Niccolo Rising - Dorothy Dunnett [83]
Tobie said, “Who else needs help? I’m a doctor.” Claes was already dismounted.
The English party were all there, and fit to ride, although a horse had been killed. The monk was thrust with rough care into Tobie’s wide grasp, while the horseless man took his place in Gilles’ saddle. The monk groaned, and Tobie gripped him one-handed. Speed. Speed was all that mattered. They had to outrun an avalanche, riding tired horses – his with two men to carry. Claes, remounted, was by him. They set off, slipping and struggling, and the rolling drumbeat of the snowfall attacked them, repeating from every towering face. They weren’t going to escape. They couldn’t. He saw Claes take a deep breath, and wasn’t sorry for him.
Claes said, “We have to reach the turn of the track over there. It’s past the line of the fall. And there’s an overhang.’ He spoke in English. A flash of angry impatience told what the English leader thought of the theory. Tobie said, “He may be right. If so, we can ease up. Or the horses will founder.”
He caught the end of Claes’ glance and was not sure, himself, why he had displayed faith in him. Snow slapped him in the face: falling snow and thrown snow and impacted snow flung from the hooves all about him. Through the whiteness he saw the turn of the track, and a looming shadow behind, which was the overhang. Claes, straining beside him, suddenly tipped his head back and inhaled through his nose, the unaccustomed lines lifting. “Which isn’t to say,” said Tobie between his teeth, “that you don’t deserve the thrashing of your young life. And will get it.”
“I know,” said Claes. “There. We’re safe.” They struggled round the sweep of the widening bend. Under the cliff was a hollow, big enough to contain them all as they stumbled in. By then, the thunder above and behind was like deafness. Tobie thought about the weight of snow making that noise, and the speed it was running at. The overhang wouldn’t save them. If the avalanche hit the overhang, it would split it clean from the face of the rock. But they had to risk it.
It missed the overhang. They all heard, seconds later, the wall of snow strike the track where they had been, and the roar of stone and wood breaking as the shelf fragmented and slipped, taking splintered trees with it.
From their place of safety, they sat their horses in silence, watching the spectacle of the fall. The edge of its path was just short of the overhang, where Claes had predicted. Either a piece of astrology, or a simple matter of calculation – or of local knowledge. Claes had been reared, after all, in Geneva. Tobie could hear him saying so at this moment to one of the English party, a swarthy young man who had crossed, perhaps to thank him. Tobie, his attention half on the monk, wondered what else they were saying. Then he lost interest, for a moment later there was a flurry of movement beyond them and Astorre appeared, with Julius and all the others, come back to make sure of their safety. They didn’t wait long. Now the shock was over, no one wanted to linger. They helped Tobie secure and settle his patient, and then they and the English party set off together.
Tobie could see Astorre looking for Claes, but Claes was wisely invisible. The English leader explained to captain Astorre what he thought of imbeciles who screamed in the mountains and, to Tobie’s admiration, captain Astorre answered mildly. He could do little else. Publicly, the matter was over. And Brother Gilles was the only real sufferer.
“He ought to ask,” Julius said,