Drums of Autumn - Diana Gabaldon [202]
Lower? There were dark smudges on the seat of his breeks; I’d thought them mud. I thrust a hand under him and groped for his laces, jerked them loose and yanked down his breeches.
It was mud; his buttocks glowed before me, white, firm, and perfect in their roundness, unmarred beneath a silver fuzz. I clutched a handful of his flesh, unbelieving.
“Is that you, Sassenach?” he asked, rather drowsily.
“Yes, it’s me! What happened to you?” I demanded, frenzy giving way to indignation. “You said you’d been shot in the back!”
“No, I didn’t. I couldna, for I haven’t been,” he pointed out logically. He sounded calm and still rather sleepy, his speech slightly slurred. “There’s a verra cold wind whistlin’ up my backside, Sassenach; d’ye think ye could maybe cover me?”
I jerked up his breeches, making him grunt again.
“What the hell is the matter with you?” I said.
He was waking up a bit; he twisted his head to look round at me, moving laboriously.
“Aye, well. No real matter. It’s only that I canna move much.”
I stared at him.
“Why not? Have you twisted your foot? Broken your leg?”
“Ah … no.” He sounded a trifle sheepish. “I … ah … I’ve put my back out of joint.”
“You what?”
“I’ve done it once before,” he assured me. “It doesna last more than a day or two.”
“I suppose it didn’t occur to you that you wouldn’t last more than a day or two, lying out here on the ground, covered with snow?”
“It did,” he said, still drowsy, “but there didna seem much I could do about it.”
It was rapidly dawning on me that there might not be that much I could do about it, either. He outweighed me by a good sixty pounds; I couldn’t carry him. I couldn’t even drag him very far over slopes and rocks and gullies. It was too steep for a horse; I might possibly persuade one of the mules to come up here—if I could first find my way back to the cabin in the dark, and then find my way back up the mountain, also in the dark—and in the middle of what looked like becoming a blizzard. Or perhaps I could build a toboggan of tree branches, I thought wildly, and career down the snowy slopes astride his body.
“Oh, do get a grip, Beauchamp,” I said aloud. I wiped at my running nose with a fold of cloak, and tried to think what to do next.
It was a sheltered spot, I realized; looking upward, I could see the snowflakes whirling past the top of the big rock at whose foot we crouched, but there was no wind where we sat, and only a few heavy flakes floated down onto my upturned face.
Jamie’s hair and shoulders were lightly dusted with snow, and flakes were settling on the exposed backs of his legs. I pulled the hem of his cloak down, then brushed the snow away from his face. His cheek was nearly the same color as the big wet flakes, and his flesh felt stiff when I touched it.
Fresh alarm surged through me as I realized that he might be a lot closer to freezing already than I had thought. His eyes were half closed, and cold as it was, he didn’t seem to be shivering much. That was bloody dangerous; with no movement, his muscles were generating no heat, and what warmth he had was leaching slowly from his body. His cloak was already heavy with damp; if I allowed his clothes to become soaked through, he might very well die of hypothermia right in front of me.
“Wake up!” I said, shaking him urgently by the shoulder. He opened his eyes and smiled drowsily at me.
“Move!” I said. “Jamie, you’ve got to move!”
“I can’t,” he said calmly. “I told ye that.” He shut his eyes again.
I grabbed him by the ear and dug my fingernails into the tender lobe. He grunted and jerked his head away.
“Wake up,” I said peremptorily. “Do you hear me? Wake up this moment! Move, damn you! Give me your hand.”
I didn’t wait for him to comply, but dug under the cloak and seized his hand, which I chafed madly between my own. He opened his eyes again and frowned at me.
“I’m all right,” he said. “But I’m gey tired, aye?”
“Move your arms,” I ordered, flinging the hand at him. “Flap them, up and down. Can you move your legs at all?