by John Norman
Audrey wept in the snow.
I listened to the sleen in the distance.
Imnak placed the first block of the second row of blocks across two blocks in the first row. The blocks of the second row, those forming the second ring of the circular shelter, were slightly smaller than those of the first row.
“Barbara is gone,” said Arlene to me. She stood near me, the tether on her throat fastening her to the sled.
“Yes,” I said.
“Where is she?” said Arlene.
“The strap was cut,” I said. “She was taken.”
“Where?” asked Arlene.
“I do not know,” I said.
“Let us turn back,” begged Arlene.
I took her in my arms, and looked down into her eyes. How beautiful she was. For a moment I felt tenderness for her.
“Please turn back,” begged Arlene.
Then I recalled she was a slave.
Swiftly she knelt. “Forgive me, Master,” she said.
I listened. The hunting cries of the sleen carried to us.
“Even if we wished to turn back,” I told Arlene, at my feet in the snow, “it does not seem we could do so.”
“I hear sleen,” she said.
“Yes,” I said.
“Oh, no!” she said.
“Yes,” I said.
I looked down at her. She was quite beautiful. It would be tragic indeed for that lovely body to be torn to pieces by the teeth of the hunger-crazed sleen.
She shuddered.
I listened to the sleen. The sound was now quite clear. “How much time is there?” I asked Imnak.
He did not answer me, but continued, swiftly, not pausing, to cut blocks of snow.
“Imnak,” called Poalu, “you will need the knife and the ice.”
I did not understand this.
“Free Poalu, and the others,” said Imnak.
I untied the girls.
“Help me load the supplies into the ring,” I said to Arlene.
Crouching inside the ring, among supplies, Poalu began working near the lamp. Striking iron pyrites together she showered sparks into tinder, dried grass from the summer. The lamp was lit.
Imnak completed the low, second row of snow blocks.
“Thistle,” said Poalu, to Audrey, “bring the cooking rack and the water kettle.” One of the first things that is done, following the lighting of the lamp, which serves as light, heat and cook stove in the tiny shelters, is to melt snow for drinking water, and heat water for boiling meat.
Our sleen suddenly threw back his head and emitted a long, high-pitched, hideous, shrill squeal.
“It will revert,” said Imnak.
“Shall I kill it while there is still time?” I asked Imnak.
“Tie its jaws, and bind it,” said Imnak. “The madness will pass.”
I took the binding fiber with which the girls had been tethered.
“I see them now!” cried Arlene. “There! There!”
The sleen squirmed but I, forcing it to its side in the snow, lashed shut its jaws. I then tied together its three sets of paws.
“Put it in the shelter,” said Imnak.
I unhitched the sleen’s harness from the sled and, by the harness, still on the animal, dragged it into the shelter.
“Its struggles will break the wall, or put out the lamp,” I said.
“Do not permit that to happen,” said Imnak.
I tied the forepaws of the sleen to its rearmost hind paws, the power, or spring, paws. Its struggles would now be considerably circumscribed and the mighty leverage it could exert would largely be dissipated in the circle of its bonds.
“They are coming closer!” cried Arlene.
“Get into the shelter,” I told her. Imnak had managed only to build two rows, and part of a third, in the shelter. He did not cease, however, to cut blocks from the drift. One uses a drift, when possible, which has been formed in a single storm. The structure of the drift, thus, is less likely to contain faults, strata and cleavages, which would result in the blocks being weaker and more likely to break apart.
Arlene joined me inside the low, circular wall. The hunting cries of the sleen were now fierce and distinct. I did not think them more than a half of a pasang away.
“There is little time, Imnak,” I said. “Return to the shelter.”
He continued to cut blocks of snow, though he now made no effort to place them in the walls. One normally places such blocks from the inside. When the domed shelter is completed, as ours was not, the last block is placed on the outside and the builder then goes within, and, with the snow knife, trimming and shaping, slips it into place. A hole is left for the passage of air and smoke. Imnak’s walls were rough, and not too well shaped. The snow knife suffices, when there is time, to shape the dwelling. Chinks between blocks are filled with snow, as though it were mortar.
“Prepare to strike sleen from the walls,” said Imnak to me.
I stood within the low walls, lance in hand. “Return with me, to fight within,” I told him.
“I shall,” he said. Then he called out to Poalu, “Is the water boiling?”
“No,” she said, “but it is warm.”
“Hurry, Imnak!” I called. I could not understand why he still cut blocks, which he had no time to place in the walls. Too, I did not understand why Poalu should be busying herself with melting snow over the flat, oval lamp. This seemed a strange time to engage in such domestic chores.
The sleen were now, like a black cloud, breaking apart in the wind, and then rejoining, flooding toward us over the ice. The cloud was no more now than a quarter of a pasang away.
“Is this the end, Master?” asked Arlene.
“It would seem so,” I said. “For my part, it will be a good fight. I am sorry, however, that you are here.”
“Will you not free me?” she asked.
“No,” I said.
If we were to die beneath the fangs of the sleen I would be torn apart as a free man, and she as a slave. It was what we were.
“Yes, Master,” she said.
The hideous crying of the sleen was nclw piercing to our ears. We could hear, too, in the cold air, even the panting of the animals, their gasping, the scratching of their claws scattering snow and ice behind them, on the ice.
Imnak now, with a knife, cut down at the ice some twenty feet from the partially erected shelter.
The sleen were now some two hundred yards away, swift, frenzied.
Imnak hurried to the low wall of the half-erected shelter. There, instead of joining us, he took from Poalu a slice of meat and, in the other hand, the handle of the water kettle. He hurried to the hole he had cut in the ice. He thrust the meat on the blade of the knife and then thrust the handle of the knife down into the hole he had cut in the ice. He poured the water then into the hole in the ice, about the handle of the knife. He waited only a moment, for the water, poured into the icy hole in the subzero temperatures, froze almost instantly, anchoring the knife with the solidity of a spike in cement.
“Hurry!” I cried.
A sleen was on Imnak. He fell rolling with the animal. I leaped over the low wall and ran to him, driving the lance into the animal, then holding it down on the ice, it snapping at the lance, while Imnak, his furs torn, leaped up. He kicked at a sleen which was leaping toward me, striking it in the snout. I pulled the lance free of the wounded animal which scrambled up, fangs wide, and, with the butt of the lance, struck back another sleen. Imnak was shouting in my ear. With the point of the lance I fended back the jaws of the wounded sleen. Then there were other sleen about us, twisting, circling. Imnak, shouting, kicking, dragged me back toward the shelter. Another sleen brushed past me. I felt another tear at the fur on my boot. Then Imnak and I stood within that small, low rampart, each armed with a lance. The full flood of sleen, the pack at large, not the lead animals, then swept about the small, circular shelter, hissing and squealing. Their eyes blazed in the moonlight. I thrust one back from the wal
l with the lance. Imnak, too, thrust animals away. Our own sleen was frenzied at our feet, struggling. An animal leaped into the snow circle and I, bodily, under it, lifted it over the wall and hurled it among others. Audrey screamed. Poalu threw oil from the lamp, burning, into the face of another animal. Arlene, screaming, reeled back from another animal, half over the wall, her sleeve torn open. I caught the animal under the throat with one hand and, getting another hand on its left foreleg, thrust it back over the wall among the others. Imnak thrust back another sleen. I again seized up the lance which I had carried. I thrust it into the face of another sleen, its head up, crouching to spring at the wall. It twisted away, hissing and snarling.
Then the sleen were outside, some twenty or thirty feet away, dark on the ice, though they were snow sleen. Some circled the shelter.
One sped toward the shelter and leaped upward but I managed to meet its charge with the lance point and it, its face bloodied, twisted, the lance through the side of the mouth, and I managed to deflect its charge to the side and it fell, snarling, slipping free of the lance, to the side of the shelter, Imnak thrust two others back.
Then it was quiet for a time.
“There are so many,” said Arlene.
“It is a large pack,” I said.
I could not well count the animals in the uncertain light and shadows, and with their dark minglings and changings of position, but it was clear that there were a large number of beasts there, probably more than fifty. Some sleen packs run as high as one hundred and twenty animals.
“I wish you well, Imnak,” I said,
“Are you going somewhere?” he asked. “This is not a good time to do so.”
“There are a great many sleen out there,” I said.
“That is true,” said Imnak.
“Are you not ready to die?” I asked him.
“Not me,” he said. “Red hunters do not expect to die,” he said. “They may die, but it always comes as a surprise to them.”
I threw back my head and laughed like an idiot.
“Why do you laugh, Tarl, who hunts with me?” he asked.
“In the strait circumstances in which we now find ourselves immeshed, I gather,” I said, “that you have no intention of dying.”
“That is exactly it,” he said. “You have hit it. That is not something I have planned on.”
“Imnak,” said Poalu, “does not fear the sleen of death.”
“If he comes around me,” said Imnak, “I will hitch him to my sled.”
“I would be proud to die beside you, Imnak,” I said.
“I am an even better fellow to live beside,” said Imnak. “This is my view of the matter.”
“I will accept that,” I said.
I looked down into the eyes of Arlene.
“Is there no hope?” she asked.
“All is lost, I fear,” I said. “I wish you were not here.”
She put her head against my arm. She looked up at me. “I would rather be nowhere else than here,” she said.
“I would rather be in the feasting house,” said Imnak.
“All is not lost,” said Poalu.
“Look,” said Imnak.
I looked out, several feet across the ice. “No,” I said, in repulsion.
“Do you wish to live?” asked Imnak.
“Yes,” I said.
“Then we must do what is necessary to achieve that aim,” he said.
I looked out, across the ice, understanding then the effectiveness, the hideous efficiency, of the sleen trap which Imnak had so swiftly constructed, the sleen pack nearing the shelter as he had worked.
One of the larger animals circled the meat on the knife twice and then, suddenly, bit at it, to tear it from the blade. He ripped the meat from the blade, making away with it, his jaws cut by the knife’s edge. There was then hot fresh blood on the knife. Another sleen, frenzied with the smell, ribs protruding from its fur, racked with hunger, hurried to the knife, licking at the blood. As it did so, of course, the blade, anchored fixedly in the ice, cut its mouth, its lips and tongue. In the frenzy of its hunger the sleen, further stimulated by the newly shed blood, redoubled its efforts to lap it up. Another animal, larger, bit at it, and shouldered it from the blade, it then licking at the blood, unwittingly cutting itself, its mouth and tongue, as well. There was dark blood, frozen about the stained, exposed blade. One sleen attacked the first animal, which was profusely bleeding at the mouth. In a raging, vicious tangle of whirling fur and snapping jaws the two animals fought. One’s throat was ripped open and, instantly, four or five dark shapes on the ice attacked the fallen animal, thrusting their heads, fangs tearing, feeding, into its belly. It squealed hideously. Other sleen tried to thrust into the orgy. Two or three scrambled literally onto the backs of the feeders, trying to push down between them. Other sleen ran to the knife. The blood on it, in the moment it had been left alone, had frozen on the steel. Two sleen fought to lick the frozen blood from the blade. Instantly as the blade cut their lips and tongue there was again hot, fresh blood on the steel. A sleen can kill itself in this manner, licking at the blade until it bleeds to death.
Arlene and Audrey looked away.
But no sleen that night bled to death, a victim of the simple, cruel trap, for there were too many animals present with too great a hunger to permit this to occur.
As a sleen weakened, or the stimulus of the blood became too great, other animals, tortured by their own hunger, attacked it.
In less than an Ahn Imnak, to my amazement, left the half-constructed shelter, and, walking among gorged sleen, and feeding sleen, and dead sleen, went to the drift and began to carry blocks back to the shelter.
In a moment I went to help him. We passed, literally, within feet of savage snow sleen, and scarcely did they notice us.
Some fifteen or twenty sleen had been killed, all by other sleen in the pack. The remaining sleen had fed on these. Some still fed, pulling and tearing at the bones and exposed ventral cavities and limbs of the fallen sleen.
Several of the animals, gorged with meat, curled in the snow, in a white coil, and slept.
Imnak added the new blocks to the snow shelter and, with his snow knife, cut those blocks he needed to finish the low, domed structure. It does not take long to construct such a shelter, if the snow is appropriate. I do not think he had worked longer, altogether, than some forty or fifty minutes on it. With the snow knife, on the outside, he trimmed and shaped the dwelling, and filled in the chinks with snow. Inside Poalu had relit the lamp and was already melting snow for drinking water and setting a pot to boil, hanging from the cooking rack, for meat.
27. The Face In The Sky; The Codes; Imnak Will Take First Watch
We pressed on, further northward.
It had been four sleeps now since we had left the first snow shelter, where we had been threatened by the sleen pack. Each sleep we had again constructed such a shelter.
The reversion frenzy of our sleen had passed quickly, even by the time the first shelter had been constructed, but we had left it tied, loosening its jaws only to feed it, because of the presence of the wild sleen in the vicinity. After our sleep in the first shelter we had reconnoitered. The majority of the sleen pack had departed, filled with meat. Imnak had retrieved his knife, it having claimed no more victims. Some five sleen had lingered in the vicinity, nosing about the fur and gnawed bones of the fallen members of the pack. From a distance they had eyed us, balefully.
We had left the shelter and trekked northward, our sleen again in its traces. The five sleen had drifted with us, some half pasang or so away. We saw them from time to time. Their presence no longer excited our own sleen, as it had now passed through its reversion frenzy.
“What lazy animals those sleen are,” said Imnak. “They are not even really hungry, but they are keeping us in mind. They should be out hunting snow bosk, or basking sea sleen, or burrowing and scratching inland for hibernating leems.”
“I suppose you are right,” I said.<
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“But look at them,” he said, righteously. “There they are, right there. They should be ashamed of themselves.”
“Yes,” I said, “they certainly should.”
“No self-respecting sleen follows a man like that,” he said.
“You are quite possibly correct,” I granted him. Though sleen were not fastidious, men were surely not their preferred prey.
“But there they are,” said Imnak.
“They certainly are,” I said.
“We must teach those lazy, greedy fellows a lesson,” he said.
“I doubt if we could get close enough to them to harm them,” I said. “When they become sufficiently hungry, then they will come in.”
“But then they will be extremely dangerous,” said Imnak. “And there are five of them.”
“True,” I said. It did not seem likely that we could sustain the attack of five snow sleen without a shelter. Instinctively such animals, when in packs, tend to circle and attack simultaneously from different directions. The shelter, incidentally, tends to confuse them. It is not a shape which releases their normal attack behaviors. The best that we could do, presumably, if caught in the open, would be to fight back to back, the girls, low, at our feet. Even then they might be dragged away from us. Our best chance, presumably, would be to have pack ice behind us.
Before we had slept that night, and after Imnak had constructed our shelter, he removed from the supplies several strips of supple baleen, whale bone, taken from the baleen whale, the bluish blunt fin, which we had killed before taking the black Hunjer whale. He had brought this with him from the permanent camp. Why I had not understood.
“What are you doing?” I asked him.
He worked in the light of the lamp.
“Watch,” he said.
He took a long strip of baleen, about fifteen inches in length, and, with his knife, sharpened both ends, wickedly sharp. He then, carefully, folded the baleen together, with S-type folds. Its suppleness permitted this, but it was undet great tension, of course, to spring straight again, resuming its original shape. He then tied the baleen, tensed as it was, together with some stout tabuk sinew. The sinew, of. course, held the baleen together, in effect fastening a stout spring into a powerfully compressed position. If the sinew should break I would not have wished to be near that fierce, compressed, stout strip of sharpened baleen.