Travellers #2

by Jack Lasenby

  We must be near the western edge. I made a bed from our packs and cloaks, pulled the bull mask over our feet again. Jak and Jess curled against us. There was no wind. I woke once, heard Taur’s snore, and reached out to touch him. I spoke his name, and Jess whimpered back. Stars pricked through a gap in the fog. I thought of how they must have looked down unmoved on the Salt Men running, Taur scything and hewing.

  Next morning, I woke staring through swathes of mist at the western cliffs of Marn Island. All our walking was wasted. The ice island must have circled again between the North and South Lands. Through the day, the current carried us further out. By evening we lay nearer the South Land, drifting north. There were times Taur seemed not to recognise me, then his old smile appeared and he slept again.

  Over the next few days, the different currents carried us north and south, and from side to side of the strait. Taur would wake, blink around surprised, eat a little smoked fish and bread, and sleep again. Once he asked about the Salt Men, so I described their drowning.

  Most of the time we saw the sun only as a distant glow through fog. Because sections kept cracking off, we shifted to keep in the middle of the floating island. I shared the dried deer meat with Jak and Jess. Taur would not touch it. I kept the fish for him, most of the bread.

  We must get shelter or perish. Hagar had described snow-houses in one of her stories of the people who lived in the country of ice, but I found it is one thing to build a house of snow, another to build it out of ice. I chopped and dragged fragments from one of the buckled pressure ridges where the ice had shattered, stacked them, threw water so they froze together and made a half-roofed shelter that kept off the wind. Taur slept on in the murdering cold. I must keep him warmer or he would die.

  Heavy snow blew and piled before the wind. Where it formed a deep drift, I was able to cut blocks, leaving a long trench. I remembered the snow-houses in Hagar’s stories and stood the blocks in walls at the end of the trench. They leaned towards each other, but I couldn’t make them curve into the domes Hagar described. Then, to my delight, they froze to each other and began to form a roof. I held a few last blocks in place on top until they froze. The roof held! The cracks I plastered with handfuls of snow. We wouldn’t be able to stand upright, but at least we had a roof.

  I dragged Taur inside, wrapped him up again. He still felt cold. Hagar’s story had said the lower entry tunnel kept in the warm air. I cut thin slabs and leaned them against each other to roof the trench. It became our entry tunnel, below the level of the floor, and I closed it off with a slab of snow.

  Jak, Jess, and I lay against Taur. The heat from our bodies was trapped, unable to escape except through a small hole I had to make in the roof. The ice walls dripped but, in that warmer air, Taur began to wake, to sit up, and eat.

  Our food finished, we found melt-water in a shallow pool, and drank it carefully after Jak almost lost his tongue to the ice’s grip. The water bloated us, but the hunger pains were like knives. Inside the snow-house, Taur slept again. Hollow-flanked, Jak and Jess looked at me.

  When Jess caught a broken-winged seagull, Taur would not eat any, knocked it away as I forced it into his mouth. I felt life returning as I tasted the salty blood, chewed on the stringy meat. The bones, feet, and bill were bolted by the dogs.

  That same morning Jak scented something across the ice, a black shape like a short log. Both dogs bounded away barking. The creature heaved, slid, and disappeared in the water. It surfaced, stared through round, bulging eyes, close enough for me to see the whiskers either side of its face. I thought of firing an arrow, but there was no way to reach it in the water, even if the animal died. I woke Taur and described the beast. In a small voice, he reminded me of Hagar’s story about the old man and his wife who ate their grandchild while they waited for the seals to return.

  According to that story, seals were good to eat. I closed the dogs inside the snow-house, with Taur. Their howls came muffled as I took my bow and and tottered weak along the edges of our island. At last another seal hoisted itself from the water and lay on its back.

  It escaped, too, but I had learned something. It would take more than an arrow; the seal would have to be speared, which meant getting close without being seen.

  Taur did not respond, not even when I shook him. Fingers blunt, clumsy, I tied a framework of arrows, lashed what was left of his bleached old tunic over it, and dashed it with snow. It froze white and looked like just another part of the ice island.

  Next time a seal dragged itself out on the ice, I pushed the frame ahead, wriggling behind, peering through a hole. The seal woke, lifted its head, and stared suspicious. It grunted, but dropped its head again and seemed to sleep. I remembered my deer hunting and kept still so, when it lifted its head again, I was motionless. Slowly, slowly. The cold cut through my tunic. Wriggle. Close the gap.

  Leap to my feet! Between seal and water. Cut off, it roars, rears. I strike with the spear. A chance blow on the top of its head. The beast collapses. And I collapse on top.

  Cut through a layer of fat, open the belly, hands stinging like sparks inside my flesh. Find the liver, gulp pieces raw, hot, and sweet. The way the men in Hagar’s story ate it. My body glowed with heat. I felt better at once, hopeful, and carried back the rest of the liver and a junk of meat. Still weak but lifting my feet in feeble dance, shouting.

  I forced lumps of bloody liver into Taur’s mouth as he sat up against my shoulder. He tasted it, shivered, gulped, and demanded more. “Queegh!” he moaned. “Sweet! Sweet!” Blood ran down his chin, and he licked it while I fed the dogs.

  Taur slept while I went back. The seal’s skull was very thin bone. My lucky hit had smashed open the brain. I towed the carcass slick across the ice, Jak and Jess licking its gory slither. Shaken, shoved, Taur woke. We gorged and, belching, farting, slept warmer for the furry skin beneath us, the red meat in our bellies. Next morning we feasted again, even though the meat was now frozen. Three days later I killed a second seal. Eating the blubber with the meat made it tastier, as if we needed the fat to burn it inside us. After discovering that, I hardly noticed the cold, though Taur was still not himself.

  Jak and Jess did well on the seals. Glossy-coated, all day they searched the island, running back like children to make sure we were still there, holding up their paws to have the clotted ice dug out. And while we hunted, Taur still slept. There was no sun, all that time. When the fog cleared there was only a louring, sombre sky.

  Late one night our floating island, shrunk now to a white raft, lurched and cracked, thrust up, ruptured in sudden crags. We had run on rocks. There was no way of telling if it was the South Land, the North, or even Marn Island. Taur woke terrified. We grabbed the sealskins, shoved everything into our packs, dragging them, clambering on to the rocks dry-footed. Only Jess hesitated and slipped into the water with an astonished yelp.

  I dropped on my face, took Jess by her scruff, dragged her on top of the rock and backed away just before the ice island rammed the shore again. A moment later she would have been pulped. She frisked about, accepting Jak’s licks as I rubbed her down with a sealskin.

  We crawled up against a cliff for the night, still wondering which side of the strait we were. Taur shouted with laughter and pointed through the gloom at a large crab rustling sideways, eyes goggling. He poked it. The crab nipped his finger with a large claw, so he yelled, tore off the claws, and smashed them open for the sweet meat. His yells would have wakened every Salt Man on Marn Island, if that’s where we were, but all I could do was grin, roll in my cloak, and lie down on a sealskin. Taur was crawling on his hands and knees, catching crabs, crunching their shells between his teeth. He seemed his old roaring self again! I cried a few tears in relief.

  Taur had changed from the Bull Man who used to eat only cheese and bread, and drink milk. “I hope you’re not turning cannibal,” I told him, but he laughed. “Grawgh! Urgsh!” he shouted and dived after another crab. I went to sleep, the last sounds his teeth crackin
g claws, his shouted pleasure, the dash of little waves on pebbles.

  Chapter 13

  Taur the Hunter

  Fog’s wet cloth dragged across my face, lifted, and dragged again. I blinked around. We must find where we were. Shelter. Warmth. In silence an ice island emerged from the fog; slow it turned end for end, and vanished. Jak and Jess woke and searched the kelp, cocking their ears at crabs scuttling between rocks, leaping to catch them, pawing, whining. Taur lay and snored, surrounded by broken shells.

  A quick look around. We were marooned on that strip of sand and rocks between unclimbable cliffs and the sea. I killed a seal at the far end and returned with the liver. Taur had woken and joined Jak and Jess catching crabs, roaring and laughing, and I was grateful for his recovery. We shared the liver, still warm, the four of us.

  I had found a rivulet of fresh water. The falling tide left fish in rock pools. Jak and Jess learned to stick their heads under and pull them out. We threw up a shelter of driftwood against the dripping mist and fog. In front Taur got a fire going, striking sparks from his flint and steel. Fluff out of the bottom of his pack began to glow. He added scrapings from dry sticks, shavings, splinters, twigs, and bits of wood.

  We were there several days, before a southerly came up. Waves scoured the beach, swept away our fire, slewed wet embers across the floor of our shelter. We could see a real storm would thump waves halfway up the cliffs.

  While Taur rolled drift logs together, I climbed and cut flax that grew in pockets on the cliffs. We plaited ropes, made a raft, and put aboard the packs filled with seal meat and smoked fish. Up to his waist in water, Taur shouted to hurry, Jak and Jess whined, and I ran to the white cliff with a lump of charcoal and sketched a horned Bull Man scything down his enemies.

  “Urgsh!” I flung myself aboard, laughing. The sea rushed out, sucked the raft up and over the back of a returning comber, and the current carried us away. “Grawgh!” Taur pointed. Across the strait, orange light shone – an egg yolk – through the fog’s white bank: the sun rising.

  “That means we’ve crossed the strait! We’re safe!”

  “Gurgh!” Taur roared and smacked my back, and I remembered how dangerous he was when well.

  Wave caps broke and frothed across the logs. Lashed on the platform in the middle, our gear was dry inside seal skins. I made rough harnesses and tied Jak and Jess fast to the platform. Hoping to find a safer beach Taur tried to steer with a pole towards the cliffs we saw appearing and vanishing through the murk.

  My ears ached with a sudden change. We were in still air. Around us, instead of waves, a jobble of chopping water. Sharp tongues that poked up, slopped back, seethed between the logs of our raft. Hiss! Paddling was useless. The logs jostled against my feet. As I tightened their lashings, Taur flung a huge arm around me, roared louder than the sea. “Gahr, Urgsh! We’ll be all right!”

  Through the mist we heard the wind thrashing the sea, the smash of waves toppling, yet we moved almost silent on huge mounds of smooth water that lifted, carried us on their backs, slid away, dropped and left us becalmed and lifting up another swell. Then the clouds of tossed spume drew apart like curtains. Like the spikes of some half-submerged dragon’s back, rocks rose jagged to our left. Seabirds cried down the air, swung off bluffs that leaned to our right. A vast body of water rode us on its front, swept roaring up a gap between the cliffs. Eddies boiled, dark gurgles of whirlpools. I gave up trying to steer, watched the stone faces move dripping past above.

  The dragon’s back rose higher, kept off the worst of the southerly which howled over. The cliffs vanished in a spin of snowflakes white as gulls’ wings. When the current slowed, we levered our poles against the water, making clumsy headway towards the southern side. The tide weakened, hung uncertain. Before it turned and moved back towards the open sea, our raft crunched on a beach. I leapt with a rope, tied up to a boulder, and found my knees shaking, thigh muscles twitching.

  “I wouldn’t like to be carried out again!” Jak and Jess looked serious, as if they understood. They barked, and jumped on the sand. Did they feel the same sense of relief, or just detect it in my voice?

  Taur pointed through wrack and spindrift to where the open sea ravened. “Gaw!” I nodded, thankful.

  The only sign of people was a fallen wall on the hill above the beach. That night, when the tide turned and ran inland again, we shoved out and let it carry us further, finding another beach to land upon. As we drifted, and Taur steered, I plaited new harnesses for Jak and Jess and wove panniers.

  The ice islands, the fog and storm of the strait seemed far away from this long arm of the sea between hills. The air was as chill, snow dappled the ridges, but we began to take shelter during the day. It was as if we had entered a borderland between the insane sun of the north, the violent cold of the south. I reminded Taur of my father’s story, about the mountain that ate the sun, and he nodded his huge head. His people, too, had talked of a country of ice to the south, like the one in Hagar’s stories.

  After several days we drifted on to a muddy beach at the head of the long arm. Jak jumped off, gave an astonished bark, leapt back on the raft, snapping, growling at the water. Taur guffawed, holding one foot on the bottom despite the splashes, reaching down, and bringing up a large flat fish he had stood upon, a curious creature with both eyes on the top of its flat head. I lit a fire with driftwood while Taur charged through the shallow water bellowing, amazing the dogs, spearing more of the fish. I could not make out the name Taur shouted.

  As the light failed, we cooked them and filled our bellies. Jak and Jess had become expert at eating fish, learning how to drag off the sweet flesh without getting a mouthful of bones. They still snuffled for tidbits as we lay back in the warmth.

  “Tomorrow,” I said, “we’ll see what we can see.” Taur belched. Jack and Jess looked up from licking themselves clean and grinned. “At least we’ve shaken off Squint-face this time!”

  I dreamt of Tara that night, woke crying her name. Taur and the dogs were in heavy sleep, filled with food. I tried but couldn’t sleep, crawled over to get the fire going again, was feeling for a stick to stir the embers when the night cracked open. As if somebody painted upon a black cliff with slashes of light. Dazzled, I saw a picture of men running up the beach from a boat, of flames springing into the darkness, daubing gaudy rocks and sand. I stared, realised I was not dreaming, that the figures were neither images nor reflections in my mind, but our enemies, the Salt Men, lighting a fire. Although they seemed a great distance away, that was only the effect of the dark stretch of beach separating us.

  I warned Jak and Jess to be quiet, woke Taur in silence. As the Salt Men’s fire grew, knowing they could not see us but feeling naked in that light, Taur and I scattered sand over our embers, weighed down our raft with rocks so it lay under the water, brushed out our tracks. We slipped into the trees before the shaking grey light of dawn. The Salt People’s boat was drawn up along the beach from where we had come ashore. Only one man would have the relentless hate to pursue us all that way.

  We climbed through the trees, covering our tracks. “He hunted us all the way down the North Land and out to Marn Island. Now, here he is again.” I looked at Taur. “What does he want?”

  “Gaw, Urgsh. He wants his god, the green stone dolphin. He will never stop, cannot stop until he gets it.” Taur touched his throat and turned away. I wondered if he might suggest leaving the green stone dolphin where Squint-face would find it, but he said nothing more.

  Late that night, after resting through the worst of the sun’s heat, we reached a wide river of many streams of water between shingle islands. We decided to follow it up as far as possible, perhaps find some place to hide among the high mountains.

  The river’s branches that came in from the right, the northern side, were warm, fanning over shingle beds heated by the fiery sun. The southern branches, coming down off the mountains to our left were icy. It was as if they ran from different countries. Something about tha
t made me feel uneasy. How could such heat and cold exist side by side? I thought of the ice islands that floated through the strait, of the fog, and wondered.

  We tried to avoid crossing sandbanks. Floods and wind would obscure our tracks, we told each other, but it was better not to leave sign. Much of the way we travelled up the right-hand side of the river, following deer tracks through scrub and across grassy flats, fording the warm streams that came in from that side. We traversed long beds of shingle. Where it was sharp, we wore the foot wrappings torn from my old tunic. We wove broad flax hats against the sun and travelled the evening and morning hours. While there was a moon, we travelled by its light, up and up the river which diminished above each entering stream.

  We buried our shit – and the dogs’, ashes, bones of fish and deer; tossed out of sight the crushed fern and grass we slept on. The shingle soon wore out our old foot wrappings, and we buried them, too. Through one burning day, I sat in the shade and tried to make something to protect our feet. Taur saw what I was trying to do, took some flax, and made rough sandals while I was still trying. They lasted only a day or two, but were quick and easy to replace.

  “Graw! Graw!” Taur said, as I tried walking in the first pair. “Graw! Graw!”

  “Taur!” I said, and took another step. “Taur! Taur!”

  “Urgsh! Urgsh!” We followed up the river.

  There were trout, and I shot ducks and large pigeons. We hid the guts and feathers. Taur began to practise with a bow he made for himself. He was keen to learn to hunt. I remembered my own first lessons, my clumsy arrows, and the stone tips Hagar taught me to make. I thought of how long it took me to get my first deer.