And by everything he’d learned about Tara Chang, he wasn’t going to give her up until she could tell him—in words, at which riders including himself didn’t generally excel—that she’d made up her mind to be as shut down as a rock forever.
“Damn you!” she said, for what he was doing, not what he was thinking.
Afterward she lay and shivered, and in her mind still was the firelight. And him.
Then her lost partner. And him again.
She had her hand on his arm, and could have pulled away, and didn’t. Just lay there, as he did, the two of them in the firelight. His horse, Burn, helpfully came over and sniffed them over, approving.
That told him something, too. Burn didn’t likeeveryone.
There was probably a glorious view from the turn next and higher, as the wind shifted into their faces again: all the peaks of the great Firgeberg Range were probably right there behind that veil of white, but all they met was wind that scoured what it hit. If they plummeted straight off the edge in their next snow-blinded steps it still wouldn’t give them a view—they’d just fall and fall, Danny said to himself, in white no different from the snow that veiled the road.
From a high Shamesey window he’d dreamed boyish dreams of the far crest of the world. From the safety of Shamesey walls he’d seen Rogers Peak send out its winter banner of white and thought it the greatest beauty in the mountains— hismountain, hishorizon against the evening sky.
Well, this was it. He was here. Best view he might ever have. And snow and the fading of daylight were all the view he had.
One foot in front of the other—hand was numb, arm was numb, and Cloud was getting too far ahead of them, moving into blowing sleet that didn’t let up, up an increasingly sleet-gray road. Randy, walking near him, was dropping behind; Danny realized that in a distracted moment and turned his head, blinded by his scarf, to urge Randy to catch up.
“Come on,” he yelled. “Keep with us. ” He saw their strength giving out, finally, to pull that travois. They’d dumped all the non-essential supplies. Held on to the shotgun and most of the food. Couple of blankets. And Brionne. Randy had to carry himself—but he looked to be losing his battle against the wind.
Randy might have answered his hail just now. Danny couldn’t entirely hear. His ears were aching to match the duller ache racketing around the walls of his skull. But Randy didn’t overtake them until Carlo stopped and beckoned and cursed and refused to go on until Randy trudged past them again.
On that steeper grade, Randy struggled to keep walking. Feet skidded on snow-packed rubble as often as they gained upward. More than once the kid slipped to his knees and got back up in what had become an exercise of raw, desperate courage. Danny’s hand that held the left-side travois pole was going numb even through the gloves, and his running argument with Cloud about <bacon> and <cabin in the woods above> had degenerated to a litany of calls on God as his feet slipped and his heart jumped—supposing the preachers’ Beast-hating God had a little concern to spare for a stranded and hellbound rider.
Carlo had his feet go out from under him, wrenched the travois down and almost took Danny off his feet, and that was the way it went: slow going for a long, long distance as rubble fill bridged a rift in the mountain flank. Wind blew the ends of Cloud’s tail straight sideways below the point where muscle and bone had it tucked tight into Cloud’s rump.
Then tail and horse alike faded into white ahead of them. Randy was momentarily a gray, ghostly figure and then gone, too.
It was like walking into a wall. Ice particles stung exposed skin. They couldn’t see, and what Cloud sent made Danny sure Cloud couldn’t, either. By the end of the next switchback and the change of the wind from their flank to their backs Danny couldn’t feel his grip on the travois pole at all. His chest hurt, his head hurt, his lungs hurt, and the constant slipping and the scares it set into him didn’t help his labored breathing or his pounding, front-of-the-skull headache.
Carlo was bearing up somehow, but Randy—
Randy by now was walking on instinct, not mentally there, Danny was increasingly afraid. He watched Randy, who’d stopped when they had, wander off to the left and to the right again, averaging their course, but not holding a steady line. The thoughts that surfaced from the boy were increasingly erratic, things about home and <Tarmin> and going somewhere Danny couldn’t figure.
Cloud was struggling with the increasingly frequent idea of < shelter and shops> coming from the kid. <Cattle tails,> was Cloud’s opinion of villagers walking this road—<cattle tails> describing the feature Cloud most despised on the creature Cloud most despised on the planet, adding <cattle dung> and <cattle rear ends> for villagers who confused his navigation.
Foot slipped. Randy went momentarily to all fours and got up again, amid <fear> from Carlo, who surely knew the score. They couldn’t, Danny thought, afford another test in this gale with Randy already chilled—couldn’t just pile him on the travois in the open, either, if he was chilling. He kept looking for a tall rock, a snowbank, any place where he and Carlo could shelter Randy and stabilize the travois for long enough to pack Randy in the furs with his sister—if shewasn’t frozen.
Randy lagged back by them. Danny turned his head and in the fuzzy side vision his frozen lashes and the edge of his scarf afforded him realized the boy was no longer trudging beside him and Carlo. He looked back, fighting the scarf and the wind for vision. Randy was standing still, slowly disappearing into a veil of white.
“Randy!” Carlo yelled back at him. Carlo’s voice was mostly gone, too, but he yelled: “Randy, come on! Keep up, dammit, you lily-livered stupid kid!”
It wasn’t exactly the encouragement Danny would have offered, but he guessed Carlo knew his brother, because Randy started walking, and as they went at a slower pace, caught up, <angry> and <wanting to hit Carlo.> Carlo shoved at him one-handed as he passed, cursed him and made him madder.
Couldn’t have the kid quit. They were—he’d tried to reestablish a time-sense—maybe an hour from the shelter and the end of this road. It was getting toward dark.
Get the kid to a level spot, pack him on—he and Carlo could pull that weight.
Couldn’tbe that much longer. The shelter was supposed to be right at the crest, a broad truck pull-out, so that trucks in convoy from the High Loop could park and the drivers could sleep in them before or after that notorious steep. Villagers appreciative of the means by which their goods had moved provided soft bunks, even heated showers in the summer, Tara had said so. Tara had promised them—he could seethe image she’d cast him.
<Hot water. Hot meals. A shelter still within the treeline> and away from this rocky face, which meant firewood available if they had to wait out a succession of storms.
He had no feeling in his left hand. With his free right, he gave a furious wipe across his eyes to free his eyelashes of the accumulating ice—and in that moment Randy slipped on a runoff trace of ice and shot past him downhill.
He dropped and grabbed the kid, and Randy’s weight spun him, the travois, and Carlo all to the left and onto the ice. Carlo—he thought it was Carlo—by a miracle or a dug-in boot-toe held onto the other pole of the travois, flat on the ice, and didn’t let them skid more than a body length further.
Danny lay still with a gloved fistful of Randy’s sleeve and a second precarious grip on the side of the travois. For all he knew the rig might be only balanced on one pivot, ready to slide again if he moved.
He really hadn’t been scared in the instant he’d grabbed Randy. Now a shudder went through him that passed to quaking shivers, a blinding acuteness of headache, and an inability to get his breath.
He couldn’t let himself panic. Couldn’t. He’d saved Randy. His eyelashes had mostly frozen shut and he couldn’t judge where they were on the road or how close to the edge or how steep it was below them.