“Yes.” I knew she was right, but it was still hard to force myself to shake the Fool to consciousness. He moved like a man in a daze. While the others bundled our gear, I hurried him into his coat and nagged him into an extra pair of leggings. I wrapped him in all our blankets and stood him outside while the rest of us struck the tent and loaded it. Of Kettricken I asked quietly, “How much weight can a jeppa bear?”
“More than the Fool weighs. But they are too narrow to straddle comfortably, and they are skittish with a live load. We might put him on one for a ways, but it would be uncomfortable for him and the jeppa would be difficult to control.”
It was the answer I had expected, but it did not make me happy.
“What news from the wolf?” she asked me.
I reached for Nighteyes, and was dismayed to find what an effort it was to touch minds with him. “Six riders,” I told her.
“Friend or foe?” she asked.
“He has no way to know,” I pointed out to her. To the wolf I asked, How do the horses look?
Delicious.
Large, like Sooty? Or small, like Mountain horses?
Between. One pack mule.
“They are on horses, not Mountain ponies,” I told Kettricken.
She shook her head to herself. “Most of my folk do not use horses this high in the Mountains. They would use ponies, or jeppas. Let us decide they are enemies and act accordingly.”
“Run or fight?”
“Both, of course.”
She had already taken her bow from one of the jeppa’s loads.
Now she strung it to have it ready. “First we look for a better place to stage an ambush. Then we wait. Let’s go.”
It was easier said than done. Only the smoothness of the road made it possible at all. Light was only a rumor as we started that day. Starling led the jeppas ahead. I brought the Fool behind them, while Kettle with her staff and Kettricken with her bow followed us. At first I let the Fool try to walk on his own. He lurched slowly along, and as the jeppas drew inexorably away from us, I knew it would not do. I put his left arm across my shoulders and my arm about his waist and hurried him along. In a short time he was panting and struggling to keep his feet from dragging. The unnatural warmth of his body was frightening. Cruelly, I forced him on, praying for cover of some sort.
When we came to it, it was not the kindness of trees, but the cruelty of sharp stone. A great portion of the mountain above the road had given way and cascaded down. It had carried off more than half the road with it, and left what remained heaped high with stone and earth. Starling and the jeppas were looking at it dubiously when the Fool and I limped up. I set him down on a stone, where he sat, eyes closed and head bowed. I pulled the blankets more closely around him, and then went to stand by Starling.
“It’s an old slide,” she observed. “Maybe it won’t be that hard to scramble across it.”
“Maybe,” I agreed, my eyes already looking for a place to attempt it. Snow overlaid the stone, cloaking it. “If I go first, with the jeppas, can you follow with the Fool?”
“I suppose.” She glanced over at him. “How bad is she?”
There was only worry in Starling’s voice, so I swallowed my annoyance. “He can stagger along, if he has an arm to lean on. Don’t start to follow until the last animal is up and moving across it. Then follow our tracks.”
Starling bobbed her head in agreement but did not look happy.
“Shouldn’t we wait for Kettricken and Kettle?”
I thought. “No. If those riders do catch up with us, I don’t want to be here with stone at my back. We cross the slide.”
I wished the wolf were with us, for he was twice as surefooted as I and much quicker of reflex.
Can’t come to you without their seeing me. It’s sheer rock above and below the road here, and they are between you and me.
Don’t fret about it. Just watch them and keep me alerted. Do they travel swiftly?
They walk their horses and argue much among themselves. One is fat and weary of riding. He says little but he does not hasten. Be careful, my brother.
I took a deep breath, and, as no place looked better than any other, simply followed my nose. At first there was just a scattering of loose stone across the road, but beyond that was a wall of great boulders, rocky soil, and loose sharp-edged stone. I picked my way up this treacherous footing. The lead jeppa followed me and the others came behind her unquestioningly. I soon found that blowing snow had frozen across the rocks in thin sheets, often covering hollows and cracks beneath them. I stepped carelessly on one and thrust my leg down to my knee in a crack. I extricated myself carefully and proceeded.
When I took a moment and looked around me my courage almost failed. Above was a great slope of slide debris going up to a sheer wall of rock. I walked on a hillside of loose rock and stone. Looking ahead, I could not see where it ended. If it gave way, I would tumble and slide with it to the edge of the road and shoot off it into the deep valley beyond. There would be nothing, not a twig of greenery, not a boulder of any size that I could cling to. Small things became suddenly frightening. The jeppa’s nervous tugging at the lead rope I clutched, a sudden shift in the push of the breeze, even my hair blowing in my eyes were abruptly life threatening. Twice I dropped to all fours and crawled. The rest of the way, I went at a crouch, looking before I placed a foot and trusting my weight to it slowly.
Behind me came the line of jeppas, all following the lead beast. They were not as cautious as I. I heard stone shift beneath them, and small scatterings of rock that they loosened went pebbling and bounding down the slope, to shoot off in space. Each time it happened, I feared it would waken other rocks and set them sliding. They were not roped together, save for the lead I had on the first beast. At any moment I dreaded to see one go slipping down the hillside. They were strung out behind me like corks on a net, and far behind them came Starling and the Fool. I stopped once to watch them and cursed myself as I realized the difficulty of the task I had given her. They came at half my crawling pace, with Starling gripping the Fool and watching footing for both of them. My heart was in my mouth when she stumbled once and the Fool sprawled flat beside her. She looked up then and saw me staring back at her. Angrily she lifted an arm and motioned to me to go on. I did. There was nothing else I could do.
The dump of rock and stone ended as abruptly as it had begun. I scrabbled down to the road’s flat surface with gratitude. Behind me came the lead jeppa, and then the other beasts, jumping from scarp to rock to road like goats as they descended. As soon as they were all down, I scattered some grain on the road to keep them well bunched and clambered back up the slide’s shoulder.
I could see neither Starling nor the Fool.
I wanted to run back across the face of the slide. Instead I forced myself to go slowly, picking my way back along the tracks the jeppas and I had left. I told myself that I should be able to see their brightly colored garments in this dull landscape of grays and blacks and whites. And finally I did. Starling was sitting quite still in a patch of scree with the Fool stretched out beside her on the stones.
“Starling!” I called to her softly.
She looked up. Her eyes were huge. “It all started to move around us. Little rocks and then bigger ones. So I stopped still to let it settle. Now I can’t get the Fool up and I can’t carry her.” She fought the panic in her voice.
“Sit still. I’m coming.”
I could plainly see where a section of the surface rock had broken loose and started tumbling. Rolling pebbles had left their tracks over the snowy surface. I sized up what I could see and wished I knew more of avalanches. The movement of stone seemed to have begun well above them and to have flowed past them. We were still a good ways above the edge, but once the scree began moving, it would swiftly carry us over the edge. I made my heart cold and relied on my head.