Chapter 26
Imnak Makes A Camp; Poalu Boils Meat

The wind howled about us, and I could hardly keep my footing.

“We must stop!” I called to Imnak, over the storm. I do not know if he could even hear me, and yet he was little more than a yard away. It was utterly dark. The moons, the stars, were obscured. Winds struck against the hides I wore, almost tearing them from me. I kept my left hand, mittened, on the supplies on the sled. It then began to snow, the crystals whipping against our faces, driven almost horizontally over the level and among the pinnacles and turrents of the jumbled, bleak terrain. I pulled down my hood. The lart fur, with which it was trimmed, snapped against my face on the left, and was almost torn from the hood on the right I felt my face might freeze. I could see nothing. I stumbled on, holding the sled. I could not see the girls but I knew they were fastened to the sled. Imnak had had us tether them thusly, that they might not be swept away from us and lost in the storm.

“We cannot see where we are going!” I cried out to Imnak. “We must stop!”

I heard the sleen in the traces squeal ahead of us, the noise torn in the fierce snow and wind. I sensed Imnak turning about, and then again he was at the tabuk-horn uprights at the sled, glimpsed momentarily in a break in the clouds. I saw the girls then, too, their hands on their neck tethers, small, pelted, coated with snow, pathetic in the storm, weary, with us. Then again it was dark. Ahead I had seen Ram’s sled for a moment I had not seen Karjuk’s sled.

“It is madness to continue!” I cried to Imnak.

The sled stopped, wedged between two ice blocks. Imnak and I tilted it and it slid on one runner and then righted itself and again moved on.

“Let us stop!” I called out to Imnak.

I thought I heard a scream but I could not be sure, in the howling wind.

Imnak threw his weight back on the uprights. I held back too, on the sled. The sled stopped. I fumbled for the tethers of Audrey and Arlene and pulled them to the sled. Then I went toward the head of the sled. The sleen was there, already curled in the driving snow. Its pelt shook under my touch. It would be asleep in moments. Snow was almost to my knees. I felt my way back about the sled to the uprights. Imnak was shouting to me, but I could not hear him. Audrey and Arlene, as I could tell by putting forth my hands, were crouched beside the sled. I went about the back of the sled. I could see nothing. The wind howled fiercely. On the other side of the sled, extending my hand, I felt Poalu. She, like the other girls, was crouched beside the sled. Imnak was at my side. He pressed a strap into my hand. I drew it to me. Barbara was gone. The end of the strap had been cut. I made to move out into the snow, to search for her, but Imnak, bodily, obstructed me. He pushed me back. I did not resist. Imnak, of course, was right. It would be madness to go forth into the howling darkness, the snow and wind, to search for her. In moments one’s trail would be obliterated and, shortly, wandering foolishly in the darkness, the storm, one might find oneself lost, and dangerously separated from the sled and its supplies.

I do not think the other girls even realized, at that time, that Barbara was gone. Poalu, exhausted, fell asleep almost immediately, beside the sled. The other girls, too, were soon asleep.

“What are we going to do?” I shouted at Imnak, putting my face near the side of his head.

“One will sleep, one will watch,” called Imnak.

I found it hard to respond. I found it hard to believe he had said what he had.

“Are you sleepy?” asked Imnak.

“No!” I shouted.

“You watch first,” shouted Imnak. “I will sleep.”

I stood beside the sled. Imnak then lay down by the sled. It was hard for me to believe, under the circumstances, that he could sleep. Yet, in moments, I think he was asleep.

After a while I crouched beside the sled, and peered into the darkness.

The wind howled about the sled. I wondered how far Ram had continued on. I had not seen Karjuk when the clouds had parted for a moment earlier. I wondered where Barbara was. I did not think she was lost. The strap which had held her had been cleanly cut. The lovely blond slave had been taken prisoner, but by whom, or what, I did not know.

After a time Imnak awoke. “Sleep now,” he said. “I will watch.”

I then slept.

 

I awakened, Imnak’s hand on my shoulder.

“Observe the sleen,” said Imnak.

The animal, some nine feet in length, twisting, was awake, and restless. Its ears were lifted, its nostrils distended. The claws in the wide, soft paws emerged, and then retracted. It did not seem to be angry.

It lifted its snout to the wind.

“It has taken the soent of something,” I said.

“It is excited, but not disturbed,” said Imnak.

“What does this mean?” I asked.

“That we are in great danger,” said Imnak. “There are sleen in the vicinity.”

“But we are far out on the ice,” I said.

“The danger is thus much greater,” said Imnak.

“Yes,” I said, understanding him. If the snow sleen had taken the scent of sleen in this area it might well be one or more sleen wandering on the ice, sleen driven by hunger from the inland areas. Such animals would be extremely dangerous.

“Perhaps Karjuk or Ram are in the vicinity,” I said.

“The sleen knows the animals of Karjuk and Ram,” he said. “If it were they he would not be as excited as he is.”

“What can we do?” I asked.

“We must hasten to build a shelter,” said Imnak, getting to his feet. The girls were still sleeping. The storm had passed, and the light of the three moons was bright on the snow and ice. “There is little time,” he said.

“What can I do?” I asked.

Imnak, with his heel, traced a circle, some ten feet in diameter, in the snow near the sled. “Trample down the snow inside the circle,” he said. “Then unload the sled and place our supplies within the circle.”

I did as I was told, and Imnak, with a large, curved, bone, saw-toothed knife, a snow knife, began to cut at a nearby drift of snow.

The sleen grew more restless, and it began to make noises.

“Listen,” said Imnak. I listened, in the cold, still air. In the cold air I did not know how far away it was.

“They are on a scent?” I asked.

“Yes,” said Imnak.

“Ours?” I asked.

“That seems quite likely,” he speculated.

He had begun to take snow blocks from the drift and place them in a circle, within the edge of the area I was trampling down. The first block was the most difficult block to extract from the bank. The first row of blocks were about two feet in length, and a foot in breadth and height.

I started, suddenly, Audrey screaming. Imnak ran toward her, snow knife in hand.

“Where is Barbara!” screamed Audrey. “She is gone!” There was horror on her face. In her hand she held the severed strap, that which had tethered Barbara before it had been cut. She had awakened, crawled to the strap, understood its import, and screamed.

I saw Imnak strike her to the snow. She fell, twisting, to his feet, her own neck tether, seeming to emerge from her furs, still fastening her to the sled.

Imnak stood over her, his head lifted, listening. There was a distinct modulation in the hunting cries of the distant sleen pack., It was almost as though the sound began afresh, energized and renewed.

Imnak tore back Audrey’s hood. His hand was in her hair, pulling her head cruelly back. Her throat was fully exposed. She was on her knees. The blade of the saw-toothed snow knife was at her throat. Then Imnak threw her angrily to her stomach in the snow.

There was no doubt now that the sleen pack was turning in our direction.

The scent it had been following was doubtless a difficult and fragmented one, carried on the air, suggesting little more than a direction. The storm had obliterated sled tracks and the customary trail signs of an afoot passage. This difficult trail to follow, little more than a waft of scent in the air, carrying over the ice, had now, however, because of Audrey’s scream, been supplemented with a clear auditory cue, one supplying both an approximate distance and location to the pursuing pack. Its meaningfulness to the sleen was reflected in the sudden alteration in the nature of the pack’s hunting cries. They had now, for most practical purposes, targeted their quarry. An analogy would be the hunter’s pleasure when first he actually catches sight of the prey.

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 wall 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.