I set off before he could make further protest. The polyhounds also moved. Half followed me while the rest kept their places around Hans. I went a hundred yards, a hundred and fifty. Then Hans’ voice came to me, urgently shouting:
“Back, sire! Come back!”
I had already seen it: the ones that had followed me were closing in. They moved to head me off as I doubled back. I saw one brute loping in toward me and cursed the hampering snowshoes I wore, though I would have been little better off without them. He must intercept me. But the Sten gun chattered and he dropped with a scream of pain. The others fell away and I reached Hans.
It took me some moments to gather breath to speak.
“Cunning indeed,” I said. “They know there is only one gun, and saw me give it to you.”
“You must take it,” Hans said. “And you must go on. The gun is only of use while there is light. After that, nothing will stop them.”
The polyhounds had taken up the same circle as before, just out of range. I said:
“I will get some of them, even in the dark.”
“But it serves no purpose, sire. Remember, you have a mission.”
A mission? He meant, of course, the task laid on me by the High Seers. As if that mattered compared with the life of someone who had twice saved mine. But there was something else, deep in the darkness of my mind. Hans was right in saying that I could not save him by staying: I would only lose my own life along with his. Yet it was not that which filled me with despair and bitterness. It was the thought of dying with my revenge unaccomplished.
I think he read uncertainty in my face. He said:
“Go, sire. You must do your duty as a Prince. Nothing else matters.”
I had left him before in the hope of bringing back help. There was nothing like this now; they would be on him, tearing him to pieces, as soon as I was gone. I shook my head, to clear the black madness from it. I said harshly:
“I am staying, Hans. That is a Prince’s duty; and a friend’s.”
I looked past him to the polyhounds. They had ceased their howling and were silent. They seemed to be listening to something. There was no sound but that of our breathing and the wind’s distant sighing in the pines. Or was there a noise, faint and far off? I strained my ears and heard it. Scarcely audible, it rose and fell with the gusting wind: a tiny jangling tinkle of bells.
The polyhounds had heard it, too. They barked, one to another like men in council. Then the circle was broken as they ran round us to re-form their pack on the slope above. They ran, silent again, into the cover of trees and disappeared.
• • •
I saw figures come into view, bearing down the slope from the north, below the tree line. They were men, but traveling so fast over the snow that I wondered if some sort of machine carried them. But as they came nearer I saw that they were sliding on long thin planks. I waved and shouted and they changed course, dipping down the valley’s side toward us.
They were more than a score in number. They were dressed in furs and looked strong and healthy, well nourished. They greeted us amiably and asked what help we needed.
I told them of the polyhounds and they nodded. They often warred with these beasts and had their measure. One of them, smiling, tapped a wicked-looking knife in his belt and showed a fur cap with half a dozen polyhound tails dangling from it.
They had ropes, and made a litter to carry Hans. Some went on down the valley, moving fast on the thin planks which they called skis, but the rest accompanied us at our slower pace. We traveled south a couple of miles; then west up a side valley. Their village was there. The huts were stoutly built of wood. Blue smoke rose from chimneys and there was an appetizing smell of food cooking.
People came out to greet us. These too were healthy and had smiling faces. The women took Hans and saw to his wounds, replacing my rough bandages with others of clean linen, smeared with a healing ointment. Others poured hot spiced ale into pots for the returning hunters, and for me also.
Unlike that other village in which we had stayed, this one was pleasant, and so were its inhabitants. There were many items one could note: the stoutness and cleanliness of the huts, the signs of good husbandry and prosperity—bins brimming with fat corn, smoked hams and sides of salmon hanging from the roof beams—the comeliness of both men and women, the vigor and merriness of the children. But I felt there was more to it than the sum of these parts. There was a sense of warmth and ease which went deep. It was not quite like anything I had known.
I was concerned at first about their reaction to the Sten gun. Either they might, as would have been the case in the lands of the south, regard it as an evil thing and Hans and me as deserving of death for possessing it; or they might covet it for its power. But neither was the case. They looked at it with scarcely even curiosity, and no desire for possession.
They were altogether strangely incurious. I told them, in explanation of how we got there, that we came from the south and were traveling to Klan Gothlen and the court of King Cymru. They nodded, indicating that they had heard of the city and the king, but asked no other questions.
It was plain that we must stay with them for some days, while Hans’ wounds healed. I offered gold for our lodging. They glanced at the coins with as little interest as they had shown in the Sten gun, and handed them back. Hospitality needed no payment. They might have added, but did not, that in any case they had no use for gold.
During the days that followed I came to know them, and their way of life, better. There was one man, older and bigger than the rest, to whom—it seemed to me—some deference was paid. I guessed he was their chief, and addressed him as such. He denied it, smiling. His name was Jok, and he had no title. None of them did. They had heard of kings and chiefs and such, but there was none here.
I did not believe him at first, thinking it some pretense of modesty or custom. I asked who made decisions among them. He said the Tribe did. But what, I asked, if the Tribe were divided among itself? Jok laughed. That could not be! One might as well speak of a man’s left arm being divided from his right.
This did not convince me. I did not see how any group of people could live together without dissension, always in agreement. It made no sense. But as time passed, though I looked for discord among them, I found none.
They had no marriage as such, and no paternity. The children were children of the Tribe, not of a particular couple. They called all women Mother, all men Father. In a similar fashion those of adult years, when they did not use given names, called each other Brother and Sister.
Most of the things they did seemed to follow one person’s prompting, the rest falling in with whatever notion was put forward. Nor was it always the same person, or group of people, who suggested things. It was almost as though they thought with a single mind, so that it did not matter whose voice it was first uttered any project.
The men were hunters; the women cooked and cleaned for them and cared for the sick and old and, of course, the children. In summer, men and women worked together in the fields, sharing the labor of sowing and planting and harvesting. I saw there were no polymufs or dwarfs among them, and asked about that. I was told they were smothered at birth. This was not out of revulsion or in obedience to the behest of Spirits, but from kindness. It would be cruel, they felt, to let a crippled child live, different from his brothers and sisters and deprived of the fullness of activity which they enjoyed.
And what, I asked, if a man or woman were crippled later in life: in the hunt, perhaps? Again it was Jok I was talking to, and he shook his head. Such a person would be well cared for, in hope of recovery. Should the time come when he knew he would not regain his true strength, he would bid farewell to the Tribe and leave the village. There was an herb growing in the woods which brought a quiet death.