by Angus Watson
“Can we slow the pace?” Finn asked nobody in particular.
“No,” said Sofi. “We don’t know how long we’re going to be in snow. It may have all blown off the west side of the mountains. So let’s get as far ahead as we can before they start catching up again.”
“Good point, got it.” Finn grinned. She’d bothered to explain. Time was she would have just said “No”. Having this wonderful-looking warrior–wearing only her scant battle gear despite the chill–treat him with respect made him forget the cold.
“What are the poles?” he asked Ayla, pointing at wooden posts.
There are fences and a few huts under the snow, she answered, left behind by the people who lived here before we did. The poles are remnants of their largest constructions.
“People lived up here in the snow?”
It’s not usually snowy this low down at this time of year. They say the freak weather is the work of the force at The Meadows.
So The Meadows can make a tornado over a thousand miles away, send a weird, enormous insect dragon that bursts into wasps a few hundred miles, and cover these mountains with snow, Finn mused. On top of that, Ottar the Moaner, who’d never been wrong before, said that this was nothing, the force was building up monsters and disasters for an onslaught that was going to kill every creature in the world.
And they were planning to take it on with a few pieces of sharpened metal, a smattering of stone weaponry and a boy who was a good few nuts short of a full basket.
Ayla led them up and along a crescent-shaped ridge. There was a drop of a couple of hundred paces to the right, down to a flat area which Finn guessed was a frozen, snow-covered lake. The cliff on the far side of the lake was fringed with a skirt of dirty snow, which had presumably fallen from the top, collecting dirt as it tumbled.
“You see?” said Erik, “it’s just like Beaver Man said. The water, or snow in this case, carries the land downhill bit by bit.”
Finn looked back. Sitsi Kestrel was at the rear, a hundred paces behind, bow ready. The cloud shifted and he caught a glimpse of the following squatch. They were spread out a long, long way below, further behind than Finn had dared hope they might be.
But they were still following. He’d been lucky against Krusha. If the beasts caught up, all of them, well, all of the Wootah anyway, were going to be ripped to bits. And it wouldn’t take much. All it needed was a couple of snow shoes to break, or Ayla to lead them up a dead-end valley, and they’d be caught.
Finn felt sick with fear.
As if they’d spotted him watching, a few of the squatch stopped and opened their arms. It took a heartbeat for the sound of their roars to reach the walkers on the ridge. The other squatch stopped and joined in, roaring and roaring. Waves of sound washed over the fleeing Wootah and Calnians.
“What are they doing?” he asked Erik.
“I’m not sure. Maybe–oh, fuck.”
A deep rumbling rose out of the very snow they were standing on.
The ground shook.
“Run!” shouted Erik.
“I thought you said—”
“Shut the fuck up and run!”
Finn felt the ground drop below his feet. He ran and ran over the shifting snow. The land was falling away, as if it had suddenly decided to flow downhill.
He clipped one snow shoe against the other and stumbled, but righted himself. He ran, keeping his legs wide.
Soon he was exhausted but the ground was firm. He dared to turn. The ridge was tumbling away behind them, sending up huge clouds of snow. Sitsi Kestrel was a good way back, running duck-like on her snow shoes, arms pumping like weird little wings. Magnificent plumes of snow exploded behind her. Right behind her. She was never going to make it.
Finn made to run back but Erik put a hand on his shoulder.
“You can’t help her.”
He was right. Even if he reached her before the avalanche caught her, which he wouldn’t, there was nothing he could do to speed her escape from it. Trying to help would be suicide.
The cloud of swirling snow overtook Sitsi and she disappeared.
Something thundered past Erik and Finn, kicking up its own clouds of snow. Paloma Pronghorn.
She was too late.
Sitsi was gone, but Paloma shot into the swirling snow anyway and disappeared.
One moment Sitsi Kestrel could see blue sky, snow, mountains and the Calnians and Wootah fleeing with Erik and Finn bringing up the rear. The next, a cloud of snow exploded around her and even her alchemically enhanced eyes couldn’t penetrate the whirling white.
She tried to accelerate. It didn’t help. It was like trying to run up a waterfall.
She was near panicking, not because she was about to fall to her death–chances were she’d survive the fall with her toughened Owsla bones–but because she couldn’t see. She hated not being able to see! Suddenly she was falling. If felt like she was tumbling backwards, somersaulting head over heels, but it was impossible to know. She hated not being able to see.
She realised she might not survive the fall because the avalanche surely was going to deliver her directly to the squatch. One of them would probably grab her like a bear hoiking a salmon out of a river. The analogy probably didn’t stop there. It would beat her brains out on a rock and eat her. Or maybe eat her alive! Feet first, then –
She waved her arms and her legs. Could she fly clear of the avalanche? It seemed like she’d been falling far too long. It was maybe a hundred paces from the ridge to the frozen lake below. She hoped the ice was thick.
Whump! She halted with a sickening thud as something whacked her head like a mallet.
She was alive. She still couldn’t see. Neither could she move her arms and legs. Was her back broken? No. She could feel the wood of her bow still gripped in her hand. She could shift her shoulders, clench her buttocks and move her toes.
She was buried.
She tried to move her limbs again. No good. She was immobilised by the weight of the snow piled on top of her. The simple problem had a simple solution. She had to dig to the surface. If badgers and groundhogs could do it…
She shushed the voice that told her that she didn’t have digging claws and powerful forelimbs, and that burrowing mammals generally started at the surface rather than entombed below it.
One leg was bent, the other straight. The arm holding her bow was above her head–or possibly below, it was impossible to tell–and her other arm was pressed into her chest, her hand by her mouth.
She opened her eyes and felt snow push against her huge pupils, scratchy and cold. She closed them again. Her eyes were no use to her here.
She told herself to be calm. She had to think. Snow pressed into her ears, a loud, painfully cold silence.
First priority was air. She wiggled her fingers in front of her face, clearing a space around her mouth and nose. She sucked in a cold but delicious breath. An achievement. A good start.
Calm, calm, she told herself, exhaling gently. She dribbled a little saliva. It ran down her right cheek. So now she knew which way was up. Her straight left arm, the one holding her bow, was nearest the surface.
Slowly, so as not to exert herself and use up the little air she had, she pressed down on her bent foot. There was the tiniest give but no more. It was the snow shoes. They were really very good at not going through snow. She wrenched her knee towards her chest, hoping to snap the twine binding them to her foot. No good.
She tried her other leg. Same thing. It was held fast by the snow shoe.
She couldn’t move. She might as well be encased in rock. There was no hope! She was going to die!
Don’t panic, she told herself. Don’t panic.
Her legs were deepest, so the compacted snow would be most dense around them. With the added hindrance of the snow shoes, it was no wonder she couldn’t move them.
So she should focus on her upper arm. For all she knew, it was at the surface. It could even be sticking out. Although given the pressure in her e
ars, she doubted she was near the surface.
Rotating her wrist from side to side, she found she could wiggle her bow, then her whole arm. Unfortunately, this sent snow cascading into her precious breathing space. She wriggled her fingers to clear the space again, but it was tougher this time. Power had sapped from her fingers. It was the cold, she realised. Her extremities were stiffening.
It was a very annoying situation.
She could move her arm a little, but any more and it would fill her breathing hole again, and what would it achieve? Her legs were stuck, her torso was stuck, her head was stuck. She was stuck. She’d been a good hundred paces behind the others. Anyone who’d run back to help her would have been caught in the avalanche, too, and be buried nearby, maybe even beneath her.
So no Calnians or Wootah would be digging her out. Where she’d fallen, she’d be much closer to the chasing squatch, anyway. She’d rather die under the snow than be dug out by them.
So she was going to die.
No. She had to get out. She twisted her hand. Suddenly, her bow flicked free. Her bow and her hand were above the surface!
She should wave it for help, she thought.
If she wanted the squatch to help her.
She pulled down on the bow, trying to use it to lift herself… no. It was like trying to pull herself up one-handed onto a slim branch, with someone heavy holding her feet.
The bow pressed into the snow and, if anything, she sank a little deeper.
She drove her elbow outwards. If she could clear a tunnel above herself, maybe that would relieve pressure on her…
The little cave around her mouth filled again. Snow pressed on her lips and up her nose.
She almost swore. It really was vexing. She was going to die!
She couldn’t move the fingers of her right hand now. She couldn’t clear her hole. She tried to bend her left arm, but the collapsing snow had stuck it fast. She could no longer move her bow.
Perhaps more snow had tumbled off the ridge onto her. Maybe the squatch were standing above, piling on snow, enjoying her suffering?
She heaved with everything she had. Nothing. She could not move at all.
Her nose was clogged. She pursed her lips–she wasn’t completely immobile!–and tried to suck in air. She got snow.
She could not breathe.
She had maybe a hundred heartbeats, maybe two hundred. Then she’d be dead.
There was nothing to do but wait.
She thought about her boring, sensible parents, who’d tried to teach her to be sensible and boring, then been proud and horrified when the Emperor Zaltan had chosen her for the Owsla. She thought about her simple-minded older brothers, so annoying when she’d been younger, then so heart-burstingly adorable in their guile-free cheerfulness. She’d been so proud when her place in the Owsla had helped them and protected them.
Innowak knew what state they’d find Calnia in when they got back from their quest, with the empress dead and the army destroyed by Beaver Man’s monsters. Sitsi had been hoping to swing by and save her family from whatever dire circumstances they were suffering. Shoot a few baddies, whisk her parents and brothers to safety, earn their eternal gratitude and adoration. That had been the plan.
She was going to miss Sofi, Chogolisa and Paloma, Yoki Choppa and the Wootah, too. She hoped they were going to be okay without her. She was going to miss shooting food for them, being their lookout and long-range protector.
Most of all, she regretted that she wasn’t going to spend any more time with Keef the Berserker. She wanted to hear more of his jokes, laugh at his antics and simply be with him, watching the sunset or preparing to face a foe.
Tears welled. No. She wouldn’t cry. She was Owsla. She would die with her head held high, metaphorically at least.
She could feel her heart beating against her contracting lungs. How many more times would it do that? She wanted to breathe so much. She didn’t want to die. She wanted her mum and dad. She wanted Keef.
There was movement above her, crunching in the snow. The squatch! They were going to dig her out and rip her to bits, like a coyote digging out a hibernating groundhog.
Something grabbed her wrist and pulled. Something very strong. The snow shoes were torn off her feet. She could move her legs now and–she could breathe!
She sucked in sweet air as she fell back onto snow, so overjoyed with its marvellous taste that she thought her heart might burst and kill her anyway. Then she looked up, ready to fight.
Paloma Pronghorn was standing over her, hands on hips, grinning.
“Hello!” she said.
“Hi.”
Paloma reached down. “We don’t have much fannying around time.”
Sitsi shook snow from her hair and let Paloma pull her up. The avalanche debris was churned in clumps all around. Above them was a newly exposed brown-black, rocky ridge. A hundred paces down the slope, the lead squatch was headed for them, annoyingly fast over the rough ground. More were following. They had no fannying around time at all.
“My snow shoes are buried,” said Sitsi, brushing snow of her bare skin, teeth chattering. “I’ll never—”
“Stand on the back of mine,” said Paloma, turning. “And hold onto my waist as tightly as you can.”
Sitsi did as she was told. And they were off.
Paloma leapt across the avalanche’s jumbled debris like a happy mountain goat, as if Sitsi’s extra weight was nothing.
Moments later they were heading back up the mountain, which happened to be towards the squatch.
“Um, Paloma?” said Sitsi.
The lead squatch saw his chance and speeded up. He was twenty paces away, fifteen.
“Paloma!”
The speedy woman veered away, over a pile of snow and then on up the mountain. The squatch roared behind them.
Sitsi hugged Paloma tighter and pressed her face into the taller woman’s back. “Thanks,” she said.
“Any time!” Paloma yelled.
“Hopefully it’s not going to happen again.” Sitsi looked back. The squatch were already so far behind that they could have stopped for lunch and still escaped.
Soon they spotted the others, already heading away across the mountains. Sitsi didn’t mind that they’d carried on without her. What else were they going to do?
Sofi heard them coming and told the others. They all turned and cheered and shouted “Wootah!” Keef waved Arse Splitter around his head and danced from one foot to the other.
Sitsi beamed as they crowded around the pair of them, and almost cried with happiness when Erik handed her a spare pair of snow shoes. She knew she looked very emotional, very un-Owsla, but she didn’t care. She really was very glad to see them all again.
“Welcome back, Sitsi,” said Sofi. “Well done, Paloma.”
The group set off together again, tramping up across bare snow, clouds boiling up in wisps around them. The going was flat for a while, then downhill. Sitsi guessed they had reached and passed the summit, or at least the highest shoulder of mountain that they were going to climb. She regretted the clouds. Perhaps she’d have been able to see all the way back to Calnia if it had been clear.
Keef the Berserker dropped back to walk beside her.
“Squatch catch up, I’ll help you split their arses.”
“Great, thanks,” said Sitsi.
They walked on together in silence. Sitsi found herself smiling. She felt deeply and deliriously happy. For the feeling it gave one afterwards, it was almost worth facing certain death.
Soon there were trees all around again, but they mostly walked along clear fields of snow, which Sitsi guessed was grassland in summer.
Ayla stopped the others and waited for Sitsi and Keef to catch up at a low rise, where, judging by the young trees poking out, the snow was about a pace deep.
This, thought the squatch, is the Great Divide.
“Doesn’t look that Great,” said Keef.
“That’s what I said,” agreed Finn.
A snowflake that lands by this foot, she pointed at one of them, will end up the farthest imaginable distance from one that lands by the other.
“Wow,” said Sitsi. “Amazing. Can you feel it?” she asked Keef.
“Do you mean can I feel the weight of destiny, here on the Great Divide?” Keef jutted his chin heroically. “Can I feel the pull of the great bodies of water that lie hundreds of miles apart? Are you asking me whether it feels like I’m on a rope swing and it’s the moment when I’ve reached the highest point and, just for a heartbeat, I’ve stopped, but I can feel the inescapable force that’s going to drag me back?”
“Yes!” Sitsi bounced on her toes. “That’s exactly it!”
“Nope, can’t feel that at all,” he grinned. “But Arse Splitter is going to split the arse of a world. Hiiii-ya!” he leapt and swung his long axe to chop into the snow.
Sitsi shook her head.
Wulf, Thyri and Paloma were jumping from one side of the divide to the other. Yoki Choppa was standing with a foot on either side, looking thoughtful. Sassa and Bodil were watching the jumpers, smiling. When they thought nobody was looking, Erik and Chogolisa kissed with pursed lips across the divide. Freydis and Ottar changed the destiny of a few snowballs.
Sofi was standing back, watching them all, a troubled look on her face.
They headed down the mountain, along a valley with wooded sides and finally onto a muddy path. They stopped to remove their snow shoes then splashed along, Calnians barefoot, Wootah in their green tribe boots. The mammals that had been scarce on the mountain’s bare summit reappeared in multitudes. Shaggy but majestic mountain goats regarded them suspiciously from craggy grey outcrops. A group of humped bears bided their time threateningly on the mountainside ahead, then ambled into the trees when Chogolisa charged them.
A stream bounced down out of the mountain, then flowed away, then back again, as if flirting with the path. Water splashed off rocks, spraying rays of dazzling sunlight. Ayla said that the happy little torrent would become the mighty Red River that ran all the way to the Endless Ocean.
