'I'll keep you company.'
'You don't need to.'
'Four eyes are better than two. And it gets lonely on your own.'
Veitch eyed Church curiously for a moment and then nodded. They sat on the leather provision bags while Veitch stoked the fire until the flames licked up again. As they warmed, conversation came easily and after a while Church realised how much it was like the early days of their friendship. He could see that Veitch felt it too, but neither of them spoke of it.
When dawn broke, they roused the others, who emerged stamping their feet and complaining to fight for space around the fire. They ate a quick breakfast of more dry biscuits, and then Veitch and Church ventured up to the ridge. The snow was disturbed and large tracks led off across the landscape.
'What do you reckon?' Veitch said.
'I don't get it,' Church replied. 'The tracks change. See here — these look like some kind of animal print, these are more like a reptile and these…' He paused at a series of circular holes in the snow disappearing into the distance, unable to find the words. 'Whatever, it looks like it was watching us.'
Veitch peered towards the horizon. 'It's not here now. Maybe it thought we were too much trouble for a snack.'
'Those black clouds look full of snow,' Church noted. 'We'd better get moving before it hits. We're going to freeze to death out here if it gets any colder.'
Church slid down the bank to the camp. Veitch inspected the tracks for a moment longer, casting his gaze across the expanse of snow, and then he followed Church, troubled without knowing why.
2
At noon, the storm struck with a ferocious force that battered them this way and that, making any progress difficult. The blizzard was so intense that the ground and sky merged into one sheet of white that left their senses reeling. Laura was worst hit by the white-out-induced vertigo and she pitched forwards into the deepening drifts at regular intervals, cursing loudly as her frustration and anger grew.
Each time Hunter helped her to her feet, only for her to shake him off furiously. 'I'm a hothouse plant,' she shouted. 'I'm not meant for these conditions.'
'Yeah, you're just a frail little flower,' he said lightly, but he was worried about her. The strange state imposed upon her by Cernunnos was still a mystery and he had no idea how the cold would affect her, although he was concerned by the blue tinge growing around her mouth and eyes.
He struggled over to Church and said, 'I'm worried about Laura. She's not coping well with this weather. We need to get to shelter.'
Church pulled the scarf from his mouth and shouted over the gale, 'Okay, if we can find somewhere, but it's impossible to see anything in this. At least we're moving uphill. There might be more shelter when we get into the mountains.'
'If we do,' Hunter yelled back. Frustrated, he turned towards Laura and noticed that he could now see only seven other black smudges in the swirling white. 'Someone's missing,' he called to Church. 'Get everyone huddled together, now!'
Once the group had packed into a tight knot, they realised it was Jack who was missing. 'He was right next to me a minute ago,' Miller said as he hugged Virginia close to him.
'If he wanders off, we'll never find him,' Tom snapped. 'Why can't you organise things better?' He wiped the snow off his spectacles.
'If we all start looking for him, we'll never find our way back together,' Hunter said. 'Let me go. I've experienced worse than this in Nepal.'
'How are you going to find your way back to us?' Church asked. 'The footprints are filling up quickly.'
'I'm like an animal — I have an unerring sense of direction.'
'Don't be an idiot,' Laura said, but before she could stop him, he disappeared into the blizzard.
Rapidly, he followed their footprints back and then searched for Jack's outlying track. Church was right — their trail was already becoming a ghost, and he guessed he would only have a few minutes before he lost his way back to the group.
He called Jack's name, but the wind stole his voice only a few feet from his mouth. After a moment, he came across a set of tracks that peeled off from the main body of the others. Keeping his head low, he pressed on into the face of the gale.
He hadn't gone far when his senses picked up movement nearby.
'Jack,' he called again. Even as the name left his mouth, he realised any movement he might have perceived came from something much larger than a teenage boy.
Another shape loomed and was gone in the blink of an eye. This time he glimpsed something black, dense and powerful before the white folded around it.
A second shape, this time to his left, though blurred as if in a state of flux. Another, and another. They were all around, but they didn't appear to be circling him. Perhaps they were as snow-blind as he was.
How many? he thought.
Stock-still, he listened and watched for any sign of movement. But then his attention fell on Jack's rapidly blurring footprints, and he realised he would lose the trail if he waited too long. Without a second thought, he drove on, fast and low.
He'd barely gone twenty feet when the ground shook with a thunderous approach behind him. Without looking back, he threw himself to one side, burying himself deep in a drift. He had the impression of something almost eight feet tall crashing by, a glimpse of gleaming, oily black skin, and then it was gone.
Hunter moved quickly back onto the trail. More of the beasts converged upon the location, the ground shaking from their movement, their shapes passing through the intense whirl of white like massive ships in a sea fog.
One of them came out of the blizzard directly at him. A sword-like limb with a serrated edge slashed, but he ducked just beneath it and kept running. It turned rapidly and pursued — too late, for the snow had already swallowed him.
The footprints he was following were more defined: he was closing on Jack. If, by some slight chance, he was still alive. The rising ground crested a ridge and descended into a hollow filled with boulders. Scree shifted under the snow beneath his boots. The rocks allowed him some cover as he ducked and raced amongst them. Occasionally, the black creatures loomed over him, sparks flying as their limbs scraped against the stone. Each time he glimpsed one, his perception changed: he thought they were giant insects, then lizards, then something resembling a crab crossed with a piece of machinery.
And then the footprints ahead disappeared.
He ranged around, hearing the beasts crash closer amidst low, rumbling noises that he guessed was some form of communication. He had convinced himself that Jack had already been killed when he heard the boy's quiet voice: 'Hunter.'
Ducking down, Hunter found Jack pressed into a crevice in the rock wall, beneath an overhanging boulder. The boy's face was as white as the snow, his eyes ranging with a deep-seated fear. Hunter quickly pressed himself into the crevice, shielding Jack's shaking body from the roaming creatures.
'Nice spot — room with a view,' he whispered. 'Don't worry. We're going to be all right.'
'What are they?' Jack said.
'Whatever they are, they're not the smartest or they'd have methodically tracked us down by now.'
One of the beasts tore past their hiding pace. Jack flinched, then calmed himself. 'I'm all right.'
'I know you are.' Delving into his pack, Hunter found the silver-scaled, brass-taloned Balor Claw.
'What's that?' Jack hissed.
'A weapon.'
'You can't use it here! There are too many of them. You won't last a minute.'
Hunter couldn't tell Jack he had it ready for a last stand, to take one or two of the creatures with them. 'I'm just keeping it where I can see it,' he said with a grin.
