Trojan Gold - Elizabeth Peters [119]
In the final seconds, the agonized lines of his face relaxed. His eyelids dropped, veiling his eyes, and he said something—not the expletives, orders, and insults he had been hurling at me—something quite different. It surprised me so that I almost let go of his wrist. “What?” I screamed. “What did you say?”
Then it was on us.
I pushed my face down into the snow.
The only good thing about it was that it didn’t last long, though the howling assault seemed to go on forever. A couple of rocks bounced off my back, but I didn’t feel them at the time because all the nerve endings in my body were focused on my hands and the cold, limp thing they held in a death grip. I was still holding it when the echoes faded into silence and I dared to raise my head.
The brunt of the avalanche had been broken by the trees above the cemetery. If the full force had struck, it would have swept both of us away with it. It was bad enough, however. I think the noise was the worst. My ears were ringing even after the thunder died, and I felt lightheaded and dizzy. My eyes wouldn’t focus at first. Then I saw that most of the wall was gone. Only a few tumbled courses remained. There was no sign of John—no face, no white-knuckled hands.
He was still down there, though. I could feel his weight—his entire, dead weight, pulling at my arms. I must not have been thinking very clearly. Instead of calling his name, I croaked, “What was that you said?”
I do not know how the hell I ever got him back up. At first he was no help, he kept passing out. Finally, he got one toe into a crevice and I was able to grasp the back of his jacket. When at last he was sprawled on the ground at my feet, I looked over the edge.
Fifty feet below, the road was blocked by snow and fallen stone. Nobody would be coming that way for a while. The section of cliff above the road was almost perpendicular, a sheer drop of broken, jagged stone. A single blotch of color broke the gray-white monotony of the background—a patch of bright turquoise, unmoving and crumpled.
I bent over John and shook him. He groaned and tried to burrow deeper into the snow.
“Come on,” I said briskly. “Let’s hope the horses didn’t bolt during all that pandemonium. You’ll have to walk or crawl or something; I can’t drag you, my arms feel as if they’re about to fall out of the sockets.”
When I returned to my room, he was still lying across the bed, booted feet dangling and dripping, stained jacket soaking the spread. I put the tray down on the table and bent over him. His lashes were stuck together in starry points. They lay quiet in the bruised and sunken sockets.
“John,” I whispered.
There was no reply. I said, “Kitty, kitty. Here, nice Kitty.”
His eyes popped open. “If you let that damned cat—”
“She’s not here. I just said that to tease you.”
“Oh, God,” said John. He closed his eyes again. “To think I once praised your sense of humor.”
“Just rest easy.”
“I intend to. I don’t intend to move for at least three days. I may die here, quietly and peacefully—”
His voice faded.
“Hang in there,” I said soothingly. “You can die later, after I’m through with you.”
I had to cut the laces of his boots, they were so sodden and twisted. Midway through the ensuing process, he revived sufficiently to sit up so that I could ease his jacket off. Surveying my preparations, he remarked, “I do admire a well-organized person. But I don’t see any thumb-screws or cat-o’-nine tails or—”
“I have everything I need. I wanted to make sure we weren’t interrupted.”
“I see,” John said warily.
“You’ll have to stand up for a minute. I want to change the bed.”
He did so, without comment, clinging to the bedpost for support; I scooped the whole soggy mess of ribbons, papers, and wet spread into my arms