He made his way over to the granite stub rising from the peak of the hill and pressed himself into a shadowed indent. As he listened the humming got louder, then started to fade as the source of the sound moved away from him. Luc waited for a good half-minute before cautiously leaning out to take a look around.
He saw a mechant, already at the base of the hill and on its way towards the rock hangar. Breathing a sigh of relief that it hadn’t seen him, he made his way back the way he’d come as fast as his tired legs could carry him.
The storm, however, was coming in faster than he had imagined possible. The wind kept rising in pitch until it sounded eerily like the scream of an injured animal. He picked up the pace, very nearly breathless by the time he crested another hill.
<Zelia. Can you hear me? I’m on my way back.>
<Did you see anything?>
<I saw his flier. The Ambassador’s still there.>
He transmitted the data he’d recorded and waited a minute until she came back.
<That’s good work, Luc. Just what we’ve been looking f—>
Her voice broke up into static.
<Zelia?>
He waited for her to respond, but all he could hear was the terrible howl of the wind.
<Zelia! For God’s sake, please respond.>
Still nothing.
He felt tendrils of panic reach out from his spine and wrap themselves around his chest, gently squeezing his heart. He tried again to contact de Almeida, but again heard only silence. It wasn’t outside the bounds of possibility that the storm was causing some kind of signal interference. At least, he hoped that was all it was.
He kept moving, but the storm was coming down fast and it was getting harder to see where he was going. He tried to use the tracking signal from the flier to keep him headed in the right direction, but it failed to respond, as if it wasn’t there any more.
Something was very, very wrong. If he couldn’t find his way back to the flier before the storm really hit, he was in serious trouble.
He relied on his memory to guide him back the way he had come, but after another ten minutes the light was almost gone. The wind whipped thin skeins of snow into his eyes, half-blinding him. Before long it got to the point where he could hardly make any headway at all against the wind.
‘Zelia!’ he yelled into the maelstrom. ‘Goddammit, Zelia, where the hell are you?’
He wondered if her subterfuge had been discovered, and she had decided to cut him loose rather than admit responsibility for bringing him back to Vanaheim against Father Cheng’s wishes. Whatever the reason, if he could get back to the flier he could at least get the hell out of there.
By now, the mountain peaks had disappeared behind flurries of ice and snow raised up by the wind, and he had to fight for each step he took. A part of him wanted to lay down and rest, to be done with it all.
But if he did that, he knew, he’d never get up again. So he pushed on regardless, leaning into the wind, face numb, teeth gritted. The sky had turned almost completely black.
An eternity passed before he stumbled down a steep incline to where he’d left the flier. It wasn’t there.
Looking around wildly, he squinted in the freezing dark. Maybe he was in the wrong place.
Again, he tried to pick up the flier’s tracking signal, but still got no answer.
He turned, and looked back up the slope of the hill he’d just descended. There had been a rockslide some time in the recent past that had scattered a couple of large, distinctive boulders nearby, and he remembered seeing them when he’d disembarked from the flier. He was definitely in the right place.
The wind wrapped itself around him, as if trying to carry him off. He screamed his fury and frustration into a black and turbulent sky, but the words were lost amid the tumult.
There was still one other option open to him. He could head back the way he’d come, make his way to that rock hangar and see if he could find some way inside Javier Maxwell’s prison. It was probably his one chance at staying alive.
He trudged back up the slope he’d just descended, every muscle in his body protesting at the ordeal he was putting them through. His footprints had been almost entirely obscured by the storm. Sometimes the outline of the mountains became briefly visible, allowing him to confirm he was still heading the right way and hadn’t got turned around.
An eternity passed in this way, until his legs felt as stiff and unyielding as frozen rock.
He almost cried with relief when he found his way back to the granite-topped hill, and tried not to think about the many kilometres he still had to go before he reached the hangar. The ridge he was ultimately headed for was, by now, almost entirely invisible amidst the storm.
The night surged around him, howling and tugging at his shoulders like some predator determined to torture him before making its kill.
At some point, he came to the realization he had no idea which direction he was headed in. He turned around,
