Ice Country (7 page)

We scramble to our feet, spin around, gaze up
the snowy mountainside. Plumes of snow burst from the ground like
low-flying clouds. Blurs of black snowsuits flash down the incline,
cutting side to side, carving up the slope. A line of sliders,
chasing each other playfully, head right toward us.

“Look out!” Buff shouts, but I’m not sure if
he’s talking to me or the sliders bearing down on us. I don’t have
time to clarify as I jump to one side, narrowly avoiding getting
chopped down like a poorly placed snowman.

When I look up there’s snow in the scruff of
my thin beard and flecks of ice on my eyelashes. “What the chill?”
I say, pushing to my feet, warmth flooding through my limbs. I’m
not warm, but something inside me wants me to be.

Three sliders are stopped just past us,
having turned their slides at sharp angles to brake suddenly. It’s
almost like they were aiming right for us. We can’t see their
faces, because they’re wearing thick masks to keep the snow and
cold away, but their eyes are alight with adrenaline and blinking
away coldness-induced moisture.

“You Daisy and Barf?” one of them says, his
alert eyes flicking between us.

“What?” I say, taking a step forward. “I
oughta beat you senseless for a move like that.”

The guy laughs. “The king calls the shots
here. You touch me and you’ll be off the job quicker than you got
on it. And trust me, you don’t want that.”

“What?” I say. “You mean, you’re the ones
meeting us?”

“Get wit’ it, kid,” another of the guys says.
“You must be Daisy, the big gambler who lost enough silver to land
you wit’ us.”

“It’s Dazz,” I say, taking another step
forward. “Call me that one more time and you can slide the rest of
the way down the mountain with a broken arm.”

“And I’m Buff,” Buff says, stepping beside
me, his fists knotted. He’s all riled up, too, which almost makes
me grin. Nothing like a good scrap to start our first day on the
job.

“Calm the freeze down,” the first guy says,
shaking his head. “Heart of the Mountain, you’d think we actually
hit you guys.”

“Near enough,” Buff says, not giving an
inch.

“Look, we’re on the same side. Consider it a
bit of friendly first day initiation. Now do you want to get to
work or swing those antsy fists of yers?”

The honest answer is that I want to swing my
fists, but this new job is supposed to be part of a fresh start, so
I flex my hands, trying to coax the fight out of them. But I’m also
not about to back off without some form of retribution. Weakness
like that can haunt a guy. I pick up one of my snowballs and launch
it hard enough to do some serious damage.
Crunch!
Although
it was headed right for the main speaker’s head, the ball slams
into the open hand of one of the other guys, the biggest of the
lot. Good reflexes. He grunts, squeezes the ball into mush in his
fist, lets it crumble to the ground.

The main guy laughs. “Nice arm,” he says.
“That’s why we keep this guy around. We call him Hightower, on
account of…well, I think it’s obvious.”

Obvious as a wolf in a sled dog team
,
I think, staring at the big, brown eyes of the gargantuan who’s at
eye level despite being a good foot further down the hill than
me.

“I’m Abe,” the guy continues. “This fella is
Brock.” He motions to the other one who spoke to us. His eyes glare
back, sort of cross-eyed. “And this little guy is…” Abe looks
around, scanning at waist level, like he’s trying to find a missing
child. There’s no one else around. “Where the freeze is Nebo?”

Brock gazes up the mountain. “’E was right
’ere a minute ago…Musta gotten lost at the hairpin.” Something
about his tone tells me he knows exactly what happened to the one
they call Nebo.

Hightower grunts and points, so we all follow
his gesture until we spot another slider coming down slowly, barely
spraying any snow at all. We track his progress all the way to us,
although it takes so long I swear another inch of fresh snow has
fallen by the time he gets down. His every movement is uncertain,
awkward, unbalanced, and when he tries to stop, his slider gets all
tangled up with his feet and he goes down face first.

The others are laughing—even Buff is
sniggering—and normally I’d probably join in, but something about
the guy seems so helpless, so pathetic, that I don’t feel like
getting pleasure at his expense. After all, I’ve been pretty
pathetic lately myself.

“Shut it,” I say, punching Buff and shooting
icicles at the others. I help the guy, who really is quite small,
to his feet, using the back of my hand to brush some of the snow
off. Right away he pulls at his mask, which is caked with snow,
until it pops off his head.

He’s bald…and short…and jittery.

It’s the man who came out of the Chance Hole
last night.

“You!” I say, loud enough that the small man
takes a step back, concern flashing across his red face.

“Do I know you?” he asks, saying it in such a
way that it sounds like he thinks he probably should.

“We saw you leaving the Hole last night,” I
say.

He screws up his face. “Last night. Not a
good night,” he says.

“Ah, I wouldn’t say that, Neebs,” Abe says.
“Your new losses pretty much guarantee you’ll be working with us
for the rest of time.” Abe chuckles, takes a few steps over to
smack Nebo on the back. Nebo cringes and puts a hand to his mouth
as if the weak blow knocked a few of his teeth loose. “You’re late.
Where you been?”

“Uh, sir, I’m sorry, but uh, Brock here, he,
well, he…”

“Spit it out!” Abe says, glancing at Brock.
“What did Brock do?”

Behind Abe’s back I see Brock use his thumb
to make a slashing motion across his throat. “I, uh, well, Brock
didn’t do anything actually. I just, well, sort of fell going
around a bend, sir. I’m sorry, it won’t happen again,” Nebo
finishes lamely, ducking his head like he expects to be hit.

Clearly there’s more to the story, and if I
had to guess, it was probably Brock who caused the fall in the
first place.

I chew on my lip, which is suddenly feeling
numb. “So this is his first day, too?” I ask, wondering why he
didn’t meet them at the same place as us.

“Ha ha ha!” Brock laughs boisterously. “First
day—that’s funny. Despite Neeb’s awful display of sliding, ’e’s
actually been runnin’ with us for comin’ on a year now.”

“Then why…” I start to ask, but then figure
out exactly what happened. Why would Nebo be playing high stakes
boulders-’n-avalanches if he’s already got a job and debts to pay?
Simple. Because he wanted out. One lucky night and he could pay his
way back to whatever normal job he might’ve had before he first
lost big at the Chance Hole. But why would he want out of a job
working for the king?

“Why what?” Abe says, staring at me
strangely, as if he can see the tail end of the question hanging
off the tip of my tongue.

“Nothing,” I say.

“Good,” he says, ripping off his mask. His
face is pale white with a nose so flat it looks like someone uses
it for a punching bag on daily basis. His ears stick out and sort
of up, like maybe he can hear as well as an animal, like a rabbit.
He’s older than us, but only by a few years. “First, some
instruction.”

Beside me, Buff mumbles, “I thought school
was long over.”

Abe ignores him. “Brock. Wanna start with the
rules?”

Brock nods and pull off his mask, revealing a
face that only a mother could love, and even that would be stretch.
It’s so bruised and scarred that it looks like he mighta had a pet
dog and offered his cheeks as a chew toy. Either that or this guy’s
been in a lot of fights, and not just of the fists and brawn
variety. A long, six-inch scar runs from the edge of his right eye
to his lips, like a curved scythe. It reeks of knife wound.

Maybe it’s a good thing we didn’t start
something with these guys. Between grunting Hightower and Brock,
whose eyes are looking crazier by the second, we mighta had our
hands full.

Brock says, “We ain’t got many rules, but if
you break one, we’ll break you.” He sniggers, but I don’t think
he’s joking. “One. Do as yer told. Abe gets ’is instructions
straight from the crown, so take what ’e says as if King Goff’s the
one sayin’ it. And don’t ask questions. If we don’t tell you
somethin’, it’s cuz we don’t want you to know. Got it?”

He pauses, as if testing us to see if we’ll
ask any questions right after him telling us not to. We both just
nod.

“Number two. Don’t tell anyone about what you
do while on the job. You work fer the king, helpin’ wit’ the fire
country trade routes. That’s it.”

“Well done,” Abe says, which draws a
grotesque smile from Brock’s pock- and scar-marked face. “Maybe you
got more than just rocks fer brains after all.” Brock’s smile fades
and he looks like he wants to add a few scars to Abe’s mostly
smooth face.

“It’s forbidden to go to fire country,” I
say, taking care to craft my question as a statement.

“Not for us,” Abe growls.

“And you’re the ones in charge of all the
fire country trade,” I say. Another statement.

“We’re not the only group,” he says
cryptically. “But we’re the most important ones.”

I look at Buff, who shrugs. “Let’s do this,”
he says, cracking his knuckles beneath his thick gloves.

Whatever
this
is.

T
he job is freezin’
easy.

First off, Abe gives us our own sliders.
Beautifully carved, sanded, and polished planks of wood that are
smoother than my arse was the day I was born. “Straight from the
king’s stores,” Abe said when Hightower removes them from where
they’re strapped to his back and hands them to us. Compared to the
homemade sliders we used to make as kids, these are perfection. And
somehow they fit our feet perfectly, as if someone came and
measured our feet while we were sleeping. Stepping onto them, we
put one foot in front of the other, tying the ropes tight around
our ankles.

On they feel even better than they looked
off. Buff’s smile says he’s thinking the same thing.

With a couple of whoops and a few hollers
(and at least one grunt from Hightower), we push off from the
mountain, and all the hours I logged sliding as a kid seem to
surround me as I feel every bump, slide into every turn, and dodge
every obstacle. Buff’s never been as good at sliding as me, but he
has no trouble either. Compared to Nebo we’re both sliding
geniuses, and compared to the others, well, we pretty much fit
right in. I’ve got no idea where we’re going or what we’re doing,
but if I’m getting paid for sliding down the mountain then I figure
not asking questions should be no problem at all.

We carve up the mountain for almost an hour,
feeling the icy wind whipping around us, pushing life into our
limbs and hope into our hearts. Maybe, just maybe, by our own
stupidity we’ve stumbled upon the perfect job for us.

With every passing minute my body temperature
warms, both from the athletic exertion and because some of the
sting seems to drain from the air, as if our very motion is
siphoning the cold away. Eventually, the thick, powdery snow thins,
giving way to hard packed ice that propels us forward at speeds
that are beyond anything I’ve ever imagined, sending bolts of
excitement up my spine and whirling around my chest.

It’s easy. Abe leads, and we follow, matching
his every turn, cut, and angle, until the ice turns to slush, like
it does sometimes in the Brown District in the very heart of the
summer when it hasn’t snowed for a few days and the sun sneaks a
peak between the clouds.

Except this slush seems permanent, like it
never really gets solid again, not even after a good snowfall. Like
maybe it’s not cold enough to sustain it.

A minute later my eyes widen and something
lurches in my stomach when I see what lies ahead. Armies of trees,
as spindly and free of leaves as the ones that surround the
village, but different somehow. It takes me a moment to realize
what it is. They’re not covered in snow. We’re in the thick of
winter, the coldest time of year, and they’re as brown and
snow-free as if it’s the least cold summer day of the year.

As I’m thinking all this, Abe pulls up,
sending up splashes of brown muck that seem as much dirt as snow,
and even then,
snow
is a loose term. In fact, it’s almost
more water than snow. We’re sliding on water and dirt.

We stop in a line, staring out at the brown
and gray forest before us, naked, as if its white blanket has been
picked up by a giant and rolled away, leaving it bare and
unprotected. And beyond the trees are flatlands, dotted with
strange green and gray plants, with gnarled branches, protruding at
strange angles. The land is so flat I can see for miles, all the
way to the horizon, where the cloud-free sky starts its rise in a
pool of red blood. From where we’re standing, a full quarter of the
sky is red, and it’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.

“Welcome to the border,” Abe says, grinning.
I grin back just as Nebo slides past us, out of control until he
loses his balance and crashes down the river of water melting off
the mountainside.

~~~

When we reach the border, the barest glint of
sunlight slices through the battalions of gray before the clouds
are able to close ranks and block it again. The sun is high in the
sky, at its peak: midday has arrived. A full half day of work spent
sliding down the hill. Not too shabby.

To think, the border can be reached in only a
half day. If it wasn’t for the fear of catching the Cold, you’d
think Icers would come down to see it all the time, regardless of
whether the king forbids it.

Then I see them: the Heaters. People of fire
country. My first ever glimpse.