The Harold Lamb Megapack

by Harold Lamb

  The next day the sun was brighter. The ice began to move sluggishly toward the north, leaving strips of black water visible. Although walking to shore was now hard work, Stolkei announced that he would go back to the village a last time for some snuff.

  Before setting out he ordered Fedor and the Finn to let go the rusty anchor to avoid drifting, and to mend the lug sails.

  When the anchor was down the two watched until Stolkei was out of sight. Fedor looked long from a black speck on the still unbroken ice of the bay by Ostak’s hut to the broad face of the Finn.

  “Lak,” he muttered, and coughed.

  “Lak,” he began again, “you and I are chums, ain’t we?”

  A smile on Fedor’s thin, red face disclosed black teeth. He closed one red-veined eye.

  “That girl of Ostak’s—she’s alone over there.”

  Looking at the speck on the ice Lak nodded. His thoughts had been running in that direction since he woke up at noon.

  “It’ll be a long stretch down the Yenesei, with the ice ahead of us and behind. We won’t be ashore again for a pretty spell, Lak. Look here, that Buriat girl is as sleek as a fox.”

  The big sailor rubbed the back of his hand across his mouth.

  “Those —— Buriats at the village—” he was beginning.

  “They won’t know, Lak—why should they? Look here, Ostak’s blind. There’s no other soul along the bay, there. She’ll think we want more salmon. I’ll manage her.” Fedor chuckled. “I’ll say we’ll clap her in the hatch in the ice if she doesn’t come along to the ship. I’ll manage her, if you’ll carry her to the ship.”

  “What about the master?”

  “The —— take the master—as he will, some day. Papa Stolkei has an eye for a girl, I tell you. Anyway, lad, he can’t do anything. As for the Buriats, they are oxen! What do they care for Uncle Ostak? They know we have muskets, and they won’t want a hole in their pelts just because of Ostak’s brat.”

  The Finn’s heavy face had not changed.

  “If I carry her to the ship, I keep her a while. You agree to that, Master Fedor?”

  The turkey-faced sailor scowled. Then his brow cleared and he held out his hand.

  “Agreed. Why, you’re my chum, Lak.”

  For once Ostak’s fingers were not busied at the making of nets, and Kam was not playing with the treasures on the bearskin. The boy stared up, puzzled, at Stolkei who was sitting on the, guest’s side of the fire in the hut, his coat open, drinking tarasun.

  “I’ll open your mouth for you, Uncle Ostak,” the Russian was saying. “I’ll let you talk terms. You can name the kalym, the first payment, yourself. How much—eh? Spit it out!”

  But Ostak shook his head, his eyes closed.

  “Nay, master. The girl is not a woman yet, for going with you.”

  “Tchai, Uncle Ostak,” Stolkei smiled, “you are blind enough. Aina is pretty as a fox. If she stays here some stripling from the village will come to open your mouth to talk of marriage.”

  “Nay. The girl is my hand, to work with. When the ice is on the river I can not catch the fish. Soon little Kam will be able to use the spear, but not now.”

  Ostak spoke harshly. The foster children he had taken in had found their way into his heart, after a fashion. Irritable as he was with them, Ostak saw that they had the best of the food, that skins were brought for their garments, even silk and beads and iron ornaments for Aina.

  “Well, you are a fool.” Stolkei was angered. “You are a doddering old Anakhay—a one-eyed evil-doer to children. I tell you I will pay a price, a good price. The girl will see Russia—”

  “She would not live,” again Ostak shook his head. “She is shy and quiet. She is for her own land. Go your way, master.”

  Stolkei grew red with anger and would have thrown the empty tarasun bowl at the fisherman, when Ostak said quietly.

  “There is a net spread around your vessel. If you do evil here, it will come upon you. I see!”

  Perturbed a little, Stolkei was staring at the wrinkled face of the blind man when both heard a scream from the river. Recognizing the voice of Aina, the fisherman felt his way out of the hut, followed by Stolkei.

  Ostak clutched the arm of the other.

  “What has happened to Aina? Where is she?”

  What Stolkei saw was this: Beside the hole in the ice a small figure in furs was facing big Lak, a two-pronged spear fish in its hands. The Finn sprang at Aina and jumped back as the spear drove into his shoulder. Then he brushed the weapon aside, caught up the girl, wrapped a neckcloth about her face and flung her over his shoulder.

  They moved off along the shore toward the lugger. Fedor followed.

  By the hole in the ice Stolkei saw that there remained only the dead fish, the spear and the foxskin cap that had fallen from the head of Aina.

  “What has happened?” he repeated slowly. A cunning light came into his black eyes and he pulled at his beard. “Eh? Why, pray to the mercy of God, Ostak. The ice about the hole has cracked. Aina has fallen in.”

  “Ai-a,” moaned the old man. “And the river is moving under the ice! Run to the hole, master. I can not see to go. Run swiftly!”

  Stolkei put a hand over his mouth to keep from laughing. He started off at a lumbering trot.

  “I go, uncle.” Bethinking himself, he paused. “But, nay. The girl has gone under. The ice is moving in the bay, I tell you. Never will you see Aina again, old man.”

  It was true that here and there after the passage of the giant Finn with his burden, the white sheet over the bay revealed gray lines, wherein the black water soon appeared.

  “Shame upon your head, old sinner,” was the skipper’s parting shot. “That you should make the girl go spear-fishing on breaking ice. Do not tell them of this in the village or they will set the dogs on you. Tchai!”

  He hurried around the shore of the bay after the others. Ostak remained as if petrified. Then he began wringing his hands on his chest and moaning to himself. When this ceased he stood as if listening for a long time, his heavy shoulders hunched, his fingers closing and unclosing.

  “Kam,” he growled. “Kam. Did you see what happened on the ice?”

  From under the floor planks of the hut crawled out a frightened Kam. He came to Ostak, whimpering. He told him what he had seen.

  “Why did Aina cry out, Uncle Ostak?” he asked at the end. “Is she sick and are the lords taking her to their ship to make her well?”

  But Ostak, seizing his hand, was making him hurry down toward the river. Near the fishing hole the blind man halted and told Kam to go out and bring him the spear. When this was in his hand, Ostak felt of the points.

  Then he touched them again and held his finger to his nose.

  “Blood,” he muttered. “It was even as Kam said.”

  “Then Aina is very sick?” the boy demanded.

  “How is the ice between shore and the ship?” demanded Ostak harshly.

  When the boy told him, he shook his head, muttering. Where the three men were having trouble to cross, Ostak and Kam could not go.

  The blind man took a step toward the path leading to the village. Then, still shaking his head, he turned and went back, led by Kam, slowly to the hut.

  “Aye, Kam,” he was saying. “The sister of your flesh is very sick. She will not come back to us. Her sunyesun will leave her body this night. It will be so.”

  “Then we must take her dress of silk, to clothe her, Uncle Ostak, and we must kill one of the wolf dogs, asking pardon of it, so it can pull her sledge to the kanun-kotan—”

  “Nay, we can not cross Father Yenesei when he is rising from his sleep. Ai-a, if only you were a boy full grown and could throw a spear!”

  The boy began to weep.

  There was no food that night for him or the dogs. Remembering the frozen salmon on the ice he went down and got them, but Ostak would not take his knife, nor kindle the fire.

  “What do you see in the sky, Kam?” he asked, toward morn
ing.

  “The gate of the kanun-kotan, Uncle Ostak. It is the white gate only. There are no fires climbing up to the stars.”

  “Soon there will be,” muttered the blind man. “But they are not fires. They are the souls of the cloud people, of the people of ancient times. They are dancing and making merry—some of them. The white lights are the sunyesun unburied.”

  “Thus will we see the soul of Aina?”

  “Aye, you will see it. The red lights are those who have died in violence. The blue are those enchanted. And the purple lights are the souls of those who wrought evil on the earth. They are dancing—aye, jumping up and down in pain, for it will be cold for them in the sky world between the stars and they will not see the face of the One-Being-on-High. They will be carried off in the net of the angry souls—”

  He bent his head as if listening. Kam huddled closer to him.

  “Father Yenesei is angry,” murmured Ostak. “I hear it.”

  But Kam heard nothing. Certainly the boy and the blind man, in the hut two miles from the lugger, could not have heard the splash in the river or the startled oath of the one of the three sailors who was awake.

  There was no other sound but the splash. Aina, stealing out of the hold where the others slept, saw the figure of the watcher on deck—Fedor—and sprang over the side of the lugger.

  The feet of the girl did not meet ice. She pitched into the water that numbed her with its cold as if a hundred daggers had pierced her flesh. The daggers reached to her brain and her feeble swimming ceased.

  Fedor watched for a while, then, reassured, he went below to empty the vodka bottle that his companions had left unfinished.

  The next day clouds hid the sun and the wind ceased entirely. During the darkness the moving ice cakes had vanished, leaving a mirror of clear black water on all sides of the lugger. Except along the banks where a fringe of ice blurred the reflection of the pines, the channel of the upper Yenesei was clear.

  “The last of the ice can’t rightly be gone yet,” pointed out Stolkei. “Here, you dog of a Finn, help me up with the anchor, for we had best be out of here while the channel is clear.”

  The bearded face of the skipper was bruised and blood had dried in a gash under one eye. Lak had drawn a knife on him in the quarrel of the night before over the girl. The Finn’s mouth was bruised and his shoulder stiff where Aina’s spear had ripped the skin.

  They worked at the rusted anchor chain by fits and starts. Over their shoulders they cast glances at the spot in the snow that was the hut of Ostak. Through his telescope, as they drifted down the river, Stolkei could see the fisherman busied about his skiff on the shore.

  “You see he does not think of us,” he pointed out to Lak. “I tell you I planted a few words in his ear. He thinks he is to blame for—for the girl. He will hold his tongue, I tell you.”

  Lak did not look at the skipper. Fedor, kicked out of a drunken slumber, remembered what he had seen in the night.

  “Aye, chums,” he grinned, “the wench is frozen solid by now under our keel. She went down like a plummet—splash, like that! The ice was gone when she jumped.”

  “A true word.” Stolkei heartened himself. “And look—the ice is out of the bay. A good thing for us, because some dog of a Buriat would have found the spear and the blood stains, maybe. It’s all wiped out, now; the girl’s dead. Come now, Lak, you ain’t afraid of a blind man who doesn’t even think you killed his girl?”

  Lak’s thick lips twisted.

  “Fedor—he did it. She got loose from him.”

  The thin Russian moved uneasily and spat.

  “Well, wasn’t it Papa Stolkei who spoke first and tried to buy her?”

  With a laugh Stolkei turned to the tiller, ordering them to bend the sails.

  “We’ll be under way before the —— can spit in ——. The channel’s clear. I’ve loaded the muskets—not that we’ll need them. If Lak wants to dream of water spooks, let him, I say.”

  Still they made little progress that day for the sails flapped against the mast, and the rudder of patched-up wood—the lugger’s rudder had been damaged by the ice—swung in its chains idly. When they dropped anchor that evening they were a bare two miles downstream, abreast the bay where the black square of Ostak’s hut loomed, a few cables’ lengths away.

  Even the current of the river seemed to have lost its force. The pine tops rose immovably against the sunset, and there was not a whisper of wind anywhere.

  All these things little Kam reported faithfully to Ostak. The blind fisherman knew well the meaning of the signs. Up the river the outgoing ice had jammed, holding back the floes behind it.

  The water, rushing down from the freshets fed by melting snow, was heading up against the packed ice. During the hours of quiet on the lower river the ice was gathering above.

  Soon, with the wind or a twist of the pent-up current, the jam would be broken and tons of ice, rushing behind a solid wall of water, would sweep down the breast of Father Yenesei. Not until then would the winter garment of Father Yenesei be thrown off, and the upper river be safe for vessels.

  That was why the lugger was still the only craft to be seen, even by the sharp eyes of Kam. The skiffs of the fishermen, the sloops of the traders, all awaited the passing of the ice jam, drawn up on the banks, or anchored well into safe bays.

  So near was the lugger that the creaking of the yards or rattle of the rudder chains could be heard on shore, mingled with a snatch of song or laugh as the men drank vodka before sleep.

  Kam thought he recognized one of the songs. He remembered the words:

  Hai, hai, Aina lass

  Don’t get wild, my child.

  The keen ears of Ostak heard the song, where he worked with fat and tallow, greasing the bottom of his ramshackle skiff and the wooden oarlocks. He worked the harder, for the darkness was no hindrance to him, and his wasted sinews swelled strongly under the toil.

  Lak only did not sleep on the lugger. He snarled at Stolkei’s voice that sang the song. When the two others were snoring in the hold he paced the narrow space between them, listening to the night sounds on the water.

  Once he thought he heard the dip of oars, but the sound did not come again. Again, when the creaking of the yards ceased, he fancied that another creaking went on, down by the water at the stern.

  Lak listened for a long time and was sure of a tapping, a straining, and gnawing somewhere outside the ship. Then came a loud creak. A Finn is deeply superstitious and Lak crossed himself before going on deck to look around.

  But the lugger’s deck was deserted. The gray sheet of water was undisturbed about the ship. Only the man’s heavy footfall sounded. Uneasy at a curious murmur from the river, Lak went down to the hold again where his companions lay. So he did not see the dark shape of a skiff move out from under the shadow of the lugger’s stem.

  He was nodding, seated on his bunk, staring at a lantern, when the murmur about the vessel’s sides became a ripple. The shadows in the hold moved up and down. The yards knocked against the mast.

  In an instant Lak was up, head and shoulders out of the hatch. Wind struck his cheek. He could see the outlines of the banks under the gray lantern of dawn.

  Lak jumped up and kicked Fedor. He grasped the shoulder of Stolkei.

  “Wind,” he yelled. “The river is rising!”

  With a grunt Fedor turned over in his bunk. But Stolkei stumbled erect, and climbed on deck.

  The two stared at the moving tops of the pines, and the ripples where the current eddied down the river. The eddies wavered back and forth curiously. Early daylight showed isolated cakes of ice wandering here and there.

  “It is bad,” said Lak. “There is something coming upon the river.”

  Stolkei nodded and the two fell to work at the anchor. Suddenly they looked at each other. Upstream, beyond the bend in the river there grew a murmur that rose to a roar.

  “Ice!” yelled Stolkei. “An ice jam has broken.” He glanced about swiftly
. “We can make the bay here.”

  Lak was already at the sail ropes, and the skipper jumped to the tiller swearing thankfully because there was wind. A short run to larboard—

  The lugger began to move down the river. Stolkei put over the helm. The vessel did not change its course. They were passing the bay.

  Behind them a white line appeared around the bend. They could hear the crackling roar of grinding ice. Stolkei worked at the tiller frantically. But the lugger only turned slowly as it gathered speed. It was now drifting before the wind, stern first.

  “You fool!” roared the Finn. “What are you doing?”

  “She won’t mind the helm. The rudder—”

  Stolkei swung around to stare with distended eyes over the stern. Lak wrested the tiller from his grip. The two men struggled for it, snarling and maddened by fear. The movements of the tiller served in no way to check the course of the lugger downstream, faster each moment as the wall of water, surmounted by the ice field, drew nearer.

  A segment of ice struck the quarter. The lugger was swinging violently, as the flood struck it. Lak had knocked Stolkei down and when the white flood came over the stern, the Russian was carried overside, struggling to hold his feet. Lak was torn from the tiller and swept against a mast.

  He clung there, gripping the wood with his great arms. He saw the ice pack grinding against the sides of the ship. The foremast went down, and with it the yard above Lak. Enveloped by the sail, the Finn fought against it, only to feel himself carried off on a block of ice.

  For a moment he clung to the edge of the cake, numbed. Then the circling block struck another, catching the body of the man in the impact, the arms of the Finn went up and blood rushed from his mouth.

  Out of the hatch the head of Fedor was stuck, and his screams reached the shore before the lugger, filling rapidly now, settled down under the breast of Father Yenesei.

  As much of this as he could see Kam related to Ostak where the two stood on the hillside above the reach of the flood.