Killer

A great anger welled up in him, tore him inside as the terrible Bear tore him outside; an anger that called upon him to howl at the wind, strike at the snow with his fists, smash all the iron ice with his head, curse with most terrible curses the Queen of Bitches, and God. The wind screamed at him; he took no notice, but walked on. The wind, finding its armament of snow too slight a thing to stop him, tore the frozen crystals from the grasping fingers of the ice, and hurled them into his face, like knives; he took no notice, but walked on. The wind bided its time before unleashing its greatest weapon, and meanwhile folded Jeremiah into its cloak of invisibility; noticing this, Ross stopped, and the two men tied themselves together with a length of rope, then leaning into the full power of the wind, they stumbled forwards, first one in the lead, then the other.

Thus they went through many more hours while three great witches danced around them. The great witch Night covered them with darkness and fatigue; the great witch Winter crept south early to weave her chill spells and lend her weapons to the third – Antarctica, first witch here, whose cold is greater than Winter’s cold, who for more than a month in each year refuses to surrender to Night. And as they wandered among the trains of her frozen skirts, the witch Antarctica looked down over the shoulder of her wild white Bear, and plotted their destruction. If he closed his gravelled eyes, Ross could see her: Antarctica, Ice Maiden, Snow Queen, Queen of Bitches, watching him.

So midnight passed unnoticed. They had been walking for nearly sixteen hours with hardly a break. They had covered less than six miles.

Jeremiah was in the lead when the white Bear played its next great trick. The green ice hid its terrible nakedness under the blankets of snow which made even their legs invisible to the two men. In this way, with deadly cunning, it prepared its weapons.

Ross, his anger cooling now, and thickening to despair, walked in a waking dream, followed only the steady pull of the rope held taut by his friend walking far beyond the limits of his weary vision. Suddenly it jerked him off his feet, and pulled him rolling over the ice. He screamed and spread his four limbs, seeking purchase, trying to stop. The rope pulled him forward relentlessly. He closed his eyes and dug the heels of his hands and the toes of his boots into the slick ice. The movement slowed. The rope was no longer pulling him. He stopped, and lay, breathless, on his face for several minutes before he pulled himself on to his hands and knees and crawled forward. He came to the edge of the crevasse. The rope had worn a deep friction-groove into the green translucent lip, and had frozen fast as soon as the movement had stopped. He looked, stunned, down into the Queen of Bitches’ trap. He could just see Jeremiah, caught between the jaws. “Jere­miah?” he called, but no sound came. Jeremiah did not move.

It was several minutes before he thought of pulling on the rope. When he heaved, however, his friend’s unconscious body moved easily. But moving it and lifting it were two entirely different things. Ross soon found that his arms were unequal to the task, so he carefully untied the end around his waist, took hold of it below the edge of ice, below where it was frozen immovably into the lip, and, using the whole strength of his body, he began to move back. The wind in his face, traitor to the witches, helped him a little; the ice sent enough unevennesses to give him purchase, and inch by inch was Jeremiah raised. But the pressure on the rope made it eat again into the ice-rim, so that after a while Ross could not move back any further. Leaning back, tensing his shoulders, pulling with all his might, hand over hand he went up the rope again to the edge of the crevasse. Jeremiah was hanging almost a foot inside the ice, but the rope was so far into the edge that Ross had to wrap what slack he could around his waist, kneel carefully, and lift the dead-weight into his arms. Then he untied the other end of the rope from around Jeremiah’s waist. Both ends of the rope were now frozen into the ice, far beyond the ability of the exhausted Ross to move them, and so he left it where it was. Through the heavy cold-weather clothes, Ross could make no guess as to how badly Jeremiah was hurt. The only thing he was certain of was that his left leg was broken below the knee. As he tried to straighten this leg, Jeremiah stirred and groaned.

“Jeremiah? Jeremiah, can you hear me? We have to move. Can you move?”

“Colin? I’ve broken my leg, I think.”

“I know. Do you think you can move?”

“I don’t know. You’ll have to help me stand.”

They struggled unsteadily to their feet. Jeremiah’s left arm gripped Ross’s shoulders. Ross’s right arm grasped his friend’s waist. They moved down the side of the crevasse, with the wind coming from their sides.

“It’s too slow. You’ll have to leave me.”

“No.”

“Colin, we’ll both die.”

“The hell we will.”