By Royal Command by Charlie Higson Page A

back on track. We should start to head down again.’
    ‘We didn’t cross any ropes,’ Miles scoffed. ‘I knew you were taking me the wrong way. We must have gone right over to the far side of the run, we need to turn back round again.’
    James could see fear in Miles’s eyes. He could smell it coming off his damp skin. A mixture of sweat and alcohol and something animal. It was making him irrational. If he got too desperate there was no telling what he might do.
    ‘Look about the place,’ James pleaded. ‘This is the run. The snow ahead is clearer, there are no trees. That’s where we should be.’
    ‘If this is the run then where are the tracks?’ said Miles angrily. ‘They would have left tracks. The others are obviously back that way.’
    ‘Don’t talk rot,’ James snapped.
    ‘I am not talking rot,’ said Miles. ‘I know about these things. You should listen to me. I’ve been skiing many times before. I know about mountains and suchlike.’
    ‘You don’t know about anything,’ said James. ‘You’re a pompous, overblown windbag. And, what’s more, you’re drunk. I’m not taking orders from a drunk.’
    At this Miles lashed out at James and clipped him round the head with a clumsy punch. Taken unawares, James slipped over on his skis and struggled to get up again. By the time he had got to his feet he could just see Miles’s back as he sped off in completely the wrong direction.
    James spat blood from his mouth and saw it lying black on the snow.
    For a moment he considered letting Miles go. It was clear that this idiot was going to get them both killed. But James knew that he couldn’t leave him alone on the mountain. If anything did happen to him, he would never forgive himself.
    He called vainly for help a few times, his voice getting swallowed up in the fog. There was no answer but silence. He shouted one last time, then shook his head, pulled up his scarf, tucked into a crouch and set off after Miles, oblivious to the cold and the ache in his knees and ankles. He felt a fool for letting his temper flare up like that. It was important not to lose your head in these conditions.
    He had to stop Miles, calm him down and somehow get him back on to the right path, but that was easier said than done. There were a lot of rocks here, most of them hidden below the surface of the snow, and tree trunks would suddenly loom up out of the whiteness. Thin branches whipped at his face as he sped past. He leant well forward, his knees slightly bent, trying not to tense up, keeping his body loose and elastic, reacting to every bump and dip in the ground. Twice he fell over, landing face first in the snow, and each time he merely picked himself up, wiped his goggles clean and carried on.
    At least the only way Miles could go was down, so in one sense they were headed in the right direction, but they could have no idea of what lay ahead of them and Miles was taking a line closer and closer to the fall line. Soon he would be heading straight down the mountain, and not angling across the slopes at all.
    James’s only hope was that Miles would fall, but he seemed to have the luck of the devil. Or maybe he really was the world’s greatest skier as he had often boasted.
    James sped on; his eyes focused on the twin tramlines Miles had carved into the snow. He laughed – was it possible that the boy had found an easy way down the Hahnenkamm after all, and James’s fears had been unfounded?
    Suddenly he burst out of the clouds into an impossibly steep, wide-open patch of virgin snow. There were no trees here and James at last saw Miles up ahead. He was careering along, completely out of control, his arms waving, standing first on one ski and then the other, wobbling drunkenly from left to right. It was like a long, long fall. Miraculously, though, he stayed upright.
    James saw his chance to catch up with him. He would risk taking the fall line. He gripped his sticks tightly and leant so far forward that his nose