Mother of Snow (2)
Unlike the herd of musk oxen, the wolves were few in number.
There were six in all, at least as far as he could see. Compared with the fifty-odd musk oxen, calves included, it was a pitifully small pack.
But the wolves, starved as they were, didn’t seem even slightly intimidated by the difference.
“Wolf hunts aren’t something you see every day. Yes, yes, I’d say you’re surely under Skarma’s favor.”
“Is that so?”
“Of course it is.”
The wolves didn’t rush in recklessly.
They trailed the herd at a distance, watching and waiting for the right moment.
It was strangely familiar.
The jaguars Lawrence had seen in Ulbazar Swamp behaved much the same way.
“For wolves, they’re awfully cautious.”
“Not just cautious—quick and cunning. They won’t show their claws until they’ve got a sure chance.”
The pack chose the rear of the herd as its target.
Two musk oxen had drifted away from the main group.
It looked as though the calf, worn down by the wolves’ pursuit, had fallen behind and been separated from the herd.
At last, the wolves moved.
Their first target wasn’t the exhausted calf, but its mother.
The hunt began.
The wolves lunged at the cow.
Even with their ferocious momentum bearing down on her, the mother did not retreat.
She counterattacked with her horns and hind hooves.
But once the wolves drew blood, they did not slow.
Red spray scattered across the snowy slope.
A mournful bellow rang out.
Badly wounded, the mother cow could no longer hold out and was driven back.
The wolves didn’t miss that opening. They went for the calf.
Separated from its mother, the calf never had a chance.
“It’s over.”
The wolves had succeeded.
The calf, soaked in blood, was reduced to prey in an instant.
The mother’s judgment had been swift.
The herd had long since abandoned the pair once the wolves got their jaws into them.
Hobbling on her injured body, the mother cow stumbled back toward the herd.
And she never returned.
“No way… she abandoned her calf?”
“Better than letting them both die, wouldn’t you say?”
Sadly, Pete was right.
The calf abandoned by its mother soon stopped moving.
“……”
The actual hunt lasted no more than a few minutes.
Three had died in total.
Two wolves and one calf.
It seemed excessive, considering the wolves had succeeded in the hunt.
But those wolves would never think that after they’d feasted on blood and flesh.
What surprised him came after that.
One by one, snow hares began appearing out of the drift.
And astonishingly, they started nibbling away at the wolves’ corpses.
“Snow hares….”
“Hm? Something wrong with that?”
“No. I just didn’t know they ate wolf carcasses.”
“Don’t be fooled by appearances. Snow hares are omnivores by nature. They gobble up every scrap left behind after a hunt.”
The snow hares were bloodied little things, their tiny mouths moving as they chewed.
Against the dark shadow of the mountains, the gleam in their eyes was downright eerie.
Nature was merciless.
The struggle to survive was equal for every living thing.
The two of them left that scene behind and moved on.
Following the tracks left by the musk oxen, they continued uphill.
The light snowfall made the slope easier to climb than usual.
“We won’t have to worry about a blizzard today. Animals are more sensitive to changes in the weather than we are.”
“That’s a relief. We can make a little better time today, then.”
Though they kept putting one foot in front of the other, the pace of the climb with Pete was not especially fast.
They had to be as careful as possible.
Truthfully, a little snow didn’t make it impossible to walk.
The mountain path was treacherous, yes, but Lawrence had come prepared. He’d brought everything he needed.
The problem was the hidden gaps beneath the snow.
“…!?”
The moment he stepped forward, the ground gave way beneath him.
No sound came out.
As he was sucked into the opening, Pete caught him.
“Lawrence!”
Not by the hand.
What Pete had grabbed was the white scarf.
Before the fabric could tear, Lawrence managed to seize Pete’s hand and haul himself up.
“You all right?”
“Yes. Yes… thank you, Pete.”
“Glad you’re safe. You always have to watch out for crevasses.”
A crevasse.
Lawrence carefully looked at the gap he’d almost fallen into.
A black, black hole.
Buried under snow, it had been impossible to see.
The crack opened between the glaciers was nothing but darkness.
If you fell in, not even the body would be recovered.
Cedric’s warning had been no exaggeration.
What would have happened if he hadn’t had the scarf the seer gave him?
“……”
He felt as though the blood in his body had frozen solid.
Staring at the ragged scarf, Lawrence shivered.
“Think you can keep going? Or would you rather stop for today?”
“I can keep going. No— I have to. The snowfall’s light for once.”
Slapping both cheeks with his hands, Lawrence forced himself to his feet.
He couldn’t afford to let his guard down.
But contrary to his will, the higher they climbed, the foggier his head became.
It wasn’t just the cold.
His ears felt stuffed up, and there was an odd sensation, as though his whole body had gone strangely buoyant.
Pete said something to him, but it didn’t feel real.
How long had he walked in silence, staring only at that back?
When he came to, blue sky was overhead.
A hand with no thumb moved up and down in front of his eyes.
“Pete?”
“Glad you’re awake. We’ll rest here today.”
Pain seeped through the dull haze.
The back of his head throbbed. Somehow, he’d fallen without even realizing it.
Lawrence tried to get up, but Pete stopped him.
“Don’t get up. Lie still.”
“What happened?”
“First, wipe the blood off.”
“Blood?”
Pete pointed at his nose.
Lawrence wiped the back of his hand across it.
It came away smeared with a fair amount of blood.
“Have some of this too.”
“Thank you.”
The tea had a savory aroma rising from it.
After drinking the warm stcha, his head cleared a little.
Pete used uru to build a shelter out of snow and ice.
“There’s an old saying. If you can build an ice house by yourself with uru, then you’re ready to start a family.”
“So making a house is considered proof of adulthood?”
“That’s right. We only stay in one place for limited stretches, after all. Since we’re always on the move, the least a person can do is build his own home.”
He packed snow, shaved ice, and shaped the blocks into neat little squares.
The stacked ice walls, cut like diced pieces, rose one layer at a time.
Just being sheltered from the biting wind made it easier to breathe.
Lawrence stood and leaned against the ice house.
He let out a slow breath, then drew another deep one in, and released it again.
He closed his eyes and counted in his head.
One, two, three.
His pounding heart settled, and the nausea in his stomach eased considerably.
“Do you know what sickness you’re suffering from?”
Pete, having finished the ice house, came over.
“Skarma, isn’t it?”
“Aye. That’s when Skarma gets into your head.”
Skarma entering the mind.
That was the warning Pete had given him before they set out for the Gangama Mountains.
It would leave him unable to do anything, and he would die.
Experiencing it for himself, he realized that warning hadn’t been exaggerated in the slightest.
“Once Skarma gets into your head, there’s nothing even the finest Sherpa can do. You just have to wait for it to pass.”
“I never thought I’d experience it myself.”
His head still felt hazy.
This was not something he could brush aside lightly.
It was an unknown symptom with no known cause and no known cure.
In this state, he couldn’t even handle magic.
He was absurdly lucky he hadn’t run into a monster.
No—he didn’t even need a monster.
Had even a pack of hungry wolves appeared, he would have died helplessly.
“The traveler of the stars is still only human, after all. Don’t worry. It’s dangerous if two people get it at once, but right now you’re the only one Skarma’s taken hold of.”
Trust me, Pete said, thumping his own chest.
“I’m sorry. The weather’s finally good, but I’ve grounded us here because of me.”
“What’s there to apologize for? You’re not a Sherpa, so it’s only natural. If anything, you’ve done well to make it this far. Just getting here without falling into a crevasse was an achievement in itself.”
Pete kindled a fire with whale oil.
He took the reindeer meat wrapped in leaves from his bag and buried it in the ground.
The heat of the fire seeped down into the soil.
A while later, a mouthwatering aroma drifted through the ice house.
“Can you eat?”
“In a situation like this, it feels kind of ridiculous to be hungry.”
“If you can feel hunger, that’s a good sign. Means you’re much better than before.”
Lawrence accepted the reindeer meat Pete handed him.
Its leafy fragrance lifted away as the well-roasted meat was revealed.
He ate one piece.
Then, after finishing the two more pieces Pete offered him, Lawrence let out a satisfied sigh.
“Thanks for the meal.”
“Tomorrow, we’d better take it slow and account for your condition. We also need to stop by the supply cache on the way… Ah. There was a storehouse nearby that kept narwhal meat, wasn’t there? You can look forward to tomorrow.”
“You mean the narwhal you mentioned before?”
“Mm. I think you’ll like it. It’s been stored a while, so it’s not quite as fresh as when it was first caught, but it’s still a proper delicacy.”
It would be a lie to say he wasn’t looking forward to it.
Most dishes in the north were made of meat.
There were times when he longed for potatoes or other vegetables, but honestly, being able to eat meat to his heart’s content was a pleasure.
“How much farther to the Wall now?”
“Well. We’ll probably need another month.”
“It feels like we’ve already walked a long way. Still so far, huh?”
“It isn’t far in distance. You could say we’re almost there.”
Pete, using snow to clean his teeth, went on.
“But from here on, the terrain gets rougher. If we could climb the ice wall, a few days would be enough, but we can’t do that, so we’ve got to take the long way around.”
“Climb an ice wall? What’s that?”
“Like you people say, a castle wall, right? Just think of a wall of ice like a fortress wall standing in front of you. Then you climb it like this.”
Pete mimed placing both hands and feet against the wall of the ice house.
“If you can climb an ice wall, you can reach the Wall in just a few days.”
“Can you do it, Pete?”
“Of course. Why else would I be a Sherpa?”
“That’s incredible.”
He didn’t say that lightly.
Lawrence knew full well that Pete’s hands were not whole.
Even with several fingers missing, he could still climb an ice wall.
No matter how he looked at it, it was beyond common sense.
“If Saint Wall is on top of an ice wall, then the Watchers must all know how to climb ice walls too.”
“No. If that were the case, there’d be an enormous number of deaths.”
As if he were hearing nonsense, Pete shook his head.
“So the Watchers go around the mountain every time?”
“Hard to say. I don’t know that much about it. It’s not often we run into Watchers in the mountains. But climbing an ice wall isn’t something just anyone can do. And more to the point, they probably wouldn’t have the tools. Even with tools, it’s dangerous. Go up a vertical ice wall with nothing but your bare body and you expect to live?”
That would be difficult even for a Sherpa, Pete added.
“Get some sleep for today. Once you’ve had a rest, you’ll feel much better. Tomorrow, think of it as an early start.”
“Understood. When things are hard, sleeping’s the best thing you can do.”
“Hah. Still have enough strength to joke, I see. Then tomorrow won’t be a problem.”
At that answer, Lawrence smiled faintly.
* * *
The next day.
After spending half the day climbing, the ice wall Pete had mentioned finally appeared.
“You expect me to climb that?”
“That’s right.”
“Really? Even with tools, this is possible?”
“Of course. It may not look it, but there are places where you can rest along the way.”
It was so high it made a castle wall look like a joke.
The slope was not just steep; it was nearly vertical.
Staring up at that endless height, Lawrence clicked his tongue.
“I can’t even imagine it. Even if I could climb it, I can’t begin to guess how many hours it’d take.”
“Hours? Wa-ha-ha. Not hours. Be precise now. Days.”
Pete corrected him immediately.
“This isn’t something you climb in a single day. You have to eat, sleep, and rest as you go.”
“Sleep while climbing an ice wall? Are you making fun of me?”
“That’s the very thing Sherpas do when they’re at their best. If you look closely at the wall, you’ll see frozen patches mixed in with the stone. In places like that, we hook in ropes and make temporary resting spots. That’s how we climb, stealing a bit of sleep here and there.”
“……”
He could hardly imagine it.
The reason he couldn’t picture it was that he had never once seen such a thing.
“You make a place to sleep as you go….”
“Exactly. We weave ropes and make a bed of them. Tie yourself in so you won’t fall.”
“Not perfectly, mind you,” Pete added.
“Wait. What if you fall asleep and drop?”
“What do you think happens? You die.”
“Pardon?”
Lawrence asked back at the blunt reply.
“I said you die. Think about it. Even if the ground below is snow, if you fall from an ice wall, you’ll die without even managing a scream. The only silver lining is that you died in your sleep. At least it won’t hurt, so I suppose that might be a blessing in its own way.”
“……”
Watching Pete laugh, wah-ha-ha, Lawrence shook his head.
Was he serious? Was he joking?
Even after climbing the mountain together, this was one side of Pete Lawrence still couldn’t make sense of.
“Still, now that you’ve come this far, we’re almost there. From here on out, you’re in Watcher territory. Come on, just a little farther. The Wall’s right in front of us now.”
“That’s the best news I’ve heard all day.”
He shifted his gaze upward along the ice wall.
Unless his eyes were deceiving him, some kind of structure could be seen hanging there.
Saint Wall.
The great barrier that protected the north stood there ahead of them.