She was glad she’d pushed her pack through intact.  Her head hit it, rather than the rock, at the bottom.  Even so, she hit hard and lay stunned, not in pain yet but knowing it was coming.  She forced herself to roll once, twice, to be out of the way in case Murrow also fell. 

Then she lay still, knowing she should get up, force muscles to move before they grew stiff, but she couldn’t.  Not yet.  The air had been knocked from her and she gulped deep, the cold seeming to rush all the way to her toes. 

She opened her eyes.  The opening could not have been as far above as it seemed.  Ten feet, perhaps.  Enough. 

She blinked as snow fluttered into her eyelashes.  Her cheeks splattered with new wetness as flakes struck and melted.  She had to move.  She managed to roll onto her side.  Pain arced like lightning through hips and shoulders.  She waited, queasy with it, hoping it would subside. 

In the tail of her eye she saw a shadow, descending slowly.  Murrow.  He, of course, had not slipped.  Were Brusterians part mountain-goat?

He stooped, slinging her pack over his shoulder to join his own, then she felt a hand on her elbow.  “Get up, Elmar.”

“I fell.”

“I know.  But we can’t stay here.”

She could hear him, but he wasn’t shouting.  “Has the storm let up?”

He tugged her to her feet.  “No.  This passage is deeper.  A little more sheltered.  Not enough, though.” 

She looked up, trying to ignore the protest in her back.  The opening, now behind them as they looked down the new path, was about ten feet up.  The sides sloped downward it, but were still well above her head, blocking the worst of the wind and snow.  But as he’d said, not enough.  Snow still fell in a thick cloud, and the harshest winds whistled down the passage like a boy blowing over a bottle.  Already the flakes that had been shaken from his hair in his climb were replaced. 

She pulled a last deep breath.  “Let’s go.”

The passage was wide enough to have walked side by side, but they soon found that running, it was easier to go single-file.  He went first, searching for a deeper niche, a shallow cave, anything that might get them out of the storm until it passed.  She watched frantically for another marker. 

He halted so suddenly she careened into his back.  “Here.”

“What?”

He gestured to a slight overhang.  A rock jutted from the wall at waist-height, creating a small spot beneath it a little more than a foot deep and two feet wide.

“This?” 

“It’s the best we’ve got.”

It wasn’t much.  Even if they could both squeeze into the space, would it provide enough shelter to wait out the storm?  She leaned, closer.  Only the very back was still dry.  “No.  It won’t work.  We keep going.”