Way of the Wolf by Bear Grylls Page A

it together.’
    ‘Which way?’ Tikaani asked.
    Beck mentally tossed a coin. ‘South,’ he said, so they went back the way Tikaani had come.
    They worked their way south along the cliff for five hundred metres, poking into every nook and cranny. Sometimes they climbed up the rocks as far as they could get to investigate more prospects like the one Beck had found. No luck. Finally they found themselves looking out over another crevasse in the snow. It had been carved out by a stream of melt-water that trickled by a few metres below. It was far too wide to cross and there was no way over it.
    ‘If it’s on the other side of that—’ Tikaani began.
    ‘It isn’t,’ Beck said shortly. Things like crevasses didn’t show on the map – they came and went too quickly – but he was sure they were well past the likely area for the pass. The crevasse was nature’s way of pointing this out and saying ‘Turn round’. And so they did. They worked their way back again – Beck reckoned there was no harm in rechecking the cliff they had already covered – until they got to the point where they had started. Then they looked at each other, shrugged, and kept going.
    ‘Hey . . .’ Tikaani said at one point, and Beck’s heart leaped. Then he realized his friend was looking up at the crack he had already explored. He shook his head.
    ‘Sorry. Done that.’
    Tikaani’s shoulders slumped and they trudged on. The cliff face bulged out ahead of them, and then curved back towards the mountain.
    It took them a moment to realize it kept curving. Another minute and the cliff on their left was suddenly the left-hand side of a cleft going into the rock. They stood and looked at it for a moment. They’d had enough hope knocked out of them that they didn’t get excited. Neither of them wanted to waste any more energy exploring another dead end.
    ‘Is this . . . ?’
    ‘Could be . . .’
    ‘Well, someone else seems to think so,’ Beck said, pointing at a line of tracks in the snow that also disappeared into the cleft.
    They looked like a set of dog’s paw prints. Each foot had four little toe marks arranged in a semicircle above a larger indentation. But both of them knew they didn’t come from a dog.
    The boys looked at each other.
    ‘So what do we do if the wolf’s still in there?’ Tikaani asked.
    Beck shrugged. ‘Say, “Nice doggy”?’ He craned his neck to peer further in. ‘“Woof”?’
    The cleft was certainly deeper than the blind alley he had found earlier. You couldn’t see all the way down it because it twisted and turned, but it went in the right direction. Yes, this could well be the pass . . . and it could be occupied. The paw prints didn’t emerge again. The wolf was still in there. A hungry, possibly desperate predator. Beck didn’t want to share a confined space with one of those.
    Or, of course, he thought, it might have gone all the way through.
    Well, there were two of them, and only one wolf, and they had sticks and they could probably scare it off. One thing was certain – they couldn’t wait out here for ever.
    ‘Come on,’ Beck said, and they ventured in.
    ‘This could be it,’ Tikaani said after a minute. They walked in single file between high walls of rock on either side, still clutching their sticks against any possible wolf attack.
    ‘Yup . . .’ Beck agreed as the walls began to part. They could walk side by side now. There was a sharp corner up ahead. Sooner or later this pass would have to open out into a proper valley, and he thought that might be where it happened. ‘Just round here . . .’
    They turned the corner – and found their noses pressed against a sheer rock face. It was another dead end.
    ‘
No!
’ Tikaani shouted, a sharp bark of anger.
    ‘Don’t shout,’ Beck said automatically. ‘This is prime avalanche territory.’ Though right then he wouldn’t have minded if the mountain had dumped a thousand tonnes of snow right on top of them. He added: ‘Sorry,