Free By Royal Command by Charlie Higson

blankets and go to sleep.
    Instead, he helped Miles into his jacket and secured one end of the rope round his waist. He tied the other end round his own chest. At least the two of them couldn’t get separated now, whatever happened.
    James switched on the torch, put on his gloves and manhandled Miles outside.
    ‘There appears to be a path of sorts,’ he said as he lowered him on to the sledge. ‘We’ll just have to set off and hope for the best.’
    ‘Thank you,’ said Miles, gripping on to James’s forearm and trying to smile. James took the silver flask from the other boy’s pocket.
    ‘What are you doing?’ asked Miles.
    ‘I’m going to need this,’ said James, and he emptied its contents down his throat. ‘It’s going to be a long night.’
    There were a few moments of burning, followed by a pleasant glow in his belly. This was it, then. There was nothing more he could do. He made sure that Miles was lying down safely. Then he grabbed the towrope on the front of the sledge and pulled.
    The sledge jerked forward.
    It was almost harder steering the sledge down the mountain than it had been carrying Miles on his back. It seemed to have a mind of its own and wanted to go everywhere except where James pointed it. He couldn’t work out whether it was easier pushing from behind or dragging it from in front, and took turns trying both methods.
    The crude track wound backwards and forwards across the mountainside. For the most part it was covered in snow but there were stretches of bare rock where James had to haul the sledge along with brute force, its runners squealing and scraping. He forced himself not to think about how tired he was and doggedly plodded on, but all the way down he could hear Miles moaning. Occasionally, Miles’s whole body would jerk and he would cry out in pain. He was starting to ramble, spewing out endless random facts and figures…
    ‘The Hahnenkammrennen has been held every year since 1931… The highest mountain on land is Everest but the tallest mountain in the world is actually Mauna Kea, one of the Hawaiian Islands, which is nearly six miles high from the seabed to its summit. Because most of it is underwater, this is not commonly known… Commonly known… The second highest mountain is K2, or Qogir… The third highest is… is… Monte Carlo… The first men to try and climb K2 were Oscar Eckenstein and Aleister Crowley, who is known as “The wickedest man in the world…”. Commonly known… Perhaps he is not as wicked as Attila the Hun and Genghis Khan… Genghis Khan came from… came from… Monte Carlo… which is not commonly known… There is only one rule if you get caught in an avalanche: get your hands to your boots and grip your ankles, that way you can undo your skis so that you are not trapped under the snow… No two snowflakes are exactly the same…’
    James felt like he was in some ghastly nightmare, staggering down a mountain in the dark tied to a madman. What bliss it would be to suddenly awake and find himself safely tucked up in his bed at the hotel. He started to laugh, and realised he was becoming light-headed with exhaustion and cold.
    He was making some sort of progress, though; with every step he must be closer to the bottom, closer to safety. There were periods, however, when he seemed to lose all contact with reality and be walking in his sleep. He would come round with no memory of what he had been doing. Worryingly, these spells grew longer and longer until finally he came round only to discover that he had fallen over and was being pulled down the slope behind the sledge by the rope round his chest. He was too weak to do anything about it and tried to keep his face out of the snow until at last the sledge ground to a halt against some rocks and he slid down and bumped into the back of it.
    They had lost the path.
    Miraculously he was still clutching the torch in his hand, which had become a frozen claw. He stood up and shone the beam around. They