The Blue Ice (27 page)

Lost time! What sort of a pace did he expect us to keep up? I sat down on a bench and removed my boots and stockings. My feet were red and swollen. The flesh was tender and the bones ached as though they had been bruised. I looked across at Sunde. His face was white in the long moonbeams that slanted in through the windows. The firelight threw a grotesque shadow of him on the great logs that formed walls and ceiling. I cursed myself for not having realised that he'd been wounded. He'd lost a lot of blood. There was no question of his going on. But to go on alone! With him for company the mountains had seemed remote, but friendly. But now I thought of those white, jagged monsters waiting for me outside – and they suddenly seemed cold and wild and cruel. We were still climbing. Soon, if I kept on going, those ski tracks would lead me up to the ice-capped summits, on to the glaciers. Sunde knew this country. He was at home here. I had not had to trouble about direction. I had relied on him. But to go on alone – that was different. Suppose mist came down? Then I should still be able to follow the others' ski tracks. But what about a snowstorm? With the ski tracks obliterated, how should I find my way then? I shivered. Every bone in my body cried out to stay here by the fire. I opened my mouth to tell him that I wouldn't go on alone. Then I remembered Farnell, and instead I said, ‘I'll just change my socks, then I'll get moving.'

He nodded as though there had never been any doubt. And whilst I got myself ready, he produced map and compass from his rucksack. ‘The next leg ain't so bad,' he said. ‘Keep followin' the line of the river till yer come ter a lot o' lakes. Yer'll find Gjeiteryggen there. Yer can't miss it.'

‘I seem to have heard that one before,' I muttered as I pulled on my boots.

He grinned. ‘Well, just you remember ter keep along the course o' the valley. There's a bit o' a climb at first up ter the Driftaskar – that's a pass up above the valley here where the farmers used ter ca'nt their cattle as they passed through. After that a good deal of the route's da'n 'ill.'

‘How far to Gjeiteryggen?' I asked.

‘Aba't fifteen kilometres,' was his reply.

Another eleven miles! I got wearily to my feet and began to eat
flatbrod
and goat's cheese. ‘What's at Gjeiteryggen?' I asked. ‘Another tourist hut?'

‘That's right. Ain't as nice as Osterbo or Steinbergdalen. A bit wild like. But you'll get shelter there.'

‘And after Gjeiteryggen?'

He hesitated. ‘My guess is he'll make for Finse an' the railway. He'll be gettin' tired by the time he gets to Gjeiteryggen.'

‘And how far is Gjeiteryggen from Finse?'

‘Aba't another fifteen kilometres. An' it's tough going. Yer turn sa'f at Gjeiteryggen an' climb from aba't thirteen 'undred metres, right up ter seventeen 'undred. Let's see nah.' He screwed his leathery little face up till it looked like a monkey's. ‘That'll be a climb of near on fifteen 'undred feet – right up ter the Sankt Paal Glacier. Yer go right across the top of the glacier. You'll find a hut up there if yer need a bit of a rest. An' there's posts markin' the route – or should be. Take my tip an' if mist or snow comes da'n, don't lose sight o' one post before you've located the next. You're right up in the Hallingskarvet an' if yer lose yer way, well—' He shrugged his shoulders. ‘'Ere's compass an' map. The map ain't much good. It's one the Germans made and it ain't accurate. If mist or snow comes da'n, see you got a bearing before it closes in on you.'

I took the map and slipped it into the side pocket of my rucksack. The compass was an elementary little thing, the sort I was given to play with as a kid. I put it in my pocket. ‘You stay here until I organise a relief party,' I said as I humped the rucksack on my aching shoulders.

He shook his head. ‘You don't need to bother aba't me. Oi'll make my way back by easy stages. Oi don't aim ter get cut off up 'ere. It's still early enough in the year for a bit of a blizzard to blow up. Only sorry Oi can't come wiv yer. But it wouldn't do no good. Oi'd only ‘old yer up.' He got to his feet and stood, rather weakly, holding on to the settle. ‘Well, good luck!'

I grasped his hand. ‘An' remember wot Oi says,' he added. ‘If yer crossin' Sankt Paal, don't get a't o' sight o' one markin' post before you've located the next. An' there's an 'ut right at the top. Built by the 'otel association for the convenience of skiers. It can save yer life. It saved mine once.' His friendly, wizened face puckered into a grin. ‘An' if anybody asks yer, we didn't meet no bloke off of
Hval Ti
, see. We ain't met nobody. Well, good luck – an' Oi'll be seein' yer da'n at Aurland.'

‘Fine,' I said. ‘If you can't make it, don't worry. I'll send a party up from Aurland, if you're not with
Diviner
by the time I get back'

‘Okay,' he said.

He came with me to the door and stood, sniffing at the moonlight and the chill glitter of the mountains, whilst I put my skis on. A thin powder of snow blew in my face. ‘Wind's goin' ter get up,' he said. ‘Looks like the weather's goin' ter break.' He caught my arm as I straightened up and put on my gloves. ‘Mr Gansert,' he said earnestly, ‘if you aim ter 'elp Olsen, yer've gotter move fast. They bin gainin' on us all evening.'

‘I'll go just as fast as I can,' I said.

He nodded and grinned. I bent forward and thrust with my sticks. My skis slid forward across the fine snow and a moment later I was whistling down the slope in the tracks of the others' skis, the wind cold on my face. Faint behind me came Sunde's shouted ‘Good luck!'

Then I was alone and the only sound was the hiss of my skis and the quiet whisper of the wind brushing the snow like sand across the valley.

In places the ski tracks I was following were already half obliterated. In other places they ran deep and clean as though Farnell and Lovaas had only just passed. The down stretch to the valley floor was all too short. Soon I was climbing steadily. The path became steeper, winding in giant zigzags up the shoulder of a mountain. That climb seemed endless. I climbed until my limbs ached and became like liquid. The path went up and through a litter of boulders till all the mountain tops for miles were visible, their smooth ice caps glinting in the moonlight – so cold and remote, like pictures of the South Pole.

But at last I reached what Sunde had called the Driftaskar. I paused at the top of the pass. The moon was high overhead now. The wind had risen and all about me the powdery top layer of snow was on the move, sifting across the rocks like the sand before a desert storm. The place was as desolate and white as the moon itself viewed through a telescope. I put on a windbreaker and then began to descend. There was no clear run, for the ground was strewn with rocks. But it was easier going. And after the sweaty heat of climbing, the cold night air chilled me to the bone.

Shortly after this I crossed a stream and began to climb again. After that I don't remember very much about the journey to Gjeiteryggen. I only know that the country I passed through was wild and desolate, that as dawn grew nearer it got unbearably cold, and that I was stiff and dead with tiredness. I kept on repeating Sunde's words over and over again as I trudged on through the snow – ‘
You gotter move fast. They bin gaining on us all evening.
'

Often I thought I'd lost the way. The ski tracks vanished, obliterated by the snow. Then in panic I'd have recourse to map and compass. But always, sooner or later, in some spot sheltered from the wind I came upon them again. The moon sank towards the west and soon its light began to fade as a cold, grey luminosity spread over the mountains. Dawn came creeping like death across a snow-clad world. And I barely noticed it. I was beyond caring. With head bent I somehow kept going. But it was willpower, not the strength of my limbs that drove me. And all the time I kept on thinking – the others can't be going on like this, without pause, unendingly. But always the tracks of their skis ran ahead of me to prove that they had.

The moon sank at last behind the mountains. The snow on the mountain tops no longer glinted like sugar icing at Christmas time. It was grey and cold and the first light of day stripped the place of all beauty, leaving it bleak and empty. I was conscious then of the utter loneliness of these mountains. In summer a constant stream of walkers would tread this path. But now, with the mountains still in the last grip of the winter snow, there was nobody. I remembered Sunde's wizened, friendly face and wished he were with me. Only the half-obliterated ski tracks that showed where the route was sheltered from the biting wind linked me with any other human.

I was descending now to a long, frozen lake. In the valley below me the water was not frozen. It ran swift and black, like a jagged crack in the white carpet of the snow. At the bottom I stopped behind a tall rock and rested. I set my pack down on the snow and had an early breakfast of more
flatbrod
and brown cheese. I felt dazed and numb. Nothing was real. And when I went on, my movements were automatic as though I were skiing in my sleep.

Thin clouds streaked the paling sky and as I worked my way along the lake they became suffused with a pink glow. The glow grew until the whole sky flamed a violent red. It was a beautiful, terrifying sunrise. The sun came up, a red angry disc, bloodying the snowy summits and casting an orange glow over everything. The sky reddened till it blazed with crimson. Then slowly it faded until all that was left was a cold, watery sunlight that had no warmth nor any promise of warmth. The last tinge of pink clung to high-piled cumulus lying to windward along the Norwegian coast.

At last I stood on the shoulder of a hill, leaning wearily on my sticks, and looked down on Gjeiteryggen. The hut was without beauty. It was painted a dirty red and it stood there like a barracks in one of the most hideous stretches of country that I have ever seen. A broken series of lakes, frozen and piled with snow, lay about it in a semi-circle. Between the lakes were the black marks of moving, unfrozen water. The hills in which the lakes huddled were smooth. The boulders that littered the place were smooth. Only here and there a rock showed a jagged edge, as though smashed by a giant sledge hammer. The place was marked and scored and hammered out by ice. It was an awful, unhappy place.

But there was the hut. And I thanked God for that. I wasn't thinking then about Farnell, or about Lovaas and his mate. I was thinking that I could light a fire and sink down in a chair and rest. God, I was tired – tired and cold and wretched! Nothing mattered. Nothing at all. In that moment I could have been offered the mines of Solomon, the treasure of the Incas, all the wealth of the Indies, and I wouldn't have cared a damn. What are the world's minerals worth when you're sick with exhaustion – weary right through to your bones and to the very marrow of your bones?

I started down to the hut. And then I stopped. Something had caught my eye – something that moved. I screwed up my eyes, trying to clear their vision which was half blinded by the whiteness of the snow. It was away to the right of the hut on the further shore of the largest of the frozen lakes. It was moving towards the valley that led up to the sombre mass of Sankt Paal. Was it reindeer? A bear, perhaps? But I think I knew what it might be even whilst I considered all the possible alternatives. I felt the excitement of the chase send the strength pumping back into my tired limbs. Lovaas – or was it Farnell? Had he given them the slip? No. The object had separated – there were two of them. It was Lovaas.

I searched farther on up the white slopes of the valley. And there, high up on the valley side, another black speck moved steadily through the snow.

I didn't stop to think. I thrust my sticks hard into the snow and went hurtling down the slope to the flat ice of the lake. At least I could cut a corner here. Farnell – and Lovaas behind him – had gone down to the Gjeiteryggen hut. There they had to turn sharp right. By cutting across the lake I might save a mile, maybe two.

The chase was on now. Before, the quarry had been mythical, something that was there ahead, but only visible through the lines of the ski tracks. But now I could see them. They were real. No thought of what I should do if I came up with them crossed my mind. All my efforts were now bent on one thing – making the best possible speed and lessening the distance between myself and Lovaas.

I tumbled down a steep drift of snow and my skis scrunched as they bit the harder snow on the frozen lake. The ice held and I went forward easily across the flat surface. As I started to climb the long valley leading to Sankt Paal I wasn't more than a mile behind Lovaas and his mate. Every now and then, on a shoulder of the valley, I caught a glimpse of their two figures, black against the snow. I could even pick out Lovaas – he was so much shorter and stouter than the other. Once I caught sight of Farnell, a lone dot high up on the mountainside.

The tilt of the valley became steeper. Soon it was sheer willpower and nothing else that drove me forward. Every effort was concentrated on pushing forward. Twice I saw Lovaas turn and glance over his shoulder. He couldn't fail to see me. And yet I gave no thought to what I was going to do, how I was going to get past them to Farnell. It was enough that they were in sight. And I could spare no thought for anything other than the task of holding the pace.

The tracks of the skis ahead were deep and clear now. There was no question of looking for the route. I had only to follow. But God how my legs ached! My breath came through my teeth in rasping gasps. Soon I was side-stepping up. I had not the energy to stride forward, my skis wide like crow's feet. Nor could the others apparently. And it was some comfort to know that I was not the only one who was feeling exhausted.

Once, on a particularly steep stretch, I paused. The sweat was like ice on my forehead where the wind touched it. The sun had vanished now. The day had a bleak, wintry look. And away to my right the clouds were rolling in from the sea, covering the mountain tops. It was a bad outlook for crossing the glacier. If it were mist it might enable me to get past Lovaas to Farnell. But if it were snow … The thought sent a chill through me. A snowstorm at just on five thousand feet wasn't a good prospect. It would obliterate the ski tracks. It might even hide the posts marking the route.