Powder Burn (Burn with Sam Blackett #1) (13 page)

Sam didn’t respond. There was nothing to say. But Pete was already moving again, he rolled back to face the stove. Eventually she heard new noises, of bubbling water, the chink of a spoon on an aluminum pot, murmuring as Pete spoke to Jortse. Then there was a mug of tea in front of her nose. She wriggled her hands out and took it.

“OK?”

“
Much better.” A big gulp of tea, too hot, almost scolding.

“
Feel your toes?”

“
Yeah, good now, warm, thanks.” Pete had wrapped his feet around the bottom of her sleeping bag. “How did you find this spot?” she asked, after a while.

“
I was looking for somewhere on the way up, counted the steps past it, just in case. I always count steps when the visibility is poor and there’s a chance of backtracking.”

“
That’s something my father used to do, always thinking ahead, just like you,” she said.

Pete smiled, but it didn’t change the anxious furrow between his eyebrows.
“I wonder where the others are.”

She shook her head.

“They should have ridden the mountain yesterday. I hope they’re not trying to get up and through the notch in this.”

“
They’re not stupid,” she said, putting the cup down onto the ground sheet and tunneling back inside her bag.

“
No ...” he sighed. “We might as well get some rest, we’re not going anywhere for a while. And when the weather does break, we’ll need all hands on deck to get him down.”

She snuggled into his chest and nodded, and a moment later his arms were around her again.
I could get used to this,
she thought.

Sam had the sensation of sleeping, but it was neither deep nor restful. They were still high on the mountain and the altitude was hurting her. She had a headache again, the cough had never really gone away and the cumulative strains of the past weeks had etched deep into her strength. The storm rattled just yards over their heads. Pete got out of the tent several times to clear the
fast-gathering snow and stop it burying them. Each time she made tea or soup while he was out there, keeping their fluid levels up to help ward off the crippling effect of dehydration induced by the altitude. The time passed slowly, nothing improved, least of all Tashi’s thin, labored breathing.

She was neither awake nor asleep when the tent collapsed. There had been an ominous noise a moment before, which turned out to be snow slipping off the top of the rock above them. And then she was definitely awake. She heard a muffled shout, and Pete’s body moved against hers as he tried to get out of the sleeping bag. It was completely dark, the mouth of the survival bag sealed shut. There was a flicker of claustrophobia
, which she beat back. The weight of the snow pressed down hard, there must be a lot of it, cold and heavy, her safe, warm world had disappeared in a heartbeat. Then the load eased, and the faintest trickle of light came in as Pete broke free. He struggled into his outer layer of clothes and started to shovel the snow away with wide sweeps of his arm. “Sam, can you find the torch, it’s in the top pocket of my pack,” he yelled.

She rolled over onto her stomach as the last of the snow came off her body, and fumbled for his pack. Her elbows found a puddle. She cursed, and then carried on the search. Everything was wet. By the time she found the flashlight and switched it on, Pete had got the worst of the snow off and was squatting beside her. She shone it over the scene. It was a mess, a world of swirling snow and howling wind beyond, and still falling on them in heavy flurries from the rock above. One of the tent poles was broken.

“The only thing we can use to prop the tent up and keep the snow off Tashi is the snowboard, but it won’t make a shelter for the four of us. How are you feeling, think you’re up to spending the rest of the night in the open, in the bags?”

“
Sure.” It was a less than enticing prospect, but there wasn’t a choice if Tashi was to have any chance of survival.

“
All right, see if you can wriggle out of there.” With Pete’s help, she slid herself – still inside both sleeping bag and metallic survival bag – out of the tent.

“
Jortse” – Pete knelt to make himself better heard – “lift your weight up, I need the snowboard out to prop the tent up.” Jortse had been watching all this, and levered first himself, and then Tashi, off the ground, while she directed the flashlight. Pete pulled his board out from under them with a lot of swearing and grunting. Then he pushed under the wet, collapsed nylon, dragging his board with him. He buried one end in the snow, then propped the other end into the rock. He wriggled back out and assessed his handiwork. It was a rough lean-to, but the angled board was holding the wet nylon off the two men, and the snow wasn’t lying on it. It would do the job.

“
Do you have any more clothes in your pack?” he asked, taking the flashlight from her.

“
A few bits and pieces.” She was having trouble forming words, her face was so cold.

“
Put it on, all of it, it’s going to be a long night.”

She found the clo
thes and got them inside the sleeping bag, while Pete held the flashlight for her. When she was finished, they swapped jobs until Pete had got all of his clothes on too, then they wrestled the packs and bags into place so they provided as much shelter as possible. Finally, they both lay in silence, exhausted by the effort of trying to staying alive.

“
It got pretty wet in here,” Pete said after five minutes had passed.

“
When the tent collapsed,” she explained. Her hair seemed to be everywhere. She’d lost her hat and hair band in the struggle –
way past worrying about it.
“Do you think we’re going to be all right?” she said.

“
You want the truth or the bullshit?”

“
The truth.”

“
Depends on the storm. Longer we’re pinned down here, less chance we’ve got of making it.”

She was silent.

“I guess this is your hat?” he added.

She took it gratefully and pulled it on.

“We have to take it in turns to stay awake, half an hour at a time,” he told her. “Every time you wake up, check that your feet haven’t gone numb. If they have, we need to warm them, otherwise you’ll get frostbite. And we can’t afford to both sleep, or there’s a chance we won’t wake up at all.”

She nodded.

“You sleep first.”

And she did, drifting off into a dream
- and nightmare-filled doze. It didn’t last for long. Pete was soon squeezing her awake.

“
Can you feel your feet?” he asked.

She wriggled her toes and then nodded her assent.

“OK,” he went on, “just hold tight for a minute while I shake off the snow on the bag.” She felt his arm release her and tap against the survival bag, then he handed her his watch and said, “It’s set to count down half an hour – wake me then, no longer.” She felt him shift his weight slightly, and soon after relax as he slept.

Her body jerked in that curious spasm that sometimes occurs as the body relaxes onto the very edge of sleep. And now she was awake. She lay still, remembered the watch and then the thirty minutes with a rush of panic. She checked, the watch glowing with a hint of techno-reassurance in the darkness. There was still twenty minutes to go. Relief followed
– she didn’t want to let him down. This was his chance to rest, and he needed it. And she needed him to get some rest. They were all relying on his experience to keep them alive. This little bit was up to her and she wasn’t going to screw up. She watched the clock, hanging on to that thought. The alarm went off. She wriggled against Pete to wake him up. He came round quickly, immediately asked her if she could feel her toes and fingers, then he tapped the snow off the bag.

“
Bloody hell, it’s cold,” he said when she was settled back in his arms. He rubbed his feet against hers through the sleeping bag.

“
No shit,” she mumbled. A shiver overtook her – she was so cold. Pete squeezed her a little tighter.

“
There’s something I should have said to you a long while ago,” she blurted out. She felt him tense, and moved so she could whisper straight into his ear. “I think you’re a gorgeous, lovely man and I’m hugely fond of you, and it would be just great if we could spend some time together – if we get out of this ...” she trailed off, took a deep breath.
Where the hell had that come from?
she wondered, even as she finished speaking.

Pete was silent for a heartbeat before he spoke.
“You do? It would?”

She nodded, not least because she was holding her breath. He sounded surprised.

“I think you’re wonderful,” he said, and then he was squeezing her so tight the breath came flying out and he was telling her, “And we will – get out alive, that is. Can I kiss you now?” And then he was ... cold lips pressed against her own, so numb. She could only feel the pressure to start with, until a hot breath melted into her throat and a shudder gripped her that had nothing to do with the cold.

The night had crawled forward in freezing, bite-sized, thirty-minute pieces. She wasn’t sure what she’d done, but at that moment, freezing to death, trapped on a mountainside deep in the Himalaya, it felt right. Pete woke her with the same squeeze they had used to mark the end of each half hour. “It’s daylight, and I think the storm has gone through,” he said.

She shifted a little, just enough to realize how stiff she was in every single muscle. The cold coming up from underneath her body was intense and seemed to have directly bonded to her bones. Then she sank back into his arms, and still managed the kind of smile that it would normally take days to lose. This wasn’t a night she was going to forget in a hurry. They were alive and she couldn’t wait to get him back to civilization.
“They say that relationships that start in extreme circumstances don’t last,” she said, still smiling from one ear to the other.

“
Didn’t Sandra Bullock say that to Keanu in
Speed
?”

“
Maybe.”

“
Well, she was right on that occasion. Keanu ducked out before
Speed 2
and that film was crap.”

Pete pushed the bag open and shook off the snow. They both peeked out into a bright white world
; cold air rushed in and she shivered hard.

“
Sit tight while I get a brew on and see how the others are doing. We’re all going to need some warm grub,” he said, and slid out from beside her.

She drew her legs up and pulled everything tight around her face, leaving a tiny gap to gaze into the new blue sky. She listened to Pete’s cursing as he forced limbs into his waterproofs and boots. Then she heard the rustle as he went over to the others and shook the limp tent walls to get the snow off. She rolled over to watch as he poked his head inside. He was there for maybe a minute, there was a murmur of conversation. Then Pete shuffled himself backwards out of the tent. He sat on his haunches and looked over at her with a solemn shake of the head. She knew what that meant and buried her face in her hands, dashed from her cozy high. She cried for Tashi, even though she barely knew him – she had expended so much effort and emotion trying to save his life.

But slowly routine sounds broke in – the stove was fired up, water boiled, Jortse rose and the tent was dismantled. She was short on energy for such grief, and by the time Pete came to her with a steaming mug, she had recovered most of her composure. She sat up, still wrapped in the two bags, a silver slug on the snow. Pete handed her the coffee without a word. Sam took it, fabulous warmth in her hands. He sat on his pack for a while, considering her gravely.

“
Jortse wants to leave Tashi here,” he said, finally. “We’ll wrap him in the survival bag, Jortse says he can get help to come back and get the body.” Pete glanced over his shoulder to check where Jortse was before he carried on. “He doesn’t seem too upset, more worried about getting up and over the border.”

She took a deep breath and then nodded.
“We shouldn’t judge him. We have no idea what his life has been like under the Demagistanis.”

“
I suppose,” said Pete.

“
I should get my boots on, soon as I’ve finished this,” she said, taking another mouthful.

“
We might as well stick with him, it’s going to be hard work in this snow,” he said. “It’ll be good to have someone else to break trail. We can stop and eat once we get across the border. And there’s all that food we stashed down at the shack, the people there can cook us up a storm.”

She managed a smile at the thought, and Pete smiled back. 

It was another half an hour before they were ready. Her pack seemed impossibly heavy as she hoisted it onto her back again. She looked round for Pete; he was a few yards up the slope, looking back down at Jortse huddled over the silver bundle, now tucked deep under the protection of the rock. Jortse stood and stepped back, hesitated for a moment and then reached for his bags.
That’s Tashi in there,
she thought. She shook her head, closed her eyes, tried not to think about the reality and the inert shape in the snow, remembering the big brown eyes and the ready smile.

Yesterday. She’d almost forgotten
–
the sword,
stop him
– what or whom had he meant? Had he meant anything? He’d looked so frightened, so desperate for help, he must have known then that there was little they could do. Perhaps it was best that he’d slipped back into unconsciousness. She tried to shrug off the thought. Jortse was moving, Pete falling in behind him, the snowboard awkward in its straps on his pack. Life had to go on, she told herself. They weren’t safe yet.

The sun was out, but the north-facing slope was still in shadow. It wasn’t until they got moving again that she really started to warm up. The top half inch of snow had frozen into an icy crust, but once she broke through, it was soft and powdery beneath. She crunched and waded through it in the wake of Pete and Jortse, taking stock of her body. The barking cough hadn’t got any better overnight, and her head still throbbed with its altitude-induced ache. Her breathing was coming fast and hard, and her legs wobbled like jelly. She felt filthy. The stench of unwashed body and clothes wafted up from inside her jacket with every step. And as for her hair ... She hated the dirt and damp, craved a long hot bath. She wanted clean clothes and the chance to organize the chaos. She tried to cheer herself up with the thought of relaxing on the safe side of the border, eating some proper food, even washing a little ... her mind drifted off into a plan for their arrival.

“You weren’t wrong about the snow,” she said an hour later, as she plunked herself down on her pack beside Pete. It was their first rest stop, and not before time.