Exhausted, wearied, famished, they stood there feasting their eyes on the beauty and richness of the country that lay below. Kennard pointed. Far away, almost out of sight range, a gray spire just visible through the mist rose upward.
“Castle Hastur—and we’ve won!”
“Not yet,” Larry said, warningly. “It’s a long way off yet. And we’d better get right out of the high snows while this sun is bright enough to keep any of that big fellow’s sisters and his cousins and his aunts from coming around!”
“You’re right,” Kennard said, sobering instantly, and they trudged off down the narrow trail, not really liking to think what had made it. But at least the sun was bright, and for the moment they were safe.
Larry had leisure to feel, now, how weary he was. His dislocated shoulder ached like the very devil. His feet were cold and hot by turns—he was sure he had frostbite—and his fingers were white and cold from scrabbling in the snow. He sucked them and slapped them together, trying hard to keep from moaning with the pain of returning circulation. But he kept pace with Kennard. He’d taken over the leadership—and he wasn’t going to give out now!
The slopes on this side were heavily wooded, but the woods were mostly conifers and spruce, and there was still no sign of food. Lower down on the slope, they found a single tree laden with apples, damp and wrinkled after the recent storm, but still edible; they filled their pockets, and sat down to eat side by side. Larry thought of the peaceful time, so few days ago really, when they had sat side by side like this, before the alarm of forest-fire. What years he seemed to have lived, and what hills and valleys he had crossed—figuratively as well as literally—since then!
Kennard was frowning at him and Larry remembered, with an absolute wrench of effort, that they had exchanged harsh words in the pass.
Kennard said, “Now that we are out of danger—you spoke words to me beyond forgiveness. We are bredin, but I’m going to beat them down your throat!”
Oh no! Not that again!
“Forget it,” he said. “I was trying to save both our lives; I didn’t have time to be tactful.”
Kennard is sulking because I saved our lives when he couldn’t. He wants to settle it the Darkovan way—with a fight. Larry said, aloud, “I won’t fight with you, Ken. You saved my life too many times. I would no more hit you than—than my own father.”
Kennard looked at him, trembling with rage. “Coward!”
Larry took a deliberate bite out his apple. It was sour. He said, “Calling me names won’t hurt me. Go ahead, if it makes you feel better.” Then he added, gently, “Anyhow, what would it prove, except that you are stronger than I? I’ve never doubted that, even for a moment. We’d still be in this thing together. And after coming through all this together—why should we end it with a fight, as if we were enemies instead of friends?” Deliberately, he used the word bredin again. He held out his hand. “If I said anything to hurt you, I’m sorry. You’ve hurt me a time or two, so even by your own codes we’re even. Let’s shake hands and forget it.”
Kennard hesitated, and for a flooding, bitter moment Larry feared he would rebuff the gesture, and for that same moment Larry almost wished they had died together in the pass. They had grown as close as if their minds were one—and being closed away, now, hurt like a knife.
Then, like sunlight breaking through a cloud, Kennard smiled. He held out both hands and clasped Larry’s in them.
“Have another apple,” was all he said. But it was enough.
THE TRAIL downward was hard, rough going; but with the fear of the banshees behind them and Larry’s growing skill at rock-climbing, they managed the descent better than the ascent. Weary, half starved, Larry felt a relief all out of measure to their present situation—for in a trackless, almost foodless forest, they had still several days walking to cover before they came to inhabited country. They had seen it from the pass, but it was far away.