Ice Country(18)

“You Daisy and Barf?” one of them says, his alert eyes flicking between us.

“What?” I say, taking a step forward. “I oughta beat you senseless for a move like that.”

The guy laughs. “The king calls the shots here. You touch me and you’ll be off the job quicker than you got on it. And trust me, you don’t want that.”

“What?” I say. “You mean, you’re the ones meeting us?”

“Get wit’ it, kid,” another of the guys says. “You must be Daisy, the big gambler who lost enough silver to land you wit’ us.”

“It’s Dazz,” I say, taking another step forward. “Call me that one more time and you can slide the rest of the way down the mountain with a broken arm.”

“And I’m Buff,” Buff says, stepping beside me, his fists knotted. He’s all riled up, too, which almost makes me grin. Nothing like a good scrap to start our first day on the job.

“Calm the freeze down,” the first guy says, shaking his head. “Heart of the Mountain, you’d think we actually hit you guys.”

“Near enough,” Buff says, not giving an inch.

“Look, we’re on the same side. Consider it a bit of friendly first day initiation. Now do you want to get to work or swing those antsy fists of yers?”

The honest answer is that I want to swing my fists, but this new job is supposed to be part of a fresh start, so I flex my hands, trying to coax the fight out of them. But I’m also not about to back off without some form of retribution. Weakness like that can haunt a guy. I pick up one of my snowballs and launch it hard enough to do some serious damage. Crunch! Although it was headed right for the main speaker’s head, the ball slams into the open hand of one of the other guys, the biggest of the lot. Good reflexes. He grunts, squeezes the ball into mush in his fist, lets it crumble to the ground.

The main guy laughs. “Nice arm,” he says. “That’s why we keep this guy around. We call him Hightower, on account of…well, I think it’s obvious.”

Obvious as a wolf in a sled dog team, I think, staring at the big, brown eyes of the gargantuan who’s at eye level despite being a good foot further down the hill than me.

“I’m Abe,” the guy continues. “This fella is Brock.” He motions to the other one who spoke to us. His eyes glare back, sort of cross-eyed. “And this little guy is…” Abe looks around, scanning at waist level, like he’s trying to find a missing child. There’s no one else around. “Where the freeze is Nebo?”

Brock gazes up the mountain. “’E was right ’ere a minute ago…Musta gotten lost at the hairpin.” Something about his tone tells me he knows exactly what happened to the one they call Nebo.

Hightower grunts and points, so we all follow his gesture until we spot another slider coming down slowly, barely spraying any snow at all. We track his progress all the way to us, although it takes so long I swear another inch of fresh snow has fallen by the time he gets down. His every movement is uncertain, awkward, unbalanced, and when he tries to stop, his slider gets all tangled up with his feet and he goes down face first.

The others are laughing—even Buff is sniggering—and normally I’d probably join in, but something about the guy seems so helpless, so pathetic, that I don’t feel like getting pleasure at his expense. After all, I’ve been pretty pathetic lately myself.

“Shut it,” I say, punching Buff and shooting icicles at the others. I help the guy, who really is quite small, to his feet, using the back of my hand to brush some of the snow off. Right away he pulls at his mask, which is caked with snow, until it pops off his head.

He’s bald…and short…and jittery.

It’s the man who came out of the Chance Hole last night.

“You!” I say, loud enough that the small man takes a step back, concern flashing across his red face.

“Do I know you?” he asks, saying it in such a way that it sounds like he thinks he probably should.

“We saw you leaving the Hole last night,” I say.

He screws up his face. “Last night. Not a good night,” he says.

“Ah, I wouldn’t say that, Neebs,” Abe says. “Your new losses pretty much guarantee you’ll be working with us for the rest of time.” Abe chuckles, takes a few steps over to smack Nebo on the back. Nebo cringes and puts a hand to his mouth as if the weak blow knocked a few of his teeth loose. “You’re late. Where you been?”

“Uh, sir, I’m sorry, but uh, Brock here, he, well, he…”

“Spit it out!” Abe says, glancing at Brock. “What did Brock do?”