11: CAESAR'S
SENTENCE
Before the storm spent itself, snow lay twelve feet deep in Grand St. Bernard Pass and some of the drifts were three times as deep. Every cliff and slope held a huge burden of snow, but it was not a burden willingly accepted. And the danger increased a hundred times over.
Enough snow to mold an ordinary snowball might be wind-blown and start more, which in turn gathered more. Finally, carrying boulders, ice and everything else that lay in its path, an all-destroying avalanche would roar down. Such avalanches were a daily occurrence on the peaks about the Hospice.
Franz stood in front of the stable, Caesar beside him. He was watching the sun glance from the surrounding peaks. Wherever it touched snow or ice, it gave back a reflection so dazzling that to face it for more than a few minutes meant to risk blindness. A million jewels, Franz thought, a hundred million jewels, and each one more brilliant than the brightest ornament in any emperor's crown.
The Hospice itself, with ski trails radiating in every direction, like the spokes of a giant wagon wheel, was banked high with snow. Except for the House of the Dead, toward which he looked only when he could not avoid doing so, Franz thought it the most beautiful sight he had ever seen.
Anton Martek, sitting on a chair beside the stable's open door, fashioning a ski pole, did not look up from his work. A complete craftsman, regardless of whether he was honing an ax, making a ski pole, milking a cow, skiing, or doing anything else, Anton believed wholeheartedly that anything worth doing was worth doing well, and it could not be well done unless it received his undivided attention.
Presently, Franz saw a man leave the refectory and ski toward the stable. It was Father Mark, who smiled when he came near and said, "Good afternoon, Franz."
"And a very good afternoon to you, Father Mark," Franz replied. "Have the travelers come up?"
"Not yet," Father Mark told him. "But Fathers Stephen and Benjamin have gone down to guide them. On a day such as this, let us hope there will be no trouble."