The Reluctant Champion

8. The Mountains

They were climbing again. Around them mountains lifted white heads, some decorated with jaunty wisps of cloud like feathers in the cap of a woodsman. It bothered them all, not knowing how high or how cold this journey would become. Yet the tracks continued, fainter now, and they followed as fast as they were able.

Jaspar had hardened to the journey. He was quick enough to catch a jackrabbit on the run—almost; he walked the day through without flagging; he helped with the chores and the horses willingly. But he rarely spoke, and he never smiled.

There was frost in the mornings now, and little wood for fire. The forests were behind and below them. They climbed through windswept screes marked with scrubby grass and granite outcroppings. At night, they burned what brush they could find and it burned fast, exhausting itself before morning. Where they could, they huddled in caves that protected them from the chill wind that swept down from the peaks. Galen played his flute in the evenings to keep their spirits up, but they were all very weary.

Each day their stock of provisions diminished. Each morning, Galen and Madoc eyed each other, wondering who would be the first to call a halt. Already they pushed the bounds of prudence. If they turned now, they could reach the game-rich woods before anyone starved. But they continued to climb.

Had they been better-provisioned, they might never have found the fortress. But one morning Madoc decided it was time to act.

"We have to have meat, Galen," he said. "We have only a few days left at this rate. Already if we had an early storm, we could be pinned down for days."

"I'm not going back," Galen said.

"Galen, it makes no sense. You don't push your luck in the mountains. Unless you can conjure meat out of the hills, we have to go back."

Galen looked away, stared up at the granite walls around them, looking for inspiration in the peaks. Then he laughed and turned back to Madoc.

"Very well," he said. "Behold, I conjure meat out of the hills. Look up."

Madoc did. High above them, white dots leaped across a sheer granite face. How they found purchase was impossible to say.

Madoc grinned. "Mountain goats. Dinner on the hoof," he said. "But I don't fancy arrows in this wind."

"Traps," Galen replied. "Let's camp a day or two here. We'll see what we can catch."

"Traps." Madoc frowned at him. "One sets traps where the animals are."

"Right." Galen grinned. Madoc continued to scowl.

So noon found Madoc struggling up a crack in the rock just wider than his shoulders with Galen grunting above him and nothing, nothing at all, below.

"Now," Galen yelled down, "Here, the crack widens. Swivel around and brace your feet on one wall and your shoulders on the other. Push yourself up that way."

"Push myself how?" Madoc reached the point Galen was talking about and nearly missed his handhold. "By the holy harlot," he shouted when he had his breath back, "The gods didn't make us flies or mountain goats. There's a reason for that."

"Hush," panted Galen. "Save your breath." He leaned back against the rock wall, breathing heavily himself, following Madoc's progress by sound. But when he shut his eyes, feet braced against one side of the fissure and buttocks against the other, head cradled by the living rock, he could hear something else. Almost it was as though the rock talked to itself, telling its own story, the long, slow story told in geologic time. How these mountains were thrust up out of the collision of continents—how they hosted greater races and lesser, killing and saving like arbitrary gods—if he only had the time to listen, to let the deep voice come clear, Galen felt he could distinguish the sense in its murmuring and learn all these rocks had seen. But Madoc came up below him and he had no time and no energy to spare from the business of the moment.