Achikh, Hans, and Baver backtracked, hoping to find Nils alive, riding warily most of the way, then finishing on foot. They found his horse first, grazing in a glade, with a Mongol pony which Hans made his. The Kalmuls were gone. By then dusk had thickened enough that they didn’t see Nils till he’d climbed most of the way down the slope.
Briefly they consulted. Achikh’s guess was that the Kalmuls would return to the big encampment, and that in the morning the Kalmul chief would send a force to hunt them down.
They continued on in growing darkness until a grassy slope gave them a climbable route to the ridgetop. There they rode on till there was only starlight to see by—a somewhat risky situation, given their lack of remounts. Then they lay down on the ground and slept, each, including Baver, telling himself to wake up when the moon rose.
When at last it did, it was little more than a fingernail paring in the sky. They were stiff with cold, and left at once, traveling northward, leading their horses at first, at a brisk walk, to warm their own bodies. Before long, dawn seeped up the sky. Through the day, Belukha grew nearer, her crown white with glacier, her shoulders with snowfields.
On the next day a great raven spiraled down, and landed on a young pine not far ahead of them, clinging precariously to a branch almost too small to bear it.
Hans stared. “It’s as large as an eagle!” he said, “or nearly. Surely as large as an osprey.”
Acnikh gazed intently through his slitted eyes. “I have never seen one so large,” he said. “Ravens are wise birds, and some have wizard powers; all the Buriat know that. But this—this is no ordinary raven. It is a spirit raven.”
Baver eyed it. His experience with ravens was neither close nor extensive, but it was a big bird. It spread its wings as they passed, as if to steady its balance, and he guessed its span at a meter and a half. Its head was massive, its black eyes beady, intent, and intelligent.
Nils stretched out an arm as if pointing to it, and to Baver’s amazement the bird lifted from the pine and flew to the Northman. For just a moment its black feet gripped his wrist, while the horse shied nervously, then the bird rose again to spiral up and up, so high that except for its grace in flight, it might have been a distant crow.
“We have no pursuers,” Nils said. “Not within his sight.” He gestured at the circling bird.
Achikh peered at Nils narrowly, but not in skepticism. His only question was: “Can you trust him?”
“It is difficult to lie to me,” Nils answered.
They dismounted then, and minutes later the raven came back to them. They let the horses graze awhile before going on.
The next morning they came to the end of the steppe. Forest spread in front of them, seemingly endless and unbroken. They also came to the end of Old Wives’ Summer, or a break in it at least. For the day had broken gray and damp, with a chill wind pushing dark rags of cloud along beneath a heavy overcast.
“It will snow,” said Achikh, gesturing at the mountains. “We are too late to cross this year.”
Nils nodded. “Let’s go on until we find a large stream, and build a hut there, then find game. Otherwise spring will uncover our bones, and our friend raven will use us for food instead of fellowship.”
Before the day was done, it did begin to snow, thickly. By the time it began to stick, they’d come to a stream some forty meters wide, and hurriedly built a shelter near it, of saplings and the bark of large birch snags. It was a cold and miserable camp without the bedrolls they’d lost with their packhorses. The smoke from their fire hung low around them in the wet air, reeking. By the end of a largely sleepless night, the snow lay more than thirty centimeters deep.
Then, with the axes Shakir’s mother had given them, Achikh and Hans felled and limbed numerous pines of minimum taper and twenty to thirty centimeters thick. Baver, driving one of the horses, dragged the slim logs to the site Nils had chosen. There the Northman, his deft axe perpetual motion, slabbed them flat on two sides and carved the corners to fit. After a bit, Hans came to help him.
By midday the sun came out, and the snow began to settle and melt, water dripping from the trees. By evening the walls of a hut stood chest high on Baver, with crude openings on two sides as windows, and a longer one for a door. The ethnologist’s job had expanded: Now he was not only skidder, but moss bringer and chink stuffer, filling the cracks between the logs to keep the wind out.
The snow was largely gone already, and Baver asked if they might not make it over the mountains after all. Achikh shook his head. “In high mountains the snow falls much deeper, and melts much more slowly. I doubt we could push through, surely not without knowing the way. We would die.” He shook his head, clearly not happy with the situation. “We must winter here.”