An Extract From The Comet’s Child by John Ward
The terror of the moment drove out other fears: it was all Fin could do to force one foot in front of the other. The light faded insidiously: colours drained away, leaving only shades of darkness; the mountain ahead became a vast shadowed bulk. Still they went on, at a snail’s pace.
A biting breath of wind was the first sign that they were approaching the exposed ridge. When Fin looked up, he saw that the darkness had deepened into night: surely they could not go on? Yet what else could they do? Brangorweth seemed to be wondering the same thing: he had stopped with the horse at a point where the path broadened as it turned towards the ridge. Fin came up beside him and caught some muttered snatches of talk.
‘Must be up soon…with the snow it should just be bright enough…but the horse?’
Then he became aware of the boy beside him and fell silent. He gazed out into the darkness beyond the ridge as if waiting for something to happen. Fin began to wonder
if he had lost his nerve and was now paralysed with indecision, but when at last he moved to speak to him, Brangorweth shushed him, with a finger to his lips, then pointed.
‘Here she comes!’ he whispered.
As Fin strained his eyes, he saw a lightening low down in the sky: diffuse and faint at first, it strengthened steadily, and took on a definite form – and there was the moon, rising gracefully over the mountain’s flank into the frosty air. Under its light, a scene of extraordinary beauty emerged from the darkness – the line of the snow-clad ridge gleamed a weird bluish white as it climbed towards the mountain, which now stood out starkly in the cold light, its moonward face gleaming brilliantly, marked here and there with pools of blue-grey shadow; but the blackness of the other side was absolute, an inky, velvet black.
It was so strange and dreamlike that Fin’s personal fear diminished: a kind of enchantment lay over the scene that masked its danger. He felt an inner calm as he watched the old man, working about the horse’s saddle. From it, he drew out three lengths of pole which he fitted together to make a long staff; this he thrust into the snow beside him, then began to unpack various saddle bags, muttering to himself the while.
‘Must have this…can’t risk it…these too.’
He made several items up into a bundle, and held it out to Fin.
‘Here, boy – can you manage this? We must take the essentials ourselves, d’you see, in case – well, just in case.’
Fin tried to work out what he meant, as Brangorweth made up a second, larger bundle for himself. In case of what? The old man was speaking to the horse now, murmuring in a low voice, blowing in its nostrils, and Fin realised that he was trying to calm the animal. After a time, he led it cautiously onto the ridge, probing the snow ahead of him with his staff. As he went he kept up a constant reassuring murmur, and the horse followed him, picking its way nervously.
Fin saw that his was the safest position, at the rear, able to follow a path that had already been tested; besides, his attention was absorbed in the man’s patient leading of the horse, and he was able to keep his own fear at a distance. Each step takes us nearer the other side, he told himself. With every step, we near our goal.
Once he was well out on the ridge, Fin was in a world of tiny movements made with infinite care. He was glad to have the horse ahead, because it gave him something to fix his eyes on. He did not dare look back – the thought of moving his head that much terrified him: he feared that if he even rolled his eyes violently, he might overbalance. Time seemed suspended: it might have taken him a minute or an hour to place one foot in front of the other; it did not matter. All that mattered was that, inch by slow inch, they continued to go forward. That was what he must concentrate on, and ignore the yawning gulf on either side, keeping his eyes fixed on the reassuring hindquarters of the horse ahead.
They were halfway across when the horse began to slip.
Its right rear hoof suddenly skittered away and its haunch went down on that side: at once it lurched the other way to regain its balance, did so for a moment, only for another hoof – the front left this time – to slip and send it plunging forward. Again it corrected, again seemed momentarily to regain equilibrium, but each time it must have put more weight on one hoof than the surface could hold and it would slip again, and well before it happened Fin saw that the horse must fall.
