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.