Way of the Wolf (9 page)

Beck lay cautiously back down and thought. There was no question of moving on now – if there were wolves out there, they would just follow them. And it had only been one pair of eyes; wolves hunted in packs, so there should have been many more.

Another predator? Maybe a wolverine? What colour were their eyes? He didn’t know.

But wolves rarely attacked humans . . .

And the fire should keep any animals away . . .

And . . .

Beck fell asleep while he was still thinking through options.

‘What are you looking for?’ asked Tikaani.

Beck started; he hadn’t realized Tikaani was awake.

It was the second day of their journey. He had woken with the sun, which he tended to do whenever he was sleeping out of doors. Then he had got up to check their little camp for signs of animal intrusion during the night. There were none – no scratches, no paw prints – and he had decided he’d just imagined the eyes last night. He had only seen them for a moment anyway.

‘Just . . . checking,’ he said.

Tikaani was sitting up in the shelter, rubbing his eyes sleepily. ‘So does the maid bring us breakfast or do we have to get it ourselves?’ he asked. It
looked like his earlier question was already forgotten so Beck didn’t pursue it.

‘The maid’s taken the day off. We have to get it ourselves,’ he said with a smile. Then he looked up at the mountains above them and thought about what else they had to do that day. Cross the mountains; get across some thick, deep snow fields and down the other side.

‘And if she isn’t back by the time we‘ve eaten,’ he added, ‘I’ll have to ask you to give me a hand.’

‘You know,’ Tikaani said later, ‘a pair of these from the store in Anakat would set you back, like, a hundred dollars.’

He was holding the two ends of a thin branch that Beck had broken off a tree. It was supple and evergreen, which meant it bent easily. Beck had forced the two ends round towards each other so that now it was shaped like the head of a tennis racket. He looked up from his work and grinned.

‘I bet they wouldn’t be tailor-made for the individual,’ he pointed out.

‘Well, no,’ Tikaani agreed with a straight face. ‘Craftsmanship of this quality can’t be bought.’

Beck was making them each a pair of snowshoes. They were going to be walking through snow later on. He knew there was nothing more tiring, and nothing more likely to give you frostbite. Tikaani knew all about frostbite. It was something else that you couldn’t grow up in an Anak community and not be aware of. The body withdrew blood from your extremities – your ears, your nose, your toes and fingers – to conserve your core heat. It meant that ice crystals formed where the blood had been, splitting the cells open. The cells died and became infected. Ultimately a doctor would have to remove the dead limb to save your life.

No, they did not want frostbite.

While Tikaani held the two ends, Beck lashed them together with some of the wire from the plane. Next he took a rectangle of canvas that he had cut out of a shirt from the bags, and used more wire to tie it to the frame he had created. With the canvas in place he tied thin, sturdy sticks in place across the tennis racket. They strengthened the basic frame and would provide support for his foot when he came to put the snowshoe on.

With that done they repeated the procedure three more times so that each of them had a pair. Then they gathered up their things into their rucksacks, kicked earth over the campfire, and set off with the snowshoes tied to their backs.

It didn’t take long to reach the snow. They left the trees behind and the ground grew hard beneath their feet. No more soft pine needles now; just dark, frozen earth with scraps of wiry, stubbly grass.

The first patch of snow was only about a metre across. It was draped like a sheet over a hummock of rocks. But these patches became more and more frequent, and closer and closer together, until eventually there was just snow and ice beneath their boots. It formed a very thin, frozen layer over dry, powdery snow beneath. With every step they took there was a little resistance, then a crunch beneath their feet as they broke through the crust.

‘OK,’ Beck decreed. He brushed the snow off a rock and sat down on it. ‘Shoes on.’

He fastened Tikaani’s first, then his own. He used more wire to fasten them around Tikaani’s heels.

‘They’re going to feel a little weird at first. You might find they knock together as you walk. You just have to get used to that and take care. And from now on, while we’re on the snow, keep wiggling your fingers and toes. Always. It keeps the blood flowing. Don’t let it stop for a moment.’

‘I know, I know.’ Tikaani took a few experimental steps. ‘Frostnip.’

‘Right. It can get you in sixty seconds.’

Frostnip was the first stage of frostbite. It only affected the surface layers of the skin – but it was painful and the damaged cells never grew back.

‘I will wiggle,’ Tikaani promised. He waddled off across the snow in his snowshoes. ‘I feel like a duck!’

Beck grinned. He could see his friend’s point. ‘Quack-quack!’ he said, and then laughed and ducked as Tikaani threw a snowball at him.

But the air was too thin for much of that; they needed to keep their strength for walking. The snow and ice rose up around them as they headed towards the peaks. It was a pristine field of white. Beck strained his eyes up ahead for any sign of the pass they were heading for, but he couldn’t see it yet. Well, he told himself, they were still some distance away.

The ground undulated between rises and dips but always the average direction was up. Where it got too steep Beck told Tikaani to walk up the slope in zigzags, which gave them a shallower and easier rate of climb. The sun was still low in the sky – in fact it was about the same height above the horizon as they were – and their long shadows danced over the ice next to them.

After a while the ground levelled out again. It was a kind of plateau, halfway up the mountain. There was a cliff ahead with just a small gap in the middle that led on upwards. On their left, the cliff swept up to a sheer drop. On their right it merged with another cliff at right angles to the first.

The flat ground made the going easier.

‘Keep your eyes open and watch out for snow that looks a little darker than the rest,’ Beck said. ‘And it might be sagging slightly too, like there’s a slight dip beneath it.’

‘OK . . .’ Tikaani looked around. There wasn’t anything like that yet. ‘Only, the way you say that makes me think it won’t actually be a slight dip.’

‘Nope,’ Beck agreed, ‘it will be a huge one! At the moment there’s still ground underneath us, but as we climb higher it’ll be ice. And when there’s ice beneath the snow, you get crevasses: huge great cracks in the ice that can kill you if you fall into—
STOP!
’

Tikaani froze exactly where he was. Beck stared down at the ground in horror, then looked back the way they had come. Their footprints marched side by side across the smooth snow to where they were now.

The
too
-smooth snow. Beck looked around quickly and his heart sank. He had been looking out for crevasses and missed a danger that was just as great – and more immediate.

Experimentally he poked at the snow by his feet, scraping it away with his stick. The tip hit something hard, but it made a dull, flat noise. It wasn’t scraping against rock.

‘We’re standing on ice,’ he said quietly. ‘There’s a frozen lake under this lot.’

Tikaani looked quickly down at his feet, as if expecting water to well up around them. Beck looked back again. He estimated they hadn’t come that far out. Twenty, twenty-five metres maybe – no more. After that the smooth snow tilted up and a black rock poked up. That would be solid ground.

‘Turn round,’ he said, ‘and walk back over your own footprints . . .’

The ice they had already crossed was strong enough to take their weight. They turned round, and half a minute later were safely back on dry land.

Beck studied the smooth area in front of them with a lot more attention. Only a fool walked across frozen ice if there was a safer way round. The lake was a totally flat stretch of snow for about seventy metres. After that the ground started to slope up again.

He looked from side to side. They were boxed in by rock and by the sheer drop on their left. The lake was the only way forward, but one false step and they could be dunked in freezing water. If that happened, with the wind chill reducing the temperature even further, then hypothermia would follow as surely as night followed day.

‘We don’t have a choice,’ he said reluctantly. ‘We have to go that way . . .’

Beck led the way cautiously down to the edge of the lake and scraped the snow aside again with his stick. The ice beneath was grey and rough.

‘The problem is,’ he said, ‘ice beneath snow is never going to be that thick. The snow insulates it and stops it from freezing further.’

‘So we go straight over,’ said Tikaani. ‘Shortest distance, shortest time.’

‘No, that’s the thinnest ice,’ Beck added. He rapped the grey ice a couple of times. It seemed solid, but it needed to be a good five centimetres thick, he knew, to hold their weight safely. Unfortunately there was no way of telling if it was. ‘The lake will have frozen from the edges in wards, so the ice at the edge will be the oldest and thickest. We have to go round the edge.’

‘You can tell me about how to test food,’ Tikaani said, firmly. ‘Let me tell you about ice. Look.’ He pointed at the edge of the lake, the route Beck intended to take. It was a jumble of loose rocks that had fallen into the water. ‘Rocks sticking up out of the ice mean the ice will be much thinner.’

Beck bit his lip. He could see Tikaani’s point. Unfortunately he also knew that the ice in the middle of the lake could be paper-thin.

‘So we compromise,’ he said.

The boys made their way cautiously onto the lake and around the side, as close to the edge as seemed safe, but not too close to each other – they didn’t want their combined weight putting pressure on any one point.

Tikaani was right – the ice around the rocks was thin. Beck could feel it flex beneath his feet. Halfway round, a large boulder jutted out from the edge, and to stay away from it they had to go out almost to the middle of the lake. With every step, Beck felt the ice creak beneath him. Any moment now he expected it to crack with a sound like a rifle shot and his foot to go through. They were still wearing their snowshoes, which spread the weight of their bodies, but still Beck felt the lake resented them. It knew they were foreign to these mountains; it didn’t want them here.

But the far shore – the rocks and the rising slope that showed solid ground – was getting gradually closer. Beck didn’t get ahead of himself. Even when the shore was only a couple of metres away, he scraped away the snow to check the ice before moving forward. Even if just his foot went through the thin ice at the edge, he could end up with frostbitten toes as ice formed inside his boot.

But finally he was standing on solid ground. He turned and beamed triumphantly at Tikaani. ‘Made it!’

Tikaani smiled back, and took a step towards him.

Suddenly there was a snap that echoed off the rock face, and a splash, and Tikaani vanished as if he had fallen through a trap door.