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But if you can’t wait until then here’s a sneaky peek inside the book…..

Rory pushed forward into the blizzard, he strained to see the mountain ahead but the snow blinded him and its jagged cold fingers pierced his cheeks with an agonizing cold. He turned away from the wind and scraped the shards of ice from his cheeks. Looking down he could see nothing but curtains of falling snow that reduced his vision to a monochrome greyness taking out all sense of depth or perspective. It became impossible to get any idea of the shape of the mountain ahead and, even less, discover a safe route above the cliffs. A sixth sense told him that the ridge was narrowing ahead and below him gaped a yawning void.

Rory took a moment to scrape the ice from his dishevelled ginger beard. He knew now that his handful years of summer hillwalking and half a dozen weekends on benign days on the winter hills had been no preparation for what he was facing on this day in the teeth of a highland blizzard and with a whole mountain between him and safety. Then he noticed something else, the light was beginning to fade, soon the short winter day would be over and they would be lost in the darkness.

Flakes of snow found their way inside his hood and down inside his jacket where they melted against his skin making him shiver as the cold gradually bored its way inside him. As he fought to close his jacket Rory’s fingers brushed against the cord around his neck that held Jenny’s ring, a little band of gold, against the warmth of his chest. For a moment he felt her standing beside him, her head on his shoulder, just like she always did when the world got too much for him.   Then the blizzard roared again and he was back on the mountain but now he thought he could contain the fear wriggling like an electric worm inside his belly.

Rory turned anxiously and was relieved to see a stocky figure, dressed in an ancient battered cagoule, stumbling towards him through the snow. It was Angus, twenty years or more older than him and with so much more experience, he would know what to do.

Rory yelled against the wind. “Angus, which way now?”

Angus, his face wrapped in the hood of his cagoule and his balaclava rimmed with ice below that, bent forward to drag the accumulated ice from his beard. “Let’s awa back to the bothy.”

Angus spoke calmly, as if suggesting they bought another round of drinks on a Thursday night in the little pub in inverness where the mountaineering club met. It comforted Rory to have the older man with him. When the mountains confront us with their savagery it is the companionship of others that keeps fear at bay.

Rory saw a reassuring grin flash across Angus’ face. “Ach, it’ll be nae bother. Get that gizmo of yours oot, we’ll be back in the bothy as soon as yer know it”

An image of a hearth with a roaring fire in the grate and flickering candles sitting on the mantlepiece flashed through Rory’s mind. He grinned back and pulled the GPS out of his pocket. He looked in horror at the screen, it was grey and dead.

“Bloody thing has packed up,” in that instant the storm seemed to grow around Rory shaking him vindictively. The world of swirling white grew until the immense storm swallowed him like an ocean with unknown depths.

Angus, dropped his rucksack. “Ah telt yer, you canna rely on those bloody things.”

“I put new batteries in it only last week,” Rory murmured. “It should be fine.” The blank screen stared back at him in mute defiance and he watched Angus had pull out his map and try to hang on to it as the jagged teeth of the blizzard attempted to wrestle it from his hands.

Angus at last got the map under control and turned to Rory. “Okay, where are we?”

“I was following the arrow,” Rory said realising that he should have paid more attention to the little device whilst it had been functioning. “Somewhere here I think.” Rory’s poked at a point on the map with his ice glazed gloved finger, indicating somewhere high on the ridge of the mountain.

Angus sniffed and scanned the maelstrom of snow. “Och, well, nae sense in hanging aboot.” There was a casual tone in his words, as if he was announcing that it was time to head home from the supermarket. Despite Angus’ relaxed front Rory detected a hint of anxiety in the older man’s demeanour and realised that Angus was pretending to be calm for his sake.

Rory watched as Angus tried to stare through the snow looking for some feature that would locate them on the map and give some clue to their position. Each time Angus scoured the mountainside for a reference point the blizzard seemed to delight in increasing its ferocity, blinding them and obscuring the landscape.

At last he took a bearing with his compass and followed the needle into the whiteness. “This canna be far oot.”

Rory knew this could only be a lie, told to help him feel confident for there was nothing visible in the heart of the storm to show where they were. “We’ve got to find that gap in the cliffs.” Rory yelled anxiously.

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Angus did not respond but walked on guided by the flickering needle. Rory swallowed, gathered his courage and followed.

As they began the descent the slope beneath them grew ever steeper. Rory gripped his ice axe in earnest driving it hard into the snow with each step, anchoring himself to the mountain. Sometimes he was completely blinded by the swirling snow, fearing that the next step he took there would be nothing but air beneath his boot and he would plunge into the abyss below. Angus was only a few feet away but he was sometimes lost for a few seconds in the whiteout. Rory forced his trembling legs to move stamping the spikes of his crampons into the snow and then driving in his ice axe as an anchor before taking the next step. This was the rhythm of his movement, the key to getting down the mountain alive and seeing Jenny again. Don’t panic, he thought, just keep moving steadily.

Angus called to him through the blizzard. “Now just keep yerr weight over yerr crampons like I showed yer. Yer’ll be fine yer ken.”

Angus could be patronising, especially when he went into his “old man of the mountains” mode, dispensing sage advice to anyone who wanted to listen and sometimes to people who didn’t. Right now, Rory didn’t mind being patronised, in fact he rather liked it, he just hoped the old man could get him off this mountain in on piece.

Suddenly Rory found himself on Angus’ heels, the old man had stopped and was peering anxiously below him. “Rory, I’m nae sure this is the way doon it’s too steep.”

Rory stood shivering. Angus stepped tentatively forward, and in one fraction of a second the ice beneath him sheared away, he fell, and his body span away towards oblivion .

Will Angus survive the fall? There’s only one way to find out. Pre-order here.