The Tundra Shall Burn!

by Ken Altabef

  Vithrok stood tall. And laughed.

  CHAPTER 45

  ECLIPSE

  Nunavik arrived too late. He had tarried too long down below, sitting on his big fat ass, attending to the welfare of his friend Alaana. The more he thought about it, he was certain the Raven had sent them a message. Ill-timed, quite possibly malicious and definitely dangerous, but a message all the same. Something about the Moon. Of course, knowing Raven, it might just as well have been a trap.

  Nunavik undertook the journey to the Moon on the last remaining night before summer’s long day. The walrus had traveled to this ivory sphere only a few times over the centuries. It was a long flight, and not one to be taken lightly. The golden walrus had a passing good acquaintance with the Moon-Man but Annigan grew indolent in summer, sleeping much and welcoming few visitors. No sooner had the walrus flown all the way up, he found Annigan not at home.

  The huge celestial iglu shone bright but empty. The Moon-dogs nattered briskly at their kennel. It was passing strange. Having only flippers and fins, Nunavik was not well-equipped for a long walk on the crusted surface. He waited for a time on the Moon-Man’s front porch hoping the great spirit might soon turn up.

  ***

  When Tatqeq felt the Moon shift beneath her feet she knew immediately that something terrible had happened. For some time now she had suspected mischief brewing on the dark side. She’d felt the vibrations, even if her father hadn’t cared to be bothered about them.

  But she hadn’t imagined that her half-brother the Dark was behind the trouble. Not until that moment. She felt the Moon lurch as it never had before. Her father staggered. He was in serious danger.

  She tore out of her house, a small iglu not far from the great ice house of her father. She couldn’t know what was happening on the dark side, except for the certainty that her father was in trouble. She ran across the ivory-flaked surface toward his house.

  Upon spying the walrus, she called, “Nunavik, is that you?”

  “Are there any other golden walruses that visit here?”

  “Something’s wrong,” she said.

  “Tell me. I’ll add it to the list.”

  “My father’s in trouble. Can’t you feel it?”

  Becoming suddenly serious, the walrus shook his head. “Where?”

  “The dark side. We have to go help him.”

  “It’s too far. I can’t get there in time.”

  “I can’t either,” said Tatqeq. “But we have to try.”

  “I’ve a better idea,” said the walrus. “Loose the dogs!”

  The Moon Maid dashed to the kennel. The dogs strained at their lines, whining for their master. Their shimmering fur, made of moonbeams and stardust, glowed silver-white as they lifted their massive heads.

  “You feel it too, don’t you?” she asked the dogs as she unlashed the peg posts on the kennel bar, setting the three gigantic huskies free. She didn’t need to tell them what to do. They tore off away across the rocky terrain, heading for the dark side.

  ***

  Vithrok struck the Moon-Man full in the face.

  Annigan’s big round gourd of a head snapped back as the blow sent him staggering backward. He stood dazed for a moment, weak-kneed, wobbling, looking as if he might fall. Two thin streaks of blood, which shone luminous white, trickled from his nostrils.

  Vithrok pulled his armor tighter across his body. The touch of the Beforetime against his bare skin filled him with wild energy, delivering a hint of their promise of bliss. The fight went well. Truth be told he had expected more resistance. But the Moon was old, tired and weak.

  Vithrok stepped into the fray again, fashioning the sheath of Beforetime that covered his left hand into a spiked ball. He swung the mace at Annigan’s head. The Moon-Man retreated again, he was forever retreating, and threw up a crest of rocky moonstuff to take the brunt of the blow. Vithrok’s mace shattered the ivory rock into a cloud of white smoke.

  He must be careful, he thought. He didn’t want to shatter the Moon itself. What good fulcrum would it be if it were broken in half? Annigan was the target and Annigan only.

  A sudden growl turned Vithrok’s head. He saw the three Moon-dogs tearing across the ivory crust. Distracted, he hadn’t noticed their approach until too late. One of the dogs leapt at his throat and Vithrok batted it away. Another clamped its powerful jaw on his right wrist. The armor held against the bite but Vithrok felt himself being pulled down. He fell to one knee as the other two dogs circled around, looking for an opening to strike.

  Thinking quickly, Vithrok loosed three strands of quicksilver from the Beforetime that supplied his body armor. The metallic strands pulsed and grew, taking the forms of powerful wolves, each with two snapping heads and a deep massive chest. They were sleek and hairless, with skin the color and consistency of polished silver.

  Vithrok struggled to animate three such monsters at once as he directed them to attack Annigan’s ethereal pets. The Moon-dogs battled fiercely in return. Vithrok sent his wolves at their throats.

  One of the dogs shook off its attacker and rolled beneath, seeking to sink its fangs into a soft underbelly. The dog’s teeth raked the smooth, unyielding skin of the silver wolf, several of them breaking clean off. The two-headed wolf took the Moon-dog by the back of the neck with one mouth, while its other head snarled and snapped at the front. The Moon-dog yipped confusedly at the head it could see while the other crunched down to break its neck.

  The silver wolves were not completely invulnerable. As they were puppets animated and controlled by Vithrok’s mind, they fell lifeless when out of direct sight. Vithrok couldn’t entirely keep up with the attacking Moon-dogs. Before long his new creations were leaking fiery Beforetime from dozens of wounds just as the Moon-dogs sprayed their own luminous blood across the plain.

  The sorcerer whirled around to catch the Moon-Man launching an attack of his own. Annigan thrust of a long spike of ivory at his neck. Vithrok conjured a silver blade of Beforetime to counter the attack just in time. His parry was so forceful it knocked Annigan to the ground.

  The fight between dogs and wolves was nearly over. While his attention had been momentarily diverted by the Moon-Man, two of Vithrok’s beasts had been destroyed. But the three Moon-dogs all lay dead. The remaining wolf stood over its final victim, drinking liquid moonshine from its slashed neck. The sorcerer withdrew control of his puppet and it splashed to the ground in a puddle of quicksilver.

  Annigan rose to his feet with renewed fury.

  “You don’t know the power of the Moon,” he said. “I was here long before you came along!”

  Vithrok sneered. “A dark rock in the sky, until I brought the sun.”

  “I don’t need the sun; I have all the weight of the Moon. Not just a rock. Almost a planet!”

  Annigan flexed the great weight of the Moon, the incredible power that lifted the sea from its bed twice a day even at tremendous distance. He directed his crushing blow full at Vithrok.

  Faced with such a terrific force, the sorcerer almost knew doubt. But he would not relent, not even for a second. As the Moon-Man’s power wrapped around him in a bone-crushing embrace, Vithrok was quick to react. He dispatched another dose of Beforetime, drawing from what remained of his body armor. He shaped it into multifaceted pellets, shards of crystal glass that held every color of the rainbow, and caused them to fly about him in a chaotic swirl, a pattern that was no pattern. This method of defense worked in much the same way as the shield of Beforetime that hovered over his citadel. White noise. The multifaceted shards spun in every direction at once. In the face of this chaos, the directed force of the Moon-Man’s attack was broken up and disorganized. The Moon’s pull was diffused, flung outward and away.

  Annigan broke off his assault before he became completely exhausted. He stood hunched over, wheezing to catch his breath.

  Vithrok had lost much as well. His shimmering armor of Beforetime had been reduced to only a silvery chest plate. It was time to end this fight.


  Annigan returned to the fray. In a final, desperate attack he lashed out with a bony knife of moonrock. He stabbed Vithrok just below the rim of the chest plate, the knife’s tip angled upward in search of liver or heart. Vithrok’s liver had petrified thousands of years ago. If he could have been said to have a heart, it was likewise a shriveled lump of clay. He had allowed the strike, knowing his body was already dead, animated only by force of will. Annigan could slash and stab at his body as much as he liked, but he could never break the sorcerer’s spirit.

  Once lured in close, the Moon-Man came to a serious disadvantage. Vithrok unleashed a flurry of blows that rained down on the great spirit one after another in quick succession. He battered and pounded, driving the Moon-Man to the ground. His attacks were not only physical. Vithrok struck in spirit as well, battering Annigan’s weary soul.

  His assault was relentless. The surface of the Moon roiled and crumbled beneath them as Vithrok continued to beat Annigan into oblivion.

  Reeling under the attack, the Moon-Man’s thoughts became disordered and confused. He wondered if he had fed his dogs. He longed for summer, for a warm breeze he had once known in the time Before. It was always winter on the Moon. Cold and lonely. His last thought was of the Morning Dawn.

  The Moon went dark.

  At that very instant Nunavik and Tatqeq arrived. Through the tinted lens of his spirit-vision, Nunavik watched the sorcerer fly up into the sky, a fiery soul at the heart of a huge amorphous sphere of Beforetime he had liberated from his fallen foe, a release of primordial energy to shake the heavens themselves. The Tunrit hung over the Moon’s horizon for a moment, basking in his victory. His blinding outline lit up the sky like a fireball, blazing like a new star in the heavens, and then retreated back down to the world below.

  “My father!” breathed Tatqeq.

  “Quiet!” hissed the walrus.

  “I have to go to him,” she said.

  The Moon Maid tried to dash forward but Nunavik hooked her with his tusks and held her back.

  “Your brother!” whispered the walrus.

  Tatqeq gazed helplessly into the darkness. “Is he there? I can’t see anything.”

  “I can’t see either,” said Nunavik. The Moon was dead. There was nothing left for his spirit-vision to see. The Dark had no soul.

  Tatqeq shook him off, unsure what to do next.

  Then they heard laughter in the dark.

  CHAPTER 46

  A RAIN OF STARS

  Sir Walter Gekko often enjoyed a midnight stroll with his sweetheart. Their walk, out of habit, was taken at a brisk military pace as they circled the periphery of Old Bea.

  He suffered mixed emotions about the coming of summer. On the one hand he had come to appreciate the luxury of a temperature that was slightly above freezing. But the long passage of unbroken daylight played havoc with his senses. He could not sleep well in stark daylight, and the increased work load at the trading post in summer was a burden. The natives trapped and traded at a ferocious pace in order to stock up for leaner times to come. They thought nothing of working all hours and expected Gekko to keep a similar schedule. Too much work and not enough sleep left him longing for the doldrums of winter. But it would be different this year. As long as he had Noona beside him, he would most certainly be content.

  “When will it come?” she asked. They stood at the western edge of the post, facing the bay. It was senseless to expect to see the great sailing ship if it approached at night with only the light of a quarter moon, but they looked anyway.

  “Soon, I guess,” he answered.

  “What did the sky-machine tell you?”

  Gekko chuckled. Contrary to his expectations, Noona had not been impressed at all by the wireless. She insisted that the shamans had long held the ability to converse across long distances by way of the spirit of the air. Sitting before his own magical machine he found he could not dispute such claims.

  He took no joy in the message he had received that day. His wife, Margaret Appleby Gekko, had been laid to eternal rest in Wolstoncraft Cemetery, Derbyshire. Her uncle the Earl was irritated by Gekko’s absence, but he had made no formal noises about withdrawing titles or lands from his widower nephew. Gekko was a rich man at last.

  “The boat must be here soon,” he said again. “This melt speeds their progress, I’m sure. I wouldn’t be surprised if we see sail in a day or two.”

  “Something troubles you?” she asked.

  He looked down at her face, so pale in the faltering moonlight. Her eyes, wide and luminous, gazed inquiringly back at him. There were so many things he could not tell her, could not find words to explain. But he would. Gekko, who was not the most honest person to walk the arctic wastes, whom loyalty to country had made somewhat necessarily devious, wanted to tell her everything. She would understand, he knew. But he was not yet prepared to breach such confidences; he was not yet willing to disconnect all ties with the West.

  “Nothing,” he said. He managed a half-smile, wrapping his arms around her waist. Damn it, he thought. The shaman’s daughter, just like her mother, knew when he was being less than honest.

  “Everything’s all right, as long as you’re here,” he said, and that was no lie.

  He kissed her lips in the Western way. She had learned to like it.

  Outdoor kissing, however, was always cold and less than satisfactory.

  “Let’s go inside,” he said.

  They had just rounded the southeast corner when it happened.

  The Moon went dark.

  It was as if someone had suddenly turned out a light. Noona gasped.

  They both looked up but could see nothing except a few tired stars in the sky.

  A great hubbub drifted across the plain from the trading post. Inuit natives shouting and running around. There were always a good number of people hanging about the post in summer, even at night.

  “Damn it all,” said Gekko. He and Noona set out at a jog toward Old Bea.

  Henry Jackson met them in front of the big orange front door. Jackson stood staring at the darkened sky.

  “How can it just switch off like that?” he asked. “An eclipse?”

  “It’s not an eclipse,” said Gekko. “Not all of a sudden like that.”

  Noona had taken her line of sinew in hand, twisting and turning the string in the ipiitaq aularuq. She had a complex cat’s cradle stretched between her fingers, her eyes wide again. She couldn’t believe whatever she thought she saw, and disengaged the wire to reform the shape again. The second viewing proved no better, for she threw the string to the ground. Gekko had never seen her so upset, her face so drawn and hard.

  “It’s dead,” she said. “The Moon is dead.”

  Aquppak watched the two men fight. Among the many traditions of his band of Yupikut raiders a fight to the death by moonlight was the principal way to resolve major disputes. A major dispute was defined as anything that caused two men to be mad enough to kill each other. He hardly thought the current situation called for murder. One of them, whose name Aquppak could not remember, had borrowed the other’s hand saw and returned it broken. This infuriated the second man, whose name Aquppak recalled as Killigivut, who had retaliated by breaking the first man’s sled runners in half.

  Head punching simply wouldn’t do for such a grievous offense and the men had challenged each other to a moonlight duel. Aquppak hoped Killigivut would be killed, as that would save him the trouble of disciplining him for damaging the sled. He tried to recall what the appropriate punishment for ruining a sled should be. A few lashes with the dog whip should suffice.

  As the current headman, Aquppak watched the encounter with a dishonestly bemused smile on his face, though truth be told he saw the whole thing as a waste of one of his strong men. There was nothing for it. Klah Kritlaq, in his guise of Khahoutek, stood also in attendance, wearing his famous wooden bear-jaw mask.

  The Yupikut men had formed a ring around the fighters. The two combatants circled each othe
r warily. Both held naked blades in their hands, glinting steel by moonlight. A length of leather thong tied around their ankles bound the men together. Both men yanked at the cord with their legs, but neither could topple the other. The first man lunged repeatedly with his knife to keep his opponent off balance. He whooped loudly in an attempt to intimidate, though he was clearly the one who was afraid. Most of his taunts were drowned out by the shouts of the men in the circle. Killigivut stepped calmly toward the side, hand steady, eyes sharp.

  Aquppak predicted that Killigivut would eventually win, most likely without suffering significant injury in the process.

  Perhaps the loss of the other man, whatever his name, was really no great loss. He seemed a poor fighter and too quick to anger anyway. He stepped a little too close and Killigivut slashed him across the forearm. First blood. The cut looked deep. The man’s eyes went wide at sight of the wound but didn’t lose their focus on Killigivut. He launched into a desperate charge, grappling for Killigivut’s knife. While Killigivut pulled away, Aquppak noticed the first man surreptitiously coiling the thong around his ankle. Some of the men saw it too and shouted to warn Killigivut, but their shouts were lost among the overall clamor for blood.

  The first man yanked at the thong, bringing Killigivut to the ground, and went at him with the knife.

  The Moon went dark.

  One of the men screamed, but in the darkness no one could see which one it had been.

  The Moon went dark.

  The first among the Anatatook to notice was Igguaniaq. The Big Mountain was sitting in front of his tent, puffing on a good pipe of kabloona tobacco. At first he thought a night bird must have flown across the Moon, cutting it off from view. He had seen that happen before on rare occasion, if the peregrine was close enough overhead. In those cases the bird’s shadow passed immediately. But this time the Moon did not return.