Magda went to her. “Come on! Help me get the pack off that thing, and onto our horses! And then let’s get the hell away from here before all that thing’s brothers and sisters come around looking for another helping!”
Jaelle came, wiping her face on her sleeve. Her face looked grotesque, red and blotched. “Oh, that was horrible-horrible-”
“It was. But it could have been a lot more horrible if it had grabbed one of us instead,” Magda said, and bent over the dead animal to cut the straps that held the pack to the half-eaten carcass. The same strap we so carefully had replaced in the village! With Jaelle’s help she managed to haul it off the dead animal, though their hands were slimy with blood and entrails before they finished. Magda hoisted it to the back of her horse. “We can divide up the load tomorrow,” she said. “Right now we’d better get moving.”
Numbed by fatigue and horror, the women stumbled upward, higher and higher; and suddenly, rounding a curve in the deep-beaten trail, they were not climbing anymore. They stood in the top of the pass of Scaravel, and there was no way to go but down. Magda was too weary even to feel relieved. Jaelle was stumbling with fatigue and weariness, and Magda wished it were safe for her to ride. Certainly she could not go on much longer.
The going was easier now, although the horses had a tendency to slip and stumble; before long Magda felt the lessening ache in her ears that told they were losing altitude. She recalled hearing that banshees nested only above the timberline; when they reached the first clump of gnarled trees, thick wind-tangled evergreens, she could feel the tension running out of her like water. She stumbled along for another hundred feet or so, found a thick grove of trees where the horses would be a little protected from wind and the still-falling snow. Jaelle was dazed, out on her feet; she stood blinking, unaware what was going on. Alone, Magda tied the horses and blanketed them, managed to get up one of the tiny tents, got Jaelle out of her snow-caked riding-cloak and boots and shoved her into her blankets. She fell into her own without stopping to take off anything but boots; The tent was much too small for two- Magda had thought it was too small for one-but claustrophobia was better than taking the time to get up the other one; besides, they needed the warmth. She thought, as she fell asleep, I’d bring the horses in if I could get them in. Even the faraway wail of another banshee-or the one who had attacked them?-could not keep her awake.
The weather cleared in the night, and they looked on a dazzling white world, with evergreens bent almost double under their weight of snow. When Magda dressed Jaelle’s wounds, they looked dull-white and macerated; they had been frozen, and this would make the scarring worse, but there was nothing to be done about it. She used some of the water she had boiled for porridge to try to clean them, but there was not much she could do. Jaelle ate listlessly, but she did eat, and Magda was glad; that glazed, numb look of exhaustion had frightened her. When she had done, she pointed to a low peak in the next range.
“Sain Scarp,” Jaelle said. “If the weather holds we will be there tomorrow.” Magda’s eyes were sharp, but try as she might, she could see nothing but trees.
Jaelle laughed. “I doubt Rumal di Scarp will entertain us, so we may not have much of a midwinter-feast this year! But no doubt your kinsman would rather eat porridge on the open road than feast with Rumal! And if the weather holds fine, we might reach Ardais by midwinter; you cannot see it from here, though if you have good eyes you can see it from the very top of Scaravel. But I am not going back up to look now!”
Now that they were actually within sight of their goal, Magda found herself wondering about Peter again. How would he feel, to be rescued at a woman’s hands? An hour later, as they rode down the trail through the melting snow, Jaelle voiced the same question.