Pale Country Pursuit

by Hans Kneifel

  Our 5 draft animals were nearing the end of their capacity. It was around midnight. Like the sled and our own strengths they would have to hold out a few more hours. The rising grade of the land became sharper. Fratulon, who had held the reins and the whip since our start, appeared to need no sleep or food or encouragement. Besides that, he seemed to have the eyes of a nocturnal bird of prey.

  “Don’t tell me you can see anything in this pitch darkness,” I said. “My eyes are younger and sharper but even I can’t see a thing!”

  He must have been grinning at me. I felt the frosty vapour of his breath in my face briefly before it was whipped away by the wind.

  “Just now I’m going by instinct and feel,” he answered. “How are the others doing?”

  “I think they’ve actually managed to drop off to sleep,” I muttered.

  There was a vague gleam of snow around us and under the runners of the sled. We couldn’t even see the tracks they made or the wide trail of trampled snow made by the feet of our animals, which were now making slow headway. Farnathia and Ice Claw were huddled together at our feet in the basket cradle of the sled. Their heavy cowls were low down on their faces.

  “That’s just as well—let then sleep!”

  We conversed in relatively low tones but now and again we could hear a new sound through the sharp howling of the wind—he urgent cries of the Kralasenes, who chased after us through the darkness. Both of us, the pursued and the pursuers, had refrained from lighting torches.

  “Is the terrain still familiar to you?” I asked after a while.

  “That it is, lad!” said Fratulon. His voice was husky with fatigue and tension. “At our present rate we’ll get to a level area in about 45 minutes and from there on we’ll be on our last lap!”

  “I see.”

  Again we caught the faint sounds of whip-snapping and the bellowing of hard-driven animals. The sled runners kept up their steady hissing song. Our 5 draft animals began to pick up a little speed, but they no longer bleated and bellowed, evidently too exhausted for that. I wanted to make a check of our weapons but it was too dark.

  “The distance between us seems to be shrinking!” I called out. “Is that cave pretty close by now?”

  “No doubt about it!” returned Fratulon’s reassuring voice.

  He jerked the reins and carefully applied his whip, causing the sled to pick up still more speed. The long climb was behind us and now we were out on the flat terrain he had mentioned. It was a wonder to me how a man could find his way so precisely in this darkness. Only the changing position of the sled gave an indication of our course. Before us was a fairly bright plain that contrasted with the black wall of the sky. There at the horizon line the glacier began. It was a giant ice mass that had come to rest and ceased to move farther. Sawbones had given us a description of its appearance. Here and there, he had told us, were splinters or rock which had shoved through the ice and towered above the surface like the broken teeth of a Titan. There were few crevasses and Fratulon had confirmed that he knew them all. There were blocks of ice that towered high at the glacier’s end, where they dropped vertically into vapour-shrouded depths that could not be traversed.

  “Can’t this thing go faster?” I asked uneasily as I grabbed on tightly anticipating a sudden lurch. We were shooting swiftly through a snowy rift that pointed in the direction of our course.

  “It’s useless. The animals would break down and besides we can only look for the Markas by the light of dawn. You keeping an eye on our luggage?”

  “What else?”

  The temperature had sunk to its lowest level. The Asaka was no doubt quite close to us now. We were freezing and if we had to get out soon and move about the exercise would do us good. Our pursuers were out of hearing range but that was due to the convolutions of the terrain here. We sensed the end of the wild pursuit ahead of us, but we’d still have to blunder onward for 2 or 3 days through this desolate wasteland. In fact, after the glacier we would have to depend upon our own leg power.

  “Naturally I still have a trick or two in store for them…” said Fratulon. But even he appeared to have lost something of his former assurance and confidence.

  Instinctively I was preparing myself for one final battle. A futile combat against a superior force of Kralasenes who had no fear of death.

  “Listen to me!” said Fratulon. “If something should happen to some of us or possibly myself—it’s imperative to a vast number of other humans that you, Atlan, manage to reach the Omirgos. I am less important, Ice Claw and the girl absolutely do not count—now don’t be so shocked. It’s true. In an emergency you must leave us and save yourself. You will understand later, OK?”

  I tensed hard at the shock of this revelation while gripping the edges of the jumping and leaping cockpit cradle. Fratulon was driving the animal’s mercilessly now. When I raised my face against the wind I saw the reason for it. The darkness of the sky was giving way to a pale grey light. The new day was giving the first signs of dawn.

  “The only thing I get from that,” I said, “is that you’re figuring you may have to die.”

  “It’s a wise man who never takes tomorrow for granted,” he confirmed, more or less indirectly. “Do I have your promise, Atlan?”

  “What promise?”

  “That you will place your own survival above all else and that you will refrain from acting as you might wish to. You are important! I have taken care of you and raised you through these many years and I know better than you. Will you promise this?”

  For a while my confused thoughts travelled in channels of seeming madness but finally I answered. “I promise it, Fratulon.”

  “Good. Then all is well.”

  The wind rose with the first light of day. We raced onward. When I was able to see more clearly I noted that our tracks marked a straight and unerring course. An unfailing instinct had guided Fratulon like an invisible compass. Ahead of us rose blocks of ice and small sawtooth mountains of pure white where winds and changing temperatures had sculptured strange and curious forms. We saw various dark markings which were apparently the entrances to caves.

  “There it is up ahead. I’ll make a search and you take care of everything while I’m doing it!”

  “It’s a deal,” I agreed.

  Now that we had reached the first signs of the glacier, Fratulon changed the course of our ice-encrusted vehicle. He moved in wild zigzag curves around the vast chunks of ice and raced toward his destination. The sled bounced and creaked and shook off some of its ice crust. Farnathia and Ice Claw woke up and at first were completely disoriented.

  “The Asaka!” yelled the Chretkor finally in panic. “It’s cold—icy cold!”

  “That’s usually the case when you’re in glacier country.” remarked Fratulon.

  “I’m going to freeze!” screeched Ice Claw. “I’ll turn into a block of ice and if the sled hits a bump I’ll explode to bits!”

  “Just now you’re not going to have time for that!” I assured him.

  The sled raced along sharp edges of the ice and under arching masses which formed spectacular bridges and tunnels. Once when we swept through one of these openings, Fratulon turned around suddenly with a heavy calibre gun in his hand—the kind that fired explosive charges. The pistol roared out five times to our rear, shattering vital support points on the hanging ice bridge we had passed under. About 50 tons of glassy ice splinters crashed down behind us, forming a wide barrier wall across our trail.

  “Now it’s an obstacle course!” commented Fratulon. He gave me the weapon for reloading, indicating that I should put it back into his cloak pocket when it was ready.

  Our wild race continued. Now the animals faltered and stumbled frequently but Fratulon was merciless. Finally he turned the sled and raced out into a narrow ribbon of ice that arched like a spoon handle toward a massive block of ice that rose is jagged peaks before us. To our right was a 100-foot dropoff but to our left yawned a series of crevasse-like canyons which fell
away into greenish, unfathomable depths. At the end of the bridge span I saw a cavelike opening with a low ceiling. The animals momentarily lost their footing on the wind-polished ice. The sled runners teetered on the edge and I dared not look to either side. But our momentum carried us and the draft animals found their feet again. We ducked as we shot onward through the opening, where we were surrounded by ringing echoes.

  “Up ahead the downslope begins!” said Fratulon. “After we’ve unloaded, turn the team around.”

  “Will do!”

  As we came out of this natural tunnel onto a circular area of ice, the sun came up. Its light poured down on the white landscape and made it glisten like a world of diamonds. Sawbones pulled back on the reins with all his strength. The Five Hr’seecs slid to the edge of the plateau and then stood there trembling. Sweat and melting snow dripped from their bedraggled fur but the tips of their horns were still encrusted with ice.

  “Everybody out!” cried Fratulon, leaping over the side of the sled.

  We worked then in a frenzy. Ice Claw and I helped Farnathia out and we all got busy. I laid out our meagre belongings in a row, distributed the main weapons and ammunition belts, and we cleaned out the basket cradle. Fratulon had disappeared at our backs into the greenshaded entrance of a cave, where a number of smaller access tunnels were visible. I took a quick look around… Ice Claw and the girl were dragging our luggage to the edge of the small plateau, beyond which the tremendous steep slope of the glacier fell away.

  I leapt into the sled and grabbed the reins and the whip, turning the team around. The exhausted animals came to life once more and gained speed, pulling me back over the way we had come. I drove about 200 meters through the tunnel and wondered if I should jump out before we reached the precipice. Instead I drove the team out onto the narrowest part of the ice bridge and left them there.

  “That’s a good enough road-block!” I told myself, throwing away the whip.

  When I came back to the plateau I was in time to see Fratulon emerge from the cave with two strangely-shaped toboggan sleds. They were of an unusual construction, each with 2 fashioned of leather and crossbars, powerful braking levers, and a small luggage compartment.

  “Quickly!” he shouted. “Load up and get into your seats! I’ll take the girl. You follow me, lad! Right in my tracks!”

  “Nothing will stop me, Your Excellence!” I retorted.

  We stowed our gear. Several blanket rolls were tossed into some small crevasses because we couldn’t use them. We fastened on our weapons as well as we could. Fratulon showed Farnathia how to crouch down into the small seat and shove her legs under the protection of the flexible slats, after which she was strapped in with leather belts.

  “Thirty kilometres downhill, Atlan!” called Fratulon. The sun gleamed from his chest armour.

  We might as well have been madmen. Like legendary figures out of another time, here we were on a planet with spaceports and nuclear power plants, sitting in our fragile toboggan sleds—one of the most primitive inventions of the humanoid species—preparing to conquer a precipitous glacial slope that was 30,000 meters in extent. By the time we reached the extremity of the Asaka icemass we’d probably be breaking the sound barrier. I looked at the heavy steel hooks at the ends of the braking levers and shook my head. We had to be insane, I thought.

  “All the gear tied on?” asked Fratulon.

  “Yes!” cried Ice Claw nervously as he buckled himself into the front seat of our sled.

  “All set, Sawbones—you start us off!” I shouted.

  “I shall now teach you the fine art of toboggan sledding! Watch me carefully, lad!” Fratulon laughed back at us.

  I watched every one of his movements. From a canvas pouch under his seat he produced two large yellow pairs of goggles. He shoved one pair over the girl’s head cowl and fastened the other over his own face. Then he pushed the sled to a specific position on the edge of the plateau. The upcurved prongs of the runners supported a windshield. When the sled was teetering on the brink of the icy slope, Fratulon got in and strapped himself down. Whereupon he then tipped the sled forward and shot away.

  “I’m frozen stiff…” stammered Ice Claw in a high-pitched anxious voice. “I’m solid and as transparent as a chunk of glacier ice. I’m going to shatter in a cloud of crystals!”

  “One thing I’ll say for you, Ice Claw, you never keep your fears buried!” I told him. I fastened my goggles and shoved the sled forward. We neither saw nor heard any sign of the Kralasenes.

  Then I also tipped my sled over the edge. I felt the snugness of the leather seat under me as I shoved my boots into the harness staves. All this was new to me but my fatherly friend, my stern teacher and mysterious partner on this mad adventure, had been to the Pale Land before and seemed to know every ice crystal on the way. I picked up speed, noting th faint marks of the other sled ahead of me on the ice. I clicked home the wide safety strap around my middle. The wind struck my face but the goggles protected my eyes. We raced down the vast slope. Before our velocity became critical I managed to pull my gloves on tight and double-check the fastenings that secured our weapons. Then I gripped the brake levers and hung on, testing them briefly as we went. They sent up a spray of ice crystals behind us. I felt finally that I would know how to handle the contraption. Far ahead and below me I saw the long, swift shadow of Fratulon on the sled that held the girl I loved.

  “I’ll burst! We’ll hit an ice block and I’ll die!” shrieked Ice Claw.

  “Stop distracting me!” I scolded him.

  A few seconds later I couldn’t hear a thing. The wind of our passage howled and whistled in my ears. The spots on my head and face that were not protected by the goggles or the long-haired fur of my headpiece threatened to freeze. We hurtled onward and now the steep slope revealed such dangerous obstacles as fissures and boulders and jagged crags of ice. I braked into right and left turns and strove to stay in the tracks of our cool-headed toboggan expert.

  Was it only seconds? Or was it minutes that passed in that mad, hurtling plunge? At any rate we swept downward at increasing speed, following a moderately zigzag course. The glacier which lay over a barely visible mountain chain did not drop away too abruptly but its northern slope did remind us of the long ascent we had made in the roller sled. Now and then we braced ourselves with gritting teeth to shoot through narrow ravines of ice and snow where we took banking turns that shoved us deep into our seats—or we would meet a rise and leap with sudden weightlessness into the air, perhaps as much as 20 meters before hitting the downslope again. The rest of it was like a slanting mirror with a few outcroppings and rills here and there.

  A timeless period passed… until later I finally saw the other Marka and threw all my strength into the brake bars. Shortly thereafter we came to a stop beside it. Fratulon was missing but Farnathia sat there trembling from fear and cold. She pointed upward at a craggy outcropping. “He’s up there—he’s taken a weapon with him!”

  Even as she spoke I looked up and saw Fratulon, the heavy leading Marka of the Kralasenes and the puff of smoke that came out of his light rifle barrel. Almost simultaneously I heard the whip-like report snapping through the dry cold air. One of the distant figures on the Marka moved and arched backwards half out of the sled and then collapsed, at the same time letting go of the brake hooks.

  The vehicle, which must have contained at least seven Kralasenes, swerved from its course. It disappeared into a depression, then shot into sight again while going into a whirling spin across the ice, alter which it collided with tremendous force against an ice block. With a brittle sound the block crackled and clattered and a shower of broken wreckage shot away on either side, slithering onward down the slope of the glacier.

  Not a soul appeared from behind that barrier. Presumably all seven of the Kralasenes died after Fratulon’s shot had killed the brakeman.

  I released the brake hooks and moved on slowly until Fratulon caught up again and passed me at a breakneck pace, sweeping
straight down the slope. The blinding white nightmare continued. Sometimes racing and sometimes slowing down, we evaded the rocks on our way, approaching the glacier’s edge and the beginning of the valley. Somewhere behind us but no longer visible in the vast expanse above, there was still at least one big Marka loaded with Kralasenes who would be out to avenge the death of their comrades.

  We were too numb to fear. I even lost my sense of time.

  Ice Claw seemed to faint several times, so great was his fear of our striking a boulder or ice block or crashing into a fissure.

  Finally, just before noon, we arrived at the only spot where a last sled run from the glacier was possible. As we glided the sleds out onto the adjacent area, trembling from our tensions, we looked ahead into nothing!

  “Fog!” said Fratulon, coming to a stop, and he unstrapped himself. He reached for his rifle again. “Farnathia is exhausted. We’ll tow her along for awhile.”

  He waited while we unloaded the second sled. A fur-wrapped package of food had come loose during the trip and had been lost.

  “What are you going to do with the rifle?” I asked, while packing the girl in with more furs to keep her warm.

  “Shoot!” was Fratulon’s curt reply. The explosive weapon was of course all he

  could use in this energy barrier zone.

  “Shoot?—at whom?”

  “Three guesses!”

  After a short while when the second Marka shot into view through an ice gully, Fratulon fired at it. He hit the brakeman again and managed to cause the big sled to capsize, strewing its passengers across the ice. Either dead or wounded, they slid to the bottom of the glacier.

  With Ice Claw and Farnathia in the remaining sled, Sawbones and I moved forward, towing the vehicle with us across the level ice. Once more we took up our flight, this time on foot, and soon we were enveloped by the fog. Fratulon reached into his pocket and extracted a round, flat object. Checking some figures on its face, he announced: “Straight ahead!”

  Ice Claw got out once in awhile and helped us push while Fratulon and I took the lead. Farnathia had fallen asleep from sheer exhaustion. The heavy yellow-white fog seemed to muffle every sound. Rapidly we were approaching the mist-shrouded Valley of Kermant.