White Silence by Ginjer Buchanan

Author:Ginjer Buchanan [Buchanan, Ginjer]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fantasy
ISBN: 9780446556392
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Published: 1999-02-01T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter 8

We left the valley in the first week of December, Duncan thought to himself, composing his next Argonaut’s report as the two sleds raced through the snow-covered emptiness. He had the team led by Vixen. She was full of energy today, leaping through the fresh powder, pulling the other dogs along in her wake. They’d been running beside Sam and his sled, but now they had drawn ahead.

We were fortunate, he continued, to find that the passes were not yet blocked. We made excellent time through the mountains. We are now well on our way north and a bit west toward Fort McPherson.

He whistled and pulled on the traces. Ahead, the ground sloped slightly. At the bottom of the slope lay the frozen surface of a narrow river. The smooth ice was dusted with snow.

Duncan guided the sled to the place where the snow was disturbed by the tracks of several deerlike animals. Vixen barely slowed her pace as they skimmed across.

He was just calculating that they might well reach McPherson by December 25, when he heard a terrible chilling sound. Thunder, muted rolling thunder, mixed with a sharp snap/crack. It was ice breaking, he knew. Yet it sounded like wood in the fireplace, green wood popping and sparking as it burned.

He braked the sled, pulling the dogs to a stop. But they were still moving as Danny threw himself off to the side, and rolled clumsily to his feet. He gave a strangled cry as he rose.

“Hugh! Sweet Jaysus, Hugh!”

As he turned and began running through the snow, back toward the river they had just crossed, Duncan had a fleeting thought that he had never heard the young Immortal swear before.

Danny was flailing in the deeper snow, but Duncan kept to the path just broken by the sled’s passage. Without snowshoes, it was a heavy task, but he had no time to strap them on.

The white world was full of other sounds now: Danny behind him screaming Fitzcairn’s name over and over; the yelps of the dogs that had been pulling the second sled, as they struggled vainly to break free of their traces; Sam’s guttural voice, crying for help in a mixture of Siwash and English.

He did not hear the familiar tones of the man he had known for three centuries, the still-detectable British accent that grew more clipped in times of excitement.

As Duncan got closer, he slowed. If you examined the seemingly solid expanse of ice closely, you could just tell where the water ended and the land began. The sled had fallen through a good fifteen feet out, the ice beneath breaking up like spun glass. The flailing of dogs and men had widened the hole, and the rushing torrent of water beneath could now be seen clearly. And heard.

Cracks extended out in all directions. Even as Duncan watched, another ragged chunk of ice broke off and was swept away, sucked under the surface and borne downstream.

The ice held for the deer, he thought. It held for me.

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