‘You’re right, Gabriel,’ he said as he clenched his teeth together. He felt his shoulders tense with the desire to go to war, to vanquish the enemy and return safely home. ‘And I don’t know if you can, but I want you to come back with us… back to Idaho Springs. Maybe there you can find the peace you deserve.’
‘I will try, Mark Jenkins.’
‘But first, we have to kill Prince Malagon.’
‘You will find no dissent in my mind, Mark Jenkins.’
The threatened storm arrived mid-morning, careening between the sullen peaks like a frozen tidal wave. There was no place to hide on the exposed mountainside. Neither Garec nor Brynne spoke as the winds howled about them; there was nothing to say. Like Mark, they knew they had to continue moving or they would die.
Sallax spoke periodically, but not about the storm, or their route over the pass. He sounded unconcerned as he chatted aimlessly about friends and old times back home in Estrad. Brynne could not hear much of what her brother was saying, but she was getting increasingly concerned at his apparent complacency about their situation. Did he not realise how serious this was?
Even though she bowed her head forward into the wind, she felt the sting of thousands of fast-moving snowflakes pelting her forehead and cheeks. Like tiny needles, the flakes ravaged her flesh until the cold took over and a forgiving numbness set in.
All the while, Sallax prattled on as if his will to live, lost for days, had returned in a rush, like the very storm through which he sauntered so gaily. Brynne heard his voice through the wind, a resonant bass line beneath the screaming soprano bearing down on her from the north. Periodically, she could make out fragments of what he said.
‘Capina, remember her?’ The storm interrupted him for a while, but he didn’t appear to stop. ‘-had a backside on her that must have been created by a god.’
Brynne, trying to catch up with Garec, slipped on the ice. No one appeared to notice. ‘Garec,’ she called, despairing, ‘Garec, something’s wrong with him.’ She heard no response; Garec, almost shapeless under his cloak, continued trudging ever upwards towards the narrow break just below the mountain’s peak.
Brynne squinted into the blinding snow, but she could see nothing beyond Garec. The rocky peak above had disappeared long ago and the ground beneath her feet extended to blend with the ice-white sky in an endless expanse of nothingness.
‘We will be here for ever,’ she whispered to herself. ‘There can be no path through this.’
Sallax’s voice came again from behind, ‘-always did favour Garec… remember her, Garec? Drank too much beer, though, thought you’d marry her… for no other reason than to be around that backside every day… glorious backside-’
Brynne felt her resolve begin to wane. She found solid footing for a moment, on what she guessed was a snow-covered boulder, and she wondered if she should stay there. Even her thoughts were interrupted by desultory static, she mused, difficult to decipher over the noisy winter around her.
Sure footing, a place to sit down later. Ahead there is nothing, an endless white void and behind there is Sallax, my brother, and his madness. Please, gods, let it be a passing illness. Who would know of a cure? Sallax would. We would turn to him were it anyone else.
Suddenly Sallax was there with her, lifting her up by her armpits. When had she sat down?
‘Come on Brynne,’ he shouted, ‘I’m sure there are safer places for you to sit out this storm.’ His eyes stared down at her, through her, and his mouth hung open slightly, the inane visage of a bewildered halfwit.
‘Right, okay, I’m fine,’ she answered with a groan and climbed to her feet.
‘Do you remember the name of that wine we had at Mika’s last Twinmoon?’
She reached out and touched her brother’s face. He was grinning at her, his eyes alight with enthusiasm. ‘Sallax, what’s wrong with you?’ she asked.
‘It was grand. Don’t you recall?’ He looked into the distance. ‘Gods, but that was a good one. Of course, Mika is dead now. But we had it with those venison steaks Garec brought from home… where is Garec?’
‘He’s just up ahead,’ Brynne said in a comforting tone as she rested her head against Sallax’s chest. She felt her breath catch in her throat; she didn’t want to cry again today. She had no idea what had happened to her brother, nor what to do to help him. And as Sallax carried on about wine and women, she kept getting flashes of memory: Gilmour’s lifeless body catching fire among the pine boughs in his funeral pyre. Brynne’s world shrank to a point. A little rip in Sallax’s cloak caught her eye and she studied it, learning its imperfections, watching as the frayed strands of wool blew back and forth together in the cold wind. Her breath cascaded over Sallax’s chest and she blew gently on the fabric wound to watch the threads fight back against the storm.
Then Garec was with them, bearing a coil of rope he’d unearthed from his pack.
‘Garec,’ Sallax called jovially, ‘d’you remember Capina?’
Garec blinked, but replied, ‘Of course – how could I forget her?’
‘She was built like a brick alehouse, though, wasn’t she?’
Garec gripped his old friend by the shoulder and grinned. ‘You should have seen her naked, Sallax. Break your heart to see that girl naked.’
‘I knew it, you dog rutter!’ Sallax, apparently thrilled with Garec’s confession, laughed out loud. He appeared to be completely unaware that the Blackstone Mountains were trying once again to kill them.
All the while Garec was indulging Sallax’s madness, he worked with the rope, one end of which he tied to Sallax’s belt. He ran out a length of some three feet and looped a hitch around Brynne’s belt, then did the same for himself.
‘This way none of us will get lost in the blizzard,’ he shouted to Brynne. ‘We need to keep moving, to keep together. We’re near the top of the pass now. We’ll deal with Sallax once we’re safe, but for now, we need to get out of here.’
As Brynne smiled waveringly, he came back and hugged her. ‘It will be okay, Brynne. You’re the strongest, bravest woman I have ever met.’ He rubbed his hands briskly up and down along her back. ‘This storm will kill me ten times before it even begins to dent you.’
‘I’m afraid, Garec.’
‘So am I,’ he said as he pushed her hair back and pulled the hood of her cloak firmly over her head. ‘I don’t know what will happen when we find the others, and I don’t know how we’ll get to Malakasia, but I do know that we’re not going to die on this gods-forsaken mountain, not today.
‘I’ve seen you get angry, Brynne. It’s your strongest survival skill.’ He looked down at her feet, invisible in the snow. ‘It’s all right if you get angry today. Get mean with this storm and you’ll be fine.’
‘I’ll try,’ she muttered, still fighting back tears.
‘You’ll do it.’ He smiled at her again. ‘And you’ll be toasting my memory a hundred Twinmoons after I’m gone.’
She took his hands in hers and squeezed as tightly as she could. ‘We can make it together.’
‘Just one step at a time, and don’t be afraid to hang on to the rope. Let’s go,’ he shouted as he turned back into the wind, ‘Sallax, we’re off!’
Lahp constructed a hasty but durable lean-to from several fallen trees, then gingerly moved Steven into its shelter, trying hard not to jostle the injured man. ‘Firood,’ he said, and when Steven nodded to show he’d understood, the Seron bounded off nimbly towards the river.
Steven rested in relative comfort, listening to the sound of the river rushing by and feeling the delicate tingling sensation of the querlis interacting with the muscle and bone tissues of his lower leg. Adjusting his position, he focused his attention along the trail and up the slope behind their camp. Several minutes passed and he began to grow impatient.
‘C’mon Mark,’ he called, as if it might speed him along. The moments ticked by at an agonisingly slow pace while he tried to remain vigilant. A clump of snow, falling from an overburdened branch, made him crane his neck, hoping to spot his friends appearing suddenly from the underbrush. Soon his legs fell asleep and his lower back began to ache from sitting up straight. He realised he was getting hungry.