Relentless

3

He blinked sluggishly and jerked himself upright. No good going to sleep. No good. His legs felt rubbery and he was having trouble keeping his knee-grip on the saddle. He tested the knot with which he had tied the reins to his right wrist. He couldn’t see it until he brought it up within a few inches of his face.

He lifted his right leg over and slid to the ground. Almost fell; kept his grip on the saddle, straightened, felt his way along the reins to the bit and found the nylon rope. Took a grip on that and staggered ahead.

He kept his eyes closed because there was no point in trying to see anything. His nose and lungs burned with the in-and-out rasp of frigid air. All the layers of clothing didn’t seem to help: the wind came up inside his cuffs, inside the sleeves of his coat, under the coat skirt, down the back of the neck.

His feet burned and tingled when he stamped them on the ground. He would put a foot out and test his footing and then stomp down hard and bring up the other foot. It got to be like that: you thought about each step and you took time executing it. It meant the others were going just as slowly. But that made sense: the Major had to find the way, had to keep from blundering into trees, keep from falling over precipices.

The earth seemed to change its tilt underfoot but it was impossible to tell which way it had shifted until he detected an almost imperceptible drop in the force of the wind. They must be on the backside of a slope now. Going down, or at least going around something. He kept walking into the rump of Mrs. Lansford’s horse and in a dulled way he began to worry that he might do it once too often and get kicked in the belly by the horse.

He kept the reins wrapped around his glove and whacked his hands together with energetic sweeps of his arms.

He stumbled over something and went down. The horse made a vague sound that was whipped past and away on the wind; he felt a jerk of reins against his hand and scrambled for footing, got one leg under him and tumbled forward, dragged by the reins. Terror hit him: the rest of them were going on regardless, they couldn’t see him or hear him, he’d get dragged to death. His feet spun and scrabbled and finally he got upright after a fashion and lurched forward: found the saddle, hooked his arm around the horn and let the horse carry him along a little way while he sawed icy air in and out of his laboring lungs and fought down panic.

The wind tumbled and howled, beating at him like fists. He walked alongside the horse’s head with his grip on the reins choked up tight: if he fell again he would be able to pull himself up.

His boots were sliding a little; feathery soft snow on slippery pine needles made a treacherous footing. The wind was a vast pounding thunder in his ears; it flayed at him willfully. He knew what it was like to be a blind man now. Tingling pinpricks of sensation burned in his feet and hands. His ears hurt him with a sharp agony; he took a long clumsy time untying the scarf and snugging it down over the top of his hat, tying it under his chin, tucking the ends into his coat and wrapping the collar around.