WE REACHED THE TOP of the first hill. Below us, Knacke struggled to break through the gate. Flames seethed from his hands. Even from a distance, the groan of old melting iron was sickening.
In the olden days, Mount Hope was called the Beautiful City of the Dead. But that night, it seemed more like an entire country. There were hundreds of little hills, roadways that led everywhere and nowhere. Below, in the first valley, a few dozen tombs were laid out like an ancient stone village. In the other direction stood arches of stone, pyramids of stone, eight-sided shafts, and tiny stone churches.
"We can't win," Relly panted. "There's no point in running." No matter where we fled, our tracks would be perfectly clear to Knacke.
I paused a minute, turning inside myself. I was a god of water. Underground streams, yeah. The river, yeah. But also snow and ice. I let myself feel the water pouring through me. And I let myself feel the icy wind. Soon the snow was ten times thicker in the air. And our tracks were blotted out.
We ran on, into the hills where two hundred thousand people lay in eternal sleep.
I saw a tree stump full of water, like a rotted black cauldron. I saw a carved angel whose arms had fallen off and whose face had dissolved. Still, I could tell she was looking heavenward. I saw rank after rank of stones like soldiers hunched over in the drifting snow.
Knacke got through the gate and aimed his car up the first rattling brick roadway. I heard him somewhere behind us. Then I saw the bright jets of his headlights poking through the empty branches above us.
"We're dead, we're dead," Relly moaned. "We can't outrun a car."
"No, but we can hide far from the road."
He stopped, blowing on his fingers and stamping his feet. "We'll die of the cold or they'll get us. What difference does it make?"
"I don't get it," I said. "Why, after everything we went through, why are you giving up?"
"Because you did."
"What are you talking about?"
"You sold us out! You agreed to join up with Knacke."
"That was to save you!" I yelled. "I thought if I went with them—"
Relly tripped and went headlong into the snow. I grabbed for his hand, but he slapped it away. "You gave up on us," he hissed at me.
"I did not! I was trying to save your life."
We looked down at the marker that had caught his foot. It was a dissolving white lamb, a gravestone for a little child. "Just one year old," I said. "Didn't even have a name. 'Our Baby.'" For a hundred and fifty winters, the lamb had stood guard over this spot.
"We should just give up," Relly said. "I'm freezing to death. I can't keep going all night." He rolled onto the grave and rested his head on the lamb like it was a pillow.
I'd read somewhere about people freezing to death, how they get warm first and sleepy. "You got to keep moving," I said. "Come on. It's not much farther."
"What's not much farther? More graves, more snow?"
"Shhh!" Butt said.
The wind died suddenly, as though commanded to lie down. Footsteps were approaching. Three men, three old killer gods, coming at us from three directions.