With the first step, his feet merely felt cold. Then there was a trickle into his boots, followed a half-second later by a flood of ice-cold water. He winced, but kept walking. Then the water was right over his boots and working its way up to his knees.
The cold ate into him like an army of ants gnawing on his bones. Even though this was meltwater, which meant it was warmer than ice, it was still freezing. The force of the river was like an invisible noose around his ankles, trying to pull them from under him.
He made sure he was side-on to the current, offering the least resistance to the water, and checking for approaching hazards like logs. The river flowed from his right to his left, so the bow wave where the water hit his right-hand side was almost up to his waist. The cold seemed to paralyse his lungs so that he could hardly breathe.
‘You’re doing great,’ Tikaani called.
‘Th-a-nks,’ Beck croaked, not looking back. ‘Never better.’
That time in Colombia, he and his friends had forded a river. They had used vines from the jungle as support ropes so that no one would be swept away. But there were no vines here and the homemade ropes tying up the rucksacks weren’t long enough. If the current caught him, there would be no fighting it.
And so every step had to be carefully planned. He could feel the water-smoothed rocks shift beneath his feet. At least with two legs and one stick he had three anchor points under the water to hold him steady. He always made sure that two were firm before moving the third. Every time he moved a numb foot forward he had to make sure it was planted on solid ground before he put his weight on it.
He knew he had about ten minutes before hypothermia set in: his body would be losing heat faster than it was making it. Right now, every part of his body wanted to turn round and run back to Tikaani. But that would achieve nothing, except that he would be cold, wet and still on the wrong side. There was no point in losing all that body heat for nothing.
So, ten minutes to get across this torrent . . .
The cold was chewing its way up his body. It had reached his hips, his stomach, his ribs. Breathing was actively painful now. He had to force each gasp in and out of his lungs – huh! huh! huh! The deeper he went, the more of his body there was for the current to work on.
The water was now up to his armpits. He held his elbows out and tilted his head back to keep his chin dry. He could feel his rucksack bobbing madly against the back of his head. He hoped it would be staying dry in its waterproof wrapping.
Now the biting chill had gone – his body was just numb, apart from an ache deep inside his bones. There was so little feeling that it took a few more steps to realize – the water was going down!
Beck glanced down to confirm it. Yes, with each step the water level was dropping a little further down his chest. He was past halfway. Relief surged through him. He could do this.
Then a traitorous stone turned beneath his foot and his legs were swept away. The water closed over his head and he was swept tumbling away in a roaring torrent of ice.
Beck reacted without thinking and jammed his stick down into the river bed. It gave him a second’s grace to find his footing again and he stood up. His head broke the surface, back into light and air, and he whooped for breath as water streamed down his face.
‘Beck! Beck!’
Tikaani was running down the bank to follow him. In just that couple of seconds, Beck had travelled a long way downstream.
‘I’m OK,’ he gasped. Soaked, he thought, but OK. He wiped the hair out of his eyes and turned away from Tikaani to see how far he had to go. In fact the current had done him a favour and swept him a little closer to the far bank. He could feel the cold setting in from below and above. He just hoped his rucksack had survived its dunking because life was going to get so much more interesting if it hadn’t and everything inside was wet.
The adrenaline surge from his accident gave him new strength to press on. Two minutes later the water was down to his knees. Then he was splashing through the shallows and finally he was out on the other side.
He longed to throw himself down on the ground and rest, but that way he would just freeze quietly. He had to keep moving. He whirled his arms round and round to force the blood back into his hands, which would warm him up fast.
‘OK!’ he called to Tikaani, hopping up and down. ‘Your turn. Watch out for . . .’ He paused, his attention caught by a standing wave in the water another twenty metres downstream. The river seemed to rise up a small ramp that stayed motionless in the water. From this angle the sun shone on it and he could see it clearly. From the other side of the river it had been just the same colour as the rest of water and he hadn’t noticed it.
‘Tikaani, come down here,’ he called. If there was a standing wave, it meant the current was coming up against something on the river bed. There might well be a ridge of slightly higher ground at this point, which would mean the river would be shallower all the way across . . .
‘This way,’ he instructed, pointing. ‘Use your stick for support, take each step carefully . . .’
A little less than ten minutes later, Tikaani had made his way across the river safely too. It had been a struggle against the current and the cold, but he had made it without being swept off his feet even once. By this time Beck was fully dressed in new, dry clothes – luckily, only a few drops of water had got into his rucksack. He had gathered wood and more Old Man’s Beard for a fire and the first flame took hold even as Tikaani pulled on his own dry socks.
‘Just like you said . . .’ his friend noted, eyes closed in bliss. ‘Best feeling ever.’
Beck grinned.
This wasn’t to be their last stop of the day, but Beck knew they both needed the warmth of a fire more than anything else right now. They still had plenty of light left – this far north dark wouldn’t fall until after eleven. They would spend a couple of hours here to thaw out, and then they would tackle the high ground.
He glanced up at the mountains that loomed above them.
Tikaani followed his gaze. ‘It’s all uphill from now on, isn’t it?’
Beck nodded. The ground up to the far side of the river had been level and flat. Here it was already sloping up and away from them. The river really was the base of the mountains.
He hadn’t seen the wolf again. It would be stranded the other side of the river now, anyway. But from now on they would be under increasing attack from other forces. Wind, ice, snow, cold – even gravity. A realm of no warmth and no food where it would be very easy to die without even realizing it.
‘All uphill,’ he agreed.