Way of the Wolf (15 page)

Like the previous night, he thought of Al. He hadn’t thought so much of his uncle during the day – there had been enough on his mind to keep him occupied. How was Al doing? Had the storm hit him too? His little shelter should be OK. He would be in serious trouble if the fire went out, though. Beck just had to trust that Al knew enough to look after himself.

In his last waking moments, he sent up a silent prayer that the storm wouldn’t last long. They didn’t have enough food or water to survive a long imprisonment.

They could be warm, and dry, and sheltered, and still starve. Their warm cave could just as easily become an icy tomb.

Beck was woken by a sharp stab of hunger in his guts. He winced and rolled onto his side. He was pretty certain he must have slept. He had a sense that time had passed without his knowledge.

Something had changed and it took a while to work out what. There was more light, for a start. A white glow further down the tunnel forced its way past the rucksacks in the entrance and outlined them with silver. And it was quiet. Even allowing for the muffling effect of the snow, it was quiet. No wind blowing.

Light plus quiet equalled no storm. No storm equalled no reason to hang around a moment longer.

He gave Tikaani a hard nudge. ‘Wakey, wakey! We have to leave the room for the maid to clean.’

While the other boy groaned and stirred, Beck kicked the rucksacks aside and worked his way back down the tunnel. He poked his head out of the mountainside like an animal emerging from hibernation.

It was the third day of their journey – and, Beck fervently hoped, the last. He wanted to be off these mountains and down in Anakat by sunset. The signs were good. The sky was blue and the sides of the valley were pristine white. The snow wall had held up against the wind. All the jumbled, torn-up snow left over from their digging was smoothed and rounded by a fresh coating.

Tikaani poked his head up beside him and blinked sleepily. ‘I am so hungry. Is there any food?’

‘Plenty,’ Beck assured him. He threw his rucksack out onto the snow and scrambled out after it. ‘As much as you could ever want.’ He pulled out his water bottle and started to pack it with snow.

Tikaani looked around at the stark crags above and smooth, unblemished snow all around. ‘Where?’ he asked suspiciously.

Beck pointed westwards, down the valley. ‘A couple of hours’ walk in that direction.’

Tikaani groaned.

In fact it took more than a couple of hours, but it felt like less. In no time at all, they both realized the valley was angling downhill. They were over the top of the mountains. That alone gave them a huge psychological boost. Charged with energy, they plunged down through the snow.

Before long they were out of the pass and onto the mountainside again, two specks on an infinite sheet of white. It seemed like all of Alaska was laid out before them, covered with a fresh coat of snow from the night’s storm. Far below were meadows and the tops of trees. Sometimes a sparkle caught the eye as sunlight shone off fresh water. Towards the horizon, sky and land came together, sealed with a strip of glittering blue sea.

‘Anakat’s down there,’ Beck said.

Tikaani’s grin split his face from ear to ear. ‘Oh, yeah!’

The way down grew steeper. Beck remembered the magic figure – two degrees for every hundred metres. And this time it was getting warmer. At first they went down the same way as they had walked up on the other side, zigzagging from side to side. But, Beck reckoned, it would be so much easier – not to mention shorter – if they went straight down . . .

‘OK,’ he said. He pulled off his snowshoes and hung them on his rucksack while Tikaani looked on. ‘There’s an art to this. You take large strides . . .’

He set off downhill for a few paces, deliberately lengthening his stride. Each time his foot came down he put his weight on his heel and kept his leg straight. His weight drove his boot into the snow and he went in to above his knees. But with each step the snow compressed beneath him and provided him with an automatic foothold.

‘Try it,’ he called back up to Tikaani. ‘We’ll take a few practice steps to start with.’

Tikaani took one step and paused. His position was comical, one leg buried almost to the thigh in snow, the other at an awkward angle and a little further uphill. ‘OK, that worked . . .’

He brought the other leg down. ‘Yeah, I can do this . . .’

And again, and again. He lurched past Beck. ‘This is easy!’

Beck set off quickly after his friend.

It
was
easy. The practice steps turned straight into the real thing. The rhythm of their strides took their bodies and their momentum did the rest. They plunged through the snow like a pair of ploughs, sending up sprays of powder with each stride. Beck tried to keep up with Tikaani but his friend was actually drawing ahead. From the way Tikaani was leaning forward, his arms waving, Beck wondered if the other boy was getting out of control. Sure enough, a moment later Tikaani tipped forward and cartwheeled down the slope ahead of him.

‘Tikaani!’

Tikaani kept rolling until he smashed into a snowdrift in an explosion of snow. Beck hurried down after him. Tikaani was just lying there, covered in snow, his body quivering slightly. Beck wondered if he was in some kind of shock. But as he approached, he realized Tikaani was shaking with laughter.

‘That was fun! Let’s do it again!’

Their way down the mountain after that was much faster than their way up. Before long there wasn’t enough snow to support that method of travelling. Then came the moment when Beck stumbled on something. He kicked the snow aside and saw rock. They were almost off the snow altogether.

Patches of dry earth began to show. Soon it was hard to tell if they were on snow with bare patches of ground, or ground with occasional snowy areas. Tough, scrubby grass appeared underfoot.

They came to a stream, running with clear, fresh meltwater. On the way up, streams had been irritations – they were just obstacles to overcome. This one was a welcome companion, flowing down towards the same warm, low land they were heading for. They could drink liquid water straight from the source again without having to wait for it to melt.

They followed it into the trees. Trees! The woods seemed thicker this side of the mountains. Less bare tundra, more wood, stretching all the way to the distant band of the sea.

‘OK,’ Beck said. ‘I promised you breakfast.’ It didn’t take long to find a fallen trunk. He pried off a section of bark with the Bowie knife and a small colony of wriggling grubs tried to squirm away from the daylight.

Tikaani looked at them without enthusiasm. ‘I know I ate something out of a dead animal’s stomach yesterday,’ he said, ‘but even so . . .’

Beck picked up a large grub the size of his finger and held it for inspection. It writhed and coiled like an animated piece of string. He thought for a moment. ‘Every time I eat one of these, it’s like it takes a poop on my tongue in revenge.’

‘
Every
time? You mean, you’ve done it more than once and you still haven’t learned?’

Beck grinned and bit the head off the grub, then spat it out and swallowed the body. ‘You know these things are eighty per cent protein? Even beef’s only twenty per cent.’

‘Yummy.’ Tikaani picked up a couple, studied them philosophically and crammed them into his mouth. He pulled a face. ‘You got fries to go?’

‘They taste better if you bite the heads off . . .’

‘Now he tells me!’

Beck suddenly held up a hand. ‘Listen,’ he said. ‘Hear that?’

Tikaani strained his ears. ‘Only water,’ he said. It came from lower down, through the trees – the sound of a torrent, rushing and gurgling over rocks.

Beck beamed. ‘Exactly! Still hungry?’

‘What, after that delicious feast? You bet.’

‘Well then, let’s see if we can get something even better!’

The river came down from the mountains in joyous leaps and bounds, tumbling from ledge to ledge and pool to pool. When the boys came across it, it was flowing purposefully over a wide bed of gravel. Stones and rocks rippled beneath the sparkling water. It was shallower than the river they had forded two days earlier, and – thankfully – calmer. The water’s flow was a quiet hurry, rather than the deadly rush that had presented them with such difficulties.

‘Fish,’ Beck said.

‘Rod and hook?’ Tikaani asked sceptically.

Beck smiled. ‘Who needs ’em? Look.’ He pointed over at the bank where the river flowed around a number of small boulders. The spaces between the rocks made natural little pools. ‘Let’s check to see if there are any fish caught over there. I’ll look over here.’

There weren’t any fish in the pools, which didn’t really surprise him. Fish got caught in pools when the river level fell – for instance in the heat of summer. At this time of year the river would be rising constantly, swollen by the meltwater.

‘Right. For my next trick, ladies and gentlemen, I will require a couple of water bottles.’ Beck delved into his rucksack and dug out two of their spares. They had once held lemonade, but he had poured that out back at the plane (it seemed almost a lifetime ago). The bottles were cylindrical and plastic and transparent, perfect for his needs.

He looked up at Tikaani. ‘Could you see if you can dig out some grubs or worms or something?’ he asked. ‘Bring ’em over here.’

Three days ago, Tikaani would have rewarded him with a blank look or an expression of disgust. Now he just shrugged. ‘Sure.’

Beck used the knife to cut each bottle in half across its width, and sliced off the tip where the cap twisted on. It made the spout just big enough for a fish to get through. Tikaani used a pointed rock to dig into the soil of the river bank and came back a moment later with a couple of writhing worms.

‘Perfect!’

Beck dropped them into the bottom halves of each bottle and forced the top halves in after them, upside down. Now each bottle was something like a double layered cup, with the worms squirming around in the gap between the two halves.

‘There’s nothing fish like more than a bit of worm,’ he told Tikaani. ‘Now we just need to decide where it’s going . . . And that is over here.’

They went back to the rocks they had just been checking, which were on the outside bend of a wide curve in the river.

‘Fish get carried round the bend on the outside,’ Beck explained. He leaped onto the nearest rock from the bank and carefully studied the channels where the water flowed. Yes, he decided, this would do. He knelt down and plunged the first bottle trap into the water, with the open end facing into the current.

Freezing water splashed against his hand but he made sure the trap was wedged into position before letting go.

Then he did the same with the second bottle trap on the other side of the rock. The water stripped the warmth from his arm and cold seemed to gnaw at his bones. He was just grateful that he didn’t have to put more than his hand in.

‘And now we wait . . .’ he said. ‘Stay there and stay still. They can’t see us clearly but they can tell when something moves . . .’

Shapes moved under the water in the pool, graceful and sinuous. They flickered over the gravel bed from shadow to shadow. Beck remained perfectly motionless.

‘Lovely, lovely worm . . .’ He tried to project his thoughts telepathically at the fish. ‘Yum yum yum . . .’

‘How long does it take?’ Tikaani asked.

‘Depends on how hungry they are.’

‘They can’t be as hungry as I am . . .’

Beck smiled. ‘If they won’t take the bait then we can try and drive them in. Get in the water upstream and wade down here. They’ll hear us coming and try to get out of the way.’

‘You mean, get wet again?’

‘Exactly, which is why I don’t want to do it. Or I can try tickling them.’

‘
Huh?
’ Tikaani looked baffled.

Beck grinned. Mindful of the fish in the water, he still didn’t move. ‘You lie on the bank with your hand in the water. You do it very, very slowly so the fish doesn’t notice you’re not just a branch or a piece of weed. You slowly move your hand under the fish . . .’