Winter's End (16 page)

Milos had joined Helen behind the rock over an hour before, and they were waiting in vain for any sign of life in the mountain refuge. Mills must be
worried about his colleague’s absence. Surely he was bound to come out soon. Helen wasn’t shivering so much now with Pastor’s warm sheepskin jacket over her shoulders. Milos, lying beside her, held a handkerchief pressed to his leg and was fighting the pain. Every movement he made, however tiny, brought warm blood flowing over his thigh. The dog-handler’s body lay under the snow a few yards away. Neither of them dared to look at the small mound forming there. Suddenly the door of the refuge opened and Mills finally appeared. They saw him walking out of the doorway, hesitating, and going back inside. Later they heard him shouting — first for Pastor, then calling to Ramses for help. Then came that terrible outburst of noise, and they realized, with horror, just what was happening. At last, as silence returned, they froze with amazement as they watched an unreal spectacle.

The five dog-men came out of the refuge, raised their muzzles to the sky, and began howling like wolves. The sound pierced the night. But it was not a howl of menace; it sounded joyful. Teti was the first to tear off his jacket and throw it away in the snow. Mykerinos did the same, and then in their own turn Chephren and Amenophis stripped off shirts and jeans. Soon they had all cast off their human clothing, and they leaped away in the direction of the mountains. Within a few seconds, they were lost from sight in the mists.

“The dog-men!” breathed Milos, fascinated. “Reverting to savagery.”

“No,” said Helen. “Reverting to freedom. They’re leaving savagery behind. Come on, the refuge is empty now.”

She supported Milos as well as she could. Every step he took sent a stabbing pain through his leg. The wound must be deep.

Helen was astonished to find that she had the strength to drag the bodies of Mills and Ramses outside all by herself. She laid them beside Pastor and covered them up with snow. Her own movements, slowed by exhaustion, seemed strange to her. She returned to the refuge like a sleepwalker, picking up one of the dog-men’s shirts in passing. She turned over the mattress, drenched with Mills’s blood, so that Milos could lie on it, and put a makeshift dressing on his injured thigh.

There was a large loaf of rye bread on the table. “Could you eat something?” she asked.

“No,” said Milos, “but you eat. I think you’re going to need enough strength for both of us.”

She put some wood on the fire, sat down at the table, and managed to swallow a few mouthfuls. Then they lay down side by side, while the flames cast moving shadows on the ceiling.

“All right?” asked Helen.

“All right,” Milos murmured, “except that I’ve killed a man.” And he buried his head in the crook of his elbow and wept quietly.

“You killed a man who would have killed us,” she said. “Was that what you wanted?”

“Strangling’s
not allowed,” Milos sobbed. “It’s not allowed. And I did it. I never want to fight again.”

She stroked his hair for a long time until he calmed down. Then she said, low-voiced, “Listen, we can’t go on tomorrow. We’ll never get across the mountains in this snow, not with your injury. We must turn back. What do you think?”

But Milos wasn’t thinking anything. He was asleep.

She took his large hands in hers — they were hardly warming up yet — and kissed them. They were not the hands of a killer.

H
elen woke up early in the morning. The fire had gone out, and the acrid smell of cold ashes caught her by the throat. She was shocked to see the belongings of Mills and Pastor scattered around her, useless, in the pale light of dawn. So she hadn’t dreamed last night’s events: the fight to the death between Pastor and Milos, the wound in Milos’s leg, the carnage inflicted by the dog-men.

She turned to Milos and gently touched his shoulder. “How are you feeling?”

“All right,” he said, smiling. But he didn’t move.

She got up and went to open the door. More snow had fallen overnight. The dog-men’s clothes were covered up, and over by the rocks, the buried bodies of Mills, Pastor, and Ramses showed only as three gracefully curved little mounds. She went back indoors and set to work making a fire with some dry twigs and small pieces of kindling. Kneeling in front
of the fire, she blew on the flames. Milos, who was still lying on the mattress, watched her out of the corner of his eye.

“Seems you can do anything! Hide bodies under the snow, light a fire, cheer people up. I’m tempted to ask you for a coffee just to see what happens!”

“Want to bet?” she said, pretending to be cheerful. Hurrying off, she opened drawers and cupboards until she found what she was looking for: an old saucepan without a handle. She went out to fill it with snow and then put it over the fire. Less than ten minutes later she was handing Milos a mug of steaming hot water with a few drops of the spirits Pastor had brought added to it.

“Sorry, not very strong as coffee goes,” she said.

He drank it in small sips, leaning on one elbow.

“Will you be able to walk?” asked Helen. “We’ll each have a pair of snowshoes; that should help us get down. Because we are going to turn back, aren’t we? We can’t go on now.”

Milos put the empty mug down and looked at her sadly. “Thanks for the ‘coffee.’ You’re very kind, but I can’t walk at all. I can’t even get up. I didn’t sleep at all last night — it hurt too badly. And look: I think the knife went almost right through my thigh.”

He raised the blanket. Blood had soaked the dog-man’s shirt, and he carefully moved the torn denim of his jeans aside.

“Oh, my God,” Helen gasped at the sight of the gaping wound. “I’ll change the dressing for you.”

“That won’t stop it from bleeding,” said Milos. “All I can do is keep the wound compressed by trying to move as little as possible. There’s nothing else to be done unless you can stitch wounds too. Got a needle and thread with you?”

But neither of them laughed. Last night Milos had said, “I think you’re going to need enough strength for both of us,” and now Helen realized how right he was.

“I’ll go down to the valley to get help,” she said, trying to keep her voice steady. “I’m sure I can find a farmer with a sleigh, and we’ll get you back down to have that wound seen to. Or I could bring a doctor up here?”

“Do you think you can manage it?”

“I don’t see any other solution, do you? We might wait hundreds of years for someone to come this way.”

Milos sighed. He didn’t like the idea of letting Helen go on her own.

“The snow will have changed the whole landscape. You won’t recognize anything.”

“I won’t even try finding the path we took up here. I’ll go straight ahead downhill and knock at the first door I come to.”

Wasting no more time, she stood up and began getting ready to leave. Mills’s snowshoes were better than the other pair; the wood was almost new, and they had supple leather straps. She adjusted them to fit her and took a few steps out in the snow to try them. Of the two knapsacks, she chose Pastor’s,
which was smaller. She took out the contents, a packet of hard crackers, and two apples, and left them beside Milos with half the loaf of bread.

“You must eat a little or you’ll just get weaker.”

“I’ll try,” he promised.

She melted another full saucepan of snow and gave it to him to keep in reserve. Then she arranged anything that might keep him warm around him: the blanket belonging to the refuge, one of the dog-men’s pullovers, and Mills’s jacket, which was still hanging behind the door. She rolled up Pastor’s sheepskin jacket and put it in her knapsack with the rest of the rye bread.

When the time came for her to leave, she crouched down beside Milos and took his curly head in her hands. “It took us two days to come up here. I won’t need that long to get down again. We saw some houses on the way, remember? With a bit of luck I’ll be back tomorrow, the day after tomorrow at the latest. You won’t run away, will you?”

“I’d have my work cut out for me to do that!”

They said nothing for a few seconds.

“I thought I was going to protect you, and now I’m the one who needs your help.” He sighed. “That was clever! I should have stayed at the school.”

“Stop it!” Helen interrupted him. “You wanted to keep the pack from catching up with Bart and Milena, and you did it! It’s because of you they have nothing to fear now.”

“Yes, but what about you?”

“I’ll be all right — don’t you worry. Well, I’d better
leave. Shall I look for some more wood for you first? Dead branches? You could burn them this evening.”

“No, don’t waste time doing that. I’d rather you left at once.”

“You’re right. I’ll be off.” But she was still hesitating. “Is there anything else I can do for you?”

“Yes, come back!”

“Of course I’ll come back!”

“Promise?”

She merely nodded.
If I open my mouth,
she thought,
my voice will fail me, and this is no time to burst into tears.
At the door, she turned and gave him a last smile. He waved good-bye with the fingers of one hand.

“I’ll wait, Helen. Look after yourself.”

She walked straight ahead for hours, going downhill, running when she could, thinking only of saving time. The wooden snowshoes crunched at every step she took over the fresh snow.
Go on! Go on!
their little rhythmical tune seemed to say again and again. The sun made the ice crystals glitter.
How beautiful this would be,
she thought,
if Milos weren’t up there with his leg bleeding!

Whenever she stopped, she was surprised by the noise of her breathing and the frantic beating of her heart in the silence of the mountains. She swallowed a mouthful of bread, let a little snow melt in her mouth, and went on again. Her secret hope was to find shelter before nightfall, but the sun was already sinking behind the mountain peaks in the
west, and she hadn’t yet seen any sign of a human dwelling.

At last the slope became less steep. She couldn’t be far from the plains now. Since it was slowly growing darker, and a sharp chill was penetrating her sweater, Helen put on Pastor’s sheepskin jacket and quickened her pace. She didn’t like the idea of sleeping outside. Luckily some rocks soon appeared ahead of her, and then came the green grass of the plains. She took off her snowshoes and tied them to her knapsack by their straps. A path went downhill past a wood of silver birch trees. She followed it, and she hadn’t gone five hundred yards before a small stone cottage appeared to her right on the far side of a meadow.

The cottage was certainly very old, but it looked well maintained. A thin plume of white smoke rose from the chimney. A giant pig was squelching around in the mud of its enclosure, two huge, dirty ears flapping against its sides. Helen had never seen such an enormous pig. It must weigh almost two tons. She went up to the wooden door and knocked, waited in vain for someone to answer the door, and knocked again. She thought briefly of Goldilocks: Would there be three bowls of porridge on the table? And three chairs? And three beds? The enormous pig was watching her from a distance, with unearthly grunts emerging from its throat.

“Anyone there?” called Helen.

She walked all around the cottage, but she
couldn’t see a sleigh or any kind of cart, only stocks of firewood under a lean-to. Back on the other side again, she tapped at the window panes.

“Anyone there?”

She put her face against the glass. The room inside was lost in the dim light, but in the faint glow of the fire in the stove she saw someone sitting on a chair, both legs propped on a foot warmer.

“Please, sir!” called Helen, and the man raised his eyes and saw her. “Please, may I come in?”

She decided that the vague movement of the man’s head meant yes and opened the door. The room had a low ceiling. Its entire furnishings were a cupboard, a table, a clock, and two benches standing on the trodden-earth floor. Helen went over to the stove.

“Excuse me, sir, but I saw the smoke and . . .”

The man was even older than she’d thought. Or perhaps he was sick. Deep wrinkles lined his tired face; the last of his scant white hair lay over his forehead like a funny little comma. He was keeping his hands warm under the blanket that covered his knees.

“I’ve come down from the mountain refuge,” Helen ventured. “The refuge — you know, in the mountains?”

The old man didn’t seem to understand. He was watching her without alarm but without any real curiosity either. His large ears stood out from his bald head.

“Do you live alone here?” She took a closer look
around the room and saw a second wicker chair drawn up close to the stove. “Do you live alone here?” she repeated, raising her voice and pointing to the chair. “Is there anyone else here with you?”

She was already resigning herself to further silence when he opened his mouth and, in a hoarse voice, uttered a short and totally incomprehensible sentence, something like, “Sjo ce adji?”

“I’m sorry, what did you say?” she asked.

He repeated the same words, but raising his voice and sounding annoyed.