Way of the Wolf (12 page)

‘Tikaani!’ Beck shouted. There had been a brief yell of surprise from his friend, but it had been cut short by an ominous thump. The rope and the buried rucksack held his weight, though the rope was taut and cut into the snow at the crevasse’s edge. Tikaani was out of sight, dangling below on the end of the rope.

‘Tikaani!’ Beck called again. ‘You OK?’

There was a pause.

‘Yes.’ Tikaani’s voice came up out of the crevasse. He sounded winded. He would have thumped against the side as he fell. Beck pictured his friend dangling there. Neither boy was wearing any special kind of harness. The rope had been tied around their waists, so the loop would slowly squeeze Tikaani, cutting off his breath.

Beck wished he could go and peer down, but he didn’t trust the edge of the crevasse and he wasn’t tied to anything.

‘Can you climb?’

‘Uh . . .’ The rope quivered. Beck heard the sound of Tikaani’s boots scrabbling against the ice. Then the rope jerked as if a weight had yanked on it and he heard Tikaani swear.

‘No. My boots just slip off the ice.’

To climb a wall of ice you needed proper equipment. Crampons. Axes. Sharp metal that would stick in. Beck looked around him for anything that would help. Anything. All they had was more rope . . .

Yes, he thought, the rope, of course. One end was tied to Tikaani. Only the middle bit was tied around the buried rucksack. The other end was still loose, coiled on the snow next to the pack.

‘Tikaani? I’m sending some more rope down. Look out.’

Beck threw the free end of rope towards the crevasse. It uncoiled as it flew through the air and the end vanished into the crack in the ice. A moment later:

‘Uh – got it. Now what?’

‘Take hold of it with both hands. Pull it tight.’

The rope stiffened as Tikaani’s weight pulled down on it.

‘Now, brace your legs against the side of the ice and . . .’

‘Yeah. Thanks. I think I’ve got it.’

Both ends of rope were completely taut now – the one that was tied to Tikaani and the one he was pulling on. They lay side by side on the ice, vanishing over the edge.

The length that was tied to Tikaani suddenly went loose. That meant Tikaani was climbing – his weight was no longer pulling on it. Beck allowed himself a grimly pleased smile and sat down in the snow, with his heels digging in. He took hold of the loose length and looped it around his body, then pulled gently until it was tight once more. Now Beck himself was a bollard, something to take the weight if Tikaani fell again. His friend would drop back into the crevasse, but not as far.

He heard scratchings and scrapings as Tikaani slowly clambered up. Then the rope jerked in Beck’s hands as the other boy’s full weight tugged on it again. Tikaani’s weight yanked hard at him and he slid forward in the snow a few centimetres, braced against the force. But then his heels dug in and he stopped moving.

Again there was the thump of Tikaani’s body hitting the side of the crevasse, and some furious Anak words he hadn’t heard before.

‘OK,’ Beck called. ‘So you slipped, but you’re a bit higher.’ And because Beck had gathered the rope in as Tikaani climbed, Tikaani was going to stay a bit higher. ‘Just keep going . . .’

Bit by bit, Tikaani made his way up. He would hold onto the free end of rope and walk a metre up the ice. The rope tied around him would go loose and Beck would pull it in. When Tikaani’s snowshoes inevitably slipped and he fell against the ice, he stayed at his new height.

After about ten minutes, Tikaani’s head emerged above the lip of the crevasse. His face was contorted with effort, but he managed to bare his teeth at Beck in a grin of triumph. Beck kept up the tension on the rope while his friend slowly crawled over the edge. He only let go when Tikaani was well and truly safe.

Tikaani pushed himself up onto his knees. ‘Please,’ he croaked, ‘just get us off this bloody ice.’

Beck laughed with relief. ‘Certainly. If sir would like to step this way . . . ?’

It wasn’t far – just another hundred metres until the glacier bent to the north, and they kept straight on. Even so they stayed roped together.

‘It doesn’t matter if there’s only a metre or so to go,’ Beck pointed out as they neared the edge. ‘On a glacier like this you can’t be too careful.’

But finally they were off the glacier and back on the mountainside. They could untie themselves and coil the rope back into a rucksack. They looked at each other and breathed out in relief.

‘And we’re almost there,’ Beck told Tikaani. He glanced up ahead. The wall of rock was still a few hundred metres higher than they were, but it was only about half a mile distant. He pulled out the GPS again. ‘It’s . . .’

The glow of the screen faded away like a dying breath.

‘Oh no!’ Beck protested. ‘No, no!’

He thumped the little gadget in his hand and the screen flickered briefly back to life. The power display was almost completely flat. He tried to fix the image in his mind before the GPS died for good. Beck was left staring at a small square of dead plastic. It was the best that advanced twenty-first-century technology had to offer, and was now as much use as a dead fish.

Or maybe not even that much use – at least they could have eaten a dead fish.

‘Hey, no problem,’ said Tikaani, straight-faced. ‘I’m sure I saw a recharge socket back there. I think it was in the wall of the crevasse.’

Beck smiled ruefully. ‘OK, it got us this far. And we still have the map.’ He slipped the GPS into his pocket and turned his back to Tikaani. ‘Could you get it out?’

Tikaani pulled the map from Beck’s rucksack and they unfolded it together. The map was covered with symbols – contours, of course, and different hieroglyphs for rocks and trees and ice. It took a moment for Beck to assimilate it all and identify their position. He wondered if maybe he hadn’t been a bit too reliant on the GPS.

But the river that they had forded was easy to find – a wiggly blue line, deceptively thin. He remembered where the pass was too – the winding thread through the knot of contour lines. Their position had to be somewhere between the two. They had headed pretty well due west from the river. He trailed his finger along the map. Once he had found the cluster of dark lines that represented the glacier, he knew exactly where they were.

‘So, we’re here . . .’ He looked up at the mountaintops. ‘And the pass is here.’ They would find it. He squared his shoulders. ‘Ready for the last bit?’

‘And then it’s downhill all the way?’

Beck checked the map again. The pass itself crested a rise through the mountains.

‘Once we’re halfway through – you bet!’

‘Oh boy, oh boy!’ Tikaani said with feeling. ‘Lead on!’

Up ahead, two rocky promontories protruded from the base of the cliff. They came down the slope in different directions, one to the south and one to the north. The boys were heading for the cliff in between. They kept their zigzag course up the slope but their destination was always in sight. The rocky arms stretched out like the mountain was welcoming them into its embrace. The cliff loomed up ahead of them. Beck scanned it quickly for the dark cleft that would indicate the opening of the pass.

‘Not seeing it . . .’ Tikaani murmured. He mirrored Beck’s own thoughts. ‘What exactly are we looking for?’

Beck remembered the pass on the map. On this side of the mountains it was tiny, its walls so close together that the threadlike contours on either side were a solid line. Beyond that it widened out into a much wider valley.

‘This end – it won’t be big. It might just look like a crack . . .’

A little further along the cliff, to their left, the mountainside bulged out slightly. Beck reckoned the pass would be just the other side.

‘This way,’ he said, and they changed course slightly. They came round the bulge . . .

. . . and faced nothing but sheer rock.

The boys stared at it for a moment as if it might magically open up.

‘Do we knock?’ Tikaani asked after a moment.

Beck swore to himself. ‘I’m sorry. I really thought this was it.’

‘Hey, it must be around here somewhere,’ Tikaani pointed out logically. Beck could hear the disappointment in his voice but his friend was quite right. ‘We can go different ways to look for it.’

‘Yes . . .’ Beck really didn’t want to split up, but it would save time. ‘Don’t go too far. A hundred metres, tops. We make sure we can see each other all the time, right?’

‘Right.’

Tikaani headed south, Beck went north, carefully scanning the foot of the rock face. Suddenly his eyes caught a gap in the cliff a couple of metres up. His heart leaped. Right! Of course! No one said the entrance to the pass had to be at ground level.

He kicked off his snowshoes and scrambled up the bare rock. The gap he was aiming for was no more than three metres wide, and it angled away from him. No wonder they hadn’t seen it from a distance. He was careful to keep to his own rules, making sure Tikaani could see him, but at least he could get to the entrance. He stood there triumphantly and looked at . . .

. . . more rock. The gap went back for a few metres, and then its sides closed together. No pass.

Beck slowly turned away and climbed back down. He sat down and tied on his snowshoes.

Tikaani was trudging towards him. ‘Nothing this way,’ he reported. ‘Not within a hundred metres anyway.’

‘OK,’ Beck sighed. ‘We’re going to have to go further. We’ll look for it together.’

‘Which way?’ Tikaani asked.

Beck mentally tossed a coin. ‘South,’ he said, so they went back the way Tikaani had come.

They worked their way south along the cliff for five hundred metres, poking into every nook and cranny. Sometimes they climbed up the rocks as far as they could get to investigate more prospects like the one Beck had found. No luck. Finally they found themselves looking out over another crevasse in the snow. It had been carved out by a stream of melt-water that trickled by a few metres below. It was far too wide to cross and there was no way over it.

‘If it’s on the other side of that—’ Tikaani began.

‘It isn’t,’ Beck said shortly. Things like crevasses didn’t show on the map – they came and went too quickly – but he was sure they were well past the likely area for the pass. The crevasse was nature’s way of pointing this out and saying ‘Turn round’. And so they did. They worked their way back again – Beck reckoned there was no harm in rechecking the cliff they had already covered – until they got to the point where they had started. Then they looked at each other, shrugged, and kept going.

‘Hey . . .’ Tikaani said at one point, and Beck’s heart leaped. Then he realized his friend was looking up at the crack he had already explored. He shook his head.

‘Sorry. Done that.’

Tikaani’s shoulders slumped and they trudged on. The cliff face bulged out ahead of them, and then curved back towards the mountain.

It took them a moment to realize it kept curving. Another minute and the cliff on their left was suddenly the left-hand side of a cleft going into the rock. They stood and looked at it for a moment. They’d had enough hope knocked out of them that they didn’t get excited. Neither of them wanted to waste any more energy exploring another dead end.

‘Is this . . . ?’

‘Could be . . .’

‘Well, someone else seems to think so,’ Beck said, pointing at a line of tracks in the snow that also disappeared into the cleft.

They looked like a set of dog’s paw prints. Each foot had four little toe marks arranged in a semicircle above a larger indentation. But both of them knew they didn’t come from a dog.

The boys looked at each other.

‘So what do we do if the wolf’s still in there?’ Tikaani asked.

Beck shrugged. ‘Say, “Nice doggy”?’ He craned his neck to peer further in. ‘“Woof”?’

The cleft was certainly deeper than the blind alley he had found earlier. You couldn’t see all the way down it because it twisted and turned, but it went in the right direction. Yes, this could well be the pass . . . and it could be occupied. The paw prints didn’t emerge again. The wolf was still in there. A hungry, possibly desperate predator. Beck didn’t want to share a confined space with one of those.

Or, of course, he thought, it might have gone all the way through.

Well, there were two of them, and only one wolf, and they had sticks and they could probably scare it off. One thing was certain – they couldn’t wait out here for ever.

‘Come on,’ Beck said, and they ventured in.

‘This could be it,’ Tikaani said after a minute. They walked in single file between high walls of rock on either side, still clutching their sticks against any possible wolf attack.

‘Yup . . .’ Beck agreed as the walls began to part. They could walk side by side now. There was a sharp corner up ahead. Sooner or later this pass would have to open out into a proper valley, and he thought that might be where it happened. ‘Just round here . . .’

They turned the corner – and found their noses pressed against a sheer rock face. It was another dead end.

‘
No!
’ Tikaani shouted, a sharp bark of anger.