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It had been supposed to be a fun team-building exercise, although Blanche had more chance of seeing the team-building bit than the fun part. Snowdonia in November was nobody's idea of fun, least of all hers.
"Can't anyone read a map?" she asked, for maybe the dozenth time, fighting to keep her hair out of her eyes. It all looked the same to her - greenish-brown mountain, grey cloud. Wet everything. What wasn't wet was covered in snow.
"Come on, it's this way." Ever-eager Will Devenish (something in HR, Blanche wasn't sure what) waved an arm encased in a bright blue windproof rainproof everything-proof jacket.
"Are you sure, absolutely cross-your-heart-and-hope-to-die sure this time?" Blanche squinted at the map to see whether he was holding it the right way up this time - they had just spent an hour slogging the wrong way because he'd had the map upside down and nobody had thought to double-check until they had gone about million miles the wrong way. That was a whole hour of her life she was never going to get back.
"Absolutely one hundred thousand million percent sure," Will said, sweeping a blond curl back under his woolly hat.
Blanche folded her arms and glared at him. "If you've got that map upside down again, or your compass is broken or..."
"Compasses don't get broken!"
"...or anything else, you're paying for dinner. For all of us."
"All right, all right. But it's this way." The bright blue arm indicated a snow-free something that might have been a path. Well, a path for elves or mountain goats or something. It looked about two inches wide and seemed to go straight up into the low thick cloud hanging over the mountain.
Blanche glared. Will grinned. The others shrugged.
"Mountain goat path it is, then," Blanche said in resignation and hitched her rucksack a little higher on her back.
She didn't know how far they had gone when It happened. She had her head down, trudging along and thinking up all sorts of Doom for the person whose bright idea this whole expedition had been - 'yes, I'm looking at you, Nate Scarborough. Do you prefer slow roasting or boiling oil?' when her foot came down on a piece of wet rock and slid from under her. The pain didn't register until she tried to get up, but it was impossible to stand on.
Her colleagues gathered around her, their faces pale blobs peeking out between dark hats and jackets of multiple colours.
"Can you stand on it?" Nate had, naturally, got to her first. She shook her head.
Clem Worthing - a new hire who'd only ended up coming on this week away because Frederica had had to drop out - had her phone out and was frantically waving it around trying to get a signal. "Can't get even a single bar," she reported after a moment, looking worried.
"I don't think we can carry you, not down this," Nate said after a second's silent communication with Will and Ira (IT, thoroughly competent when it came to computers but a little lost when away from them).
"Then what am I going to do? Because I refuse to stay out here until I freeze to death."
"Problem?" It was a voice Blanche didn't recognise, that didn't belong to anyone in their group.
She squinted up, past Will's bright blue wind-cheater and Ira's red one, to see a man in camouflage green-and-brown.
"I slipped, I've hurt my ankle and..." She couldn't even finish the sentence before he had joined her, the coloured waterproofs parting before him like the Red Sea before Moses.
Army Camouflage knelt beside her. "Well, you're conscious," he said cheerfully. "May I take a look at the ankle - I'll try not to hurt you."
She nodded and he carefully pulled her waterproof over trousers up, and then the leg of the warmer trousers she was wearing underneath.
"Where did you get an orange from out here?" he asked with a grin. "Because that's what it looks like you have under your sock. I can't say for certain out here, but I think you may have broken it. I don't want to touch it because that will hurt." He carefully rolled her trousers down again, but not before untying the laces of her hiking boot. "We don't want to take it right off, or your foot will freeze, but we certainly don't want it fastened up because that will press on the swelling," he told her. "As for getting you off this hillside, excuse me a moment."
He vanished the way he had come but only briefly because Blanche was suddenly surrounded by men wearing the same green-and-brown waterproof clothing. The first man was right next to her.
"There won't be any signal this far up, so what we're going to do is carry you down out of the cloud-base until someone gets a signal, and then we'll get Mountain Rescue out - I don't think even we can carry you all the way off the mountain."
"For a broken ankle?" Blanche frowned at him - he was really rather cute under the green woolly hat he was wearing. His brown eyes were delicious, she thought stupidly, and from this close to him she could see the crow's-feet in the corners of his eyes. He looked like someone who laughed a lot.
"Yep," he replied cheerfully. "They're used to it - they've even had Search and Rescue out for sprains before now. You know, the big yellow helicopters? It's none so easy when people can't walk, after all."
"I feel silly," she said, and he grinned.
"Don't. We've had squaddies do what you've just done, after all. Now. What we need to do is stand you up on your good foot, and then two of us will make a seat and carry you between us - we'll go carefully and may need to change, but we'll get you down."
He looked at the soldier on Blanche's other side. "Ready, Jenkins?"
"As ever, sir."
"On three, then. One... Two... Three."
Progress down was slow, but steady, with changes of carriers every so often.
Blanche discovered that the soldiers were in the area on adventure training, and had just decided to stick with the path down after cancelling their map-reading exercises - "Can't make out landmarks when you're lost in a cloud," their leader had declared with a laugh. "And there's no shame at all about deciding not to risk life and limb because you can't do something you'd planned on doing. After all..."
"Plan A never survives first contact with the enemy, sir," his current carrying partner said with a grin.
"Got it in one. I was going to say, the best-laid plans of mice and men gang aft agley, though."
"Aye, but ye cannae do the Scots accent, sir," another soldier put in from behind them.
There was breathless laughter from everyone, civilians and soldiers alike.
"We're much closer to Llanberis than we thought we would be," someone observed from behind Blanche as they broke through the mist almost at the foot of the mountain.
"I've got a signal," Clem said excitedly. "Where shall I say to meet the ambulance?"
"We don't need an ambulance - our mini-bus is in the car-park and I'll drive her to hospital, get it checked out," Ira replied.
"Let's get her to the car park in Llanberis, then."
It took another few minutes, though far less hair-raising ones, and then Blanche was installed in the passenger seat of the mini-bus.
"Hey!" she called as the soldiers moved away.
The humorous one in charge turned and came back over as she gestured to him. "Thank you," she said, leaning out of the door to give him a hug. "I never got your name."
"Major Fitzgerald - though my friends call me Robbie."
"I'm Blanche Carey."
"Nice name! Good luck at the hospital, Blanche."
He grinned at her as he closed the door. As Ira headed away toward the car park exit, Blanche was already digging her phone out of her pocket and scrolling through her contacts.
"Nate! Blanche here - do me the biggest favour ever and I'll forget the disaster today's been. Get his number for me, I don't care how but get his number!"