Lhaten’s left leg lay at an awkward angle. There was blood on his trousers below the knee, and when Christopher ran his fingers over the leg, he encountered something hard beneath the cloth.
The boy’s shin had been fractured in his fall, and the broken bone had cut through the thin layer of skin.
Christopher reset the bone while the boy was still unconscious and prepared strips of bandage from his own undershirt. Using thicker pieces cut from his chuba, the sheepskin coat Lhaten had obtained for him in Kalimpong, he made pads to place between the boy’s legs and then tied them together firmly, having first bandaged the actual wound.
When he had finished, he collapsed beside the boy and fell into a deep sleep. If another avalanche began, that would be too bad:
Christopher could not move another step, even to save his life.
When he finally woke, it was dark. A wind had sprung up, a black wind from nowhere, an old wind full of sadness and unreasoning anger. It was lonely and hungry and malevolent. The whole world was filled with it: sky, mountains, passes, glaciers all the high places, all the footpaths of the damned. It moved through the gully in which they lay, raging with all the fraught intensity of a lost soul.
Because of the wind, Christopher was not at first aware that the boy was groaning. Then he heard him, moaning into the darkness like a dog cast out into the storm. Christopher shifted towards him.
“Lhaten,” he called, trying to make himself heard above the din.
“It’s me, Christopher! Are you all right?”
There was no answer, so he bent down closer, bringing his mouth near the boy’s ear. This time Lhaten responded.
“I’m cold, sahib. And my leg hurts. Someone has tied them together my legs. But my fingers are too cold. I can’t untie them.
And there’s a terrible pain in my left leg.”
Christopher explained what had happened and the boy grew calmer. Then he pulled Christopher close and said, “We’ve got to find shelter, sahib. If we stay in this, we’ll die.”
The boy was right. In their weakened condition, exposure would kill both of them, if not tonight, then tomorrow or the day after. In a matter of hours, Christopher might be too frozen to stir, and once that happened they were both doomed. Fortunately, the enforced rest had done him some good. It was the longest stop he had made in a while, and it had given his body a chance to make some progress with acclimatization. His previous experience at high altitudes had rendered his system better able to cope with the abrupt changes of the past few days, and after his crisis he was beginning to return to normal. Now, the real danger was not height, it was the wind and the rapidity with which it could strip the human body of heat.
Christopher found the large canvas bag that had been slung round Lhaten’s neck and which had still been with him when he was found. His own smaller bag had been lost in the slide. Inside Lhaten’s, he found the tiny trenching tool he had insisted they bring with them. It was small, but sturdy. With luck, it would save their lives.
The wind was still rising as Christopher made his way back to the site of the avalanche, crouching low to prevent himself being picked up and spun over by the gale. There was just enough light to find his way by. Once in the snow, he began to cut out blocks, each about two and a half feet long by a foot wide. When he had cleared a six-foot area in this way, he started to stack the blocks edgeways, forming a wall. It took him an hour to build a crude, rectangular igloo, roofed by slightly thicker, longer blocks.
When he got back to Lhaten, the boy was shivering uncontrollably and showing signs of severe heat-loss. He was moaning again and muttering to himself. When Christopher tried to talk to him, he showed no sign of hearing him. His pulse was sluggish and his breathing slow and shallow. It would be impossible for him to walk to the shelter, even with Christopher’s assistance. If nothing else, the wind would just tilt them over like skittles.
Christopher dragged him. It was only a matter of about ten yards, but the wind and Christopher’s desire not to dislocate the boy’s leg again made it seem like a hundred. After the exertion of building the snow-shelter, his lungs were making it clear they would not stand much more of this treatment. He closed his eyes and hauled. Not now, he prayed, not now.
The words of prayer came easily to him. They came unbidden but necessary to his lips, the child in him praying for the man, the believer for the unbeliever. In the howling wind, like Lhaten with his mantras, in another tongue, in another season of faith, he prayed to the Virgin. He prayed for love, for life, for strength to pull the boy another foot across the wind-torn floor of the valley.
Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death. Holy Mary, Mother of God .. .
The words were torn from him by the wind. He rested briefly, then pulled again. The boy felt heavy, though he should have been light to Christopher. It seemed an age before they made it to the shelter.
Christopher settled the boy in the back of the dug-out, on a blanket taken from his bag. That done, he sealed the entrance with more blocks cut for the purpose, trimming and squaring them as best he could to ensure a close fit. As the last block slotted into place, the noise of the wind was abruptly cut ofT, leaving Christopher and the boy in the midst of silence, as though they had found the eye of the storm and entered it. Christopher filled the gaps in the makeshift construction with loose snow and curled himself up at the boy’s feet. Within minutes, he was asleep again. He dreamed of harvest and abundance in autumn, of golden sheaves and ripening apples on the bough.
That was the night the weather changed. It was the twelfth of January. The night two caravans were trapped on the Nathu-la and a hurricane tore the roof from the temple at Mindroling. The night a meteor was seen in the sky above Tashi Lhumpo.
That was the night the gods stopped playing and came to walk in places they had never walked before.
By morning, the temperature inside the shelter had risen to a comfortable level. Lhaten had recovered consciousness and said he felt all right, except for the pain in his leg, about which Christopher could do nothing. Christopher found some dried yak-dung left by a summer caravan further up the defile and used it to light a fire.
In Tibet, where there were so few trees, it was almost the only fuel.
He had to light the fire inside the shelter, making a hole to let out the smoke. Outside, the wind still raged. At one point, thick, stinging hail hurled itself into the canyon. In a black sky, rolling clouds collided angrily with one another.
He made hot tea and added it to some tsampa in a bowl. There was a little butter in Lhaten’s bag, and Christopher added this to the tsampa mixture. The boy ate it greedily, then drank some lightly buttered tea. In spite of his pain, he was beginning to look more himself. But Christopher knew it was only a matter of time before he began to weaken again. He would have to have proper attention as soon as possible.
“We’ll have to head back as soon as you’re able to walk,” he told the boy.
“I’ll need a splint,” Lhaten said.
“I’ve thought of that. I’m going out now to find my bag and my climbing stick. They’ll be near the spot where I was hit by the avalanche. It should be no trouble to dig them out. The stick can be cut to fit your leg. It won’t be easy, but if you lean on me, we should be able to get down.”
“What about the avalanche? The snow. The canyon must be blocked. I won’t be able to get through. Leave me here. You can get help at Tsontang. If you hurry, you can be back here in a few days.”
But the boy was lying. He knew what way the weather was going. And there was something else, something he kept to himself as well. Just before the avalanche started, he had heard a sharp crack, high up, like a gunshot. Someone had started the snow-slide deliberately. Perhaps Christopher too had heard the crack. But he had not known they were being followed.
“I thought there might be a way round. Even if we have to go up a little to join it. Surely you know of a way.”
Lhaten shook his head.
“I’m sorry, sahib. There’s only one way that’s back the way we came. Every inch of the way. You must start soon if you’re to clear the snow before nightfall.”
Christopher did not answer. There could be no question of his going back without the boy. And he was not sure that he himself could make it through the avalanche. There was only one alternative: they would have to go on into Tibet and make for the nearest village. It would probably mean Christopher’s capture, but at the moment the boy’s life seemed more important to him even than finding his son.
