The Yeti

by Mike Miller

  Upon this moment, Conrad realised that heretofore he hadn’t even bothered to study the beloved chart. Only now did he understand that their new destination lay at the very summit of the entire mountain if not beyond, a terminus that starkly contrasted his own knowledge that indeed their journey should have ended leagues ago at the destroyed caravan. The surrounding horizons indicated they had little left to trek before reaching the top of this mountain. The dual facts that this journey continued onwards for an unknown duration combined with the bitter reality that their sought treasure was not a commodity of gold created a nauseous gurgle in the deep recess of Conrad’s malnourished stomach. Once he had safely passed Douglas, he permitted an even deeper frown to rumple his beard, though he made himself not dwell upon the helplessness of his predicament.

  A blow struck across his right shoulder which made the soldier whirl about at the assault. But it was just the overzealous hand of Douglas clapping down across Conrad’s back as the leader had actually approached from the sinister left.

  “How goes you, friend?” Douglas stank breath was a gasp of foul heat across Conrad’s chilled face.

  “What do you care?” Conrad grumbled without any interest in looking at the speaker.

  “Oh, come now,” Douglas said with a false tone of sorrow. “What kind of way is that to talk between two dear old friends such as ourselves?”

  Now Conrad averted his eyes back to study Douglas, who was ridiculously naive if that was his real perception of the circumstances. Conrad’s reply was a hostile shrug to escape out from under Douglas’ embrace.

  Douglas trivialised the angry gesture with a laugh. “What digs at you, friend?” Again his insistence upon the term ingratiated Conrad.

  “Are you putting me on?” Conrad said loudly, now stopping to fully confront Douglas. The outburst’s volume was amplified as it ricocheted off the icy walls, siphoning the sound through the tunnel for the entire party to hear in either direction. While the harsh words actually did give pause to the group’s relentless shuffling, they soon lurched back into motion to continue their ascent.

  Though Douglas perversely enjoyed the ire, Conrad continued his inquiry with even more wrath. “You lied about the cargo, our destination. What else are you hiding from me, friend?” Conrad took special care to sneer the final word at Douglas like he was verbally smearing the man’s face in custard.

  “Such bold accusations. How dare you claim I lie when I have lied not once to you?” Douglas asked with bold bewilderment. He stopped walking as Conrad advanced in stubborn refute.

  Conrad would not retreat from his contention. “Perhaps you lied about Baxter as well,” he said in a softer though sharper tone.

  It only took one rushed footfall for Conrad to wheel around defensively. His arms flung outwards with unknown destinies until he saw Douglas’ dagger swinging down for his head. Then his hands knew what had to be done.

  Conrad deflected Douglas’ knife in time, but reeled backwards from the aggressive momentum. His feet fumbled to grip the icy surface, though Douglas cared little for stability, allowing his weight to bear down on his prey in the assault. They fell together to the ground with Douglas on top.

  With their faces but inches apart, Conrad got a good glimpse into the frenzied fire of murder that shrank Douglas’ pupils. He heard a strange gurgling that rattled forth from his attacker’s throat like a boiling stream of lava.

  The eruption of the inevitable clash between the two wrestling men was enough to halt the troop in their tracks. Several faces alighted with glee at the distraction, and murmurs of wagering escaped their mouths as natural as a next breath.

  With a surge of strength, Conrad cast aside Douglas to send him stumbling to the ground. With the maniac now at his mercy, Conrad was grateful to Douglas for the obvious clarity of how to resolve the ongoing and awkward combativeness that had been borne between the men. All Conrad had to do now was be the first to destroy the other, and there would be no more doubts over the course of leadership on this maligned expedition. Conrad drew his own sword from his sheath, pleased to play the executioner.

  “Look out,” a voice cried, sending Conrad whirling to guard his back. He was greeted by an onrushing Molor, whose twin sabres were rapidly descending down upon Conrad’s shoulders with the malicious intentions of severing his arms from his body. While one instinct demanded that Conrad raise his own blade in self-defence, the savvier side of his battle-ready senses forced him to evacuate the area with a well-timed tumble. The pair of angry swords clanged against the ground, sending chips of ice spraying into the air.

  The Indian was quick to forget the setback, lunging after Conrad, who was now rolling to his feet with his sword upright before him. With a backhanded swipe of his left hand, Molor knocked aside Conrad’s blade while the right hooked around with the unmistakable force of a killing blow, forcing the corporal to duck under the swipe.

  While Conrad’s own sword was cracked away, the skilled warrior was able to divert the blade’s momentum back into a thrusting blow back at Molor’s chest. The tip of the sword stopped just inches away from breaching Molor’s tunic as he blocked the attack up and over his shoulder. However, Conrad’s blade managed to trim a small piece of thick black beard in the exchange.

  The two men paused to circle one another, each daring the other to attack first. Conrad contemplated ditching the cumbersome pack on his back, but knew he would be quickly skewered in attempting to do so.

  Conrad’s strict British blade stood in upright attention as thin and straight as the horizon. Meanwhile Molor’s sabres were a decidedly distinct contrast to Conrad’s weapon, a pair of curved scythes that swelled at the points like the heads of twin cobras. In the Indian’s hands, the two swords even methodically swayed in the air like poisonous snakes.

  At a loss for a legitimate next move, Conrad tossed his sword from his right to his left, showily catching the hilt then swinging it in a looping circle around his wrist. The flashy manoeuvre was designed to fill time for Conrad to invent a tactic, or at least intimidate his opponent. Instead, Molor pounced to attack, thrusting his right sword directly at Conrad’s torso. The corporal was lucky enough to recover his weapon and parry away the attack with his off hand.

  Douglas had recovered to his feet. “Get him!” he screamed wildly.

  While Molor’s abilities were noticeably slowed by the after-effects of his drug partaking, that slowness was offset by the dual-wielded weapons and trained precision. The Indian’s onslaught was so merciless, with blow after blow hailing down in uninterrupted succession, Conrad imagined that the pace could not be maintained for long. All he had to do was wait for the enemy to tire.

  As Conrad was forced back into an unyielding wall, he noticed that as he slid off that barrier, his foe was skilfully pushing him back around to Douglas. So while Conrad could hold his own against the semi-intoxicated Indian, he knew that once he was outnumbered, even by Douglas’ lazy assail, that he would be finished. He only had a scant few seconds to decide his next course of action, though the overpowering offense of Molor provided little opportunity for any proper review of strategy.

  Douglas was pleased to see Conrad being pressed back towards him, making things all the easier to exact his final revenge on this traitorous malcontent. With his machete drawn at the ready, Douglas nimbly twisted the blade in his hand with agile flicks of his wrist, content to wait for his prey to be delivered to him. When Conrad furtively glanced back over his shoulder, Douglas saw that lovely and familiar expression of a man afraid of his imminent demise.

  Douglas raised his blade back over his head in preparation to slam it down square in the middle of Conrad’s skull.

  “Stop!” cried the high-pitched tenor of Private Gregory, his young voice made all the more shrill as he dashed in from the side to tackle Douglas. Though Molor’s two-bladed assault continued to feverishly bite at Conrad, the veteran still managed to watch the boy’s heroic tackle of his enemy to his rear.

  But whil
e Conrad surely appreciated the noble gesture that afforded his salvation, albeit temporarily, he still could not lament the impulsive stupidity of the tactic. For as Conrad had seen Gregory blindly throw himself at Douglas with the empty-handed intentions of peacefully halting the fight, Conrad knew that Douglas would not retaliate in kind. The seasoned soldier knew the interference would be strictly punished, as the armed murderer would not halt his aggression from rational appeal.

  Now atop Douglas in a pile on the ground, Gregory’s face stretched into an abnormal mask, a frightened look as if he had seen a ghost as both his eyes and mouth opened wide with silent torment. Douglas twisted his knife further into Gregory’s abdomen while snarling with malevolently perverse glee. Conrad cursed the moment he had invited the boy to accompany them on this trip as Private Gregory’s corpse tumbled onto the ground with a squishy wallop.

  Conrad noticed that Molor too had been distracted by the side altercation. With only that tiniest of opportunities to exploit, Conrad then knew exactly what to do. Whether it would work or not remained to be seen, but his mind instantly seized upon the divinely inspired plan as the best odds of surviving this encounter.

  Conrad lashed out on the offensive with a short series of thrusts, startling Molor to parry away the blows and retreat backwards in defence. With that swashbuckler on his heels, Conrad turned his attention back towards Douglas, who was now rising with one hand planted on the ground and the other brandishing his bloody machete.

  As Conrad dashed to the attack, Douglas sneered, “Come on, you ponce,” The killer rested on one knee so that his free hand could invitingly beckon his prey with a friendly come-hither wave.

  The mocking tone and gesture of Douglas in the midst of dire battle only further grated Conrad’s nerves into stony anger. For a moment Conrad recalled his friend Baxter’s irritation whenever he would adopt the same light-hearted attitude. So Conrad’s frown cracked even more with ire, breaking his lips apart to reveal his fangs, as he drew his pistol from his belt and raised the gun towards Douglas’ head.

  The appearance of the pistol in their duel evoked a dreadful sensation within Douglas: the horrendous realisation of being cheated in an otherwise fair contest. This breach of decorum spelled an unfair defeat in the match.

  With the gun targeting Douglas’ forehead and the mirthless expression of Conrad directing its fire, Douglas decided he did not have time to retaliate by throwing his knife. Douglas knew he was far too late and outclassed in the encounter to walk away alive. So his only response was to drop the knife as his trembling hands went to cover his mutilated face in a foolhardy and worthless act of defence. “No!” he whimpered.

  The gunfire should have been the last thing Douglas ever heard. But while the blast was deafeningly loud from such short range, it was not final. Conrad had missed, the shot amazingly errant, as Douglas could tell from the muzzle fire warming his side.

  When Douglas finally managed to peek out one wary eye from beneath its frightened shade, he felt fortunate to have survived the gunshot. If there were any proof that he was indeed a blessed soul, it was that Conrad’s aim had somehow flubbed both low and to the side.

  Douglas’ confidence for victory in this skirmish was redoubled, a sinister grin erasing the fear from his face.

  Molor had almost closed upon Conrad from behind, both blades pulled back behind him and ready for wild, sweeping blows like a lumberjack poised to chop a tree with complete abandon. Sensing the assassin’s imminent arrival, Conrad whirled about, using the turn for added momentum to hurl the pistol straight at Molor’s turbaned skull. The wooden hilt cracked off of the mad swordsman’s temple with the resounding plunk of a cricket bat striking a ball into the sky.

  As the Indian’s steps fumbled to Conrad’s left, he dashed away to his right. Douglas had scampered to his feet and taken one quick, scrambling step in pursuit before killing the sprint as quickly as it had started. Molor rapidly recovered from the thrown pistol, and became irate that Douglas had so quickly halted. “Hurry, damn you!” Molor screeched in an undiscovered level of wild emotion.

  But Douglas had just noticed something was amiss, something that had already sent all bystanders clambering away from him for their lives. Save for the footfalls patting off the icy ground and breathes huffing and shouting with fervent urgency, Douglas could detect a small, mysterious crackling in the otherwise silent moment. Looking down at his belt, he saw the lit fuse on a stick of dynamite twinkling away in a tiny blossom of sparks like a Chinese firecracker.

  “No,” Douglas said in the tiniest and most breathless whisper possible. Molor was already running and leaping for cover as Douglas ripped the burning bomb from his waist. The black wick had almost extinguished itself into the red canister of explosive. Reeling his arm back for a throw, Douglas knew he could not afford to waste too much time on the wind up, and needed the projectile to vacate his immediate vicinity immediately.

  He threw the bomb up and after Conrad. It exploded quickly. The concussive power of the dynamite threw Douglas violently onto his hindquarters, then sent him tumbling backwards ass over head.

  Conrad was in the middle of a leap that would transition him from the icy tunnel onto a snowy incline when the percussive force of the explosion propelled him with a rough shove. His torso buckled outwards while his limbs flayed behind him like paper streamers on a kite. Landing awkwardly in a slope of soft snow, his body welcomed the soft, forgiving ground. His right leg sank into the white landscape past the ankle, and Conrad knew from experience to forfeit any further attempt to land on his feet or else risk breaking the foot. He fell forward with barely enough time to scoot his arms in front of his chest to brace for the crash. Although he landed a bed of newly fallen snow, the collision still rolled him down the hill while forcing the air from his lungs.

  Conrad concentrated attention to his limbs for any sprains or breaks, and thankfully there were none. Still wheezing so that every giant gasp was a shot of frozen air to assault his lungs from within, Conrad raised back to his feet. Still dizzy, the motion to stand was weak and wobbly. Soon he realised that it was not his addled senses that reverberated, but rather the ground itself was responsible for the shaking.

  With arms outstretched to balance himself against the mounting tremors, Conrad nervously turned around to see the land above him coming to life. Quaking with increasing force, the mountain’s slope sent a fine cloud of white dust into the air reminiscent of a shaggy dog flopping watery mist from its wet fur. Tiny rivulets began to break through the rock and ice. Wild cracks formed in the earth like veins of blood. With increasing loudness the mountain sounded its roaring cry as stones broke and ice shattered, trumpeting the unmistakable onset of an avalanche.

  Conrad began to flee in the opposite direction, down the mountain side as fast as he could.

  With one thunderous clap, the mountain broke, and the wall of snow and stone began to pour down from the summit in a tidal wave of white spray.

  The steep angle of the terrain helped to pitch Conrad forward with the innate force of gravity. But despite his brisk pace, he could feel the avalanche outrunning him and drawing nearer as the vibrations rattled his feet with augmented intensity. The entire mountainside seemed aligned against him in his escape, as tiny obstacles such as small mounds of snow and patches of gravel threatened to undo him less he sidestepped each as they appeared. His body now being pulled downward from inertia and gravity, each misstep threatened to hobble him to the ground. The mountain conspired with every available trick at its disposal to force him to kneel in final supplication.

  But Conrad would not relent and persisted in his mad hurtling before the avalanche’s gargantuan wall of snow.

  Thick clouds of rumbling mist appeared on both sides to overtake him like a massive vaporous hand reaching out to grab him. Small pebbles and rocks clattered playfully along the ground before the awesome dragon’s breath of the vengeful mountain closing in on Conrad’s heels.

  Up ahead, a sudden ravine
steeply dropped off into a wide abyss. While it had appeared that the land would continue forward indefinitely, Conrad now was able to discern that there was indeed a deep gash cut down into the mountain, where his side of the mountain suddenly ended before another rose up across the way. The far side climbed higher than his level so that even if Conrad miraculously crossed the gap, he would only be flattening himself against a sheer cliff wall.

  With only a few steps before the oblivion, Conrad frantically strived for any alternate course of action. But there was none. Soon to be sandwiched between the attacking avalanche and the open gorge, the good corporal fully committed himself to the only, albeit ludicrous, tactic available to him.

  While his legs and body grew weary and sore from the crazed scrambling, a final reservoir of energy was tapped to provide the ultimate push. Now was not the time for any half-hearted heave. With his final precious second on the ground, Conrad reckoned one more thing which could contribute to his chances of survival. He quickly removed the pickaxe dangling from his pack, and readied the tool in his right arm. Holding it tight on the neck up by the slender head, he coiled to jump.

  The wall of crashing snow nuzzled against his back, shaping itself along his end and legs like a fluid seat. Conrad wanted to faint as the steep ravine opened into a bottomless oblivion before him like a lion’s gaping jaws ready to devour him whole. The adrenaline of the moment banished the fear into a dark corner of his mind, confidently permitting him to do what needed to be done and summon all his might.

  So Conrad leapt.

  With arms flailing for a hold, and legs kicking as if pedalling the air behind him like a bicycle, Conrad shot up and out into open air. With the pouring avalanche upon him, the thunderous torrent helped to propel the flying Englishman even farther through the air.

  As he flew, the uncertainty of whether Conrad could even reach the far wall dissipated and was quickly replaced with a fear of collision. In the final feet before striking the sheer icy surface, Conrad angled his shoulder forward to absorb the upcoming impact, while steadying both hands at the highest point on the neck of the pickaxe. Its curved iron head anxiously anticipated the stone cliff like the beak of a hungry bird.