed downhill. The cyclist was sweating and panting already, muscles starting to seize and ache, and there was more incline to come. The track couldn’t be worse than the road, and it would never show on the Garmin tracking. He shifted his handlebars slightly to the left and the bike bumped off the road onto the track.

He found himself in a cool shaded tunnel of trees blocking the sun, the track surface unexpectedly smooth, free of bumps and patches repaired from roadworks and potholes. But most importantly, it was down hill – not dramatic, just a gentle consistent slope. The cyclist let his screaming thighs relax and felt the extravagantly expensive freewheel coast him along, the clicks of the mechanism slowly picking up speed, gradually blending into one as the cogs spun faster and faster. He rotated the front cog forward to change up through the gears, the derailleur shunting the chain from the biggest gears on the back to the smaller. At least that way, he would start to have some control when he reached the bottom and the hill flattened out.

The track got steeper and the branches flew faster and faster over his head, and his wheels spinning faster. Straight at first, it started to curve a little, left and right, and enjoyed the pleasure of his own skill in steering simply by leaning infinitesimally left then right, the tiny shift in his centre of gravity taking the bike in each direction. He was enjoying himself – this was what cycling should be like. Cool air streamlining over his body, a smooth surface, just enough steering to enjoy his mastery of the machine. The numbers on the Garmin were satisfyingly high; the boys would be impressed.

The downhill steepened even more and his speed increased, and the curves tightened a little more, each needing a more of a tilt one after the other, becoming more of a bend, each time. He focussed on taking the perfect line through them, relishing his own ability to control the descent as he went faster and faster, relentlessly down and down. The bends tightened to become corners and there was a thrill now in getting through each one, leaning enough to shift the bike’s path, and keep the tyres gripping the road as he turned. The surface was stable like nothing he had cycled on before.

After what felt like about fifteen minutes of quickening descent and sharpening corners, he conceded to himself that his mastery of the his machine would mean a few light touches of brake as he set his line into the next corner, just to take the edge off his ever increasing speed. His fingers closed round the brake levers on the curve of his handlebars and delicately tightened, just enough, he estimated, to stop the acceleration but maintain the excitement of the descent. Too delicate a touch, perhaps, as he didn’t feel any slowing, and he pulled them tighter, wondering if the expensive lightness of his disc brakes was just too light for their own good. But still no change in his acceleration, and he was starting to feel out of control, his heart beating faster. The next corner was hurtling towards him and he concentrated and tensed, focussing on leaning and twitching the handlebars to make it round, with no thought of his perfect line though this time. Straightening up, he pulled at the handlebars with full force, determined to slow enough to make it through the next corner. But nothing. The bike continued to accelerate down the twisting tunnel of trees, with the cyclist sliding from side to side as though on a bobsleigh run. He had no run-off, no way of escaping.

Instinctively, he tried backpedalling, but it made no difference, as some part of his rational mind outside his terror knew. All he could do was cling on to his bike, head down, fingers gripping the sweat-damped tape on his handlebars, and keep remembering that sooner or later, the steepness would relent. He would reach the bottom of the valley and the track would level to flatness, and friction and the laws of entropy would bring his bike to a halt. All he had to do was to stay in the saddle till then. That was all.

But the track continued to drop away just as steeply. His adrenalin sodden brain had no idea of time, but it seemed to be hours, and there was no sign of any decrease in the incline. With each curve, he had no idea how he stayed on the bike: the corners were too tight, his speed too great, and he braced for the bike to slip away from under him, the front wheel losing traction on the ground. He almost craved that moment of touching nothing and anticipating whatever hellish impact he’d have at this speed, onto the ground, into a branch, his head slamming into a tree trunk. But somehow he kept descending, and his primitive will to survive taking over his brain, keeping him on the bike as it zigzagged through the tunnel, down and down and down.

Faster and faster, never stopping. Forever. No choice is without sacrifice.

Fiction