The Towers of the Sunset - L. E. Modesitt [21]
“Captain! He’s off the road! The skis are missing!”
Creslin wobbles, the powder piling to his knees before his desperate weight shift and downward momentum bring the ski tips upward. He is moving, the wind tearing at his face, his eyes, his body—reaching even through the heavy parka.
He totters at a scraping on the right ski but leans left and back, slowly forcing his track at an angle to the slope. Heading straight downhill would be a death sentence, even for him.
Scccttttccchhh . . .
Once more he corrects, leaning into the hill, hoping he can maintain his balance at least until he is out of easy range of the guards. With only a few pair of skis left to them, he has a chance—more of a chance now, in the kind of terrain he knows—than in the intrigues of court life of the west.
Rrrrrr . . . scttttt . . .
A mass of rocks appears out of the lighter curtain of snow ahead, and he begins a sweeping turn, the only kind he dares.
The wood vibrates under his boots; the thongs bite through the heavy boot leather; but he stays on the skis through the turn and into the narrow, snow-filled bowl downhill.
Behind him stretch the twin tracks of his skis, arching down the snow that cover the rock and ice beneath, not that he can afford to look back. Instead, he concentrates on the powdered surface ahead: untouched, virgin like him, but with hidden depths he would rather not find at the moment.
Also like him, he reflects with a grim smile, nearly frozen in place by the wind, for he still flies downhill too fast to control the air that slashes at his waterproofed and underquilted leathers and unprotected face.
Frumppp . . .
As he lurches, flying, he tucks the short skis as close to his body as possible and rolls into a .ball, flailing . . .
When he comes to rest, his buttocks are smarting and one ankle is twisted sharply. Snow is wedged in improbable parts of his body, and his torso is lower than his legs.
Slowly he twists around, levering the skis over himself and to the downhill, even though he cannot see. Cold snow is packed against his bare back where the quilted leathers and wool undershirt have ridden up.
His footing semi-secure, Creslin wipes the snow from his face, studies the area around him. He has rolled nearly a kay downhill, stopped at last by a raised snow hummock through which poke a few thin branches of elder bushes.
He pauses, wiping both the instant ice-sweat and snow from his forehead. Above the silver eyebrows, a single lock of silver hair falls across the unlined forehead from under the hood of his leather and quilted parka.
His body, still too soft for what he is putting it through, let alone what must follow, rests on the threshed snow he has carried downhill with him.
Less than a hundred cubits downhill, the evergreen forests begin. He takes a deep breath and checks his pack, relieved that it has clung to him. So has the short sword in its shoulder harness. Creslin struggles upright, ridding himself of the clinging snow, distinctly less powdery and dry than on the slopes where he began his wild descent.
His ankle is sore, but not tender to the touch. He eases himself onto the skis and makes his way down toward the forest, careful stride after careful stride, knowing that he must keep moving to outdistance the determined guards who follow him as though their lives depend upon it.
His skis swirl the powder like the wind. As he passes, the air congeals behind him, and the winterseed beneath the frost line draws deeper into the thin, stone-hard soil. He pushes onward until he is nearly a kay into the forest, panting with every sliding stride.
After a time, he stops to concentrate, and the wind rises behind him. On the slopes above, the snow re-forms into an unbroken expanse, almost as pristine as before a fleeing consort crashed through it. His breath continues to rasp through his lungs like an ice saw, for brushing the