What Ky-Lin didn't say was that going down could be quite as painful as climbing, for you were using completely different muscles; also falling upwards wasn't as perilous as falling down a slope—in fact some of that first descent was so steep that we had to hold the sledge back rather than pull it behind us.
That initial way down wound irritatingly between interlocking spurs of the mountains, so although we moved as fast as we could, as far as losing height was concerned it was a slow business. We stopped for a quick mid-day snack, cheese and dried fruit, and then pressed on. Later a few flakes of snow drifted down, and the sky was a greyish yellow.
Ky-Lin looked anxious. "There's a lot more snow up there—we'll need shelter tonight. These hills are mainly limestone, so there should be caves further down."
By sundown we had managed to find a small scoop in the hillside, surrounded by boulders, with an overhang of rock. I made a fire and boiled up enough rice and fish to last until the following night and, at Ky-Lin's suggestion, put the pan outside to catch any snow for filling our water-bottles.
It was a miserable night. Quite apart from the moaning wind that seemed determined to seek us out, both with noise and cold, and the rattle of stones intermittently falling from the rocks above, we all ached all over. Ky-Lin touched us all with his healing horn and that alleviated the pains a little, but did nothing for the cold; however I was comforted by the warmth of Beau-cat, who crept under my blankets and snuggled up against my back.
It had been snowing heavily overnight; as we progressed the sun melted most of it away, but the ground was slippery and several times I ended up on my behind. One consolation was that the spurs of the mountains were widening and our course downwards was faster and easier, although the going was very uneven: smooth rock, stony clefts, thin soil.
At last we rounded the last spur of the mountain and there before us, some five hundred feet below, was a wide valley, sloping gently towards the horizon, the midday sun glittering on what looked like a sliver of river, that grew larger as it progressed southward.
"Great! Now we can float the sledge down the water," said Danny, clapping his hands together; he was tired of dragging on the ropes.
"Not on there we can't." said Ky-Lin. "And tell him, tell them all, not to make any sudden loud noises." He glanced up at the mountains on either side. "There's enough snow up there to give us all a nasty shock."
"Why can't we float the sledge?"
"Because that isn't a river of water: it's a river of ice. A glacier."
A glacier! I had heard of them, read something about them many years ago. Rapidly I translated Ky-Lin's words to the others, who gazed down at it with a wonder equal to my own.
"Well, if it's a river of ice, why can't we slide the sledge along it?"
"Not on that surface," said Ky-Lin. "At least, not for more than a short distance. It is like a badly iced cake, and is rough with stones, rocks, whatever has got caught up with it over the years. Also, it moves, albeit slowly, more towards the middle and the edges tend to pile up with rubbish. You'll see when we get there."
I translated again, and then we began the steep descent, which was quite the most hazardous part of our journey so far; it was far steeper than we had had to cope with so far, and at one stage we were literally clinging to the rocks with the sledge dangling beneath us. All the while Ky-Lin was trying to educate me with talk of moraines, ablation, neves, sublimation, crystallisation, firn and crevasses, but I'm afraid I was too busy trying to get down in one piece to pay much attention. Afterwards I wished I had, but by then it was too late.
The glacier started like a thin tongue of ice, but gradually widened until it filled most of the valley. As Ky-Lin had predicted, it was very difficult to walk upon. Not only was it both skiddy and slidy, it was also gritty, fissured and uneven. The sledge was more difficult to manage than before, because we had to seek out the smoother bits all the time, or lift it bodily over ridges as high as my waist. Of all of us, the terrain was toughest on Beau-cat. Not because he wasn't far more agile than the rest of us, but because of the tenderness of his paws; he could manage stones and rocks, but the gritty surface of the glacier scratched and tore at his pads, so for the most part he rode on the sledge.
The one bonus we had was to realise how we were definitely moving downhill, cheered at our pause to eat at mid-day to see the highest mountains receding behind us.
"Another two or three days," said Ky-Lin.
We took turns with the sledge, generally an hour at a time, although Ky-Lin, pony-size, always did a double stint. After eating that day it was Toby's and my turn, it being easier with two at once, each with a length of rope. Suddenly Toby stopped on a smooth stretch, so abruptly that the sledge ran into the back of my legs.
"Ouch! What's the matter?"
"Quick, over here everyone!" he shouted. "Just look at this!"
"Hush!" said Ky-Lin, sharply. "We don't want to bring the snows down on us."
"What is it?" Claude, Danny and I were over by his side in a moment, for he was pointing downward through the ice.
"Look," he breathed. "Just look at that . . ."
Generally the ice was cloudy and we could not see more than an inch or so beneath the surface, but here we could see far farther by a freak of the glacier's movement. What we saw was like something out of a book of faery. There, trapped beneath the ice, were the antlered heads of two enormous stags, locked in a battle of death. Anywhere else their bones would have long ago vanished, but here they were forever immortalised. We could only clearly see their heads, part of their shoulders and one leg, but they were so large, even at this distance beneath the ice, that I found it hard to believe they had ever existed.
"Giant elk," said Ky-Lin. "Some call them Irish elk, because their remains have been found in the peat bogs of that island. Peat is a good preservative."
"Why the two of them together?" asked Toby. "Did they kill each other at the same time?"
I translated Ky-Lin's reply for him. No, one would die first, but because their antlers were locked solid, the other wouldn't be able to free itself, and would die later of wounds or starvation, as sometimes happens even now with the red deer of Europe.
I shivered, not only because it was cold, with the bitter north wind chasing us down the valley, but also because it was sad to think of death coming that way—the victor becoming the vanquished. Somehow for a brief moment a thousand years, two, three became now and they were here—
I shivered again.
"Come on," said Ky-Lin gently. "We've a way still to go before nightfall. They are history: we are now. Their reincarnations will have passed through many stages by now." I had forgotten he was a follower of the Buddha.
That night we found a better cave, which seemed warmer, but this, we discovered, was because of the snow which had again fallen overnight. The wind semed to have increased and was pluming the snow on the tips of the mountains into puffs of what looked like mist, and drove icy particles skittering unpleasantly across the ice of the glacier.
All night long we had been aware of the creaks and groans of the glacier as it moved in the centre at an average of one foot per day. Fresh-fed by spring melts it would flow faster, also in the heat of summer, but now it was almost static. Despite this it still made the most weird noises as the ice rubbed against the banks, or thrust up a barrier in the centre.
What happened later was meant to be, perhaps not. All I know is it changed our journey irrevocably. It was a mistake, my mistake, and a costly one.
It was Toby's and my stint to pull the sledge, the last one before our midday halt. We had done a half-hour when Toby went off to relieve himself. The sledge was much lighter now, because of the food and fuel we had consumed and I didn't find it too burdensome, but the Afghan rifle kept getting in the way. Danny had insisted on bringing it with us, saying darkly that "it might come in useful," but so far it had just been a nuisance. For the dozenth time it hit me in the back of the legs and I lost patience. Tugging it free, I sent it skidding across the ice in Danny's direction.
"If you want this, then carry it yourself . . ."
"Now don't get in a paddy, darlin' girl . . ."
"For the last time, I'm not your darlin' girl!" and I pulled away as fast as I could. Not far to go now: another couple of days or so and our journey would be over. I fell into a reverie of just what I would do when I got back to Hightop Hall, and saw that I was falling behind with my daydreaming. Seeing a nice long, smooth, stretch of untrodden snow, sloping down for at least two hundred yards, I thought: perfect! Why pull when one could ride?
Gathering up the ropes I went to the back of the sledge and gave it a shove, then ran forward and jumped on as it gathered speed. My weight made it go even faster and I waved gaily to the others as I drew level. Toby waved back, but it was with both arms and urgently, while Ky-Lin started to bound across the ice towards me. I waved again, to assure them I was fine—
Then the world disappeared.
One moment I was accelerating along the fresh snow trying to keep the sledge in a straight line, as I had when a child, delighting in whizzing down the slopes near the village, to tumble off at the bottom and be scooped up in my father's arms, the next I was falling into oblivion, my mouth full of snow, blocking out my shout of panic. There was a bump that nearly knocked the breath from my lungs, a knock on my head and momentarily I lost consciousness.
I opened my eyes again to a blur of white, pain, a dragging sensation in my left wrist, piercing cold and complete disorientation. There was a creaking, crunching noise in my ears, the falling of stones . . .
"Stay still, stay perfectly still . . ." It was Ky-Lin's voice in my ears, thought rather than the spoken word. "Just don't move, however much it hurts. We're coming to get you. No, don't look up: just wait. Don't try to talk . . ."
I did as I was told, desperately fighting all my instincts to move, to yell out my terror, to wriggle free of whatever held me fast. I was shivering like the leaves on an aspen tree, my teeth chattering like the proverbial castanets. All I could see from my prone position was a wall of ice, layered like a giant sandwich: white, grey, stony, clear, cloudy, thick, thin. Even the strips were wavering before my eyes, for my shivering was growing uncontrollable.
All at once there was a creaking noise above me and instinctively I cowered, fearing a fall of rock, but a moment later I saw a pair of feet followed by the attached legs, and a moment later there came the reassuring voice of Toby.
"It's all right, Sophy: just lay still."
Idiotically I wanted to correct his English. "Lie . . ." I whispered, but I'm sure he didn't hear me.
"Keep still. I know you're cold and you hurt, but for the moment you are best just laying there while I set things up. You're on a ledge—that's why you mustn't move—and I'm going to land just beside you. The sledge-rope is still attached to your wrist, and I'm going to cut it loose so they can haul you up. Meanwhile I shall stay with you." He was speaking in a very low voice, as if he feared he would bring a further fall down on us.
It seemed to take an age. I could feel his feet nudging my body, hear the sawing of the rope, and then suddenly my wrist was free, the pain started to subside and a creaking, bumping noise told me the sledge was being retrieved. I was now so cold my teeth no longer chattered: they felt as though they were glued together, and I was sure that if I bit my tongue I wouldn't feel it.
There was another slithering noise and then Toby was fastening the rope around my waist. He thrust my hands around something, but I couldn't feel what it was.
"Now, hang on and don't struggle. You'll be perfectly safe. Don't look down . . ."
There was a sudden jerk, and I screamed as I found myself spinning and twisting in space. For a long moment I panicked, as the rope slipped from my waist to my chest, and I was afraid of the disgrace of soiling myself, but luckily I had to concentrate on just breathing, for my weight was tightening the rope cruelly. At last I realised I was moving upwards and, risking a look, I saw a ring of faces above me, spinning slowly round.
It seemed like forever, but it could only have been a couple of minutes later that my front was being scraped painfully across the lip of the crevasse into which I had fallen, as I was finally hauled to safety. I was pulled away across the ice to safety, and a moment later Danny was rubbing my arms and legs, and as Toby was hauled to the surface by Claude and Ky-Lin, all joined in carrying me to the edge and wrapping me in blankets, while a warm, furry blanket wound itself round my neck and proceeded to lick at my ears and nose. I attempted feebly to push away Beau-cat's rasping tongue, but Ky-Lin stopped me.
"Let him. Best thing for you: we don't want frostbite."
Ky-Lin pronounced that there were no bones broken, just bumps and bruises and a slightly sprained wrist.
"No more travelling today. Stay where you are, and I'll scout around for a decent shelter." No words of blame for stupid behaviour: if I had been wider awake I would have realised there was some good reason why the rest of the party had been on a completely different course. I was lucky to be alive, I knew that now, and I tried, inadequately, to thank them all.
I felt even worse when I discovered that the sledge was a write-off and that we had lost a lot of the heavier provisions: rice, fuel, honey, the axe and larger cooking-pot. We still had one spare blanket, a small pan, some flour, dried meat and fruit, but it was a pitifully small heap. Thank goodness there were only a couple of days or so to go. . . .
Ky-Lin found us a roomier cave than usual, and once we had everything inside it started to snow again, so we probably wouldn't have got far even without my "accident." Claude and Danny were trying to wrest apart the shattered remains of the sledge, but they needed the missing axe.
"Pity!" said Danny. "It would have made a broth of a fire."
"The wood's damp anyway," said Claude. "No, it's hopeless."
I was still shivering, and there was a tightness in my chest. Ky-Lin glanced at me anxiously.
"Claude is wrong," he said. "Nothing is entirely hopeless . . . Tell them to stand back from the sledge."
Somewhere at the back of my mind I seemed to recall a fragment of Summer's journey: was it something to do with Ky-Lin splitting rocks, or metal, or something?
There was a sudden flash of light, a scrunching noise, chips of wood seemed to fly everywhere, then rearranged themselves into a neat heap of firewood in the corner of the cave.
"Wow!" said Danny and Claude in unison.
"How did he do that?" asked Toby.
"Tell him," said Ky-Lin, "that it is literally the triumph of mind over matter."
"Magic?"
Ky-Lin shook his head. "No magic. Just a simple matter of disassociating various elements into their separate constituents and reassembling them into a combination more acceptable to our present needs."
I tried to translate this but failed: I hadn't the slightest idea what he was talking about. I glanced at Ky-Lin and thought I detected the fragment of a smile—obviously he didn't want me to understand, or he was making the whole thing up and it was magic.
We lit a small but warming fire and Claude took over the cooking, producing pancakes with the last of the flour and pouring melted cheese over them. Everything else would have to be divided up between us and carried in the haversacks, but we decided to leave this until morning, especially as Ky-Lin had diminished in size, explaining to me that splitting the wood had weakened him somewhat. I made sure he ate part of a pancake and some dried fruit, then he curled up in a corner and slept till morning, when he seemed almost fully recovered.
That afternoon while Claude soaked some dried meat to add to a supper of rice, we played desultory word-games, several times looking out to see whether it had stopped snowing, but it hadn't. The tightness in my chest didn't seem to lessen, and that night I kept waking up with a troublesome little cough.
In the morning everything was covered with a fresh fall of snow that squeaked its protest underfoot and clogged our footsteps. We had parcelled out what remained of our goods, Toby being in charge solely of the Eg, which was by far the heaviest individual burden.
"Take care now," advised Ky-Lin, now nearly back to pony-size. "If we keep to the edge of the glacier, the snow will have cushioned the rough places."
We made reasonable progress, and before long I was perspiring. I looked across at the others: they too were mopping their brows and Danny, now using the long Afghan rifle as a walking stick, had undone his jacket.
Ky-Lin lifted his nose and sniffed the wind, which had swung round to the south. "There's a temporary thaw coming, he said. "We shall have to take extra care. This will activate small streams and rivulets and may well loosen the snow above us. We'd better move out into the centre of the glacier, just in case."
We ate a frugal luncheon under an overhang so we didn't have to sit on the snow, then moved out again. We had been plagued by thin wisps of mist all morning as the sun sucked up moisture from the snow, but suddenly these cleared temporarily and we all saw it at once. There, admittedly at least a day's journey away, was a green valley.
We gazed at it disbelievingly for at least a minute before the mists closed in again, then we all started talking at once.
"Are you sure that wasn't a mirage?"
"We should be there tomorrow!"
"What a relief to see a bit of green again!"
"At last some proper food . . ."
Then what should have been the impossible happened.
Danny, in his exuberance raised the Afghan rifle in the air and mimed what we had seen the tribesmen do in reality: firing a round into the air. He pulled the trigger twice, mouthing silent "Bang-bangs."
Then three things happened simultaneously. Ky-Lin whispered an urgent "No!" the Ring gave a tremendous stab, and Danny pressed the trigger for the third time. There was a terrific bang that ricocheted from side to side of the ravine, then a horrible hush.
Danny threw the rifle away, whispering: "I didn't know it was loaded!" and we all glanced at each other in terror. For a moment it looked as though we might have got away with it, but the Ring was still stabbing away furiously and Ky-Lin was herding us urgently towards the edge of the glacier.
"Find us a cave, a large one, Master Beau!"
Then it came.
At first it was a rumble so low that it was almost under the threshold of sound, but it grew in pitch and intensity until it drowned all other sound. We ran as fast as we could, but the clinging snow impeded our progress, and it was like trying to run in thick, dry sand. We were only half-way to the edge when Ky-Lin left my side and went back the way he had come, and to my horror I saw Toby had fallen. I ran a few more faltering steps and then glanced back. Toby was hobbling and Ky-Lin took him up on his back and started back towards us, but at that very moment a huge slab of ice came skating down the glacier towards them.
I stifled a scream, saw Ky-Lin leap aboard the ice, carrying Toby, and then the vanguard of the avalanche was upon us.
With a huge rumbling roar and an icy blast of air the snow bore down on us like huge waves on the sea-shore, turning over and over, curling and spuming, cresting impossibly high. I looked for Toby and Ky-Lin but couldn't see them, forgetting my own danger until hands grabbed me from either side and dragged me away.
I couldn't see for the tears in my eyes. Gone, probably for ever, were Toby, Ky-Lin and the Eg. Not that the last mattered against the lives of the other two: people I had loved, my especial friends. I would have given anything to have them back beside me.
A moment later I was pulled into a black hole, the rumbling and crashing behind me intensified, I was thrown to the ground and then utter darkness . . .