Bram Möller's Arc

Chapter 23 of 63

They had been walking an hour when Bram felt the wind change. He turned. A grey wall was climbing the ridge behind them, thick with snow. A squall, moving fast. It would fill their tracks in minutes and bury the shelf where the owl had lifted off. Any flyer sent to find them would see only white. He stopped Wendell with a hand on his sleeve. Wendell was the pilot they had pulled from the mountain, wrapped now in a pale fur coat and a red waistcoat scavenged from his hidden chamber. He squinted at the weather and pushed out his lower lip. "Half an hour," he said. "Less." Parisa caught up, cheeks raw. She was the woman who had hired Bram to find the compass, and she still carried it in her coat. "If they can't see the ridge, they can't see us." "Then we don't stay on the ridge," Bram said. He looked down the slope. A rock spur jutted from the snow fifty yards below, dark and broad. "That outcrop. Above the squall line. Wind will scour it clean." "And if the hawk misses it," Wendell said. "We give the hawk something to fix on." Bram pulled off his cracked leather flight jacket. The cold bit through his shirt at once. He handed the jacket to Parisa. "Hold it open." He took the dented brass compass from her palm and pried the lid back on its hinge until the polished inner disc caught the grey light. He wedged the compass into the jacket's chest pocket, lid out, mirror facing the sky. "A signal," Parisa said. "Brass throws light. Leather holds shape against the wind." He shrugged the jacket back on and started down toward the spur. "Come on. Before the snow hits." They half-slid to the outcrop as the first flakes came sideways. Bram climbed onto the highest stone. He unzipped the jacket and spread it against his chest so the open lid faced up the valley. Wendell braced him from behind. Parisa crouched beside him and watched the sky. The squall closed on the ridge above and swallowed the shelf they had left. Their footprints went with it. Below them the air stayed clear for another minute, then two. A speck banked out of the south. It rose, cut across the wind, and came straight for the spur. The storm-tracking hawk. It circled twice and dropped onto Wendell's outstretched arm, talons finding purchase in the fur. A brass tube was strapped to its leg. Bram unrolled the strip inside. Omondi's hand. Tender inbound. Hold position. One hour. Parisa let out a breath she had been keeping. Wendell smoothed the hawk's feathers with one thick white finger. Bram looked up the ridge. The squall had taken the pass. It had not taken them. He zipped the jacket shut over the compass and sat down to wait.