Thank you all, once again, for the reviews! You know, back at the beginning I'd said that I thought this story would be about as long as "That Which is Broken", but I'm starting to think it's going to be quite a bit longer. In fact, I think it's already longer. And there's plenty more to go!

They found a place to climb the cliff where a creek, now frozen, had cut a deep notch in the side of the river canyon. With the creek frozen and covered with snow, what remained was a steep chute choked with brush. To Rodney's eyes, it appeared nearly vertical from below, but once they were climbing he found that it actually wasn't as hard as it looked. Caldwell, hampered by the gun and by his broken arm, had considerably more trouble. About halfway up, Caldwell made a soft sound in the back of his throat and sat down in the snow. Rodney, above him, paused and looked down. Oh HELL, you'd better not pass out or do anything crazy ... "What's wrong?"

"This isn't working," Caldwell said, unzipping his parka. "I think I'm going to need your help for this."

Rodney stiffened in place. "Dare I ask, my help with what?" He watched with mounting alarm as Caldwell stripped off his coat, apparently oblivious to the snowflakes settling on his head and shoulders. Wasn't taking off your clothes one of the symptoms of end-stage hypothermia? So help him, if he had to deal with a naked Caldwell on top of everything else ...

"Binding my arm," Caldwell said, and Rodney sighed with relief and slid back down to join him -- sparing a moment's regret for the lost time he'd spent climbing up those few extra feet.

They had nothing to use for binding material, so Caldwell opened the top of his coverall -- again getting a horrified look from Rodney, which he ignored -- and used his military-issue knife to sever strips of the T-shirt he wore underneath, with deft slices. Rodney stared. "I don't think I'd be wielding a sharp implement that close to my vital organs, Colonel, but maybe that's just me."

Caldwell glowered at him. "Well, help me, then!"

Gritting his teeth, Rodney held a handful of the T-shirt material away from Caldwell's body so that the Colonel could cut it at a slightly less awkward angle. Caldwell worked his injured arm out of his coverall's sleeve and, with Rodney helping to hold and tie knots, used the sleeve and the T-shirt strips to bind his arm to his torso. He was white-faced and breathing hard by the time they were done. Despite the cold, a thin sheen of sweat glistened on his forehead.

"You look like crap," Rodney told him as the Colonel worked his parka back on one-handed.

"I wish you could see what you look like right now, Dr. McKay."

Self-consciously, Rodney raised one hand to his face. "What? Seriously, how bad is it? I can breathe okay, so I don't think my nose is broken. Does it look like it's broken to you?"

Caldwell snorted as he finished zipping his parka. "It's not broken. At least, I don't think so. Hard to tell under all the blood."

Rodney scrubbed at his face with his glove, hissing in pain as he accidentally bumped various tender spots. His face, like the rest of him, seemed to be one gigantic bruise. "Did that get it?"

Caldwell just shook his head with a little laugh, and resumed climbing.

"Ah, I see," Rodney said darkly, bringing up the rear. "The mocking begins. Let's all laugh at the smart man -- it's a common problem on Atlantis as well. Why none of you physical types seem to have outgrown grade school is an absolute mystery to me."

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You had to do one of two things when you spent any amount of time around Rodney McKay: kill him, or get used to him and start playing the game on his level. Caldwell had gone with option #2 and found that he was actually enjoying it.

The man had really done a number on his face when he'd fallen. There was blood everywhere, and a couple of spreading purple bruises, one covering most of his chin and the other crossing the bridge of his nose and blackening one eye. On the other hand, Caldwell doubted if he looked any better, between the lingering effects of the crash and the new abrasions and various other injuries that he'd obtained in the avalanche.

When they reached the top of the cliff, the wind struck them and nearly drove them to their knees. Rodney whispered "Jesus!" and raised one hand to pull his parka hood down over his eyes, shielding his face. Caldwell braced his knees, turning his head away from the wind. They were definitely in the full grip of the storm now. Even if, through some miracle, Perry's team managed to get the F302 bay open, nobody would be coming after them until the storm died down.

He could only hope that Armstrong was having as much trouble with the weather as they were. Maybe he'd given up and gone back to the Daedalus. Remembering how deftly and easily the man had navigated through the snow, though, Caldwell had a sinking feeling that it wasn't likely. Armstrong had everything to lose if any of them survived, and it wasn't likely that he'd stop hunting them until he had their bodies at his feet.

Cadman and Seavey ... But there was nothing he and Rodney could do to help them. Scattered to the storm, they were all on their own.

"You said we're going upstream?" Rodney yelled over the wind.

"That's the plan, McKay." Luckily this wouldn't take them fully into the teeth of the wind -- it was blowing across the river at an angle. But Caldwell could already feel the sharp bite of the cold, even through his parka, on the windward side of his body. The windchill out here must be astonishing.

The land along this part of the river sloped down gently from a stand of pine trees to the edge of the cliff. With the falling snow and the wind, the trees were only visible as a hazy, jagged outline, and whatever lay beyond was shrouded in the blizzard. A cave, Caldwell thought, or a deadfall, even a cleft in the rocks -- that's what we have to find. They couldn't survive indefinitely with the wind stealing the heat from their bodies. But as visibility was so poor, they'd almost have to stumble upon something by accident. He was beginning to regret not staying down at the bottom of the ravine, where at least they were sheltered from the wind ...

It would be possible to climb back down if they could find better shelter down there -- slightly counterproductive, but possible. Caldwell made his way closer to the edge, cautious so as not to slip and fall over.

"Now what are you doing?" McKay demanded.

"I'm just checking for ..." His voice trailed away into a low curse.

"What? What?"

Caldwell didn't answer immediately. Between waves of blowing snow, he'd caught sight of a small dark figure at the bottom of the ravine -- on their side of the river.

"What?" McKay asked again, reminding Caldwell of a particularly annoying parrot.

"Armstrong. He's following us."

Rodney stopped in his tracks and then he ... the only suitable word was scuttled, in timid-woodland-creature fashion, a lot closer to Caldwell. "What is he, superhuman? How in the world can he actually find our trail in this, this ..." His hands waved wildly around, indicating the storm "... this example of nature gone horribly out of control?"

"At least if he's here, he's not pursuing Seavey and Cadman." Caldwell peered over the edge of the cliff thoughtfully. "And I'm thinking that two can play the avalanche game."

Rodney's eyes grew wide. "Ah! Yes, yes. You need some sort of concussive shock ... I don't suppose you carry grenades ..." He began to pace, excited by the prospect of finally having some kind of puzzle to solve. Caldwell impatiently nudged him away from the edge of the cliff: frequent peeks over the side indicated that Armstrong was rapidly toiling his way towards them, and he would probably be able to see them if he looked up.

"Mind the personal space, Colonel!"

"Mind the bad guy watching us from below," Caldwell retorted, and backed away from the cliff himself. In all likelihood, Armstrong was going to try to climb up the very same frozen streambed that they had used, which meant that this was where their efforts should be concentrated. If they could just get a lot of snow going down that chute, they might eliminate the whole problem.

The trick, though, was how to do it. "And no, I don't have grenades," he said, seeing Rodney's mouth open again.

Armstrong had used bullets, but there was no way that the little pistol could do it, and that method was probably only effective on a steep cliff with a lot of overhanging snow, anyway. Rodney obviously realized this, because he didn't ask about the gun; he just slid down the side of the little ravine and stared at the snow.

"You thinking of something, McKay?"

"Why is it that neither you nor Sheppard seem to realize that every minute I spend trying to explain my brilliant plans to you is another minute I'm not executing said brilliant plan?"

Caldwell crouched down in the snow at the top of the ravine, presenting less of a target to the wind. "And do you actually, in this case, have a brilliant plan?"

"Well ... no ... but I'm working on it, and would be working on it faster if certain people would stop bothering me ... hey, waitaminute ..." Perking up suddenly, he tried to snap his fingers and gave a reproachful glance at his glove-clad fingers when they refused to snap.

"Got something?"

"Hmph," was the only response, as he scrambled up to the top of the ravine, shoving Caldwell out of the way in passing. For a minute he just stared into the blizzard, muttering to himself -- calculations from the sound of things. Then he turned to look at Caldwell with a manic gleam in his blue eyes.

"There are tons of snow up here. All we have to do is get some of it started. See that dead pine tree there?" He pointed towards one on the lip of the cliff. "It looks like it would go over easily. One pine tree might not do it, but a lot of them along the edge look pretty dead to me."

"You want us to push over trees?"

"Only the ones that will fall. Now, here's what I'm thinking -- one of us shoves that tree into the canyon -- hole -- thing, whatever you call it, geology is a pseudoscience anyway, admittedly one I wish I'd paid more attention to -- where was I? Anyway, of all of them, that tree looks unstable enough that it could actually be pushed over. I can't believe that I'm actually coming up with plans that involve shoving trees into canyons ..."

Too impatient to wait for the tortured chain of logic that made up Rodney's thought processes, Caldwell slid over the edge into the frozen streambed. "Well, let's push some trees, then!"

"Whoa, whoa, whoa! We're gonna get one shot at him, Colonel -- and by the way, speaking of which, where is he?"

Caldwell risked a glance over the edge, just in time to catch a glimpse of Armstrong vanishing into the brush at the bottom of the creek bed they had followed to the top of the cliff. "Climbing," he reported in a lower voice. "He'd be easily within target range if he could see us or hear us, so keep your voice down."

Rodney swallowed, his confidence visibly faltering. "You have a gun too ..."

"With nowhere near the range or accuracy -- this is not a distance weapon, McKay! Now, I'm climbing up there and pushing down that pine tree."

Rodney drew a breath, and pointed behind him, at another stand of pines. "Right. Yeah. And what I was saying earlier is that this'll be a lot more likely to work if we can both do it at once. We have to get enough snow, and whatnot, moving that it'll build up momentum and, pardon the pun, snowball."

"So? Let's go!"

With that he turned his back on McKay and began to scramble up the far side of the ravine. It was much steeper and took all his concentration, with only one arm available to help himself. They had only minutes, if that, before Armstrong would be too high for this to work.

"Wait for my signal! Remember, both at once!" Rodney shouted after him.

"Shut up," Caldwell muttered under his breath. Hopefully Armstrong hadn't been able to hear that over the sound of the wind.

The last leg of his climb was a frantic scrabble across loose rocks stripped clean of snow by the wind, and then he was standing under a listing, very precarious-looking pine tree. Looking back, he could see why McKay thought this might work. The ground fell away steeply beneath him, and once the tree began to tumble, it might go for quite a ways before getting hung up on brush along its descent. He couldn't see Armstrong at all now, and that worried him, although with the steepness of the cliffside, once Armstrong was climbing up the ravine they wouldn't be able to see him from above in any case.

Rodney was a small figure moving through the snow, now pausing beside one tree, now moving on to the next one. Caldwell gave his own pine an experimental shove and found that Rodney was right -- the tree's roots had only a fragile grip on the frozen soil, and when he leaned against it, they began to snap. The tree creaked and ice clattered down onto his head from the branches. "Come on, McKay," he whispered, mentally hurrying the scientist's form as he paused and stared at another pine.

Then Rodney turned and gave a sweeping, expansive wave and a thumbs-up that was visible even through the blowing snow. Caldwell turned and threw his whole weight against the tree. He sucked in a sharp, hissing breath as a bolt of pain shot through his arm. But the tree yielded to the pressure, and with a great snapping and cracking of branches, it went over the edge. Caldwell flung himself the other way, nearly getting carried over the edge with it. The wash of pain as he jolted his arm nearly made him pass out. He lay flat on the ground for a minute, then sat up slowly and looked over the edge.

He was just in time to see the tumbling shape of the uprooted pine tree vanish in a wash of white as the unstable cornices along the top of the cliff let go. Unfortunately his vantage point meant that he couldn't see a whole lot of the avalanche itself, but he could feel the vibration through his hips and legs, and he could see the great cloud of loose, powdery snow kicked up into the air over the river canyon.

When the haze began to clear, Caldwell could see that a swathe had been cut down the cliffside, much like the one Armstrong had caused earlier. Of Armstrong himself, there was no sign -- just a lot of splintered and broken trees along the path of the avalanche.

He used another, slightly more stable tree to pull himself upright. Could it actually have worked -- could they be that lucky?

McKay was waving to him from the top of the cliff, and Caldwell waved back, when a movement beyond Rodney caught his eye. He dropped his hand instantly.

Oh hell.

There was Armstrong, just coming over the edge of the cliff, a couple hundred yards beyond Rodney. He hadn't been in the ravine at all. He must have realized, even if he hadn't heard them, that he'd be a sitting duck if he continued to follow their trail ... and he'd circled around, found a different way up the cliff.

Now he was behind Rodney.

Caldwell had opened his mouth to shout a warning, when he saw Rodney spin around. Rodney's hands flew up in the air. Armstrong approached the scientist at a slow, measured pace, and Rodney backed away until he came up against the edge of the cliff.

The one good thing about all of this was that Armstrong hadn't once looked up towards Caldwell under the pine trees. He didn't know that Caldwell was up here. Armstrong might have gained the element of surprise for himself, but the Colonel still had it too. Gun in hand, he slipped quietly over the edge, trying to seek cover as he climbed down into the ravine. He would have to get much closer before he could have any hope of hitting Armstrong with the pistol.

As the wind rose and fell, he caught snatches of their voices. "-- dragged me out here without a coat!" Rodney was saying, his voice rising in aggrieved tones.

Caldwell gritted his teeth. Don't make him shoot you before I can shoot HIM, McKay.

"Shut up!" Armstrong snapped, and he must have waved the gun to punctuate his words, because Rodney fell silent as if a switch had been flipped. Caldwell peeked out from behind the clump of brush that he was presently using for cover. From where he was, the two of them were seen in profile -- all Armstrong would have to do was catch a bit of movement out of the corner of his eye, and everything would be over.

But Armstrong's attention was still riveted on Rodney. "Where's the Colonel?" he demanded.

"Dead," Rodney said.

Caldwell scrambled a few feet closer. Too slow, too goddamn slow. He could see that this line of questioning wasn't going to last very long and it didn't have anything good waiting at the end.

He couldn't see Armstrong's face, but he could hear, over the whisper of his own boots and the muted roar of the wind, a loud snort of derision. "I followed two sets of tracks."

"He was caught in our avalanche, you ignorant ape. I saw him go over the edge." Rodney's eyes were wide, holding only fear. Caldwell thought McKay might actually be using his fear as a shield, hiding the lies behind a wall of terror.

And Caldwell finally saw -- really, truly saw -- why Sheppard was willing to go offworld with this man at his back. That McKay was brilliant, he already knew -- a brilliant, annoying, egotistical prima-donna. But the other person, the one in Sheppard's reports ... he'd never really seen that version of Rodney McKay before. Until today.

And he couldn't get close enough, fast enough, to stop what he knew was about to happen.

The gun was trained, unwavering, on the scientist's forehead. "If you're lying, McKay, you're a dead man."

"It's the truth! The truth, dammit! Do I look like the sort of person who's capable of lying with a gun in my face?"

I never would have thought so either, Caldwell thought, and went to his knee in the snow, because he wasn't going to make it in time, he wasn't close enough to touch Armstrong with the .9mm, but maybe he could manage some sort of distraction.

There was a slight relaxation in the set of Armstrong's shoulders, as if a little of the tension had gone out of him. "Then I guess all I have left to worry about is you," he said in a voice so soft that it could barely be heard over the wind.

Too. Goddamn. Slow.

Caldwell squeezed the trigger at the same time as Armstrong did. His own shot fell short, as he'd known it would, hitting a snowbank several yards from Armstrong's feet. Maybe the sharp report of his .9mm, coming at the same time as Armstrong pulled the trigger, could have thrown off the Lieutenant's aim a little. It didn't really matter, not at that range, not with a cliff under McKay's feet. It was like a slow-motion ballet -- the sharp jerks of Rodney's body as the bullets hit him and a spray of blood flew, as he tumbled backwards off the edge of the cliff, falling, falling, to break through the thin black ice on the river's surface and vanish without a sound into the water. To sink, and not to rise.

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TBC