Ursus of Ultima Thule (11 page)

He uttered a long, shuddering cry and his head shook so from side to side that his thick hair rustled upon his broad and shaggy shoulders. “Men gender much,” he said, “and the men-wives bear often. Nains gender seldom for our passion be for the forge and few are the nain-brains our shes do get. Before the Great Bear took starfire and gave it we and beteached we how to delve and deliver metal from the earth’s belly and to mold and shape it as the bears do mold and shape their cubs — before even the yore-tide — men were few and nains were few and lived they twain folk far apart, for broad and long be Thule.

“But since then men have swarmed — yet the nain’s numbers do stay the same. Still be Nainland far from menland, eh but ah,
it be not so far as once ‘twas!
Men can hunt without iron, men can farm without iron, men can still beget them many mennikins without iron; men can do without iron and I betell thee this:
If men may live without iron, men may live without nains
.”

The echo of his voice was long in his listeners’ minds.

He divided them into nine watches and to each watch he assigned a third part of one night. And the first watch for the first third of the first night began at once to clear away with slow care the rubble at the end of what they had begun to call the Doe-Hare’s Den. The nains stripped off their leather kilts and piled loose stone therein, then gathered up the corners four and slung the juried bags over their shoulders and trudged away on noiseless feet to empty their loads well out of sight in yet another disused corridor. And then to return. Thus, while the work went on, none lost more rest than one-third of every third night; and, after many nights, the toilers in the Doe-Hare’s Den, pausing a moment for rest, recognized in their nostrils the bitter, faint, familiar smell of woodsmoke — and recognized that an aperture, of whatsoever a nature, existed between them in their captivity and the unfettered outside world.

• • •

And thus the elusive memory returned to the boy. Remembering woodsmoke and firelight and father’s words, he said, “The strange woman who was here. Was she the queen of love with whom you dabbled and dallied?”

A silence. “Eh, she was.”

“Be that why the king do hate thee?”

A growl. “She said he never knew.”

“Then why
do
he hate thee?”

A grunt. “Has thee forgot my tale of how he and me vowed a compact and at the end stood face to face to fight for treasure and for life, winner take all?”

“No, I remember that.”

A cough. A second, longer, deeper cough. A gasp. “I won. He lay at my feet. He groveled and gibbered. I raised him up, gave him half the plunder and I spared his life. That is why. For this he cannot forgive me.”

• • •

In the darkness he heard droning of dry and dusty voices and he knew it was the wizards that he heard. He heard them droning as though ineffably bored and weary, as though repeating over and over to themselves, lest they forget, forcing their dust-choked voices and thinking with dust-choked minds, at a great distance away, repeating something of great importance which must not be forgotten —
The Bear dies, iron dies. The Bear dies, iron dies. As the Bear comes to life, so must iron come to life. As the Bear comes to life, so must iron come to life
. A pause, a faint gasp, the click of voices in dry, dusty throats. And again and again the droning recommenced.
The Bear sleeps in the ground, so must iron sleep in the ground. As the Bear sleeps its death-sleep-life, so must iron …

The Bear dies, iron dies …

Endlessly he heard this. The sound ebbed and faded away as he felt himself gently rocked.

“What?”

“Bear’s boy, it be time.”

Time for iron, time for … But the droning voices were away and gone. Had he heard them echoing thinly in a cavern somewhere? Or was it only the familiar echo of the nain voices in the mine? Confused, already forgetting, he got up.

Still half-asleep he followed, sometimes stumbling, as the men filed from their sleeping-cell into unguarded tunnels. In the Doe-Hare’s Den he saw the now familiar sight of and heard the now familiar sounds of debris and detritus being shoveled and scraped into the carrying-skins. But while this still went on he heard those who watched and who waited discussing whither they should go when they had made their escape from the mines: and should they go in one body for defense, or should they split up and make their several — or it might be their many — ways, in order to divide and so to weaken their pursuers.

He did not hear if an answer had been concluded, let alone what it was, for Aar-heved-heved-aar took hold of him and said, “Bear’s boy, ‘tis thought they have broken through up ahead. Get thee up then, for thee be but small as compare to us and maybe can find out — ”

The senior nain did not finish his phrase, but propelled Arnten forward, saying, “Up, then, and up and up.”

Though so much diminished, still the pile was high and required climbing. He half scuttled and he half slid as he set to climbing. And he had somehow a fear that, though he went on his way slow enough, still, he might strike his head there in the darkness; and from this fear he went slower. And every few paces he paused and thrust his hands forward.

And by and by he felt his hand as it scraped the face of the cavern suddenly fall through into nothingness, and he fell forward a bit and he grunted rather than cried out. And ahead of him, where yet he could not see, ahead of him in the black, black, blackness, something moved which was even blacker (though how he knew this he did not know). Something made a sudden movement and a sudden noise and he had the impression that something had been waiting and hearkening, listening very closely, he had an impression of a head cocked to one side —

And before he himself could do more, the sound from the other side of the hole ceased to be startled, flurried, resolved itself into the flap of wings in the darkness.

And he and all of them heard the sudden sharp cry of a crow. And again, farther away. And once more, faint.

• • •

Now the work quickened, concentrated and focused on enlarging the opening. An opening onto the world at large? Or into another cave? If the latter, still, this next cave must itself open onto the world at large, else how came any bird to be there? But the stone or bone blades of their picks no longer sank into rubble. Either they sprang back as they were swung against the lips of the scrape-hole or they shattered. The nains began to mutter. Then Arn came forward on all fours, reached out his long, shaggy arms, felt and pawed and groped in the darkness.

“It seems that two slabs of rock all but meet face to face here,” he said. “Some bit of softer stone did rest between them, as might a piece of stale bread between a dead man’s teeth —

“Now, part of that had weathered away, else that hare had neither entered nor left — and we have battered away the rest — but the teeth be fixed firm. Somehow we must crack the jawbones, then. So — ”

His voice fell into a muttering growl. “We must break the jaws of the rock,” he said once more. “How?” he muttered. “How?
How?
”

• • •

A dull glow from a brazier of coals made shadows as the king moved slowly and painfully upon his bed. Something scuttled outside the chamber. Someone entered on hands and knees. The king lifted his head, stopped, groaned, rubbed his face, moaned.

“You smell of mold and of trees,” he whispered. “Well — what?”

Mered-delfin panted a moment. Then: “Slayer of — ”

The king made a noise of loathing, deep in his throat.

“Damn all fulsome phrases! None’s here now save thee and me.
What?
”

“Wolf — the mine-thralls — trying to break — ” His wind failed, his voice caught in his scrannel chest and throat.

His master finished the words. “To break out? Eh? To — ” He struggled up, hissed his pain, rested on his elbows. Raised his voice. “
Hoy!
” he cried. “The captain of the guard!
Hoy! Hoy!
Hither! Flay him, does he slumber? Hither! Here! Now!
Hoy!
”

• • •

The bear half-slid, half-crawled backward. The air in the hole was thick. “Bring bracken,” he said. “Bring all the bracken that be. Not all of ye!” he called sharply. “The crew of the first third — go!” What might have been confusion was at once averted. “The crew of the second third — to that line of tunnel where the pit props be fallen and bring, for the first fetch, the smallest and the softest pieces of the dry-rotted old props — ”

He waited till they had got them gone and next he said, “Senior Aar. We must needs soon make fire.”

A moment, then the elder nain murmured, “Ah, Bear, that be no easy thing, thee knows.”

“I do know!”

“They take care — and always have — the accursed smoothskins, that we have no flint about us — to name but one lack — and though we might break the pick-handles, their wood be not — ”

“And this, all this, I know. And
thee
knows and all of ye know what I mean. Well. The cub and I will withdraw.”

Softly, as it might have been reluctantly, the senior nain said, “Nay the twain of ye may bide. ‘Tis no time to stand upon custom.”

He made a sign to the remaining nains and, though somewhat slowly, they joined hands. There was scarce room even at the broader end of the Doe-Hare’s cave for a wide circle, shoulder to broad shoulder they stood, hand in hand, leg against leg and foot against foot. All was silent and, as silence will when thought upon, silence gradually gave voice. Silence whispered to itself, and silence began to sing a little song. It was a curious bit of song and it hissed and it crackled as the nain feet shuffled, as the nain forms shifted themselves in the darkness, as the small and cramped circle went around and around in the darkness, softly stamping feet upon the rubble-strewn floor.

Arnten, stared into the blackness and, as it will when stared long into, the blackness began to give light, a faint blue light, a spark, a worm, a glow that had no outline and faded. And then did not fade.

Arnten felt the hairs on his flesh rise as his skin puckered in something the far side of fear. He saw in the darkness the forms of the nains and he saw their hairs risen and he saw upon that nimbus of hair outlining each head and each body a nimbus of blue light: and as the nains so softly-softly muttered the lights wavered and as the nains slowly circled around the blue lights slowly undulated and as the nains slowly and softly stamped their feet the blue lights softly hissed and softly crackled.

The dance did not cease when the first crew returned, arms laden with the great coarse bracken-fern; Arnten gestured and they passed their burdens, bundle by bundle, to the end of the cave. First they stuffed it through the still small opening into the outside world and then, when this would take no more, piled it all around about.

Then the second crew began to come back, stripped to the buff, their garment-skins used as carry-alls for piles of wood from the fallen pit-props, soft from long dry rot, and Arnten gestured again and they piled wood on the bracken. And still the slow, strange dance went on and on. Arn, in a few words, bade two more crews begone. They must bring back the larger stumps and shafts of the wooden columns used here and there to hold up the tunnel roof.

The dancing nains, meanwhile, had danced nearer and closer to what was now a bosky mass of dry-rotted wood and bracken. The dancing nains were pressed together almost as though to make one enormous grotesque creature with many limbs, a sort of nainipede; and this grotesque heaved and huddled close to the piled up bracken-fern which had been its bed. Still it sang and still the blue lights wavered at the ends of its hairs; and then the blue light gathered itself together into one mass and the nainipede went dancing back on its many limbs. The ball of light floated up and bounced along the rough roof of the cave and settled upon the pile of wood. It seemed next to snuggle and to creep its way deep into the bracken and then there was a flash and the blue was gone and there was the familiar red and orange and yellow of fire. And the song was silent but in its place they heard the crackling of flames.

• • •

Mered-delfin stood by the curtained door and flapped wide black sleeves.

“My men have them safe now?” the Orfas demanded.

His chief witcherer opened his mouth and closed it, long thin tongue fluttering. Then he said, “They will not go.”

Then seemed the king confused. “How now? Won’t go? The nains?”

Mered shook his dry old head, his long nose seeming to point all ways at once. “Not the nains, King Wolf! The men! Your men! The kingsmen will not go! They will not go down into the mine! It seems — I should have remembered that — ” His voice stuck, came out again at last. “They fear the deep, they fear the darkness, assuredly they fear the nains and their witchery.”

The old wolf let waste no time in rage and imprecation, but he rubbed one rusty wrist with one rusty hand and he said in the voice of one who thinks, “Then what is it which they may fear e’en more, my crow, than the nains and the deep and dark — eh?”

They looked at each other. The King’s eyes went past the old vizier and the old vizier turned; and together they exclaimed a word.

• • •

So dry was bracken and dry-rotted wood that both together burned with minimal smoke, but smoke even so there was. Arn and Arnten and the nains stood in the main corridor and with their garment-skins they flapped and fanned away the smoke. And now and then they stopped and took sips of water from the buckets, but only sips. A thin glow of firelight lit the somber halls of underground and over this lay a thin haze of smoke. The fire dance of the nainfolk had ceased.

He leaned against his father and in his body he was in the mine-cave and beside his father, yet in his mind he was beside his old uncle in the old man’s medicine hut. And there was the sound of a dance … the sound of a drum …

Out of the dimness and the deep, deep darkness came the figures of men. It was no vision or dream — here, in the mine and out of the darkness of the mine-tunnels, they came.