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"Fuck!" screams Zhu, the wild, uncontrolled quality back in his voice. "Those treacherous bastards! They've left us here, left us to die!"

He breathes hard, then breathes again, trying to calm himself.

"OK," he says, turning to you, not even bothering to say good morning. "OK. This is…this is manageable. We have food. Not much, but we have dried meat and tinned fruit in our backpacks. Not much, a few days, but enough to get through the pass and to a village at the far end, if we ration carefully. We can—we can still do this. The mission is still on!"

He turns to the tent, and a dark look crosses his features.

"But—but him. Stevo. We have no yaks for him to ride, and he cannot walk. We would have to carry him, and he would slow us down and drain our supplies. There is no choice. We—we have to leave him behind."

"Enough people have died because of you. I won't abandon him."

Zhu's eyes flash with anger, but he sees you are not going to relent. "If you insist on this, we will have to make a stretcher out of parts of our tent. We will have to carry him. It will make everything far more difficult for us. You will not be saving him; you'll be dooming all three of us.

"Go inside; look at him. You will see. He cannot make it off this mountain alive." With that, Zhu yanks open the tent flap and strides away.

Stevo is shivering in his sleeping bag inside the tent, propped up against the tent pole, looking at you with imploring eyes. You sigh and step inside.

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