X. THE ANGEL OF THE MOUNTAIN

SIXTY-TWO

By half-day they had found the river again. They rode in silence under the snow, which was falling steadily now, filling the woods with a muffling light. The river had begun to freeze at its edges, dark water flowing freely in its narrowed channel, oblivious. Amy, leaning against Peter’s back, her pale wrists slack in his lap, had fallen asleep. He felt the warmth of her body, the slow rise and fall of her chest against him. Plumes of warm vapor flowed back from the horse’s nostrils, smelling of grass and earth. There were birds in the trees, black birds; they called to one another from the branches, their voices dimmed by the smothering snow.

As he rode, memories came to him, a disordered assemblage of images that drifted across his consciousness like smoke: his mother, on a day not long before the end, as he stood in the door to her room to watch her sleep, and saw her glasses sitting on the table, and knew that she would die; Theo at the station, when he’d sat on the cot to take Peter’s foot in his hand, and again, standing on the porch of the farmstead, Mausami at his side, watching them leave; Auntie in her overheated kitchen, and the taste of her terrible tea; the last night at the bunker, everyone drinking whiskey and laughing at something funny Caleb had done or said, the great unknown unfolding before them; Sara on the morning after the first snowfall, sitting against the log, her book in her lap, her face bathed in sunlight and her voice saying, “How beautiful it is here;” Alicia.

Alicia.

They turned east. They were in a new place now, the landscape rising ruggedly around them, wrapping them in the forested embrace of the mountains, mantled in white. The snow eased, then stopped, then started up once more. They had begun to climb. Peter’s attention had narrowed to the smallest things. The slow, rhythmic progress of the horse, the feel of worn leather in his fist where he held the animal’s reins, the gentle brush of Amy’s hair on his neck. All somehow inevitable, like details from a dream he’d had once, years ago.

When darkness came on, Peter used the shovel to clear a spot and pitched their tarp at the edge of the river. Most of the wood on the ground was too wet to burn, but beneath the heavy canopy of trees they found enough dry kindling to get a fire going. Peter had no blade, but in his pack was a small pocketknife that he could use to open the cans. They ate their dinner and slept, huddled together for warmth.

They awoke to bone-numbing cold. The storm had passed, leaving, in its wake, a sky of fierce cold blueness. While Amy built a fire, Peter went to look for the horse, which had broken loose and wandered away in the night-a situation that under different circumstances would have brought him to outright panic and yet somehow, on this morning, did not alarm him. He tracked the animal a hundred meters downstream, where he found him nibbling on some grassy shoots at the river’s edge, his great black muzzle bearded with snow. It did not seem like the kind of thing Peter ought to disturb, so he stood awhile, watching the horse eat its breakfast, before leading him back to camp, where Amy’s efforts had produced a small, smoky fire of damp needles and crackling twigs. They ate from more cans and drank cold water from the river, then warmed themselves together by the fire, taking their time. It would be their last morning, he knew. To the west, behind them, the garrison would be empty and silent now, all the soldiers moving south.

“I think this is it,” he told Amy as he was tying the bags onto the horse. “I don’t think we have more than ten kilometers to go.”

The girl said nothing, merely nodded. Peter led the horse to a fallen log, a great sodden thing at least a meter high, and used this to step up. He got himself situated, pulling the packs tight against him, and reached out to pull her aboard.

“Do you miss them?” Amy asked. “Your friends.”

He lifted his face toward the snowy trees. The morning air was calm and sunlit.

“Yes. But it’s all right.”

They came, sometime later, to a fork. For a period of some hours they had been following a road, or what had once been a road. Beneath the snow, the ground was firm and even, the route marked here and there by a rusted sign or a weather-beaten guardrail. They were moving deeper into a narrowing valley, walled cliffs rising on either side, showing their rocky faces. That was when they came to the place where the road split in two directions: straight, along the river, or across it on a bridge, an arched span of exposed girders, covered with snow. On the opposite side, the roadway rose again and angled into the trees, away.

“Which direction?” he asked her.

A silent moment passed. “Across,” she said.

They dismounted. The snow was deep, a loose powder that rose nearly to the tops of Peter’s boots. As they approached the riverbank, Peter saw that the connecting roadway was gone; the bridge’s decking, which had probably once been wood, was all rotted away. Fifty meters: they could probably manage it, balancing on the exposed beams, but the horse would never make it.

“You’re sure?” She was standing beside him, squinting intently in the light. Her hands, like his own, were drawn up protectively into the sleeves of her coat.

She nodded.

He returned to the horse to unhitch their packs. There was no question of leaving Greer’s horse tied up to wait for them. It had brought them this far; Peter couldn’t leave it defenseless. He finished unloading their gear, unhitched the bridle, and stepped to the animal’s hindquarters. “Ha!” he yelled, giving the animal a firm slap on its haunches. Nothing. He tried again, louder this time. “Ha!” He slapped and yelled and waved his arms. “Go on! Git!” Still the animal refused to budge, gazing at them impassively with his huge, gleaming eyes.

“He’s a stubborn son of a bitch. I guess he doesn’t want to leave.”

“Just tell him what you want him to do.”

“He’s a horse, Amy.”

And yet what happened next, strange as it was, did not feel wholly unexpected. Amy took the animal’s face in her hands, placing her palms against the side of his long head. The horse, which had begun to fidget, quieted under her touch; his wide nostrils flared with a heavy sigh. For a long, hushed moment, girl and horse stood there, locked in some deep and mutual regard. Then the animal broke away, turned in a wide circle, and began to walk in the direction they had come. His pace quickened to a trot as he vanished in the trees.

Amy lifted her pack off the snow and hoisted it to her shoulders. “We can go now.”

Peter didn’t know what to say; there was no reason to say anything.

They clambered down the embankment to the river’s edge. The reflected sunlight dancing on the surface of the water was almost explosively brilliant, as if, on the edge of freezing solid, its reflective powers had been magnified. Peter sent Amy up first, giving her a knee to send her through a hatchlike opening in the exposed beams. Once she was situated he passed her the packs, then chinned himself up.

The safest route would be along the edge of the bridge, where they could hold onto the guardrail as they stepped from beam to beam. The feel of the cold metal on his hands was like fire, an exquisite sharpness. They couldn’t get this done fast enough. Amy went first, skipping with confident grace over the gaps. As he made to follow her, it became instantly clear that the problem wasn’t the beams themselves, which seemed solid, but what encased them, under the snow: a hidden skin of ice. Twice Peter felt himself losing traction, his feet slipping out from under him, his hand biting into the frigid rail, barely holding on. But to come this far, only to drown in an icy river-he couldn’t imagine it. Slowly, beam by beam, he made his way across. By the time he reached the far side, Peter’s hands felt utterly numb; he had begun to shiver. He wished they could stop to build a fire, but there was no delaying their progress now. Already the shadows had begun to lengthen; the brief winter day would soon be over.