Nash looks around frantically. He scans the feeding pack, the blocking wolves, the sheer cliffs. Then his gaze lands on the scree slope where the young bull fell.
"We climb," he says.
"Up that?" I stare at the loose, shifting rock. "That's where the bull fell! It's unstable!"
"It's unstable for a seven-hundred-pound animal with hooves," Nash says. "We have hands. We have ice axes." He shoves me toward the slope.
"Go. Now. Before they decide we look tastier than the bull."
I run. I run toward the landslide, toward the steep, terrifying wall of loose rock.
Behind me, I hear a growl. It's deep, guttural, and close.
I don't look back. I hit the scree and start to climb.
It's a nightmare of physics. For every two steps I take up, I slide back one. The shale shifts and grinds under my boots, threatening to send me tumbling back down into the kill zone.
"Keep moving!" Nash yells from below me.
I look down. He's backing up the slope, rifle trained on the wolves below. Two of them have started to follow us up the rocks.
"Nash!" I scream.
He turns and scrambles up the loose rock, his boots slipping. He's stronger and faster on the shale than I am, and in three punishing strides he's past me, hitting a solid rock outcropping above. He plants himself and stretches down, his hand extended.
"Jump!" he commands.
I lunge for him. He grabs my wrist, his grip like a steel clamp, and hauls me up the last few feet of loose rock. We scramble over the lip of the ridge and roll onto the solid ground of the drainage, gasping for air. My cheek stings where the shale spat up at me. I don't remember it happening.
Below us, the sounds of the pack are muffled, replaced by the wind howling through the high timber. We're safe. But we're miles from home.
Chapter Eighteen
NASH
We'reon the spine of the ridge. To our left is the box canyon, now a slaughterhouse echoing with the sounds of the pack. To our right is a steep, forested drainage that eventually leads back to the river.
I check Aris. She's leaning against a boulder, her chest heaving, her skin pale and waxy. She climbed that scree slope like a goat, but the tank is empty. Her hands are trembling. I can see it from here.
"We have to loop around," I explain, pointing down the timbered slope. "We can't go back down the scree. We have to drop into that drainage, follow the creek to the river, and hike back up to the sled."
"How far?" she asks, her voice thin.
"Five miles. Maybe six. In deep snow."
Aris groans, dropping her head back against the stone. "Six miles. Breaking trail in snowshoes. After that climb."
"The good news," I say, helping her stand, "is that it's mostly downhill. And the wolves are busy eating."
"Silver linings," she mutters.
We start the descent. It's a grueling slog that turns into a nightmare by the first mile.
The high of the fight evaporates instantly, leaving behind a crushing, leaden weight. One minute I was a warrior putting a round into the rock beside a wolf's head; now I'm just a man standing in deep snow with legs that feel like wet sand. The cold, which I had successfully ignored during the standoff, comes rushing back with a vengeance.
"Nash?" Aris's voice is a whisper, barely drifting over the sound of the wind.
I stop and turn. She's ten yards behind me, swaying. Her face is gray, the scrape on her cheek standing out like a brand against her pale skin.
