A Hidden Biblical Reference

Eric Wace, tired, and Sandra Tamarin, restless, walk and talk, then pause on the ridge of a cliff hundreds of meters above a canyon with a foaming river, red-tinged snowy mountains and an upward wind striking them in the face.

Wace describes his ascent from poverty to the factorship on Diomedes (see Eric Wace) and concludes:

"'So here I am, on a mountain top with all Diomedes below me, and what's next?'"
-Poul Anderson, The Man Who Counts IN Anderson, The Van Rijn Method (Riverdale, NY, 2009), pp. 337-515 AT XI, 424.

Wace echoes Matthew 4: 8 but ironically because no one is offering him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory.