“Will you do it or should I?” he said. “I suppose it should be me. I named him, I should skin him.”
The mystif didn’t argue, only suggested that it should move the other animal out of sight of the scene, in case it too lost all will to live, seeing its comrade disemboweled. Gentle agreed, and watched while Pie led the fretting creature away. Wielding the blade they’d been given as they left Beatrix, he then set about his butchering. He rapidly discovered that neither he nor the knife were equal to the task. The doeki’s hide was thick, its fat rubbery, its meat tough. After an hour of hacking and tearing he’d only managed to strip the hide from the upper half of its back leg and a small portion of its flank. He was sticky with its blood and sweating inside his coat of furs.
“Shall I take over?” Pie suggested.
“No,” Gentle snapped, “I can do it,” and continued to labor in the same inept fashion, the blade dulled by now and the muscles driving it weary.
He waited a decent interval, then got up and went back to the fire where Pie was sitting, gazing into the flames. Disgruntled by his defeat, he tossed, the knife down in the melting snow beside the fire.
“I give up,” he said. “It’s all yours.”
Somewhat reluctantly, Pie picked up the knife, proceeded to sharpen it on the rock face, then went to work. Gentle didn’t watch. Repulsed by the blood that had spattered him, he elected to brave the cold and wash it off. He found a place a little way from the fire where the ground was untrammeled, removed his coat and shirt, and knelt down to bathe in the snow. His skin crawled at the chill, but some urge to self-mortification was satisfied by this testing of will and flesh, and when he’d cleaned his hands and face he rubbed the pricking snow into his chest and belly, though the doeki’s fluids hadn’t stained him there. The wind had dropped in the last little while, and the sky visible between the rocks was more gold than green. He was seized by the need to stand unencumbered in its light, and without putting his coat back on he clambered up over the rocks to do so. His hands were numb, and the climb was more arduous than he’d anticipated, but the scene above and below him when he reached the top of the rock was worth the effort. No wonder Hapexamendios had come here on His way to His resting place. Even gods might be inspired by such grandeur. The peaks of the Jokalaylau receded in apparently infinite procession, their white slopes faintiy gilded by the heavens they reached for. The silence could not have been more utter.
This vantage point served a practical as well as an aesthetic purpose. The High Pass was plainly visible. And so, some distance off to the right, was a sight perplexing enough for him to call the mystif up from its work. A glacier, its surface shimmering, lay a mile or more from the rock. But it wasn’t the spectacle of such frozen enormity that claimed Gentle’s eye, it was the presence within the ice of a litter of darker forms.
“You want to go and find out what they are?” the mystif said, washing its bloodied hands in the snow.
“I think we should,” Gentle replied, “If we’re walking in the Unbeheld’s footsteps, we should make it our business to see what He saw.”
“Or what He caused,” Pie said.
They descended, and Gentle put his shirt and coat back on. The clothes were warm, having been left beside the fire, and he was glad of that comfort, but they also stank of his sweat and of the animals whose backs they’d been stripped from, and he half wished he could go naked, rather than be burdened by another hide.
“Have you finished with the skinning?” Gentle asked Pie as they set off, going by foot rather than waste the energies of their remaining vehicle.
“I’ve done what I can,” Pie replied, “but it’s crude. I’m no butcher.”
“Are you a cook?” Gentle asked. “Not really. Why’d you ask?”