Stirling, S. M. - Emberverse - 04 - The Sunrise Lands by Stirling S. M

Author:Stirling, S. M. [Stirling, S. M.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780451461704
Publisher: Roc
Published: 2013-08-23T04:00:00+00:00

The High Cascades, Central Oregon

April 20, CY23/2021 A.D.

“We’re not moving fast enough,” Ingolf said, hitching his thumbs into the straps of his pack. His teeth wanted to chatter. It was an effort of will not to be depressed—the sensations of being wet and cold were similar enough that it was easy to let the one slip into the other. And another effort not to snap at Rudi’s indecent cheerfulness.

White flakes were falling out of the sky, drifting down silently between the tall dark green firs and hemlocks, muffling sound, making even the smells of sap and wet earth seem faded. The flakes that landed on him were big and fluffy and a little wet, the sort you got at the beginning and end of winter back home as well. So far they were sticking on the branches but not much on the ground, and the rocky dirt of the game path was turning to rocks mixed with cold mud. But the temperature was falling with the sun, somewhere up above the gray ceiling that was coming closer and closer. The breath of the three men steamed in the cold air, and Garbh was walking along with her head down and a white scruff starting to build up on her black-and-gray fur.

The clouds already hid the mountaintops, and now the thin air was wet at the same time. Luckily the pathway ran along the slope here rather than up and down the forty degree mountainside. You could trust a couple of generations of deer to find the easiest way through.

“At least you two know how to handle cold weather in these mountains,” Ingolf said. “Cold winters I’m at home with, but I was born a lowlander and I nearly got killed coming over the Cascades last year.”

Something in the way Rudi’s shoulders set ahead of him made him go on a little sharply: “You are experi enced at handling winter weather here, right? It’s only a couple of days’ walk from where you live .”

Rudi stopped; behind Ingolf, Edain did as well. “No, I’m not,” Rudi said shortly, turning to face him.

“No body comes up this high except in summer, usually. Not even bandits.”

“No point,” Edain said helpfully. “The big game all migrates down to the foothills or the valley in winter-time. And these are wet mountains, here on the western side, as wet as wet can be.”

Rudi chimed in: “They get a lot of snow, twenty, thirty feet in a winter, sometimes more. And it can happen right up until June.”

“Yeah, I can see that,” Ingolf said dryly. “If we really didn’t want anyone to notice us, this was the way to come, by God.”

He looked up the boulder-strewn slope where the old granulated drifts were still waist deep, the surface rap idly disappearing under the new fall. Off to the right a fair-sized river was rushing unseen in a deep cleft, hard enough with the first of the spring flood that sometimes it shook the rock under his feet. The temperature was dropping faster now, and the snow fell more thickly.

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