She heard the approaching helicopter long before it came into sight over a strip of woodland in front. The whining, chainsaw-like noise getting louder and louder, her companions looking at one another in alarm, setting down their loads. Frightened, wanting to run but not knowing in which direction to flee. It seemed to kick-start her memory, jerked her back to civilised thinking.
'It's all right, it's a helicopter,' she shouted. They would not have understood even if they had been able to hear her above the din.
A helicopter! Her brain reeled, a shipwrecked mariner suddenly seeing the smoke from an approaching steamer on the skyline after months of waiting in vain. Numbed, fumbling for some garment to wave madly, reflexes stalling. It might go away, it might not see you. Hurry!
And just as the whirling blades came into sight Sylvia flung herself headlong into the snow, pressed herself flat. Please God it doesn't see me. I don't want to be picked up, I don't want to be rescued! Crazy, she knew it was, but all the same she buried her face in the snow, clasped her hands over her eyes. Don't stop, please don't stop!
Deafening, directly overhead, seeming to hover. If they land then I'll refuse to go with them, they can't make me.
I don't want to go back. I want to be out here with Eric. He's dead, I know it, but I still want to be with him.
Realisation that the noise was receding. Sylvia turned her head, glanced upwards. A huge unwieldy mechanical bird droning on up the valley, its dark blue paintwork in stark contrast to the dazzling whiteness of the hills and fields. Going away. If it had seen her then it wasn't stopping. She felt slightly dizzy, afraid.
The other woman was screaming hysterically, the limp form of her son clutched to her, his arms and legs dangling limply. Shaking him, slapping him, but his head lolled to one side.
Two of the men had come across to her, were grunting and gesticulating angrily. The boy is dead, we cannot take him with us. We cannot delay. The woman shouted back at them, stepped away, spat when one of them reached out an arm. She was not giving him up, refused to cast his body to one side for the creatures of the night hours to feed on.
The procession was moving on again. Sylvia glanced down at the stretcher; it would not be needed any longer. The woman was standing back waiting. Either she was going to stay behind or else follow at a discreet distance. Sylvia didn't know which, only that the other spurned company.
Sylvia followed the others, did not attempt to catch up with them. They were on a road of some kind now, the going much easier. Houses, scattered farms and cottages, she saw a sign but the letters had been blotted out by drifted snow. It didn't matter, names had ceased to mean anything; one place was much the same as another.
Another hour and it would be dark. Sylvia wondered where they were going to spend the night. There were always deserted houses to be used but she guessed that her companions would spurn habitation beyond the status of crude stone dwellings, suspecting a trap, claustrophobic because the chill night air was shut out. She had lived in one once; she half-remembered it.
The woman carrying her dead child was stilt following, a hundred yards or so behind them, wailing her grief, staggering under the weight of her burden. She would not be able to keep up much longer. Once she stopped she would die because she did not have the will to live. In all probability she would not survive the coming night.
Dusk, a saffron sky streaked with the last reflections from the sun which had dipped behind the distant jagged mountain peaks. On the left was a village, its church spire rigid and defiant in this white wilderness. But the party was veering off, taking a narrow lane bordered by high snow-capped hedgerows. Barely more than a crawling pace now, the journey having sapped their weakened bodies.
It was almost dark when they saw the ruined castle, skeletal remains of an isolated bastion which had once withstood the onslaught of Welsh raiders across the border, an impression of top-heaviness as it perched on a hillock, still on guard in spite of its crumbling stonework.
One of the party had slumped to the ground, the others clustering round him. They made no attempt to pick him up. The sick must be left to die. They staggered on, came to the foot of the knoll, the small castle sinister and forbidding in the failing light. Sylvia shuddered, she could almost feel the aura of death that had surrounded this place for centuries. In the distance somebody was wailing, grief-stricken cries that hung in the still frosty air. It was probably the woman who cradled her dead offspring, unable to continue any further. Eventually the noise died away.
The ruins were already occupied, another group of a dozen or more tribesmen engaged in building a fire with dead wood which they had dug out of the drifts. There was neither animosity nor friendship shown towards the newcomers, just an acceptance of their presence.
With some difficulty they managed to ignite the woodpile, the yellow flames having to fight for a hold on the wet kindling, hissing angrily, determined to conquer, giving off a strange eerie glow.
Sylvia found herself scrutinising the faces of the strangers, peering at each in turn; hope, despair, still hoping.
Eric was dead, he would not be here. She tried to remember what he looked like but her memory failed her.
Her reasoning was becoming dulled, even she realised it, knew vaguely what was happening to her. Very soon I shall be one of you. She felt at her face, her cheeks were rough and coarse and that line of fluffy hair along her upper lip, which she had creamed for years, had grown strong and prickly. Her armpits were bushes of coarse hair, her breasts full as though they were in milk.
She did not feel the cold as she had done earlier, huddling now with the others in the damp pit which had once been a prison from which captured enemy soldiers rarely emerged alive. No longer an outcast, she mingled with the others, sought the warmth of their bodies. They were her people, always had been.
A long cold night, the condensation on the stone walls a sheet of ice. Sleeping; dreams which were beyond her comprehension now, of strange places where the elements did not penetrate, where there was food in abundance. Fearful of this unfamiliar environment, shying away from it. Running to the hills in search of her own kind.
In search of a man who had once been her mate.
And with the coming of daylight she no longer questioned her presence here, helped the others to search for firewood amongst the frozen snowdrifts. The clouds were building up again and they all knew that it was going to snow once more, that further travel was inadvisable. They had a supply of dried meat but they needed to keep the fire going. They would have to hole up here until the weather changed.
When Sylvia went back inside she noticed that two of the men had not risen from their sleeping positions of the previous night. She knew they were dead, the others realised it, too. Everybody accepted it; later the corpses would be dragged outside and that would be the end of it. Where there was life there was always death.
By mid-morning it had begun to snow and the wind had risen, driving it against the north-west face of the castle, buffeting the ancient walls mercilessly as though it sought to break through to those sheltering inside. A ceaseless onslaught.
Sylvia helped the women prepare the food, noticed how two more of them coughed and spat blood. Her head ached, she felt unnaturally hot, her forehead damp when she wiped it with the back of her hand. A soreness in her lungs, but there was no blood when she coughed.
And each night she dreamed of one who had once been her mate. She saw his face, heard him calling her. She knew she had to go to him, that she must leave this place.