The Commonwealth Saga 2-Book Bundle (46 page)

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.

“Are you going to light a fire?” Orion asked; his teeth were chattering.

Ozzie helped the boy into the tent. “Not tonight. Get into your sleeping bag, that’ll keep you warm.”

Orion did as he was told without complaint. There were dark circles under his eyes, by the light of the kerosene lamp it looked as if his freckles were fading from his white skin. Ozzie wormed his way into his own sleeping bag, and immediately felt the benefit. He took a heatbrick out of his bag and ripped the tag. The unit was powered by a simple chemical reaction, and the top surface was soon glowing vermilion, throwing out considerable heat. They took it in turns to cook their cans, and Ozzie boiled up two large thermosfuls of tea so they’d have a hot drink waiting for them when they woke. “Get some sleep,” he said. “It’ll be dawn quite quickly.”

Orion gave him a worried look. “Is the snow going to cover the tent again?”

“No. We’ll be fine. It was definitely thinning out when we came in. But I’ll check every couple of hours. Don’t worry.”

“I’ve never been so cold.”

“You’re warmer now, though, aren’t you?”

“Uh-huh.” The boy pulled the sleeping bag up to his chin. “Suppose so.”

“Okay then.” Ozzie pulled the blankets up around him. “It’s just when we stop moving you feel it worst.”

Ozzie’s watch read five minutes to four when dawn arrived. His e-butler had woken him up at regular intervals through the night so he could check the tent. He felt as if he’d had about ten minutes sleep all night. Orion was equally reluctant to get out of his sleeping bag.

“We have to move on,” Ozzie told him. “We can’t stay here.”

“I know.”

The snowfall had stopped sometime during the night, producing a uniform brilliant white landscape. Snow covered everything, even sticking to the vertical tree trunks so that any dark twig or leaf that protruded looked strangely out of place. It was nearly two feet deep on the ground now. Ozzie put on the darkest sunglasses he had, trying not to show how much that perturbed him. It was going to be slow progress for the animals today.

“Mr. Stafford should sell sledges,” Orion said. “He’ll like that when I tell him.”

Ozzie laughed too loud at the boy’s humor, and gave him a quick hug. They were both sipping their tea from the thermos as they walked over to the animals. The precarious corral had worked to a degree; covered with snow and frozen solid it had provided a reasonable protection against drifts. Behind it, the horse and pony had trampled the snow about their feet, and were shivering heavily. The lontrus simply stood there, snorting out clouds of faint steam. If such a thing were possible, it was giving them a sullen look from beneath the shaggy strands of fur that curtained its eyes.

Orion gave their surroundings a baleful stare. “Which way?”

Ozzie frowned as the answer stalled in his throat. He tried to work out which direction they’d arrived from last night. It simply wasn’t possible, the clumps of trees all looked identical. “Try your gift,” he suggested.

The boy fumbled with his sweaters, pulling the pendant out. There was a tiny glimmer of blue starlight within the little gem. He slowly turned full circle, holding it like a compass. When he was pointing just to the right of the tent, its intensity increased noticeably.

Ozzie thought the trees formed a kind of avenue that way. Sort of. “Guess that’s it then,” he said.

“Glad I came now?”

“Very.” Ozzie put his arm around the boy’s shoulder. “Looks like I owe you big-time, huh? How do you figure you’ll cash it in?”

“I just want Mom and Dad back.”

“Yeah yeah, but like apart from that? I mean, guiding me to safety’s got to be worth a couple of mega-K’s. That’s serious money.”

“I don’t know.”

“Oh, come on, man. I knew when I was your age.”

“Okay then,” Orion said, suddenly animated again. “This is huge money, right?”

“Absolutely. Buy your own planet style.”

“Right, first off, I’d buy loads of rejuvenations, so I live as long as you do.”

“Good one, I can dig that.”

“And then I’d buy lots of smart memories, so I’d have an education and know all the complicated stuff like physics and art and banking, but I don’t have to go to school for years.”

“Even better.”

“And I want a car, a real cool one—the coolest there’s ever been.”

“Ah, that’s the Jaguar-Chevrolet 2251 T-bird, the convertible.”

“Really? There really is a coolest car ever?”

“Oh, yeah. I got a couple in my garage. Sad thing is I never drive them these days. That’s the thing with serious money, you can do so much that you never have time to do anything.”

“I’d give some away, too, to charities and hospitals and things, people that really need it.”

“Nice; that’ll prove you’re an okay kind of a guy, not just another rich bastard who doesn’t give a shit.”

“Ozzie, do you give money away then? Everyone knows you’re cool.”

“Yeah. I give some of it away.” He gave the boy a dutiful shrug. “When I remember.”

As Ozzie expected, it was slow going at first, with Polly breaking ground again. He would have preferred to send the lontrus on first, but its legs were too short. So Polly pushed her way laboriously forward, her longer legs churning up the thick layer of snow. He spent most of the morning considering options. Make some kind of snowshoes and sled, haul their food along and let the animals go? Simply turn around and return with the right kind of equipment to tackle this terrain? Except … who knew what kind of terrain he’d face next time? Assuming he could find a way back to Lyddington from here.

He just kept telling himself this was Silfen country. The aliens wouldn’t let any real harm befall anyone.
Would they?

As the morning progressed, so the depth of snow gradually began to reduce. It didn’t get any softer, though, and it remained stuck to every surface. Four hours after they started he was shivering inside his multiple layers. A layer of hoarfrost caked every square inch of his clothing. There was nothing else for it, he got down and plodded along beside the horse, shoving his boots through the snow. The action warmed him slightly, but now he was worried about the rate he was burning off calories. The horse and pony were visibly in distress, despite the blankets tied around them.

Sometime after midday, Ozzie noticed what looked like tracks in the snow ahead of them. He took his sunglasses off, and found the light had become a pale pink. It turned the world into a strange grotto land, as if the forest had been carved out of brittle coral.

“Is it evening already?” Orion asked with a muffled voice. His face was completely swathed in a wool scarf, with only a narrow slit left to see through.

Ozzie checked his watch. “Don’t think so.” He bent down to examine the tracks. They were definitely footprints, elongated triangles without any tread. “These may be Silfen boots,” he said excitedly. There were perhaps fifteen different sets, all emerging from the forest; a couple had even appeared directly beneath trees, which he suspected the aliens had been climbing. They merged together and headed off along the vague avenue of snow-encrusted trees.

“Are you sure?” Orion asked. He was treading ground where he stood, slapping his hands against his sides in an effort to stay warm.

“I think so. I don’t know who else is going to be running around these woods. Besides, we haven’t got a lot of choice.”

“Okay.”

They started off again. Orion was walking beside his pony, one arm draped over the saddle so his hand could grip the reins. Ozzie suspected he was doing that so the pony could partly pull him along. The air was so cold now, it burned the inside of his mouth if he took a clear breath. The scarf he’d wrapped over his own nose and lips dangled long ice crystals where his breath had frozen against the woolly fabric. Before he put the sunglasses back on, he tried to see where the sun was. The branches overhead were thinner now, showing patches of a hazed ruby sky. He thought one section was slightly brighter, about halfway between the zenith and horizon, but that would put nightfall several hours away. If he’d worked the new short days out they only had about an hour left.

Half an hour later, Orion stumbled. Ozzie only knew because he heard a small grunt. When he looked around, the boy was facedown in the snow with the pony standing above him. Much as he would have liked to hurry back, Ozzie’s limbs responded slowly. It was like trying to move through liquid.

When he sat Orion up, the boy wasn’t even shivering. Ozzie pulled the scarf off his mouth to check for breathing. His lips were dark and cracked, with tiny flecks of blood frozen into place.

“Can you hear me?” Ozzie shouted.

Orion’s eyes fluttered weakly. He moaned softly.

“Shit,” Ozzie grunted. “Hang on, I’ll put the tent up. We’ll wait here until the weather picks up.”

There was no reply, although Orion raised one arm a few inches. Ozzie left him propped up against the pony and tried to get the tent pack off the lontrus. His outer gauntlets were too thick to unfasten the strap catches, so he took them off, trying not to wince as the arctic air bit straight through the woolen inner gloves. He started fumbling with the straps, then gave up and pulled the diamond-blade machete from its sheath, and cut the straps.

Three times he had to put his gauntlets back on and flap his arms to try to heat his hands back up before his fingers actually moved. What seemed like hours later the air-insulated section of the tent had reluctantly self-inflated and he’d got the support poles secured to the edges. He dropped a couple of heatbricks inside, then dragged the semiconscious boy in after them. With the flap sealed, the interior of the tent warmed rapidly from the radiance of the heatbricks. Ozzie had to strip several layers of clothing off himself and the boy before they began to feel the benefit. The chilblains in his fingers and toes were strong enough to make him wince as circulation returned. Orion started coughing; he looked as though he wanted to burst into tears.

“How can it be so cold?” the boy asked wretchedly.

“If you really want to know, I don’t think we’re on Silvergalde anymore.” Ozzie watched the boy anxiously to see what his response would be.

“Not for about three days, I figured,” Orion said. “But I still don’t see why anyone would visit a world with this kind of climate.”

“Oh. I’m not sure. I don’t think we’re in this planet’s polar regions, because of the trees. I may be wrong, but rule of thumb is that year-round ultra-cold environments don’t support living things as big as trees. So my guess would be either a world with a dying sun or one with a very long elliptical orbit and we arrived midwinter, worst luck.” He shook his hands, trying to ease the pain as feeling and movement returned. His ears still felt like lumps of ice.

“So what do we do now?”

“Like I said, wait to see if the morning brings any change, though I suspect it won’t. But we can’t go any farther now. We need to prepare. I’ll go out again in a while. I need to put the tent’s wind shell up, then I’ll get the rest of our packs in here. We also have to eat a good hot meal. And the first aid kit has some cream that’ll take care of your lips.”

“And yours,” Orion said.

Ozzie put his fingers up to his mouth, feeling the rough broken skin. “And mine,” he conceded. He was praying he wouldn’t have to deal with frostbite as well; fortunately his boots had kept his feet reasonably insulated, but he’d have to check Orion over properly later.

“What about the animals?” the boy asked.

“I can’t chop any branches off for a bonfire, I won’t have the strength. I’m going to spread some flame gel around the base of a tree and see if I can just set the whole damn thing alight. That might help them keep warm enough.”