and pointed on down the slope. Josh gaped at him, understanding at last that the man was telling him to go on. He had forgotten all about the Inferno. He shook his head impatiently. Mackintosh was all but free now. They were reaching gently, to lift him on to a canvas stretcher. Somehow, on their backs or on a sledge, they would carry him up to the hut. They had done it often enough before.
‘He is gut,’ one of the officials said. Josh lifted his head then. Racing away, out of his control, his imagination swept to the route down, beyond the avalanche. Mackintosh’s face had been hidden by the backs of the rescuers, but as they moved him Josh saw it again. His eyes were open, incongruously as blue as the sky. He was looking at Josh, and his lips moved.
Go on.
‘Ja, ja.’ They were shouting and pointing again. They were telling Josh that he was to climb back up and walk along the flat to the control point, in order to restart his race from there.
Suddenly, Josh was moving. He snatched up his poles and hoisted his skis over his shoulder. He glanced at Mackintosh for the last time, and saw the flicker of a painful smile.
‘I’ll have to finish for us both, Alex,’ he shouted. ‘You do the same for me some other time.’
He was already on his way when one of the rescuers grabbed his arm. He was holding out his own gloves. Josh tore off his ruined pair and waved the good ones in a salute. Then he was off, up over the debris, his legs pumping like pistons.
At the control hut a DHO regular, Tuffy Brockway, had materialised. He clapped Josh on the back and Josh staggered.
‘They’ll credit you with the time you’ve lost,’ Tuffy roared. ‘It’s happened before. Esme Mackinnon stopped down at Grütsch to let a funeral go by. Took off his cap and stood to attention, of course. They gave him the time back.’
Josh barely heard him. He leaned on his poles for a second, gulping air and trying to steady his shaking legs. He looked down and was amazed to see other skiers skirting the worst of the avalanche. They were sliding and falling, but the race was still in progress.
A stopwatch clicked decisively beside him. Josh’s grip tightened on his poles and he flashed away. Ahead lay a steep drop, a rise up to Castle ridge, and then the hideous Inferno slope itself. Josh tried to shut off the pain that wrenched at his side, the memory of the thundering snow and Mackintosh’s deathly grey face. Alex was alive, and he wanted to stay alive himself. That was all there was room to know now. He was skiing again. A second later there was nothing in Josh’s mind but the way down, unfurling like a treacherous ribbon ahead of him.
At the Allmendhubel, Sophia looked at her wristwatch again. She was frowning. ‘He should have come through by now. And the man before him. If he’s going to stand any chance, he should be here by now.’
They stared up at the route until their eyes stung, searching for another of the black specks that would fly down to them and grow, faster and closer, until it became a man who swooped past them in a glittering plume of speed and ice.
The mountain was empty.
They stood in a huddle, not speaking. Julia’s hands and feet were numb, but she was watching too intently to stamp and clap to try to warm them.
Another minute went by, and stretched into five. No one came, and the other spectators began to mutter at one another, eyebrows raised.
Sophia murmured, ‘Something has happened.’
Looking up, Julia suddenly saw that the mountains were hostile. Josh was somewhere up in that high, white space. She was afraid, and she shivered. Without taking her eyes off the route Belinda put her arm around her. Gratefully, Julia huddled closer. The four girls drew together, waiting.
Then Felicity shouted, ‘Look!’
At last, a black speck appeared on the lip of a col high above them. The skier seemed to hang there motionless for a second, and then he came twisting down the huge slope.
No one spoke. ‘Is it him?’ Julia almost screamed.
Sophia shook her head. ‘Josh doesn’t ski like that.’
Another skier appeared over the col, and then another. The leader came closer, and Julia heard that he was shouting something at them. They crowded forward and she saw his mouth open, a black shape under his blank goggles.
‘Av—a—lanche!’
He was French and the syllables of the word sounded too soft for the images that exploded with it. He lifted his pole and waved it backwards at the white walls. And then he hurtled past them, on and down towards Winteregg below.
Julia did scream now. ‘What does he mean? Where is the avalanche?’
The other skiers passed, unrecognisable, but not Josh. Sophia’s ruddy face had turned grey-white. Julia understood that avalanche was something terrible. She shrank back against the wooden wall of the funicular station, feeling the splintery planks give a little at her back. They waited, still in silence, their faces all turned upwards.
And then, again, Felicity shouted, ‘Look!’
Julia knew at once that this one was Josh. He came, seemingly, straight as an arrow down the dizzying slope. Crouching low over his skis he didn’t swoop, bird-like, as the others had done, Josh had power, not grace. A wordless cry burst out of the girls and before the echo of it had gone Josh was whirling down to them. Julia glimpsed the red silk scarf wound round his neck, the white flash of his smile, and his pole lifted in a brief salute. An instant later he was past and they swung round to watch him carving a straight path down the fall of the slope.
Julia realised that they were all cheering and whooping. The icy air tore at her throat and there were tears of relief and excitement pouring down her face. She clasped Belinda in a bear-hug and they capered in a circle, laughing and gasping.
‘He’s not there yet,’ Felicity warned.
‘But skiing like that,’ Belinda answered, ‘he’ll not only get there, he’ll bloody well win.’
Down again, after the Allmendhubel. Josh had glimpsed Julia at the funicular station, but the thought of her had vanished from his head just as quickly. He was tiring rapidly and he was skiing through open country, over and down treacherous humps, and every atom of concentration and muscle power was needed to find the right route, the fast route. But he had come this far, and determination was like a tight wire inside him.
At Winteregg, he came to the railway line. A bigger knot of spectators waited beside a little tea hut and as he reached them a storm of questions in three languages broke around him. ‘Happy Valley,’ he panted. ‘Alex Mackintosh was hurt, but they’ve got him away now.’
Someone tried to pat him on the back but he ducked away and pushed on again. Beyond Winteregg was a kilometre and a half of flat country. His body felt like lead, but he clenched his teeth and poled on. He thought of Alex Mackintosh’s faint encouraging smile.
And then, at Grütsch station, the route dived downwards again. Josh took one gasping breath and pointed his skis down the slope. Beneath him, beyond the dense fir forests, was Lauterbrunnen.
Down.
The pain had spread to his chest now, and there was burning from his armpits to the top of
