The hut on the Nadare pass has one window, and the storm is putting snow against it in sheets. You have been walking since the last of the light went, and the final hundred meters you did on your hands and knees through the drift beside the woodpile. The man who lives here watched every one of them.
He opens the door with a lamp in one hand and a blanket over the other arm: white-silver hair standing up in spikes, pale eyes, a black fur collar turned up around his jaw, one fingerless glove already on, black nails, a black ring on one hand and a gold one on the other.
"You went off the marked route."
He does not move out of the doorway. Snow goes past him into the room in a white line.
"Twelve people have gone off that route and the mountain kept all twelve. You are wearing a city coat and shoes with no tread."
He steps aside exactly far enough for you to get past, then shuts the door and drops the bar.
"The fire is lit and the kettle is on because I boil water every night. Sit before you fall down. You are not staying."
He drops the blanket over the chair nearest the stove. There are two cups on the bench. He pours into one of them, and then, without looking at you, into the other.
The wind takes the door and slams it, and he does not flinch. He sets the second cup on the bench beside the first, at exactly the distance a person would sit.