Ozzie was busy splitting one of the logs lengthways, turning it into slim segments of kindling. “So, like, I guess you were never in the Boy Scouts, then?”
“What’s that?”
“Group of young camping enthusiasts. They all get taught how to rub lengths of wood together so they spark. That lets you start a fire no matter where you are.”
“That’s stupid! I’m not rubbing logs together.”
“Quite right.” Ozzie concealed his grin as he opened a pot of flame gel, and carefully applied a small layer of the blue jelly to each of the kindling sticks. He pushed them into the middle of the logs, then took out his butane lighter—it was actually older than his watch. “Ready?” He flicked the lighter once, and keeping it at arm’s length, pushed it toward the kindling. The gel ignited with a loud whoomp. Flames jetted out around the logs, engulfing the whole pile. Ozzie only just managed to pull his arm back in time. “I thought they banned napalm,” he muttered.
Orion laughed in relief, and clapped his gloved hands together. The flames burned intently, spilling out across the remaining logs. In a couple of minutes, the whole pile was spitting and blazing keenly.
“Keep it well fed,” Ozzie said. “The new logs will have to dry out before they burn.”
While the boy enthusiastically dropped another log on every few minutes, Ozzie set the tent up a few yards away. The struts were simple poles supporting a double air-insulated lining that expanded automatically, inflating as soon as he twisted the valve open. Over that went the wind shell, tough waterproof fabric with long pins along its hem that he hammered deep into the ground. Not that any wind could ever penetrate the forest floor, but he was starting to get a bad feeling about this weather.
For once, Ozzie had allowed Orion to choose whatever food he wanted from the pack bag. The boy was becoming seriously depressed by their environment, he needed cheering up. So they settled down in the lee of the tent’s front flaps that had been hoisted up to form a little porch, with the warmth of the fire washing over them and drying their clothes, eating sausages, burgers, beans, with hot cheese poured on thick chunks of bread. To follow that up Orion heated a can of orange sponge with treacle.
After they’d taken care of the animals, they banked up the fire and went into the tent. Ozzie had his six seasons sleeping bag to curl up in. Orion’s bag wasn’t as good, but he had a couple of blankets to wrap around it. He went to sleep complaining it was too warm.
Ozzie woke to a bad headache and distinct lack of breath. It was light outside, though not the kind of brightness daylight usually brought. Orion was asleep beside him, his breathing short and shallow. Ozzie looked at the boy for a moment, his mind all sluggish. Then it all made sense. “Shit!” He got out of the sleeping bag fast, fingers fumbling with its zipper. Then he was crawling forward. The tent’s inner lining seal parted easily. Beyond that, the wind shell was bulging inward. He tugged at the zipper. A torrent of fine powdery snow fell in silently, washing up against his knees. Even when it finished moving, leaving him half-immersed in a broad mound, there was no sign of the sky. He pushed his way up against it and started to dig frantically. After a couple of seconds his hands were scrabbling in air. Bright white sunlight streamed in. He gulped down the freezing air, trying to slow his panicky heart.
Orion was sitting up behind him, eyes blinking. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing, we’re okay.”
“I’ve got a headache. Is that snow?”
“Yeah.”
“Oh, wow.” He crawled forward and scooped some of it up, grinning delightedly. “I’ve never seen any before. Is it covering everything like it does in the Christmas pictures of Earth?”
Ozzie, who was just about to start telling him to dress in his waterproofs, did a double take. “You’re shitting me, man. You’ve never seen snow before?”
“No. It doesn’t snow in Lyddington. Ever.”
“Right. Okay. Well, put your waterproofs on, we’ll go out and take a look.”
The snow was a foot deep on the ground, with several inches coating the top of every branch and twig. Right around the base of the trees it was thinner, and of course it had drifted high against the tent’s wind shell, completely covering the apex. Ozzie looked back at it rather sheepishly; if it had truly buried the tent then the wind shell wouldn’t have been able to take the weight. Nonetheless, it was a sharp lesson not to take anything for granted in the alien forest.
He called Orion over to help soothe the animals as they stamped their hooves and shivered in the cold. The unkempt pony didn’t seem to mind the snow too much, nuzzling up to Orion as soon as the boy found some oats for her. The lontrus simply shook its shaggy gull-gray coat as Ozzie checked it over; the creatures had a strange biochemistry that allowed them to withstand temperatures far more severe than this. It was Polly who had suffered the worst, she didn’t have a winter coat. Mr. Stafford of Top Street Stables had kept the mare nicely clipped for Silvergalde’s moderate climate. Ozzie thought about that as he stroked her trembling neck. He knew damn well he wasn’t in Silvergalde’s mild temperate zone anymore. Yet the temperature didn’t drop to anything like this for thousands of miles north of Lyddington. They’d made good progress in the last nine days, but not that much. The only rational explanation was that they’d gained a lot of altitude, though he wasn’t sure where, it wasn’t a single mountain, yet his virtual vision map showed no true highlands within nine days’ hard riding of Lyddington—nor within twenty days come to that.
He turned a full circle, then glanced up at the blank featureless sky, a slow satisfied smile lifting his face. “Definitely not Kansas anymore,” he said quietly.
They had a cold breakfast, dug out and packed the tent, then went on their way. Snow drifted about aimlessly all day; the powder was fine enough for the slightest gust of air to send little flurries whirling around them. It turned the forest into an exquisite crisp winter land, but once they’d started there was no clue as to where the path actually was. Horse, pony, and lontrus plodded onward as if they knew where they should be going, bearing the new climate stoically.
Every now and then, great cascades of snow would tumble down from the overhead canopy of the giant trees, making a gentle prolonged roaring noise, which was alarmingly loud in the silent forest. A softer fall of snow began around midafternoon, big flakes trickling down from the lost sky. It turned the ambient light a miserable gray and the air even colder. Polly was making hard going of breaking ground as the snow’s thickness built up. Ozzie took a break to put his big waterproofs on over his clothes. Without semiorganics he was layering; it was a strategy that kept him warm and dry, but at the cost of mobility. Bundled up as he was, he could barely remount Polly. He gave Orion a couple of sweaters and another pair of trousers to wear under his oilskins. Once they were moving again, Ozzie began to worry about when night would fall. With the snow showing no signs of relenting, they would need time and light to make a proper camp.
About an hour later they came across a clump of bushes, all covered in snow so they looked like big dunes with just a few twigs poking through the top.
“We’ll shelter here for the night,” he said.
Orion just looked around and shrugged. The boy had barely spoken all day.
Ozzie took off a layer of sweaters and climbed up into the tree above the bushes. He set about the big lower branches with his diamond saw, slicing through at the junction. It didn’t take too much effort before they broke off, falling on top of the bushes. He got four largish ones down, letting them land on top of each other to form a semistable barrier. As a makeshift corral, it would have to do. By the time he gingerly climbed back down again, the snow was already settling on top of them.
Orion set about tying blankets around the horse and pony, while Ozzie pitched their tent in the scant shelter of a big trunk. It was almost dark when he finished. He checked his watch: quarter past five. Which made the day about ten hours long. Silvergalde’s rotation was twenty-five and a half hours.