They started out after breakfast with the goal of crossing the snow covered pass along the north path. As it rose higher into the mountains, the worse the trail steadily became, for winter ice breaks loose stones and rocks and so rockslides frequently blocked the way. It bothered not the boy’s goat hooves, but it slowed the others down and the air was getting colder. As Belam predicted, there were few trees here in the rock sided mountains for firewood.
Presently, the sky clouded over, and it became dark, even though it was midday. Soon, there came a quivering glow of lightning from above that vaguely revealed the craggy rocks for a moment and then vanished. By and by, another came, a little stronger, and then another. Now a faint whistling came through the ravines of the mountain and they felt a fleeting icy cold upon their cheeks and shuddered with the realization that things were about to get worse. There was a pause and now came the howl of a wolf or, worse a warg; a particularly large and evil demon wolf. There was an answering howl as it became darker still. Now a bright flash turned everything bright as day and showed very little grass but mostly bare rock about their feet. And it showed seven white, startled faces, too. A deep peal of mighty thunder rolled and rumbled down from the heavens, and finally lost itself in the distance. Another sweep of chilly air passed by and, with it, the first flecks of snow.
“We should find shelter,” stated Belam of the change in weather. “This could get bad.”
For as a man of the south, he disliked snow.
Another fierce glare lit up the sky and an instant crash followed that seemed to shake the very mountains around them. All eyes looked for a dry place, but there was none at hand. Another wolf howled. The first two had been ahead. This one was from behind.
“Quick, boys, we need to build a fire!” warned Amien.
They sprang away, stumbling over rocks and fleeting snow, no two plunging in the same direction in a search for wood. A furious blast roared through the pass and now one blinding flash followed after another, and peal on peal of deafening thunder. Heavy snow poured down and the rising wind drove it like white sheets of blowing sand along the ground. The company cried out to each other, seeing no place to hide, but the roaring wind and the booming thunder-blasts utterly drowned out their voices.
Finally, Belam found a sheltered spot from the wind and, one by one, they straggled in together while he sought to light a fire, before the snow wet their carried wood. Under the onslaught of the blizzard, the landscape transformed into a swirling canvas of white, like an artist’s brushstrokes blurring the boundaries between earth and sky. They all huddled around Belam, hoping to shield the flint sparks from the wind with their bodies. After the wind blew several good sparks out, though, the flint became wet with snow and could no longer be used to strike a fire. Other flints were tried but with the same result. The wolves’ howls, haunting and sorrowful, now echoed through the pass like a song of melancholy, their eerie voices weaving through the wind like spectral threads, stitching together the flying tapestry of the storm.
“We can’t stay here,” Belam declared. “Without a fire, we shall either freeze or the wolves shall get us!”
“We shall have to reach the mines!” Marroh called to the others over the wind. “But I cannot see one because the snow covers their slag!”
The boy did not even know what slag was to know that it was covered.
“I agree,” said Graybeard. “Ronthiel, can your eyes see a mine entrance from here?”
Now the wet snow was already beginning to stick. Under the ceaseless conflagration of lightning that flamed in the skies, everything stood out clean-cut and in shadowless distinctness: the grey rocks, the white snow, and the distant shapes of the grey wolves. Every now and then, some rock yielded its hold and fell crashing and tumbling down from above. It was a wild time for homeless young lads to be out in.
“I see three!” reported the elf over the wind.
“Give directions to the boy on how to find them,” instructed Graybeard. “He is the best climber amongst us to reach them. Marroh, tell the boy how to recognize if a shaft goes through the mountain. The rest of us shall wait here for his return.”
The boy listened to his directions and then set out up the steep sides of the mountain, putting on his rabbit fur hat with its ear flaps. Yet the snowflakes hitting his face stung like frozen ice. One mine entrance he could see but not the other two. For that, he had Ronthiel’s guidance on how to find them.
Although the mine entrances were high up and far apart, the goat boy climbed to them easily, leaving the others to huddle in the cold behind. When he reached the first, he did as Marroh instructed and walked into it far enough to get out of the wind and stopped, wetting his finger to feel for any wind coming in from the other side of the mountain. He felt nothing but dead air and cold blackness.
He felt the same in the second mine too. By now, the snow was getting deeper and there was a wolf following him as he made his way to the third.
But in the third mine, he felt a breath of wind and the boy went back for the others. He did not see the wolf at first but eventually saw it still following not far behind.
He found the others in the snow facing three wolves, plus the fourth he now brought back with him. They more than happily set out for the third mine, even Ronthiel, and his freezing crow. It took two hours for the others to make the climb and by then it was such a raging blizzard even the wolves found it difficult to keep up when they reached it. The company slipped and fell on the sharp, slippery rocks and the cold quickly sapped their strength. Each step was slower and heavier than the last. None thought they should ever make it to the top to enter.
“Hah!” called Marroh as Ronthiel’s teeth chattered in the cold and they reached the mine’s entrance. “You’ll soon learn to appreciate a dry cave and the temperature’s better than you might think without this chill wind. It’s much easier traveling, I assure you. You’ll all see!”
None disagreed and all eagerly tumbled into the mine, save Ronthiel, who held back. The boy went in too, but only so far. To enter the mine was to be engulfed in its chilling confines. He had been inside it before but only for a short distance. Now, something told him to go no further. Like the elf, who found he did not like dark, blackness of a hole, neither desired to go into this for any distance at all.
“It’s no different than riding a horse,” Marroh called back to Ronthiel in jest.
The elf reluctantly nodded and steadfastly followed after them. The pass weather outside had defeated even his fear of a cave. He even passed the boy, who was now last.
The howling of a wolf right behind at the entrance though promptly inspired him to catch up.
But what was ahead? Already, he sensed claustrophobia, coldness and dank stale air.
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