David Gilman - Ice Claw

Max went back to the hut, an unconfirmed warning banging through his body like a fire alarm.

And his instincts were right.

The monk’s killer was watching Max’s every move through a high-powered spotter scope from a vantage point more than a kilometer away.

Max had imagined something quite different from what he found inside the hut. For a start it was bigger than it appeared. The thick walls offered resistance to the cold and wind, and although Zabala had been a recluse, he had obviously led as comfortable a life as he could, given the confines of the building.

An overstuffed chair, bookshelves, a portable radio, oil lamps and a log-burning stove were as much as anyone living alone needed. A sturdy bed with a deep mattress and an old duvet covered by a red knitted throw took up one corner of the room, and Max felt a pang of envy. It would have been a cozy and warm safe haven. Would have been-before someone had trashed the place. Only the bed had not been upended; everything else was turned upside down. Bookshelves were trashed, books were torn and even the old woolen carpet had been pulled back, exposing a solid stone floor. Max pressed the back of his hand against the stove. It was, of course, ice cold. A cold grate is as welcoming as a grave . He couldn’t remember where he had heard that, but he wasn’t going to argue with the sentiment. He dropped his backpack and began to sift through the damage.

It looked as though a storm had wrecked the place. The chair was slashed, its stuffing pulled free. The mattress had a surgical slit down its side, and book bindings had been skinned from their pages. Curved daggers of glass remained embedded in the smashed photo frames.

Violent upheaval. Was the monk’s killer responsible, or could it have been a bear that had tortured the room? They were up here. The damaged climate meant they weren’t hibernating as they should. A hungry bear could have done this.

Max saw dark flecks splashed across the whitewashed wall, more on the edge of the mattress and bigger globules settled on the floor like dribbled paint. He brushed his fingers against them, and, like breaking the skin on cold porridge, the smudge told him it was blood.

The signs of struggle were everywhere. Zabala, who was a big man, must have connected a blow. That gave him time to escape and ski across and down the mountain. After the avalanche the killer must have come back here and made a frenzied search-for what? Max fingered the pendant. It was obvious.

He bent down, sifting through the debris. There was precious little to salvage, and nothing seemed of any intrinsic value. And nothing that gave Max any clue as to Zabala’s secret. The books were varied, and Max realized that they covered a whole range of subjects. He began sorting through them. Quantum physics, astronomy, astrology, religion, myths and legends, conservation and animal behavior. The monk had been an extremely well-read man.

A scrapbook’s pages lay scattered. Max sifted through them. There were faded newspaper cuttings about Zabala. He gathered those that weren’t torn and folded them into his pocket to be read later-something more interesting had caught his eye.

Max picked up one of the broken photo frames. He eased out the shattered glass and swore as he felt the edge cut into his finger. Damn! Small cuts seemed to bleed worse than bigger ones. His finger oozed blood; he wiped his hand on the side of the old chair. There was a small first-aid kit in his backpack, but the wound could wait. The picture held his attention.

He carefully pushed out the remaining glass and took the photo closer to the light at the window. The two men in the picture stood smiling, side by side. They wore trousers and short-sleeved shirts. The sun was shining; their eyes squinted against the glare. Each had an arm around the other’s shoulders and each held a clipboard. The bigger of the two men had bushy eyebrows, wild twisting bristles that Max had seen close up a couple of days ago. It was Zabala. He was clean-shaven and his hair was trimmed short.

The man who stood with him was more gaunt, his sallow complexion almost noticeable in the monochrome photograph. His eyes had a sunken look. He had his head tilted back slightly-he was laughing. It was a moment of shared joy about something. Friendship. The photograph was a medium close-up. The two men filled much of the frame, but Max could see that the picture had been taken in front of an archway; a narrow one, like an entrance to an old building. The Gothic arch’s apex was cut off above the men’s heads and the background was out of focus, but just to the left of the picture a shape curved down from what looked like steps. It was low to the ground, its outline irregular. Jagged. Two sections gaped open, half hidden by the gaunt man. It was a statue of a crocodile.

It had to be the abbey! This was where Zabala and the other man had worked.

A scream severed his concentration.

Max turned and ran for the door. A shadow filtered the sunlight. Another shriek. It wasn’t human. Max barreled out of the doorway into the glare. With barely seconds to react, he saw the eagle swoop out of the sun a few meters away. Its glaring eyes fixed on his. The talons aimed at his face and neck. Acting on pure instinct, Max yanked the sheepskin from the wall, pulled it across his arm and presented it to the raptor.

The eagle came in at speed. Max wouldn’t be able to stand the impact. But then it heaved those mighty wings into a braking stall and the curved weapons dug satisfyingly into the sheepskin.

It flapped once again, settling, finding its balance. Max couldn’t bear the weight on his arm. The crutch. Of course. That was what Zabala used it for. Max grabbed it and rested the back of his arm on the support.

The bird seemed content. Suddenly the thumping in Max’s chest and his racing pulse were due to excitement rather than fear. To have a king of the skies resting on his arm, its head turning, its eyes, ever alert, meeting his own, this must have been how rulers of long-lost empires felt. Standing above the rest of the world, a breeze teasing eagle feathers, a sense of power surged through Max. He laughed. The bird stared in a seemingly disapproving way. It opened its beak, its head swiveled and it shrieked again.

If the bird had come onto his arm so easily, it meant it had done the same with the monk. Max looked around. On the weather side of the animal shelter was what appeared to be a stone-built storage area for bins, bunkerlike, with heavily planked lids, as sturdy as the hut’s front door and covered in frozen snow.

You weren’t likely to get a bin collection up here. So what was being kept there? Max staggered under the eagle’s weight, propped his arm up again and, with his free hand, heaved off one of the lids.

It was a perfect outside larder. Cuts of sheep were laid out on racks; dead mountain hares, some gutted, others not, none of them skinned, hung from nails. Jars of fruit and tins of food were stored lower down, and to one side were haunches of what looked like goat and deer. This area was less ordered. Almost as if whatever had died or been killed was hacked into pieces and dumped here-probably carrion gathered from the rocky gullies-as Max had seen no sign of any weapon in the hut.

Citeaux , the nurse had told him. The place of wild animals. That was why the eagle came. Zabala must have fed him when food was scarce on the ground. Max took one of the hares and presented it to the eagle. The curved beak snatched it. Max ducked as the wings unfolded and beat the air. Transferring the hare from beak to talon, the eagle flapped lazily away, glided another thirty meters, then settled on a rocky outcrop to enjoy its meal.

Max rubbed the strain out of his arm and looked around. He wasn’t sure about raptors, but animals were creatures of habit. They would hunt and sleep when their body clock told them to. The eagle wouldn’t be the only creature that was in close proximity. He scanned the snowfields and broken ground that staggered the mountainside. Just wait. See if anything moves. Be patient. Stay still. There . A smudge of movement. Max cupped his hands each side of his eyes, creating tunnel vision, blocking out extraneous light and focusing his attention.