"See what they're yelling about, will you, Dinky?'' said Okagamut, pottering with the stove. The animals' morning howls had risen to a hysterical pitch.
Singer crawled out to look. He stopped and drew in his breath.
Crawling over the snow came a snaky creature fifteen or twenty metres long, belonging to the six-legged division of Krishnan land vertebrates. Each leg ended in a large webbed foot with long curved talons. Its reptilian appearance was confused by the fact that it was covered with dense white fur.
Singer yelled: "Earl!" snatched his ski-spear from where it stuck upright in the snow, and ran towards the pudamef, which was nearing the sledge-beasts.
The snow-dragon arched its neck and hissed.
Singer threw the spear. It missed and sailed over the creature's back.
He tugged at his sword-hilt. The sword stuck fast. Singer remembered that the scabbard didn't fit. Another tug, harder, did no good.
The snaky white head shot out. Singer leaped back, tripped over a sastruga, and fell, hitting his head on a patch of bare ice. Stars danced in front of his eyes.
The jaws gaped nearer.
A yell, and Okagamut leaped past and lunged with the other spear. Singer saw blood on the white-furred muzzle. Another thrust, into the gaping maw. More blood, and then the creature was backing, hissing like a boiler safety-valve. It turned and crawled off with a clockworky motion. Okagamut chased it with shouts and menaces until it disappeared among the pressure-ridges.
"Are you all right, Dinky?" said Okagamut.
Singer felt the back of his head and winced. "Outside of a cracked skull or two I'm fine. Threw my spear and missed—"
"I'll get your spear ..." Okagamut walked towards where the ski-spear stood with its head buried in the snow.
Then, quick as a flash, he vanished.
"Hey, Earl!" cried Singer, getting up. "Don't do that! I say, where the flopping hell are you?"
He started towards the site of the disappearance, then, remembering Okagamut's cautions about crevasses, went back to the tent, put on his skis, and set out again.
He found a hole in the snow going down to darkness, just big enough for Okagamut's body. He began enlarging the hole with his hands, calling: "Earl!"
"Pass down a knife!" came a voice from the depths.
Singer went back and got the climbing-rope, tied his knife to the end, and lowered it down the hole. After he had dangled it at various depths, the call came up: "Can't get hold of it. My arms are pinned."
Singer hauled back the knife and stood up, nonplussed. As his eyes swept the horizon they stopped at a group of black specks. He peered for several seconds. No doubt this time.
He fought down the urge to hitch up the team, which he could now drive after a fashion, and race off by himself. Why should he get caught ...?
He shook his head to clear away such thoughts and shouted down: "What'll I do now, come down and get you?"
The faint voice came back: "Can you climb a rope?"
"Yes, I've been a ship's painter."
"Okay. First, take off your skis and put on your crampons. Then tie all the skis and poles together to make a deadman, and dig a trench at least a metre deep. Tie the line around the middle of your bundle and bury it ..."
Singer raced to carry out instructions. He got the shovel, tied up the bundle, and in less than half an hour was lowering himself down the crevasse by the climbing-rope, whose other end was belayed by the deadman.
As the crevasse averaged only a metre wide, he found that by bracing his back against one side and digging the spikes of the crampons on his feet into the other, he hardly needed the rope. The inside of a glacier was the strangest place he had ever been in.
Sunlight came through the ice as a diffused blue glow.
Water dripped somewhere, plink-plink, and from deep-in the ice same cracking and groaning sounds.
Fifteen metres from the surface he found Okagamut, wedged head downward where the walls shelved together. Bracing his feet, Singer began chipping away with his knife.
"Watch out," said Okagamut. "You don't want to drop me down the rest of the way."
Singer kept on, expecting any minute to hear the whoops of the pursuers. Finally he worked the end of the rope around his companion's torso, tied it securely, and inched his way back up to the surface. Despite the cold, he was soaked with sweat.
The specks on the horizon were bigger.
He heaved on the rope. No good. Heave. No good.
He looked around frantically. The fsyokn! While they obeyed him none too well, beggars couldn't be choosers, as that bloke Cicero said. He tied the end of the rope to the sledge-trace and, with difficulty, hitched up the team.
"Kshay!" The animals strained at their traces, with no result.
Again, with a crack of the whip. No good. The specks were visibly growing, weren't they?
Again. And again. He used the whip, and with his other hand hauled on the rope himself.
The tension suddenly lessened. Up came Okagamut, until he flopped over the lip of the hole and scrambled to his feet. The fsyokn, not having been told to stop pulling, jerked him flat on his face and began dragging him at a run until Singer's shrieks stopped them.
Okagamut felt his right arm, saying: "No bones broken, I think, but my arm's asleep from having the circulation cut off. Serves me right for running around a glacier without skis—hey, aren't those our friends from Vyutr?"
"Right-o."
"Why didn't you tell me? Get the gear stowed, quick!"
"I thought you had enough to worry about, battler," said Singer, pulling up tent-stakes.
The approaching party could now be made out. The howls of their fsyokn came across the snow. The two men, the smaller hampered by his paralysed arm, rushed about stowing their gear.
"They've got us this time, that's no furphy," said Singer.
"Not necessarily. Here, catch this. Put that there. Tie down this corner. Get your skis back on."
"Still think we can escape?"
"Once we get going, I know it. Got everything? Kshay?"
Off they went. Okagamut's arm had come to life again. They jogged beside the sled at a dog-trot. Yells, whip-cracks, and howls came from the pursuers.
On the Earthmen went, neither gaining nor losing, all morning and part of the afternoon. When they got too exhausted with trotting, they hopped on the sled long enough to catch their breath.
"What's happened back there?" said Singer.
"One of their fsyokn has dropped dead, and they're cutting him loose."
"We'd better slow up a bit, lest ours do the same."
After a few minutes at an easier pace, Singer's head stopped spinning and the pounding of his heart abated. Then he said: "Oh!"
"What?"
"Look at that slope!"
"That leads to the plateau. If we can make it we'll have fairly easy going the rest of the way."
As the exhausted animals could not drag the sled up the grade, the men put their shoulders to the rear of the load. Up they went, a step at a time.
The noise neared. Something went fwht! "Shooting at us again," panted Okagamut.
The next, thought Singer, would hit right between his shoulder-blades.
Fwh-tunk! The arrow struck the load on the sled. Singer hoped it hadn't punctured their kettle.
Fwht!
"One more heave," gritted Okagamut, "and we'll be out of—uh! They got me!"
Singer, heedless of the archers, seized his companion. "Where?"
"Here!" Okagamut showed the feathered tail of the bolt sticking out of his coat. "Hey, wait!" He pulled the missile out. No blood. "They didn't get me after all; that fur-lined vest Dyenük sold me must have stopped it!"
They struggled to the top of the slope, missiles scattering more and more widely as the bowmen, in a last effort, shot at higher and higher angles.