Way of the Wolf (7 page)

Beck stood on the river bank and stared across in dismay.

Crystal-clear water came down from the mountains and flowed over a bed of stone and gravel. It didn’t look that fast. In fact, it looked quite inviting. The water rippled and sun sparkled off the wavelets.

The river was only about fifty metres wide. He thought it might as well have been fifty miles. A branch swept by, turning slowly in the torrent. It shot past Beck at the speed of the average cyclist.

Beck clenched one fist, then the other, and then hit himself on both sides of the head at once. ‘
Duh!
’

They had made good progress. Not a sign of any bears, and even the wolf shape hadn’t shown itself again. Beck had set up a brisk but steady pace through the wilderness, always keeping one eye on how Tikaani was managing. If the other boy found the pace too punishing, Beck was prepared to let up . . . a little. It wasn’t Tikaani’s uncle who was slowly dying in a shelter by a rock, waiting for rescue. But Tikaani, once he had found his stride, had kept up all the way.

And then this. Beck stared in frustration at the river, and bit his lip, and then kicked a nearby stone.

‘Hey.’ Tikaani looked at him sideways. ‘You knew the river was here, right?’

‘Yeah, I knew,’ Beck said dully. ‘The map and the GPS both have it.’

‘And . . . ?’

‘They don’t show how big it is. I was really hoping for something smaller . . . and if it wasn’t spring, it would be.’

The river was swollen with meltwater from the mountains. During the winter it would be frozen. During the summer it would be an idly trickling stream. Right here, right now, it was the biggest it got all year.

And it was going to be much harder to cross than he had expected. It wasn’t exactly a raging torrent. It wasn’t foaming white water. But there was still so much of it. Calm, implacable and ready to sweep unwary travellers away at a moment’s notice.

‘So . . .’ Tikaani raised an eyebrow at the river. ‘We go along it?’

‘I wish.’ Beck scowled at the water. ‘Yes, if we were lost, then following the river would be exactly right. Rivers go somewhere. You find towns and people if you follow them.’

‘But,’ Tikaani pointed out, ‘we’re not lost.’

‘Nope.’ Beck agreed. ‘We know exactly where we are.’ He took out the GPS and reached into his pants.

Tikaani looked on, frowning in puzzlement. ‘And rummaging in our underpants will help us
how
exactly?’ he demanded.

Beck grinned and showed his friend the batteries he’d retrieved. ‘These need to be kept warm,’ he explained. ‘The colder they are, the quicker they lose their juice, you see.’ He slotted the batteries into place, switched on the GPS and examined the screen. ‘This river cuts along the foot of the mountains for miles before it heads for the sea,’ he remarked. ‘If we followed it until we got somewhere, it would take us so long that we might as well just go back to Uncle Al and wait.’

‘So we . . . what? Wade?’ asked Tikaani.

‘’S right,’ Beck confirmed as he disassembled the GPS again. He walked right down to the water’s edge and paced slowly along it, hands on hips. His scowl swept up and down the river. He wanted exactly the right spot. ‘We wade.’

‘Hey!’ Tikaani yelped. ‘I was joking!’

‘Unfortunately, I wasn’t . . .’

With a gentler river, Beck thought, he might have tried to build a raft. But even if he did build one now, it would just be swept away in the current. Wading was the only answer. Beck could already see it would be more than a paddle. Rolling their trousers up to their knees and just walking across didn’t quite cover it.

‘So . . .’ Tikaani watched him pace along the bank. ‘Exactly what are you doing now?’

‘Looking for somewhere to cross.’

It was going to be touch and go – something Beck
didn’t
say out loud. Cold water took your strength – and there was the danger of underwater obstacles . . . They should give themselves the advantage of finding the best place to cross.

But it didn’t take long for Beck to conclude that every point on the bank had pluses and minuses that cancelled each other out. He could choose a nice narrow bit, but there the current was strong and the water came thundering through. Then again, he could choose a wider bit where the current was gentler, but it would take longer to cross. He didn’t want to go too far up- or downstream because that would just take them off course.

Finally Beck sat down on a rock and started to unlace his boots. ‘We’ll do it from here,’ he announced. ‘I’ll go first. Make sure the way’s safe.’

‘’Kay,’ Tikaani grumbled. ‘And if you get swept away I’ll dive in and make sure you don’t end up as seal food floating out to sea.’

Beck shrugged, then grinned. ‘Or just go another way?’

First he took off all the clothes he could spare and thrust them into his rucksack. He made a protesting Tikaani do the same, though with just one layer on it was suddenly a lot colder. They each kept on a shirt and their trousers. It wouldn’t keep them warm or dry, but it would be protection if the current threw them against a stone. Beck also put his sockless feet back into his boots and relaced them. The last thing he needed was to gash a foot or twist an ankle.

‘And trust me,’ he said as he tied the last knot, smiling up at Tikaani’s sour face. ‘Putting on dry socks after this will be the best feeling
ever
.’

They wrapped their rucksacks up in their coats for waterproofing, and used their home-made ropes to tie off the arms and the open ends. Finally Beck showed Tikaani how to hoist his rucksack right up and tie it so that it hung behind his neck, not at his waist as it usually did. Last of all he did the same for himself.

‘Here goes nothing,’ he said, forcing a smile for Tikaani’s benefit. And he turned and walked into the river.

With the first step, his feet merely felt cold. Then there was a trickle into his boots, followed a half-second later by a flood of ice-cold water. He winced, but kept walking. Then the water was right over his boots and working its way up to his knees.

The cold ate into him like an army of ants gnawing on his bones. Even though this was meltwater, which meant it was warmer than ice, it was still freezing. The force of the river was like an invisible noose around his ankles, trying to pull them from under him.

He made sure he was side-on to the current, offering the least resistance to the water, and checking for approaching hazards like logs. The river flowed from his right to his left, so the bow wave where the water hit his right-hand side was almost up to his waist. The cold seemed to paralyse his lungs so that he could hardly breathe.

‘You’re doing great,’ Tikaani called.

‘Th-a-nks,’ Beck croaked, not looking back. ‘Never better.’

That time in Colombia, he and his friends had forded a river. They had used vines from the jungle as support ropes so that no one would be swept away. But there were no vines here and the homemade ropes tying up the rucksacks weren’t long enough. If the current caught him, there would be no fighting it.

And so every step had to be carefully planned. He could feel the water-smoothed rocks shift beneath his feet. At least with two legs and one stick he had three anchor points under the water to hold him steady. He always made sure that two were firm before moving the third. Every time he moved a numb foot forward he had to make sure it was planted on solid ground before he put his weight on it.

He knew he had about ten minutes before hypothermia set in: his body would be losing heat faster than it was making it. Right now, every part of his body wanted to turn round and run back to Tikaani. But that would achieve nothing, except that he would be cold, wet and still on the wrong side. There was no point in losing all that body heat for nothing.

So, ten minutes to get across this torrent . . .

The cold was chewing its way up his body. It had reached his hips, his stomach, his ribs. Breathing was actively painful now. He had to force each gasp in and out of his lungs –
huh! huh! huh!
The deeper he went, the more of his body there was for the current to work on.

The water was now up to his armpits. He held his elbows out and tilted his head back to keep his chin dry. He could feel his rucksack bobbing madly against the back of his head. He hoped it would be staying dry in its waterproof wrapping.

Now the biting chill had gone – his body was just numb, apart from an ache deep inside his bones. There was so little feeling that it took a few more steps to realize –
the water was going down!

Beck glanced down to confirm it. Yes, with each step the water level was dropping a little further down his chest. He was past halfway. Relief surged through him. He could do this.

Then a traitorous stone turned beneath his foot and his legs were swept away. The water closed over his head and he was swept tumbling away in a roaring torrent of ice.

Beck reacted without thinking and jammed his stick down into the river bed. It gave him a second’s grace to find his footing again and he stood up. His head broke the surface, back into light and air, and he whooped for breath as water streamed down his face.

‘Beck! Beck!’

Tikaani was running down the bank to follow him. In just that couple of seconds, Beck had travelled a long way downstream.

‘I’m OK,’ he gasped. Soaked, he thought, but OK. He wiped the hair out of his eyes and turned away from Tikaani to see how far he had to go. In fact the current had done him a favour and swept him a little closer to the far bank. He could feel the cold setting in from below and above. He just hoped his rucksack had survived its dunking because life was going to get so much more interesting if it hadn’t and everything inside was wet.

The adrenaline surge from his accident gave him new strength to press on. Two minutes later the water was down to his knees. Then he was splashing through the shallows and finally he was out on the other side.

He longed to throw himself down on the ground and rest, but that way he would just freeze quietly. He had to keep moving. He whirled his arms round and round to force the blood back into his hands, which would warm him up fast.

‘OK!’ he called to Tikaani, hopping up and down. ‘Your turn. Watch out for . . .’ He paused, his attention caught by a standing wave in the water another twenty metres downstream. The river seemed to rise up a small ramp that stayed motionless in the water. From this angle the sun shone on it and he could see it clearly. From the other side of the river it had been just the same colour as the rest of water and he hadn’t noticed it.

‘Tikaani, come down here,’ he called. If there was a standing wave, it meant the current was coming up against something on the river bed. There might well be a ridge of slightly higher ground at this point, which would mean the river would be shallower all the way across . . .

‘This way,’ he instructed, pointing. ‘Use your stick for support, take each step carefully . . .’

A little less than ten minutes later, Tikaani had made his way across the river safely too. It had been a struggle against the current and the cold, but he had made it without being swept off his feet even once. By this time Beck was fully dressed in new, dry clothes – luckily, only a few drops of water had got into his rucksack. He had gathered wood and more Old Man’s Beard for a fire and the first flame took hold even as Tikaani pulled on his own dry socks.

‘Just like you said . . .’ his friend noted, eyes closed in bliss. ‘Best feeling ever.’

Beck grinned.

This wasn’t to be their last stop of the day, but Beck knew they both needed the warmth of a fire more than anything else right now. They still had plenty of light left – this far north dark wouldn’t fall until after eleven. They would spend a couple of hours here to thaw out, and then they would tackle the high ground.

He glanced up at the mountains that loomed above them.

Tikaani followed his gaze. ‘It’s all uphill from now on, isn’t it?’

Beck nodded. The ground up to the far side of the river had been level and flat. Here it was already sloping up and away from them. The river really was the base of the mountains.

He hadn’t seen the wolf again. It would be stranded the other side of the river now, anyway. But from now on they would be under increasing attack from other forces. Wind, ice, snow, cold – even gravity. A realm of no warmth and no food where it would be very easy to die without even realizing it.

‘All uphill,’ he agreed.