Craig steps into my shot and I signal to Annabel to get some close ups, while I get wides of the group. But they barely even fill the frame – I’m not even sure I can make this look like a competition.
‘We’ll be racing in two teams,’ Craig calls out. ‘Gaia, Helen, Wolf, you’re Team A, yes? Nish, Marco, Team B. We’ve laid a marker all the way back there,’ he says, stretching his arm out towards the mouth of the glacier, ‘at the half-mile mark. You race all the way up there, you swap mushers, then you come back. I want to see teamwork, control, firm voices.’
If anyone’s thinking about the John-shaped hole in this arrangement, they don’t show it. I see Tori a little way back, casting an eye over the two groups.
Annabel gets into position by the starting line. ‘Whatever you do, keep rolling,’ I say to her. ‘Don’t worry about getting me in shot, I’ll cut it out in the edit.’
‘Kind of a shame we don’t have body-worn cameras for this.’ She gives me a bright grin.
I take the camera from my eye. ‘What did you say?’
‘Body-worn, you know? Like the ones you used for your undercover stuff. So your hands are free.’
Giving the comment a nod, like it’s nothing, I remind myself that she doesn’t know about Leo, about what happened. Can’t know. ‘That would make it easier, yes.’
The wind starts to lift the fallen snow. I go over and settle myself at the front end of the smaller team’s sled, facing backwards. Nish takes the reins first, standing at the back of the sled with Marco in front of her in a rigid stance.
Anju starts a countdown. Standing back, Pamuk eyes his animals, all standing braced like athletes at the starting block. Annabel quickly steps back and nestles her eye against the viewfinder.
I frame up, hit Record.
And the whistle blows.
Straight away Nish calls out firmly to the dogs and they tear ahead. In my foreground Marco grips his eyes shut and shouts incomprehensibly, which has an immediate effect on the animals. Responding to the extra voice, they lose their synchronisation and suddenly spread out. The sled tips precipitously, but Marco feels it happening and lifts himself to counterbalance.
‘Fuck! My fault,’ he says, checking behind him that Nish is still on board. The dogs scramble themselves upright and Nish recentres herself.
‘Stay quiet!’ she shouts back, a savage determination on her face that I haven’t seen before. Behind the lens, my first thought is of how I can edit the shot into a sequence about her character arc, once I’m in the cutting room. My second is: what other parts of her personality does she keep hidden?
But before she can restart, the other team flies past, with Gaia gripping hard on the reins. Wolf makes an obscene gesture, and Nish swears under her breath. I grip the seat just in time for Nish to command our dogs again, and this time we stay on track.
The wind streaks past us, wickedly cold, whipping the air from my lungs. Ahead of us, the other team’s dogs have hit a rhythm, kicking up clouds of loose snow behind them. We’re not far behind. The effort of controlling the animals shows in Nish’s face, her teeth clenched hard and her elbows out as she battles the reins. Annabel and the others disappear in the distance.
I swing round for a forward shot as Gaia’s woollen hat flies from her head and is whisked away. Up ahead, the marker comes into view – a stout red pole with a pennant at the top. Gaia starts to slow, but too soon, and we gain on her. I twist back to catch the look of pure exhilaration on Marco’s face, then tilt up to Nish, who’s clearly seen an opportunity. We bank sharply and I realise she’s overtaking. We hit the halfway mark several seconds ahead of the others, and Marco and Nish swap places as swiftly as anything.
Marco’s already got the reins in his hands by the time Gaia’s team comes to a stop. I try to catch it on camera, but we set off again too quickly. My onboard mic picks it up, though – I can clearly hear the other team’s dogs sounding anything but calm, and Wolf berating his teammates.
‘Get the fuck into position,’ he’s shouting as Gaia and Helen swap roles. ‘What the hell are you doing?’
On our sled, Marco makes a few false starts, but soon we’re out in front. Nish calls out encouragement to him, the two of them showing an unexpected fraternity.
I shoot forward for a few seconds, the end coming up three hundred metres away, two-fifty. But then I hear the others. I rotate back, trying to locate them, but in my headphones I hear not Wolf, but Helen, screaming.
‘Let go, you maniac! Stop it!’
Marco looks to his right, horrified, then swerves. There’s barely time to register what’s happening, but then I see it – Wolf has somehow wrestled the reins from Helen and is directing their dog team in a hard left, straight into us.
The impact sends us sprawling. Instinctively wrapping myself around the camera, I hit the frozen ground hard on my shoulder. I get to my feet and stagger over to where the sleds lie on their sides, collided in a heap. Helen is getting up and looking around her, then rushes over to Nish, who’s holding on to her ankle and wincing. The noise of the dogs rises to a chaotic pitch, but underneath the barking there’s a single, plaintive whine.
Marco advances on Wolf. ‘Fuck was that?’ he shouts and shoves him hard in the chest.
Wolf staggers back, laughing. ‘Come on, big guy, it’s only a bit of competition! Or have you forgotten what that’s like?’
I jam the camera under my arm and get between them, one arm out. ‘Leave it! For Christ’s sake!’ But then I realise who’s missing. ‘Where’s Gaia?’
I turn in a desperate circle.
‘Gaia!’
Then I see her, hurtling across the snow to where the dogs are going berserk. From the other direction, Anju is sprinting towards the animals. ‘Leave them! Don’t touch them,’ she calls.
Either Gaia doesn’t hear or she doesn’t care. She drops beside the injured animal – the source of the whine – and puts her hand out to soothe it. And in an instant, the whole pack is on her.