The Students of Barrenmoor Ridge Page 13

  ‘Cass?’ The situation had made the decision. ‘Cass, you with me?’

  Casper blinked, and his struggling abated. His eyes were wide now but unfocused until Liam placed his palm on his cheek, and he blinked, his brow furrowed in thought.

  ‘It’s me, Liam. Do you recognise me?’

  The thin lines that had once been soft, pouting lips, creased into the faintest of smiles.

  ‘Mozart?’

  ‘That’s it, mate. Yes, it’s Mozart.’ If only he had been a genius, none of his would have happened. ‘Listen to me, Cass,’ he said. ‘I’m going for help. You understand?’

  The head moved a fraction, down and then up, expressionless.

  ‘I’m coming right back. I’ll leave you the lamp and the water, but you’ve got to do as I say. Will you do that?’

  Another slow nod.

  ‘Trust me, yeah? Stay where you are. Inside the sleeping bag. Don’t try and get out. It doesn’t matter if you feel hot, you’re not. Do you understand?’

  ‘Mozart?’

  ‘Yes, that’s it. Mozart’s telling you what to do. You’ve got to obey the maestro, right?’

  Casper seemed to understand. His eyes flicked to the lamp, the roof of the tent and back to Liam, and he nodded again.

  ‘Try and stay awake, but don’t move.’

  ‘My head.’

  ‘Yeah, I expect it hurts, but it’s only a scratch. I won’t be long. Please, Cass, promise me you’ll trust me and stay exactly as you are. Will you?’

  ‘Lee?’

  ‘That’s it, it’s Lee, and he’s telling you to stay put. Promise?’

  ‘I’ve got a letter.’

  Maybe Liam should stay with him? Perhaps he wasn’t as coherent as he thought.

  ‘That’s great, Cass,’ he said. ‘You can show me when I get back. Promise me you’ll be here?’

  A mumble that could have been anything.

  ‘Promise me, Cass. Please, mate, just say it.’

  ‘Don’t go.’

  It was pathetic, but at least it proved Casper understood.

  Liam fought to harden his voice. ‘Promise.’

  Any signs of a smile faded as Casper finally grasped his predicament.

  ‘Promise,’ he whispered.

  ‘Good. Right. The water’s here…’ Liam showed it to him and put it by his head. ‘If you use it, put your hands back inside the bag as soon as you’re done. Don’t get out.’

  ‘Promise.’

  ‘That’s it, Cass. I’ll be right back.’

  There was no time to linger, no time to dwell on possible consequences, all Liam could think of was calling for help or reaching someone who would know what to do. He was still dressed in his damp clothes, but there was nothing dry to change into, and he’d soon be wetter anyway.

  Making sure he had his phone, he grabbed the torch and tested it. The descent would not be easy, back to the path, down to the riverbed, across to where the footpath was more marked, and another couple of miles to the cottage they had passed on the way up.

  That was, of course, assuming none of the markers had been washed away.

  ‘It is important to stay positive.’ Mr Mazur’s voice in his head again. ‘Stay alert and remember, stealth saves lives, panic causes death.’

  Banishing the thought from his head, he took a last look at Casper. His eyes were closed, but the shivering had stopped, and he appeared, for all intents and purposes, to be sleeping.

  ‘Love you, mate,’ Liam whispered as he made one last scan of the tent. Finding nothing else of use, and praying he was doing the right thing, he left Casper and plunged into the storm.

  John was unable to sleep that night. The roof tiles clattered madly, and he knew the old yew tree would be creaking as it bent towards the lean-to, but he wasn’t worried. The cottage was built for bad weather.

  Gary was curled up behind him, spooned in with one arm across John’s chest. The bedroom was warm, Gary’s presence warmer and the pillows were soft. There was no reason sleep shouldn’t come, they were safe from the battering, cocooned in the perfect shelter of each other’s arms, and yet he was restless.

  Maybe because of the memories.

  The scream of the wind as it charged from the summit of Lhotse, the vibrations of the ground when an avalanche fell, the hiss of snow stinging the tent, and the mountain’s roar, all sounds from another time in his life battling to be heard through the force seven rattling the house. The bitter bite of memory gnawed at his mind for sure, but the main reason his thoughts leapt from the anaesthetising approach of sleep to the worst conditions in the world had nothing to do with the past.

  There were people out there now, not at Everest, but on the fells. The team were over at Northpeak, and they’d picked a fine night for training, but closer to home, there were hikers huddled beneath flimsy canvas hoping their pegging was sound and wishing the night would end. Daylight might bring security, but it didn’t guarantee good weather, and it was hours away. A lot could happen.

  The storm had worsened to a frightening zenith before the thunder abated, but he still couldn’t sleep. The lessening conditions meant the eye of the storm was overhead, and there would be more, possibly worse, to follow.

  As a way of tempting sleep, he imagined the fell from above, looking calmly through the frantic clouds to the swamped ground a mile below.

  Lit by lightning bursts, he imagined it as waves frozen in mid-roll with Fellborough’s peak a crest and the lower terrain its ripples. Peppered around were insignificant dots of inappropriate colour, the shop-bought, budget tents of the unwary trembling against the elements.

  He had pictured the scene on many nights as he lay listening to the conditions and wating for the MRT radio to spark into life, or for his pager to double-beep the call sign, but tonight he saw it more clearly as if it was unfolding on a widescreen television in high definition. Unaffected by the storm, he floated above it, watching over its potential victims, safe at his altitude and apart. The unhinged tempest beneath blasted from all directions, swiping at anything in its path, but John was safe, hovering on a warm updraft that dulled him towards the soft paws of sleep.

  Until he fell.

  Security gone. No handholds, no rope, he was falling fast with nothing between him and the life-taking certainty of rock.

  Gasping, he opened his eyes as his body jerked. The clock glowed one forty-seven, and Gary had rolled away, leaving him exposed and vulnerable. The pager was silent, and John was safe in his bed, but a few miles away, people might be battling for their lives, and all he could do was wait.

  The rain no longer stung when it swiped Liam’s face, his flesh was too numb to register pain. The torch beam was nothing more than a thread through barely penetrable blackness, but it showed him the ground a few steps at a time.

  All he needed to do was walk slowly guided by common sense and caution. Remembering the tent was facing west, he found the way down from the ledge between two large boulders with no trouble, pausing every few steps to check he was still heading south until he met the path. Over to his left, the lightning was visible on the horizon, and the wind swooped down from the fell on his right. If the storm didn’t change direction, its position would keep him on course, and the path, now more like a stream, was marked at distances by the cairns. With the wind to one side and the dying lightning to the other, he only needed to keep going downhill until he met the riverbed. If it was flooded, he’d wade straight through it if he had to.

  Whatever had made Casper go out unprotected in the storm, and whatever had happened next didn’t matter. There was nothing that could be done to change that. All that mattered now was finding someone who could save him. Repercussions of a bad decision would come, and Liam would deserve them—unprepared, inexperienced, thinking he knew what he
was doing… Why hadn’t he just taken Casper down to the beach at home to tell him? Why drag him halfway up the country and make him climb a hill to ruin their relationship? He could have done that weeks ago had he not been such a ridiculous romantic. There was nothing romantic about destroying their friendship and leaving his best friend shivering to death on…

  ‘Stay positive!’ he yelled.

  Beating himself up was a distraction, he had to concentrate on his footing, and at least pretend he knew what he was doing. Casper needed him to be strong, to be wise, to take only a course of action that would lead to a rescue, nothing else mattered.

  Not knowing how far he had descended; he stopped and took out his phone. Sheltering it as best he could against his chest, he switched it on only to find no signal and the battery bar now glowing red. The phone back in his pocket, the torch aimed at the path, his head down, he continued.

  The rain was easing off. That was a blessing, but the gale roared in his ears, low and booming one moment, high-pitched the next. As uncoordinated as his frozen feet, as wild as the anger he turned in on himself, it would not leave him alone. It taunted and jabbed as it bullied, and he imagined laughter in the cacophony, spiteful and insulting, but deserved.

  Another sound grew closer, the ground vibrated beneath his feet, and a few paces further, he came to the edge of the riverbed.

  Except now there was no bed, only river as thousands of gallons of water teamed from the blackness of the mountain to vanish back into the night on his left. The torch picked out foam as it spewed around rocks in untamed channels, bubbling furiously across his path. There was no way to judge the depth, and no way of knowing if the few rocks that penetrated the surface were stable, but equally, there was no time to think about it. Squinting through dripping eyelashes and aiming his light, it was impossible to see how wide the channel now was, but he knew for certain that there was no way to go up and around, and downhill, it could flow east for miles and take him off his path. The only way was through, and he knew he might not survive.

  Mr Stark’s voice echoed in his mind. It was something he had once said after Liam and Casper had sight-read a potential concert piece. ‘The thing with you two,’ he’d said, ‘is that Casper is the one to consider the music before playing, while you, Mr Dent, are the one to rush in blindly and plough on regardless.’

  Which was exactly what Liam did. With no thought for his stability, he planted his foot on the first rock while judging the distance to the next. Taking them one uneven surface at a time and doing his best to ignore the pressure of the freezing water that attacked his ankles, he moved from one to the other. Holding his arms wide for balance didn’t help because his jacket acted as a sail, and the wind tried to push him off course. Instead, he bent his knees to lower his centre of gravity and make himself as small as possible.

  The river was wider than he’d remembered, and he was probably veering from his intended direction, but the image of Casper shivering alone with his heart rate slowing pushed him slowly, but carefully forward. Casper’s gibberish, his helpless stare, his charcoal stubble over pale flesh, and even his long, slender fingers changing the note of his instrument with the most delicate of touches, the sounds and images flicked through his mind, and as each one fell into place, so Liam’s foot landed on another rock. Testing each step before bringing his other foot to join the first, and only slipping twice, he finally saw the far bank with nothing between him and it but an angry, gush of water. It wasn’t far, but it might be deep.

  ‘Three paces will do it,’ he said. ‘Don’t rush in. Test the depth. Be Casper, be prepared.’

  It was like putting his leg into a cauldron of boiling water, and he screamed at the pain.

  ‘You’re not taking me,’ he bellowed at the river as it washed up against his thighs. ‘And you’re not taking him.’ That challenge was thrown to the void above as the second leg joined the first, but he was unable to shout more as shock stole his words.

  Stay positive.

  ‘That’s the first movement done with,’ he gasped, leaning into the current so as not to be swept off his feet. Struggling forward another careful pace, the water came up to his middle. ‘Second movement. Adagio.’ Another slow, painful push against the cascade, right leg first, then the left, side-on to the flow. ‘Third movement, shorter, Scherzo, easy. Concentrate, there’s going to be a fourth.’ There was, and then a fifth he hadn’t calculated. ‘Bloody unusual symphony, this one.’ But finally, there was a coda. ‘One more repeat and you’re there.’

  His legs were soaked and heavy, but he hardly felt them as he dragged himself from the river and stumbled onto flatter ground, gasping for breath.

  ‘No time to hang around.’

  Finding the footpath thanks to public-spirited hikers and their cairns, he pressed on. Now he was lower, the wind had lessened, and at some point in the last few minutes, the rain had stopped. It left behind a colder chill that he knew he couldn’t endure for long, but after forcing himself up a short incline and cresting a hillock, he saw hope. It came in the form of a smudged, orange glow from the distant village. It was a hell of a way off and far below, but a marker at least. He only needed to head for it, watch the path and go carefully, and he would find the cottage, but first, he tested his mobile again.

  Dead.

  Every footstep was painful now, and he wondered why the only sensation he had was in the soles of his feet. Each time he put his boots to the ground, his feet exploded in agony. Pain shot up his body, bypassing his legs and landing with force in his stomach, and he took one cumbersome step after another, groaning with each effort. The pain and the sound fell into a rhythm, as he thought ‘Right, left’ on alternate steps until he zigzagged down a better-marked path, and the village fell out of sight.

  It reappeared a long while later, by which time he was exhausted and didn’t care. There had been dips in the ground on the way up, and although he wasn’t sure how many, they were a way of marking his progress. Dead streams, Casper had called them, a comment Liam thought incredibly romantic for a science-minded nerd and worthy of an operatic libretto. He had said so at the time, and Casper had thrown an arm around his shoulder and given him a matey squeeze for no reason.

  That was in daylight, and the night wasn’t allowing kindness. The memory warmed him momentarily, but reality stole it away.

  His fingers were strangely hot. Water ran down his back, and he considered taking off his jacket. The rain had stopped, the wind, doing battle with subdued enthusiasm, was less troubling, and he was overheating.

  ‘No, you’re not,’ he growled as he stumbled through one of the dead streams, now two-foot deep with water. ‘You’re fucking freezing, and so is Cass. Keep walking.’

  Another two icy streams, nothing compared to the riverbed but adding to his agony, and the ground rose, the village lights were closer, and he was winning the battle.

  Below at a distance impossible to judge, a darker shape partially blocked the orange glimmer. It could only be the stone cottage, it was too uniform in shape to be natural, and for the first time since he set off, he allowed himself a moment of congratulation.

  It didn’t last long. The next stream caught him, and he tripped and hit the ground with a sickening thud. Putting his hands out to break the fall, stones ripped through his gloves and bit into his flesh.

  Screaming in desperation, he clawed at the earth, scraping his knees and cracking his shins, as he pulled himself to his feet. The pain didn’t matter, nothing did. Whatever state he was in didn’t compare to Casper’s peril, and the only thing that he cared about was reaching that dark shape and getting Casper off the mountain.

  The ground was spinning beneath his feet, he wavered from side to side, the torch showing the seemingly endless path one agonising yard at a time, until, barely able to stand, he saw the battered Land Rover.

  Twel
ve

  Sleep had come as the thunder died, but as soon as the banging started, John was awake and alert. In a way, he expected it, as if he had dreamt it into life, when in fact, it was what Gary had said about inexpert hikers he’d met at the pub. The pounding on the side door was loud enough to cover the sound of the rattling roof as he swung his legs from the bed, noticed the time and reached for his dressing gown. He was in the hall before Gary woke, mumbling and cursing.

  An icy blast accompanied his first sight of the bedraggled and bleeding young man on the step, and the outside light catching the youth in its hard, white glare. His hair was flat on his head as soaked as the rest of him, his face was ashen, the skin taut, and his puffer jacket hung heavy, ripped and filthy.

  The lad practically fell into John’s arms the moment the door was open, and by the time John had kicked it shut, Gary was in the hall, zipping up a hoodie, bleary-eyed and concerned.

  ‘Thank you,’ the lad mumbled over and over. Mixed in were ‘please’ and ‘help’, and he allowed John to support his weight, desperate enough not to care where he was or what he was doing. Too exhausted, John thought, and in too much of a state to be left pleading in the hall.

  ‘Gary? Sitting room.’

  Gary was already on his way.

  ‘I’ve got you, lad.’ John wrapped the guy’s arm over his shoulder and clutched his side. ‘A few more steps and you’re there.’

  ‘Your LifePak’s under the dining table,’ Gary said as he sidled passed to fetch towels. ‘Want me to call him in?’

  ‘Not yet. I’ll do an EMC if you can be ready to tech.’

  ‘Two minutes.’

  John spoke quietly but with authority as he helped the boy to the sitting room. ‘I’m going to lay you on the floor,’ he said, pushing the coffee table aside with one foot. ‘Gently does it. What’s your name?’ When the boy didn’t reply, he asked again as he dropped his arm and spun to catch him under his armpits, straddling the lad and lowering him onto his backside. ‘Easy, mate, nothing to worry about. Can you tell me your name?’