“Are you hurt?” I asked. My throat closed and I swallowed convulsively. Tears threatened. I couldn’t take a full breath.
“I don’t think so,” he answered. He sat up slowly and then stood, shaking out his arms and legs. “A little sore, like I have whiplash, but that’s it.”
I felt a wave of relief and put my head in my hands, trying to control myself. When he’d vanished, my heart had stopped. It felt painful for it to start beating again. My lungs were starving.
He crouched next to me. “Very,” he said urgently, “are you hurt?”
I couldn’t control myself anymore. I sucked in a breath and started to sob. He picked me up and put me in his lap. Astrid and Theo backed up a few feet to give me space. I tried to calm down. We didn’t have time for this. But all I could hear was the ice cracking and all I could see was him vanishing.
Owen made shushing sounds and stroked my hair. I burrowed into his coat, scraping my cheek on his zipper. I could hear his heartbeat and I pressed my face there, listening to it beating, for a long minute.
Finally, I felt like I could stop my tears. I was hit by a wave of mortification; I knew my face was red. “Sorry,” I muttered into his wet coat.
“Very,” Owen said gently, “I love you too.”
I looked up at him and he kissed me, urgently and carefully at the same time. “I know. Bad timing. But I’ll be more careful. I promise.”
I stared into his eyes, knowing he saw what I felt too, and then nodded. “Do that.”
He helped me to my feet and as I stood, I smiled at Astrid, “Thank you.”
“Sure,” she said back, looking pink, and then she gestured down at the psoglav. “What’s the plan for this one?”
“I could try and whistle the crevasse back closed,” I said doubtfully, “but this whole field is unstable ice and snow. If I start messing with it, the entire surface could collapse.”
“Okay, I’ll do it,” Astrid said. She pulled her bow from her shoulder and notched an arrow. She fired down into the hole and struck the psoglav straight in its canine eye. It didn’t even have a chance to flinch.
“Nice shot,” I told her and she shrugged. “Thanks.”
We rejoined the other group, walking gingerly and testing the snow for more weak spots.
“There are at least two more besy alive in there,” Rurik said, gesturing to the avalanche field. “But I don’t know if we have the time to wait for them.”
“I agree,” I said. “We’re at least two days’ walk back to the portal. I think we need to leave, now.”
I continued, “After we close the gate, we can come back and track down any survivors. We have to come back anyway to deal with the bodies.”
Everyone agreed and we hurried back up the trail to our camp, where we packed up the tents. We were on the trail home less than an hour later.
Chapter 31
A few hours into our hike back south, I called another rest break and changed into my last pair of dry socks. Theo passed out some granola bars. It was mid-afternoon and I wanted to get much farther up the trail before we stopped for the night.
“Before we get going again, I want to run a couple of ideas past you for closing the portal. These are just preliminary, so think about them and then tonight, let’s discuss pros and cons.”
I ticked off my finger. “First, most of us stay at the portal site, guarding it, while Theo and Julian get back to the house and create another batch of Greek fire. Then, the four of you,” I gestured to the Varangians, “open the gate and go through. Once you’re through, while the gate is still open, we explode it with the Greek fire.”
This got some nods and some skeptical faces too.
“Yes, I know what you’re thinking. Will we have time to actually make the Greek fire? I don’t know. This plan needs 24 hours after we get back to the crater. We may not have that time. Plus, I have no idea if the portal could actually be damaged by an explosion.”
I paused and then ticked off my next finger. “My second idea is to whistle an earthquake and bury the gate under several tons of dirt.” That got silence all around.
“Yes, I think I can do it. When I was whistling the avalanche, I felt the potential. The spark was there and willing. But I have no idea how to control something like that. An earthquake involves tremendous forces. I could easily lose control and then we’d be buried right along with the gate.”
I continued, “Plus, if the gate is open at the time, which I think it has to be, I risk the earthquake spreading to your world as well,” I told Rurik.
“So those are my best ideas. Let’s discuss them more tonight, or if you have any ideas, please plan on sharing them too.”
We shouldered our packs and started back along the trail.
“Bury it, huh?” Owen asked. “Like in Stargate?”
I laughed up at him. “Exactly. It worked for those Egyptians for thousands of years, right?”
THAT night, as we sat around the fire and I steamed several pairs of socks dry, I listened to everyone’s opinions.
The consensus seemed to be a vote for the Greek fire bomb. It was less risky, despite the fact that we weren’t sure if it would work.
“If it doesn’t work,” Julian noted, “we can fall back on the earthquake idea.”
I agreed that made sense, but when I met Rurik’s eyes, I knew that he felt what I felt. We weren’t going to have time. Still, we could try it.
I borrowed one of Bard’s pouches to melt some snow for water. Bard shared his stew and I got the Varangians to try my MRE
