I looked downward, out across the ice of Ax Glacier. Beyond it lay the polar basin.
The north is a hard country. When one must apply oneself almost incessantly to the tasks of survival there is little time to indulge oneself in the luxury of conquest.
Thimble and Thistle dismantled the hides and poles of Imnak's tent, and began to load them on the sled.
Violence, of course, is not unknown among the Innuit. They are men.
Aside, however, from consideratiolis such as the fewness, comparatively, of their numbers, and their geographical separation, and the pointlessness of an economics of war in their environment, the Innuit seem, also, culturally, or perhaps even genetically, disposed in ways which do not incline one to organized, systematic group violence. For example, they seem generally to be a kindly, genial folk. Hostility seems foreign to them. Strangers are welcomed. Hospitality is generous, honest, open-hearted and sincere. Some animals, doubtless, have better dispositions than others. The Innuit, on the whole, seem to be happy, pleasant fellows.'Perhaps that is why they live where they do. They have been unable, or unwilling, to compete with more aggressive groups. Their gentleness has resulted, it seems, in their being driven to the world's end. Where no others have desired to live the Innuit, sociable and loving, have found their bleak refuge.
Imnak's whip cracked down across the bare back of Thimble, the blond, who had been Barbara Benson, and she cried out and wept, "I hurry, Master!" She busied herself with loading the sled. Thistle, the dark-haired girl, who had once been the rich Audrey Brewster, hurried, too, lest it would be her own back which next would feel the lash.
The red hunters, though a genial folk, keep their animals under a firm discipline.
"I see you, too, have a beast," he said, looking beyond me to the lovely Arlene.
She stood back, in the light snow, frightened of the red hunter. She wore a sleeveless jacket of fur, belted with binding fiber, which depended to her knees; fur leggings; and skins wrapped and tied on her feet. I had improvised these garments for her. I looked at her. She did not even know enough to kneel.
"Those garments," said Imnak, "will be insufficient in the north."
"Perhaps you could teach her," I suggested, "to sew herself more adequate clothing."
"I have showed my girls," he said. "They will teach her."
"Thank you," I said.
It was rather beneath the dignity of a man to show a girl how to sew. Imnak had done this with Thimble and Thistle and did not wish to repeat the task. It is enough for a girl to teach a girl to sew.
"I see you have leather on your throat," said Thimble to Arlene.
"I see your breasts are uncovered," said Arlene to Thimble.
"Remove your jacket," I told Arlene. Angrily, she did so. Imnak's pupils dilated. He would welcome this lovely she in our small herd.
"Into the traces," said Imnak.
Thimble and Thistle bent down and each looped the broad band of her trace across her body.
"You are animals, aren't you?" called Arlene to them.
"Can you rig another trace?" I asked Imnak.
"Of course," he said.
Soon Arlene, too, to her fury, stood in harness.
Imnak cracked his whip over their heads and they threw their weight against the traces and the long, narrow, freighted sled eased upward, over the rocks, and then slid down onto the ice of Ax Glacier. Imnak and I held the rear of the sled that it not move too rapidly downward. The ice of Ax Glacier, where we crossed it, had been cut by the countless hooves of the herd of Tancred; leaving a trial of marked ice more than one hundred and fifty yards wide. We would follow the herd.
It took ten days to cross Ax Glacier. There are many glacial lines among the rocks and mountains of the north, but Ax Glacier is easily the broadest and most famous. These glaciers, like frozen rivers or lakes of ice, or emptying seas, depend to the shores of Thassa, seeking her, flowing some few feet a year, imperceptibly like stone, to her chill waters. More than once we heard gigantic crashes as hundreds of feet or more of ice broke away from the glacial edge and tumbled roaring into the sea. It is thus, of course, that icebergs are formed. These great pieces and mountains of ice, shattering from the brinks of Ax Glacier and her smaller sisters, in time, drifting, carried by currents, would reach the northern sea, that eastward-reaching extension of Thassa rimming the polar basin. It was in that northern, or polar, sea that there was said to exist, if it were not myth or invention, the "mountain that did not move," that iceberg which, in defiance of tide, wind and current, stood immobilely fixed. Sometimes we could see, from where we stood, the sea, with these great pieces of ice within it. Some of these pieces of ice reared more than a thousand feet into the air. Sometimes they are even miles long. Their occasional vastnesses, and the might of the forces that have formed them, become even more impressive when it is understood that what one can see above the surface does little more than hint at what lies below. The fresh-water ice from which such blocks are formed is less dense than the salt water in which they float, weighing only about seven eighths as much. Thus, in a given piece of such ice, there is some seven times more beneath the surface than appears visible above it. These pieces of ice, like moving, drifting reefs, can be hazardous to shipping. The smaller ones, especially at night, can be particularly dangerous. Gorean ships, however, seldom run afoul of them. They are, generally, very shallow-drafted, which permits them to come much closer to such ice without the danger that would threaten deeper-keeled craft; too, the Gorean ship, because of the shallow draft, can occasionally run up on such ice, sliding onto it, rather than breaking apart when it strikes it; too, the Gorean vessel, because it is usually light in weight, tends to be extremely responsive to its helm or helms, this permitting such obstacles to be avoided on shorter notice than would be possible with a heavier more sluggish vessel; too, Gorean vessels, except when manned by those of Torvaldsland and the northern islands, usually beach at night; thus, when visibility is poor, they are not abroad; if they do not beach they will sometimes lower their masts and yards and throw over their anchors; that most Gorean ships are oared vessels, too, gives the crewmen recourse in an emergency; they are not at the mercy of the wind and they can, if necessary, back the ship off the ice; lastly, few Gorean ships ply the northern waters in the months of darkness; sufficiently far north, of course, the sea freezes in the winter. A much greater danger to Gorean shipping than the iceberg is the sea itself, when it begins to freeze. A ship caught in the ice, if not constantly cut and chopped free, its men on the ice itself, can become solidly frozen, arrested, in the ice; then it is at the mercy of pressures and bucklings; the ice, grinding, shifting, can shatter a ship, breaking it apart like a lacing of frozen, brittle twigs.
"Har-ta!" said Imnak to the girls. "Har-ta!" The expression 'har-ta' is Gorean. "Faster! Faster!" He spoke sometimes to them in his own tongue, and sometimes in Gorean. Imnak himself spoke fair Gorean. He had traded furs and skins south more than once. Many of the red hunters cannot speak Gorean.