The Dragon Book (56 page)

He floundered against ice-walls, over the frozen corpse of a wolf, a boy—

And then—then—
Umber-umber
—then—

Suddenly the beat of the alien heart faded. It grew quiet, so that he could hear it only as if it was miles away, as he had in the beginning.

In this way he knew, or his shamanic skill knew, that it was directly by him.

He had reached more solid blast-ice, where the axes had not yet come. Behind him, Kulvok made out the shouts of Nenkru and the others as they broke into the village ice-towers, pulling the furs and food from the walls, the weapons and decorations from the belts and neck-strings of the dead.
“Gold!”
he heard Etuk call in joy. For the old metals, once mined when summer had been longer and men had had strength enough to delve the earth, were rare now.

Sickened by the scavenging, and by his part in it, Kulvok leaned against the side of a dwelling. And saw a woman’s foot, booted in walrus-hide and fur, just clear of the unbreached thickness of the blast-ice ahead.

Then he leant on the ice. He squinted. Though the ice was dense and deathly, he could see straight into it.

The woman to whom the foot belonged lay there. She was, like the rest, frozen to stone. Just like the old woman caught outside, save that this one was young. And her belly rose in a hill. She had been carrying a child for some time, he thought, almost to term.

Umb,
faintly said the heart.
Umber-umber-umber.

It came from the belly, from the womb of the ice-blast-frozen woman whom the dragon had killed with a single breath.

I must smash through
.

It was crazy, yet he hammered with his gloved fists on the thick ice until it cracked. It shattered and gave way.

In the stark silence after the beat of the heart had left him, which it did exactly as the ice-wall shattered, he thought, in plain renewal of the hope for life—
We two broke this open
. We two—

I.

And he
.

WHEN he joined Nenkru’s Kimolaki those years before, they had just lost their shaman, who had perished in a lead-crack of the restless land-ice. Very oddly, once settled with the scavenger band, Kulvok’s need for magic trickery had faded as his real magical abilities grew. After this, he could often foretell, even foretell the paths Ulkioket might take. And he could heal.

Now he would try to heal the child on the ice.

Before he realized that it had no need of him.

AS the blast-ice smashed at his blows, something swift and appalling happened to the corpse of the frozen, pregnant woman. She also
shattered—
like an ancient glass. And then she was simply gone.

Instead, the baby from her womb lay on the white ground.

Kulvok stared. At first, he wasn’t able to stir.

One by one, the others stole up. They even left their scavenged goods, the things they always got by following cautiously behind a dragon and raiding the settlements it had destroyed. But this event was more bizarre even than the breath of ice.

“Is it—
dead
too?”

“No. See, it’s breathing.”

By then, Kulvok had stretched out his hands, pushing warmth from the core of his body into a magical cocoon to enwrap the baby. He felt the heat too, they all did, for they spoke of it, and anyway the air pulsed, and a little of the thinner ice melted and dripped. But it had no effect on the child. None.

He—the baby was a male—lay there, quietly shifting about, turning his head with its smooth fine cap of hair, kicking with his feet and waving his hands slowly. His eyes were open too. They fixed on the men with an unusual attention. The new-born never seemed to gaze like that. Nor did he cry or wail. His mouth, small as a silver bead, stayed shut.

“Nothing happens, Kulvok. How did he survive? But he’ll die in a minute.”

“
Look at his colours
. He’s already dead. It’s just some tremor that makes him move—”

“But his
eyes
move—
look
—he blinks!”

“That too, some tremor as the dead body gives way.” The heat from Kulvok’s hands was now cooling also. Coldness seeped back into his gloves, his palms and fingers. Only the scarred fingertip gave off a sudden flash of feeling, as if again it had been burnt. But that was gone as soon as it came.

Yet he knew the child lived. And why it lived. Was it anything but obvious?

He had a silvery white skin, the baby, that darkened somewhat at brows and eyelids, the lips, the folds of ears and legs … The film of hair on his head was white too, like fine smoke against a shadow. His eyes—his eyes were the green-blue of the core of a floating iceberg.

Near to birth, perhaps only minutes from it, the dragon’s ice-blast had caught him, killing all else, his mother included. But some god or spirit that abruptly cared for mankind had saved him, and the freeze had instead reworked every inch and atom of his body.

Kulvok stepped away. He spoke firmly in a low voice.

“He isn’t dead or dying. He’ll live. And we are entrusted with him—I can hardly guess why it is we who were chosen—perhaps to pay for our crimes.” The men stood about him in dumbstruck noiselessness. “Can you not
see
what he is?” Kulvok asked them in a kind of anger. “He is the hero. The
hero
.”

PART TWO

DURING the brief summer, pale golden down covered the low trees and shrubs. Fruits grew there, the shades of fire and darkening skies.

Salmon and blackfish might be harvested from the narrow rivers, streams, and lakes.

Thin grass and lichen toned the landscape brown and green.

Nenkru’s band moved as ever to the grassland by the great Tear Lake, and lived there with their women and children, in tents of deer-hide. The women made bread from the bitter seeds of grasses, which was only possible in the summer, and pickled the fruits in fruit vinegar. They feasted on the meat of deer and the livers of seal.

Always to Kulvok, this time, a little less than three months, which was presaged only by the lifting sun and by the breaking of the ice with colossal booms and roarings, and which often ended in only a single night of freezing gales and snow, was like a stupid if pleasant dream.

In a way Kulvok had always hated summer-time. It resembled the wicked promise of a faithless woman. She gave you, almost without warning, great happiness, and acted as if she loved you. Then in one night betrayed and abandoned you. Yet you were an idiot—always you welcomed her return. And though never again did you believe her sweet-talking, still you relished her.

Anlut, though … What did summer mean to
him
? Kulvok was unsure. Unsure what winter meant to Anlut, as well. Or what mankind meant. Or what Kulvok himself meant to Anlut, he who had taken the involuntary position of a father to the boy, just as the shaman’s wife, Nuyamat, had been awarded the status of Anlut’s mother. Anlut had been a baby then, and so had to have one. Had to have a woman to care for him and a man to hunt for him. Or had he needed none of that? As he had needed no healing, no warmth, no milk, maybe not even the protective, predictive words with which Kulvok brought him inside the guardian family of the Kimolaki band: Hero.
Hero
.

ALMOST sixteen summers passed, and fifteen winters of many thousand nights. The baby had become an infant, a child, a youth. A man. The hero born from flesh and ice.

He was tall, among the tallest of the men, straight and lean, hard as rock and flexible as a willow-branch. He had learned, as all men did, to hunt and fish, mend weapons and tools, build house towers of ice-brick, raise the ice-brick platforms up inside for two storeys and hang a strong rope-ladder of walrus-hide whereby to climb up and sleep. At all times, he was polite. He spoke to the women, young and old, as a good and serious child does to his mother. To the men, he spoke respectfully, as if to elder brothers. Even to the oldest men, he spoke this way. Which was not respectful enough, of course, yet you could not fault it.

Kulvok, taking the place of his father, had named him Anlut. The name meant simply,
the one of the tribe of the Lut
.

When she had seen him for the first time, Nuyamat had let out a loud screech. But she went dumb when Kulvok told her sternly, “He’s been given to us to tend. Do everything for him that a woman must do for the newborn—but never remove your gloves when you touch him. Inoro’s wife is still in milk from her last child. She’ll put some milk in a jar, and you must feed him this through a hollow reed I’ll make for you. If there are doubts, ask me. If I’m away, let it be. He’ll live, even if neglected. So I think. Left naked on the ice, he thrives.”

“What is it?”
Nuyamat had whispered then.

“A baby,” he replied flatly.

“But—”

He had already informed her of what was required of her. He would not repeat himself. He put the child, not crying, not struggling, already strangely coordinated and attentive, on the fur rug that lay across the lower sleeping place, for right then they were still in their one-storey ice-tower.

“Do as you’re bid,” he snapped.

She had no choice. She never remonstrated with him again.

Did they all get used to Anlut? No, never. But they became accustomed to
not
becoming accustomed. And when he grew, matured, and reached the appropriate ages of a male’s life, he was taught as the other boys were.

The house-wolves did treat him differently from all other people, though not with particular aversion. It was as if he were a favoured piece of equipment they must be careful of and note. And he did not ever try to learn the use of a sled. Later, he would run, fast and tireless, behind the sleds of others, always keeping up.

Now, as Kulvok watched him cross the summer grassland, running lightly with his fish-spear in hand and a string of silver catch around his shoulders, the shaman sucked in his breath as ever. For sunlight, like the light of winter stars, half-sun and red moonglow, reflected on Anlut’s pale skin—his
carapace
. His complexion was smooth, without a blemish, like the ice. He gleamed and flickered here with faint blue and tawny tints, and where the hot settling sun snagged on his long white hair, it too shone golden.