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She had a point there.
I glanced back to the edge of the forest that marked the difference between the farmland and the mountains. It wasn’t a forest of the sort I was used to. I could probably walk through that kind of vegetation in my sleep. But even if it wasn’t as thick as the forest on the frontier, anything could be hiding in the trees I was staring at.
“Well,” I said at last, conscious of my friends watching me, “the only thing we can do is try.” I turned away from the mountain and stared at my friends. “We’ve got another problem before we get that far, though.”
“Supplies,” Lucius said with a nod.
“Exactly,” I said. “We have the food we brought from the college and crampons, but we need a lot more rope than we have.”
“And those climbing axes you mentioned,” Darius said.
“And more crampons wouldn’t be a bad idea,” Leander agreed.
The twins nodded at each other.
I turned to Appius. “I assume that mountain-climbing equipment is available for sale in Aktau, since it’s so close to the mountains.”
Appius winced and looked a little concerned. “It is,” he said. “Or, at least, it was. After everything we’ve seen on the way here from Royersford, I doubt that the supply stores will be open.”
“No one is going climbing for enjoyment these days,” Horacio agreed.
It dawned on me that other people might have been desperate enough to attempt the treacherous journey across the mountains, that we might run into other people trying to escape, or soldiers who were intent on preventing that, but I didn’t have enough energy to worry about that.
“Do we head straight for the mountains with the supplies we have, or do we try to buy more in Aktau?” I asked.
“We should move as quickly as possible,” Lucius said right away. “We haven’t seen anyone yet, but you know the king will send people after us to bring us back. We need to get beyond their reach before they catch up with us.”
Leander shook his head. “We don’t have the supplies to make it over chasms and blocked paths,” he said. “We definitely need to buy climbing equipment.”
“But if the shops in Aktau aren’t open, you could end up in a worse position than you started in by going into town,” Horacio said. “They’ll notice strangers and could report you to someone.”
I appreciated that Horacio cared about us, but I wasn’t sure if we needed his pessimism.
“There’s another option,” Appius said with a sheepish look. When we all turned to him, he went on with, “We could go to my father’s house. I don’t know if he’s there or what’s happened with my family, since I haven’t had a letter from them in months, but we do have climbing equipment in the barn, and I know where it all is.”
I actually broke into a smile. “That would be ideal,” I said. And then, because I was exhausted, on edge, and worried I was days away from death, I pulled Appius into my arms and hugged him like there was no tomorrow.
Appius tensed with surprise, then hugged me back. He clung to me, really, and whispered, “Anything for you, Conrad.”
It was a sign of how close we were to the end—whatever that end was—that I didn’t even mind his awkward affection and attachment.
The others looked on with varying degrees of teasing, though. Or brittle seriousness on Lucius’s part.
“Where is your family’s home?” Horacio asked, gathering up the oxen’s reins to send them walking again.
“Not far from here,” Appius said, peeling away from me with a smile. “Follow this road until you get to the turn-off at Seller’s farm. Then head around to the north for about half an hour, until you get to the DeSpirito farm.”
I had no idea what Appius was talking about, but Horacio seemed to know where to go.
I was impatient to get on with things, and sitting down in the wagon and just waiting as Horacio drove on felt harder than any part of our journey so far. I distracted myself from the wait by arranging the supplies we did have in the wagon bed.
“We’re actually well-prepared,” I said, assessing the amount of food we had with us. “It took me about a week, maybe a little more, to cross all the way through the mountains, but there’s a small settlement with an inn a few days from the frontier. If it’s still there, we should be able to restock.”
“It’s going to take more than a week to climb over the rubble left in the road and to figure out how to cross the chasms, now that the bridges have been destroyed,” Horacio said, again adding his opinion.
“We’ve got enough food for two weeks or so,” Mara said. “As long as we don’t eat too much.” She glared at Darius, who had taken a heel of bread from the pile and was munching on it.
“What?” Darius said. “I’m hungry, and it’s bread. It will go moldy in a matter of days anyhow.”
