lovely and anxious to prove herself by the bracelet. She had proven herself-but not by the bracelet she wore. That, more than anything else, had led him here.
Strange, that the three should meet like that. Had it been just the two men, the empire might even now be uniting them. Had the girl appeared before or after, he might have taken her for a night and gone on, never missing her. But it had been a triple union, and the male empire had been sown with the female seed of destruction even as it sprouted. It was not the particular girl who mattered, but the presence at the inception. Why had she come then!
He closed his eyes and saw the staff, blindingly swift, blocking him, striking him, meeting him everywhere he turned, no instrument of defense but savage offense; the length of it across his body, the end of it flying at his face, fouling his rope, outmaneuvering him, beating down his offense and his defense....
And now the mountain, the only honorable alternative. He had lost to the better man.
He slept, knowing that even victory would not have been the solution. Hehad been in the wrong not totally, but wrong on balance.
On the third day the snows began. He wrapped the last of the protective clothing around him and kept moving. Stupid clung to him, seemingly not too uncomfortable. Sos scooped up handfuls of the white powder and crammed them into his mouth for water, though the stuff numbed his cheeks and tongue and melted grudgingly down into almost nothing. By nightfall he was ploughing through drifts several inches deep and had to step carefully to avoid treacherous pitfalls that did not show in the leveled surface.
There was no shelter. He lay on his side, facing away from the wind, comfortable enough in the protective wrappings. Stupid settled down beside his face, shivering, and suddenly he realized that the bird had no way to forage anymore. Not in the snow. There would be no living insects here.
He dug a handful of bread out of the pack and held a crumb to Stupid's beak; but there was no response. 'You'll starve,' he said with concern, but did not know what to do about it. He saw the feathers shaking, and finally took off his left glove, cupped the bird in his bare warm palm, and held his gloved right hand to the back of the exposed one. He would have to make sure he didn't roll or move his hands while sleeping, or he would crush the fragile body.
He woke several times in the night as gusts of cold snow slapped his face and pried into his collar, but his left hand never moved. He felt the bird shivering from time to time and cupped it close' to his chest, hoping for a suitable compromise between warmth and safety. He had too much strength and Stupid was too small; better to allow some shivering than to....
Stupid seemed all right in the morning, but Sos knew this could not last. The bird was not adapted to snow; even his coloration was wrong. 'Go back down,' he urged. 'Down. Where it is warm.- Insects.' He threw the tiny body into the air, downhill, but to no avail; Stupid spread his wings and struggled valiantly with the cold, harsh air, uphill, and would not leave.
Yet, Sos asked himself as he took the bird in hand again and continued climbing, was this misplaced loyalty any more foolish than Sol's determination to retain a daughter he had not sired? A daughter? Or Sos's own adherence to a code of honor already severely violated? Men were irrational creatures; why not birds too? If separation were so difficult, they would die together.
A storm came up that fourth day. Sos drove onward, his face mImbed in the slashing wind. He had goggles, tinted to protect his eyes, and he put them on now, but the nose and mouth were still exposed. When he put his hand up he discovered a beard of ice superimposed upon his natural one. He tried to knock it off, but knew it would form again.
Stupid flew up as he stumbled and waved his hands. Sos guided the bird to his shoulder, where at least there was some stability. Another slip like that and the bird would be smashed, if he continued to carry it in his hand.
The wind stabbed into his clothing. Earlier he had been sweating, finding the wrappings cumbersome; now the moisture seemed to be caking into ice against his body. That had been a mistake; he should have governed his dress and pace so that he never perspired. There was nowhere for the moisture to go, so of course it eventually froze. He had learned this lesson too late.
This, then, was the death of the mountain. Freezing in the blizzardly upper regions or falling into some concealed crevasse. . . he had been watching the lay of the land, but already he had slipped and fallen several times, and only luck had made his errors harmless. The cold crept in through his garments, draining his visibility, and the eventual result was clear. No person had ever returned from the mountain, if the stories were true, and no bodies had ever been discovered or recovered. No wonder!
Yet this was not the kind of mountain he had heard about elsewhere. After the metal jumble near the base- how many days ago?-there had been no extreme irregularities, no jagged edges, sheer cliffs or preposterous ice bridges. He had seen no alternate ranges or major passes when the sky was clear. The side of this mountain tilted up fairly steadily, fairly safely,
