The Ice Soldier (32 page)
I slid forward off the coffin, careful not to impale myself on my own crampons.
Stanley was still straddling the coffin, holding the rope as if a sharp tug and a click of the tongue would send us racing on across the snow. “That was brilliant!” he shouted.
“You could have killed us,” I gasped, and was about to list the half dozen ways in which he could have accomplished this when Stanley flapped his hand in the air and made a dry spitting sound through his teeth.
“Quiet, you old fusspot!” he commanded.
Muttering under my breath, I untied myself from the mad cowboy and his tin pony.
The huge cliff of sagging ice, rising at least a hundred feet above us, looked as if it might come crashing down at any moment. The buckled lines of dirt embedded in the snow were like a warning, proof that this glacier was in motion, and that its usual imperceptibly slow course was never to be trusted.
Despite the danger, Stanley and I could not help walking into the cave, drawn into it as if by some strange music which played deep in the catacombs inside.
The air was damp and there were puddles on the ground. There had to be a spring of some kind here, melting the ice from below. The arching walls and ceiling of the cave were vivid blue and dimpled like the sides of a beer glass.
We stood there for a while, listening to the steady drip of water from the walls.
I was just about to say that we should turn around when I caught sight of something hanging from the ceiling of the cave. At first it looked like a branch, but as I stepped forward,
I realized it was the wing of a bird. It was a large wing, as long as my arm and still with the feathers attached, hanging down vertically as if reaching for the floor. The feathers were brown, almost black, shimmering purple and green like the feathers of a starling. The ceiling was high enough here that I could stand directly beneath the wing. Above the place where it protruded from the ice I could see the rest of the bird, or part of it, anyway. The bird was far larger than any of the crows or ravens I had seen in these mountains. I could just make out, blurred inside the ice, the large hooked beak of the bird, whose neck had been twisted around, and a band of white stretching from its eyes to the beginning of its beak. The chest appeared to be a dirty, reddish white.
I realized it was the wing of a bird. It was a large wing, as long as my arm and still with the feathers attached, hanging down vertically as if reaching for the floor. The feathers were brown, almost black, shimmering purple and green like the feathers of a starling. The ceiling was high enough here that I could stand directly beneath the wing. Above the place where it protruded from the ice I could see the rest of the bird, or part of it, anyway. The bird was far larger than any of the crows or ravens I had seen in these mountains. I could just make out, blurred inside the ice, the large hooked beak of the bird, whose neck had been twisted around, and a band of white stretching from its eyes to the beginning of its beak. The chest appeared to be a dirty, reddish white.
Stanley stood beside me. He reached up to touch the feathers, and as soon as his fingers reached them, a handful of them fluttered down onto the ground. “What do you think it is?” he asked.
At first, I could not remember the name I wanted to say, but now it appeared, rising through the dark inside my head. “A lammergeier.”
“There aren't any lammergeiers here,” said Stanley.
“Not anymore,” I replied. “But it is a lammergeier.” I was sure of it now, recalling pictures of its white body and black wings and the masklike streak across its eyes. I did not know how long the great vulture had been gone from the Alps, but I had heard of its reputation for carrying off lambs and dogs and even babies, flying them thousands of feet into the air and then dropping them to their deaths. Birds like these had wingspans of nine feet and still existed in some parts of the Middle East, Spain, and the Himalayas. But not here. Not anymore.
It was as if, in reaching this place, we had stepped backwards through time, to a place where the years were not
counted in seasons but in centuries, in the slow creep of the glaciers, almost unmeasurable on the scale of human lives.
counted in seasons but in centuries, in the slow creep of the glaciers, almost unmeasurable on the scale of human lives.
We left the cave, our clothes dampened by the dripping air, and after roping up began to drag the coffin through a rock-strewn gully which ran in from the side of the valley.
Halfway up, the gully widened out into knee-deep snow. We were just stopping to put on our snowshoes when the avalanche hit.
First I heard a deep, soft thumping, like the sound of a giant wing beating the air above me. Then the ground began to move beneath my feet. There was no time to be afraid. Next, I had the sensation almost of swimming. For the first few seconds, I thrashed my arms and legs to keep my head above the level of the sliding snow.
But the more I tumbled, the more disoriented I became. Then I was just falling. Whiteness thundered all around me. It tumbled and hissed out of darkness into light. The air was slapped from my lungs and with a glimpse of daylight slapped back in again. I experienced the strange calm of waiting to die. Helpless. Blind. No way to fight the falling. My body shuddered as it struck something hard. But there was no pain, only the knowledge that damage had been done. I grew numb. My limbs became strangers, twisted and contorted as I tumbled down. I clung to the silence deep inside myself, surrounded by the roaring which was all around me and through me and then was gone. The rope wrenched at my waist, putting pressure on my ribs. I felt sure I would be ripped in half. Then, with one last mighty sigh, everything suddenly came to a stop. I could not breathe or move. I opened my eyes and saw only the gray haze of light above. My chest was on fire. Frantically, my arms punched upwards. Sun poured down on me like molten brass. I spat the fire from my lungs and gasped in the cold air. I began
to dig my way out, pawing the glassy grit until at last I saw my boots again. Each crossed thread of my clothing was tamped with snow. My socks and the knots of my bootlaces were knotted with ice. Still I could not get up. It was the rope, wound too tight around me. From the pocket of my coat I pulled my old Opinel knife, prized it open, and cut myself loose like a just-born creature slicing its own umbilical cord.
to dig my way out, pawing the glassy grit until at last I saw my boots again. Each crossed thread of my clothing was tamped with snow. My socks and the knots of my bootlaces were knotted with ice. Still I could not get up. It was the rope, wound too tight around me. From the pocket of my coat I pulled my old Opinel knife, prized it open, and cut myself loose like a just-born creature slicing its own umbilical cord.
I stood waist-deep in the blinding snow, and it was only when I had untangled my goggles from around my neck and set them once more against my eyes that I could see. In light the color of weak tea, I stared at the debris of the avalanche, which lay in the shape of a fan, dirty and clumped, all the way down to the floor of the valley. The cave had been swallowed up. It was hard even to see where the opening had been.
Looking back up the valley, I saw the rope rise from the snow fifty feet away and the coffin wedged against the gray blade of a rock jutting from the ice below.
Stanley's face jumped into my head. I glanced around but saw no sign of him.
I began to wade across the slope, calling his name. But he was nowhere. All I could see was the smooth sheet of the avalanche. I reached the rope and tugged at it. The thick brown sinew jumped above the surface of the snow. As fast as I could, I traced it down to where I knew he must be. Then I started digging like a dog. Snow flew everywhere.
I saw his hair first, and then his face, which was turning blue. I raked away the snow around his chest and pulled him up, and when I dropped him down again upon the surface of the slope, he spat a gob of bloody snow into the air and gasped and sat upright. I hammered on his back and he spat up more snow, which melted in bloody slime across his chest. I cut the rope with my Opinel knife and tried to get him to stand. He
wobbled on his feet, coughing and retching. I brushed the snow from his hair. His pockets were filled with it.
wobbled on his feet, coughing and retching. I brushed the snow from his hair. His pockets were filled with it.
We were like scarecrows stuffed with ice, which had found its way down our shirts, up our noses, into our ears and which melted now in painful chips like broken glass inside our bellies.
Across the slope, a gust of wind stirred up phantoms of snow. The glittering dust twirled and took on human shapes. I saw faces, shifting as if glimpsed through a curtain of water. I could make out their hands and the rags of clothes and I heard the whisper of voices.
They were like the ancient ghosts of those buried so deep that even their spirits became trapped. Uncovered now by this same avalanche that had almost buried us, they left the frozen wreckage of their bones. They swirled away across the fields of blinding white, brushing past us in a sighing crystal cloud. We seemed to have strayed beyond the boundaries of our world, into a place where neither the living nor the dead were meant to be.
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“I THINK I BROKE A TOOTH,” said Stanley. He stuck his fingers in his mouth, bloody saliva trickling out across his hand. “Thought so,” he said, turning the tooth this way and that, to examine it from different angles. He spat again. The speckles of red sank away into the white.
“Are you in a lot of pain?” I asked.
He shrugged. “I don't know. My head feels like it's filled with bees.” Carefully he put the tooth in the pocket of his mountain coat and replaced his goggles, which had been forced down around his neck but at least had not been lost. He tried to smile. “I'm fine,” he told me. “Really, I'm fine.”
Despite what he said, I could tell he had been badly shaken.
He must have been in a lot of pain, too, but he was not the type to show it. He could complain easily enough about his badly thought-out mountain jacket, but pain he would not show. Only in the crooked line of his windburned lips could the strain be read.
He must have been in a lot of pain, too, but he was not the type to show it. He could complain easily enough about his badly thought-out mountain jacket, but pain he would not show. Only in the crooked line of his windburned lips could the strain be read.
We made our way back to the coffin and dug it loose from the rock. The top had received a large dent, and some things were missing from the compartment. We had lost our stove and a bag of spare clothing, but the tent, the sleeping bags, and the rest of the food were still roped in.
Compared to others I had seen, this was a small avalanche, barely a shrug of the vast snowfields which lay ahead of us. In the past, I had watched whole hillsides give way. The force of them was almost unimaginable, and I remembered a story I'd once heard of a forestry worker in Glarus, Switzerland. In 1910, he had been thrown two thousand feet into the sky by the force of the air preceding an avalanche. He was carried half a mile and dumped, alive, into a snowbank. The six men he had been working with were all killed. You hear a story like that and you think it cannot possibly be true, but then you see an avalanche, and hear the terrible roar of the falling snow, and suddenly you know that it could happen after all.
Stanley and I had been thrown down some two hundred feet. If the coffin had not become stuck, the slide could have carried us ten times that distance, and would certainly have buried us beyond all possibility of digging ourselves out. If we had been buried, the chances were that no one would ever have known what happened and we would have ended up suspended in time like that lammergeier.
Strapping on our snowshoes, but leaving our crampons attached so that we could keep our grip on the slope, we made our way out of the valley.
By the time we emerged, clouds had come in from the north and the temperature had slid below zero, with the windchill taking it even lower. In the dimming light, I pulled my goggles down around my neck and felt the freezing gusts against my eyes.
We checked our ropes and began to drag the coffin on towards Carton's Rock, but after two hours the mountain suddenly disappeared behind a wall of boiling white. Only then did we realize we were walking into a storm. We stopped. Now, without the sound of the Rocket sliding over the glacier, we could hear the howling of the storm's approach.
Stanley's face was drawn and pale. He had taken off his goggles but the welts around his eyes remained. “Should we turn back?” he asked, raising his voice above the wind.
I went to my pack, which was strapped into the Rocket's cargo area, and took out a pair of binoculars. Searching the ground ahead of us, I saw a lump of stone jutting from the snow about four hundred meters off. I pointed it out to Stanley. “We could pitch the tent behind that,” I said. “Ride out the storm that way. Stan, the only place behind us is the valley, and the storm will overtake us long before we reach it.”
“I didn't mean just to the valley,” he said.
His words caught me by surprise. I thought about his brave-face talk of how he would get this done even if it was the last thing he ever did, and it made me angry to hear this from him now. Replacing my goggles, I turned away from him and straightened the harness on my shoulders. Then I began to drag the Rocket forward into the wind. As Stanley's section of the rope grew taut, I came to a stop. Leaning forward in the traces, I waited for Stanley to make up his mind, to join me or to untie himself and give up.
I heard, even over the sound of the approaching storm, a
kind of groaning swear from Stanley. Then the pressure on my harness was released and we were moving forward once again.
kind of groaning swear from Stanley. Then the pressure on my harness was released and we were moving forward once again.
We marched as quickly as we could, hoping to reach the rock before the storm rode over us. If we did not get there in time, we might lose our way and never find the rock. And even if we did, without the time to pitch the tent, there would not be enough shelter.
Hard pellets of snow rattled across the ground towards us, bouncing up into our faces and tearing at our windburned cheeks. Ice crystals rattled against the lenses of my goggles.
The wind grew stronger. We were leaning into it, far beyond the point of normal balance, teeth bared. The noise of the storm was a constant rolling thunder on our ears. As hard as we pulled the Rocket, it seemed to be pulling just as hard in the opposite direction, as if we were locked in a tug-of-war with the ghost of Carton himself.
The white wall was closer now, towering above us and seeming to devour the earth over which it passed.
Stanley's words began to repeat in my head, like a grim echo of Sugden's demand that we turn back from our mission during the war. I had dismissed Stanley's wanting to turn back as simple cowardice, but now, with this storm about to break over us, I wondered if he was the one being reasonable, and not me. I had been thinking of all of this in terms of how we would be judged when we returned. There, in the back of my mind, sat a jury made up of people like Sugden, Pringle, my father, and even Mrs. Reave. And there were the dead as well: Carton himself, and the faces of Whistler, Armstrong, and Forbes, already fading into impressionistic blurs as my memory slowly washed away their features, like the stone angels in the Palladino cemetery.
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