by Bear Grylls
Jonas moved again, sidling a little to his left, and again, every step well-thought-about, remembering Beck’s advice back at the ice slope to move only one point of contact — a foot or a hand — at a time. Suddenly his leg started to shudder and he had to stand still, breathing deeply, until the spasms passed and he got it under control again.
“Got it?” Beck called.
“Got it…”
Then suddenly Jonas’s foot slipped. A football-sized chunk of mountainside tumbled away and Jonas fell half a metre. One leg dangled over the drop, the other, firmly planted on an extension of rock, was bent at the knee as far as it would go. Both arms were stretched out above him as he kept his grip on his handholds.
Then, slowly, Jonas pulled himself up again, all his weight going on the one trembling leg until he had his other foot up and could find another hold. He didn’t look down or back. Without a word, he kept going.
Beck barely breathed until Jonas was over on the other side. Jonas turned and flashed an enormous, surprised, relieved grin ever as he pulled in the remaining length of the rope until it went taut with Beck on the other end.
“Easiest thing ever,” he said, with a lightness that showed it had been the exact opposite. “Okay. You are good to climb when you are ready.”
“Sure.” Beck replied, as he tied his end around his waist. “Put your end around… uh…”
And then he saw the gaping flaw in the plan.
Chapter Thirty
They stood either side of a deep drop on very similar arms of Storkittel — but with one key difference. Beck’s side was rockier. Over on Jonas’s side there was earth and tough, scrubby grass — and it was all smooth.
Beck had been able to put his end of the rope around a boulder to take Jonas’s weight in the event of a fall. If Jonas had slipped, he would have pendulumed back beneath Beck and would have been able to climb up the rock face to safety. The force of the fall would have been absorbed by the rope wrapped around the rock.
But with no rock, there was no way if Beck slipped that Jonas would be able to hold him. Beck had barely managed to hold Jonas in the crevasse, when he had been able to kick in to the snow for support. Perched precariously up on this slippery smooth face, Jonas had nothing to secure himself too.
The risk level for Beck had just gone through the roof, but with Jonas now across they were committed. Beck had to do this.
“You can do this, Beck. I know you can.” Jonas shouted back across.
Beck untied the rope from his wait and let it fall to the ground.
“If I fall, the rope will just pull you off too. That’s us then both dead.”
“Don’t be crazy Beck,” Jonas shouted. “I could probably hold you.”
“No way, and you know it. Just wish me luck — and pray like crazy, my friend.”
And with that Beck stepped out into the void.
If you’re watching over me, Dian, I could do with some help now…
You’ve done this before. In Nepal, over a much steeper drop. Be with me now once more.
If he was climbing along a rock face half a metre off the ground, without any kind of support, then he wouldn’t even think about it. This was exactly the same, Beck told himself. Just that the ground was a few more half metres away… In fact, a lot more.
The rock was damp and cold beneath his fingers, so slick that it felt the harder you gripped it, the more likely your fingers were to slide off.
It was actually liberating, he decided, as the arm of the mountain receded to his right. If he fell then he fell — he was dead and that would be it. It was beyond his control, and things that were beyond his control weren’t worth worrying about. Jonas was safely over — his friend could make his own way to Riksliden. He wasn’t stupid and would work it out.
His foot felt an empty gap where there should have been rock — it was the bit that had crumbled under Jonas. He stretched his foot a bit further over until there was something solid beneath it again, and moved his weight over.
And then a few more steps and he was over, too, with Jonas reaching out frantically to help him onto the other arm of the mountain.
Jonas grabbed Beck close to him.
“Beck, never do that again, please.”
“It’s fine. We’re across and the deception track is laid. It’s all good. Now let’s get moving.”
Beck took a last look at the drop.
Thank you, Dian. Much obliged.
Beck then put the rope away in his pack and looked up the slope of the arm. It was all fresh ground up there — no one had trod on it. There would be no signs to indicate that this was the way they had come.
Still without speaking, he jerked his head down the slope. Let’s go! They set off at a brisk pace, hurrying as fast as they safely could, arms spread for balance, finally heading down off Storkittel, once and for all.
But still, Beck reminded himself, they were being pursued by a woman who had a rifle and wanted them dead.
Chapter Thirty-One
The fir trees grew thicker on the ground and soon there were enough of them to cut off the view ahead. Beck would still have known they were getting lower, even without seeing the ground, as several times over the next couple of hours he had to swallow to pop his ears as they adjusted to the change in air pressure. Even dropping down a few hundred metres made a difference.
There was no clear boundary — no handy banner announcing ‘you have now left the mountain’ — but eventually Beck knew they had put it behind them for good. The ground was essentially level, stretching away as far as the eye could see beneath and between the trunks of firs and spruces. Under their feet was a thin layer of pine needles over moss.
It was past 3 p.m., Beck thought with gritted teeth. It had taken them eight hours just to get off that wretched mountain. And now they had, it meant that a fresh set of challenges lay ahead. He turned round as he walked, and discreetly waved through the clustered fir branches at the crags towering above them.
“So long, Storkittel.” he whispered, so that Jonas could hear. “Thank you for allowing us to make it this far.”
The shrill cry of a raptor came down from above, as if perfectly timed, like an answer from the mountain. Jonas shot Beck a smile that he couldn’t suppress, and for the first time that day, both boys felt a sense of peace.
From above, they had seen that the two arms of the mountain came down either side of a lake. It had only taken ten minutes of fast moving for the boys to reach the lake shore.
“Hey Jonas, come here a sec. I just want to check something.”
The trees on the far side were half a kilometre away and the water in between was deep and still. It perfectly reflected the blue sky, so that even on a bitingly cold day it looked inviting. Beck moved slowly and steadily, crouching low, and made his way to the edge of the water. He knelt to dip his fingers in, and it was absolutely freezing. No one would be able to swim across that without a wetsuit, and he doubted the woman had one of those on her. They weren’t exactly usual hiking gear. The end of the lake ran straight up to the mountain, where water lapped around fallen boulders and scree.
So even if the woman got to the bottom on the far side and realised immediately that she had made a mistake, she wouldn’t get across to their side in a hurry. Good. Beck allowed himself a brief sense of relief. That was what he had wanted to know.
But now he was here he saw something else worth knowing. Cattails grew beside the water — tall, thin bulrushes with slender stalks a metre or more high, with the seeds clustered together in a cylindrical brown mass near the top so that they looked like they had impaled a sausage lengthwise. Beck pulled one up and nibbled experimentally on it. It was dry and woody but he knew from experience that it would also be nutritious.
“More plants,” Jonas whispered from behind a tree where he was watching Beck from.
“Yeah, but they work cold or cooked.” Beck replied as he scurried back to the cover of the trees. “Here. Try one.”
&nbs
p; The water flask was running low on melted snow after their trek down the mountain. They finished it off between them, washing the cattails down.
Beck then crawled back to the water’s edge and held the flask under the surface of the lake so that it filled with glugs and gurgles.
“Lake water?” Jonas whispered with distaste towards Beck. “You know, that all the trees fall into and rot in?”
“It’s near freezing,” Beck assured him. “Bacteria tends not to multiply in freezing water so it is more likely you will be ok drinking it. It’s a risk we can take up here.” He screwed the top back on and the pair retreated back into the cover of the trees again.
After all that effort to throw the woman off track, it would be pretty stupid to make themselves visible to the far shore. Even if she couldn’t get to them, she had a phone. She could call in reinforcements to come at them from the other direction.
If she hadn’t already. It was a heart-stopping moment. Maybe she had already done that? Were the two of them just heading into a trap, caught between two forces?
But, he thought, people coming from the other direction had no tracks to follow, and it was a big wilderness. They couldn’t know which route Beck and Jonas would be taking.
Even so, they should keep their eyes peeled ahead as well.
Jonas was still muttering about water, when Beck stopped, and knelt again. He brushed the layer of pine needles apart with his fingers.
“Or,” he said, “there’s this.”
Chapter Thirty-Two
Beneath the needles was an unbroken carpet of pale green moss, clustered together in strands like small furry caterpillars. It came away easily when he pulled up a handful. He tilted his head back and squeezed it above his face, and water seemed to appear from nowhere, trickling out over his hand and dribbling down his face and into his mouth.
“This is sphagnum moss,” Beck explained, while Jonas stared. “It stores water in its cells, and it produces iodine so it’s naturally antiseptic.”
Jonas pulled a face, but his hand — as if it were acting under its own volition — crept down and pulled up a handful of its own.
“Um,” he said as he slurped up the drops. “Like smoke and earth.”
He had described the taste very accurately, Beck thought. It was very different to melted snow water, but it wasn’t unpleasant.
“Water on my uncle’s farm tasted like this — it came straight from a well.” Jonas wiped his mouth. “But I’ll stick to taking it from the flask, if I can—…” Suddenly his face lit up. “Oh, wow! Bilberries! And don’t you dare tell me they’re dangerous.”
He hurried over to a low bush that pushed itself out of the moss and needles. The branches were woody and grew across the ground, rather than rising up like most bushes would. When Jonas pushed the branches apart, Beck caught a glimpse of small specks of dark blue, almost purple.
“Good find, Jonas!” Beck followed him over. He had had bilberries before, and he knew they were a perennial fruit and a popular food here in Sweden.
Together they picked the bush clean. The berries were small spheres, almost like grapes but smaller and rounder. There were three or four growing on every branch of the flat bush, and they popped in the boys’ mouths with bursts of juice that was sharp and refreshing.
“I know these are good,” Jonas commented, “but I could also really do with something cooked right now.”
Beck nodded. They had been up since first light, burning energy, through exhaustion, fear and the cold. They couldn’t go on like this forever. And Beck knew that the best thing they could do before the next, and potentially more dangerous part of their journey began, would be to replenish their reserves.
Beck also knew just what a psychological boost a hot, cooked meal could be.
The key question was: would they end up blowing the lead they had on the woman?
No, he thought. It wouldn’t take long, and they had worked hard to gain that lead over her and throw her off their tracks. They could afford the break and they needed the calories. The key would be staying hidden, though.
“Okay,” he said equably. “Cooked food it is.”
“Yeah?” Jonas’s look of hope was immediately dashed by a frown. “I mean, great, but — won’t she see the smoke?”
“She won’t see anything because there’ll be nothing to see.” Beck rummaged through the pine needles at his feet and held up a twig no thicker than his finger. “Gather up as many small bits of wood like this that you can find — small, dry pieces of wood.”
While Jonas did that, Beck explored the piles of pine needles. Many had inevitably drifted into small mounds, blown at random by the sun. The ones at the top were slightly damp, but by delving down a few centimetres he found ones which were bone dry. He took a double handful over to a fallen log and made a pile on top of the bark. Jonas had assembled a clutch of pieces of wood as Beck had told him.
“And now go and get some cattails,” Beck said. “Dinner in five.”
He had to concentrate on what he was going to do now — build a fire, with no smoke to give them away.
Chapter Thirty-Three
Beck had one vital piece of equipment that had come with him when the kidnappers took him. This item hung around his neck and he almost never took it off, except to sleep and when he was travelling by plane. (Airlines had hang-ups about passengers bringing fire-starting equipment on board.) It was his fire steel — which actually came in two pieces, a flat metal plate and a rod of ferrocerium. When you scraped the two together, sparks flew off in all directions — as many as you could possibly want. If you had a fire steel, and air, and combustible material, you could start a fire anywhere.
He assembled a small pile of the dry needles tucked in tight behind the base of a large fir tree, hidden from view on almost all sides. Beck huddled over the small pile of pine needles, shielding them with his hunched form. He then struck the fire steel over them. Sparks sprayed into the pile and a few caught as he leaned close and blew gently through pouted lips. Fire consumes oxygen, so in stationary air a spark will go out almost at once as the local oxygen is burnt up. Blowing steadily produced a stream of fresh oxygen, enough to keep the spark glowing, and then making it spread.
While the sparks spread through the pile, Beck began to assemble Jonas’s pieces of wood above it. The fire needed something to spread to, otherwise it would quickly consume the needles and then go out. He sat back on his haunches and studied the growing fire carefully. The air above it began to shimmer with heat and some of the wood crackled and popped — but there was nothing substantial enough to start smoking. Good.
Beck knew the physics behind making a smokeless fire and it was satisfying to see it work. Smoke happens because fuel doesn’t burn completely: so, the more efficient the fire is at burning its fuel, the less smoke there’ll be.
The other way to conceal a fire would be to dig a pit, with a separate chimney going up through the earth. You could easily convert a rabbit burrow for the purpose. You put the fire at the bottom of the pit and as the hot air rose, fresh air would come whooshing along the burrow and up the chimney to replace it. This simply creates a steady stream of oxygen, using the same principle as Beck blowing on the needles — but on a larger scale. The extra oxygen would make the fire much more efficient, and everything would be consumed and nothing smoked.
They didn’t have the time or resources to dig a pit or look for a burrow, so they had to settle for a smaller fire using a different principle. The principle of concealment. Tucked low in behind the base of the tree and burning fuel efficiently and without smoke, they could have a small fire and heat their food.
Jonas was soon back with more thin small twigs to burn, and now they could start cooking.
The great thing about cattails was they came with their own built-in spit handle — you could hold the edible bit safely out over the fire, turning it gently and watching it cook. Beck kept the fire going, feeding it with pine needles, while Jonas did cooki
ng duty. Because everything burnt so quickly, he had to keep up a steady supply. The heat turned the cattails crispy, and when the boys ate them, the flavour was like roasted seeds, slightly piney.
“This is way better,” Jonas said as they tucked in, and Beck agreed with a nod and a smile around his mouthful. A stomach full of hot food was just what was needed to push them onwards.
“So … do you think we shook her off?” Jonas brought them back to the essential considerations with a few words. Beck swallowed his mouthful and said out loud what he had worked out earlier about the woman not getting across the lake quickly.
“True,” Jonas agreed thoughtfully. “But — that’s only true if she fell for it.”
Beck paused chewing, then ground his teeth down on a mouthful that had suddenly lost its flavour.
“And,” Jonas pressed on, “our families — both of ours — will have heard by now that we’re missing…”
Beck thought for a moment.
“Plus, if we reckon someone’s out to get the Erikssons, then you can bet your dad has too,” Beck pointed out. “We’ve already warned them, just by disappearing.”
“I figure.” Jonas stared miserably into the fire. “But they still don’t know where we are.”
“So think of how happy they’ll be when we call them tomorrow from Riksliden police station.” And with that Beck wanted to cut the conversation short. The hot meal had been a good idea, but now was not the time to sit about fretting. Getting back on the move would help them both focus on their immediate needs.
He climbed to his feet. “We should get on.”
But there was one more thing they needed to do — and Beck suddenly realised that, well, he wasn’t ready to do it.
