Allan and the Ice Gods (6 page)

that Henga had done this thing, as did everybody else, since among the

tribe none murdered except the chief, though sometimes men killed each

other fighting for women, of whom there were so few, or when they were

angry. Yet, when he showed the body to the people, they only shook

their heads and were silent, for had not Henga the right to take the

life of any among them?

Then it was that Wi’s blood boiled within him and he talked with Aaka,

saying that it was in his heart to challenge Henga to fight.

“That is what he wishes you to do,” answered Aaka, “for being a fool,

he thinks himself the stronger and that thus he will kill you without

reproach, who otherwise, when he is older, will kill him. Also I have

wished it for long who am sure that you can conquer Henga, but you

will not listen to me in this matter.”

Then she rolled herself up in her skin rug and pretended to go to

sleep, saying no more.

In the morning she spoke again and said:

“Hearken, Wi. Counsel has come to me in my sleep. It seemed to me that

Fo-a our daughter who is dead stood before me, saying:

“‘Let Wi my father go up at night to make prayer to the Ice-gods and

seek a sign from them. If a stone fall from the crest of the glacier

at the dawn, it shall be a token to him that he must fight Henga and

avenge my blood upon him and take his chieftainship; but if no stone

falls, then, should he fight, Henga will kill him. Also, afterward, he

will kill Foh my brother, and take you, my mother, to be one of his

wives.’

“Now, Wi, I say that you will do well to obey the voice of our child

who is dead and to go up to make prayer to the Ice-gods and await

their omen.”

Wi looked at her doubtfully, putting little faith in this tale, and

answered:

“Such a dream is a thin stick on which to lean. I know well, Wife,

that for a long while you have desired that I should fight Henga,

although he is a terrible man. Yet, if I do, he may kill me and then

what would happen to you and Foh?”

“That which is fated to happen to us and nothing else, Husband. Shall

it be said in the tribe that Wi was afraid to avenge the blood of his

daughter upon Henga?”

“I know not, Wife, but I know also that, if such words are whispered,

they will not be true. It is of you and Foh that I think, not of

myself.”

“Then go and seek an omen from the Ice-gods, Husband.”

“I will go, Aaka, but do not blame me afterward if things happen

awry.”

“They will not happen awry,” answered Aaka, smiling for the first time

since Fo-a died.

For she was sure that Wi would conquer Henga, if only he could be

brought to fight him, and thus avenge Fo-a and become chief in his

place. Also she smiled because, for reasons of which she did not

speak, she was sure also that a stone would fall from the crest of the

glacier at dawn when the sun struck upon the ice.

Thus it came about that, on the following night, Wi the Hunter slipped

from the village of the tribe and, walking round the foot of the hill

that ran down to the beach on the east, scaled the cleft between the

mountains until he came to the base of the great glacier. The wolves

that were prowling round the place, still winter-hungry because the

spring was so late, scented him and surrounded him with glaring eyes.

But he, the Hunter, was not afraid of the wolves; moreover, woe had

made his heart fierce. So with a yell he charged at the biggest of

them, the leader of the pack, and drove his flint spear into its

throat, then, while it writhed upon the spear, gnashing its red jaws,

he dashed out its brains with his stone ax, muttering:

“Thus shall Henga die! Thus shall Henga die!”

The wolves knew their master and sped away, all save their leader that

lay dead. Wi dragged its carcase to the top of a rock and left it

there where the rest could not reach it, purposing to skin it in the

morning.

This done, he went on up the cold valley where no beasts came, because

here there was nothing to eat, till he reached the face of the

glacier, a mighty wall of backward sloping ice that gleamed faintly in

the moonlight and filled the cleft from side to side, four hundred

paces or more in width. When last he was here, twelve moons gone, he

had driven a stake of driftwood between two rocks and another stake

five paces lower down, because of late it had seemed to him that the

glacier was marching forward.

So it was indeed, for the first stake was buried, and the cruel,

crawling lip of the glacier had nearly reached the second. The gods

were awake! The gods were matching toward the sea!

Wi shivered, not because of the cold, to which he was accustomed, but

from fear—for this place was terrible to him. It was the house of the

gods who dwelt there in the ice, the gods in whom he believed, and who

were always angry, and now he remembered that he had brought no

offering to propitiate them. He went back to the place where he had

killed the wolf, and with difficulty, by aid of his sharp flint spear

and stone ax, hacked off its head. Returning with this head, he set

the grisly thing upon a rock at the foot of the glacier, muttering:

“It bleeds and the gods love blood. Now I swear that, if I kill Henga,

I will give them his carcass, which is better than the head of a

wolf.”

Then he knelt down, as men have ever done before that which they fear

and worship, and began to pray after his rude fashion:

“O Mighty Ones,” he said, “who have lived here since the beginning,

and O Sleeper with a shape such as no man has ever seen, Wi throws out

his spirit to you; hear ye the prayer of Wi and give him a sign. Henga

the fierce and hideous, who kills his own children lest in a day to

come they should slay him as he slew his father, rules the people and

does evilly. The people groan, but according to the old law may not

rebel, and to speak they are afraid. Henga would kill me, and my

little daughter Fo-a he has killed, and her mother weeps. I, Wi, would

fight Henga as I may do under the law, but he is strong as the wild

bull of the forest, and if he prevails, not only will he kill me, he

will also take Aaka, whom he covets, and will murder our son Foh and

perhaps devour him. Therefore, I am afraid to fight, for their sakes.

Yet I would be revenged upon Henga and slay him, and live in the cave

and rule the People better, not devouring their food, but storing it

up for them; not taking the women, but leaving them to be the wives of

those who have none. I have brought you an offering, O Gods, the head

of a wolf fresh slain, which bleeds, the best thing I have to give

you, and if I kill Henga, I will bring you a richer one, that of his

dead body, because our fathers have always said that you love blood.”

Wi paused, for he could think of nothing more to say; then,

remembering that as yet he had made no request, went on:

“Show me what I must do, O Gods. Shall I challenge Henga in the old

way and fight him openly for the rule of the tribe? or, since if I

fear to do this I cannot stay here among the people, shall I fly away

with Aaka and Foh and, perhaps, Pag, the wise dwarf, the Wolf-man who

loves me, to seek another home beyond the woods, if we live to win

through them? Accept my offering and tell me, O Gods. If I must fight

Henga, let a stone fall from the crest of the glacier, and if I must

fly to save the lives of Aaka and Foh, let no stone fall. Here, now, I

will wait till an hour after sunrise. Then, if a stone falls, I shall

go down to challenge Henga, and if it does not fall, I shall give it

out that I am about to challenge him, and in the night I shall slip

away with Aaka and Foh, and Pag if he chooses; whereby you will lose

worshippers, O Gods.”

Pleased with this master argument, which had come as an inspiration,

since he had never thought of it before, and sure that it would appeal

to gods whose followers were few and who therefore could not afford to

lose any of them, Wi ceased praying, a terrible exercise which tired

him more than a whole day’s hunting or fishing, and, remaining on his

knees, stared at the face of ice in front of him. He knew nothing of

the laws of nature, but he did know that heavy bodies, if once set in

motion, moved very fast down a hill, going quicker and quicker as they

came near to its foot. Indeed, once he had killed a bear by rolling a

stone down on it, which overtook the running beast with wonderful

swiftness.

This being so, he began to marvel what would happen if all that mighty

mass of ice should move in good earnest instead of at the rate of only

a few handbreadths a year. Well, he knew something of that also. For

once, when he was in the woods, he had seen an ice child born, a vast

mass large as a mountain which suddenly rushed down one of the western

valleys into the sea, sending foam flying as high as heaven. That had

hurt no one, except, perhaps, some of the seal people which were

basking in the bay, because there was no one to hurt. But if it had

been the great central glacier that thus moved and gave birth,

together with the other smaller glaciers of the west, what would

chance to the tribe upon the beach beneath? They would be killed,

every one, and there would be no people left in the world.

He did not call it the world, of course, since he knew nothing of the

world, but rather by some word that meant “the place,” that is, the

few miles of beach and wood and mountain over which he wandered. From

a great height he had seen other beaches and woods, also mountains

beyond a rocky, barren plain, but to him these were but a dreamland.

At least, no men and women lived in them, because they had never heard

their voices or seen the smoke of their fires, such as the tribe made

to warm themselves by and for the cooking of their food. It was true

that there were stories that such people existed and Pag, the cunning

dwarf, thought so. However, Wi, being a man who dealt with facts, paid

no heed to these tales. There below him lived the only people in the

world, and if they were crushed, all would be finished.

Well, if so, it would not matter very much, except in the case of

Aaka, and, above all, of Foh his son, for of other women he thought

little, while the creatures that furnished food, the seals and the

birds and the fish, especially the salmon that came up the stream in

spring, and the speckled trout, would be happier if they were gone.

These speculations also tired him, a man of action who was only

beginning to learn how to think. So he gave them up, as he had given

up praying, and stared with his big, thoughtful eyes at the ice in

front of him. The light was gathering now, very soon the sun should

rise and he should see into the ice. Look! There were faces, grotesque

faces, some of them vast, some tiny, that seemed to shift and change

with the changes of the light and the play of the shadows. Doubtless,

these were those of the lesser gods of whom probably there were a

great number, all of them bad and cruel, and they were peering and

mocking at him.

Moreover, beyond them, a dim outline, was the great Sleeper, as he had

always been, a mountain of a god with huge tusks and the curling nose

much longer than the body of a man, and a head like a rock, and ears

as big as the sides of a hut, and a small, cold eye that seemed to be

fixed upon him, and behind all this, vanishing into the depths of the

ice, an enormous body the height of three men standing on each other’s

heads, perhaps. There was a god indeed, and, looking at him, Wi

wondered whether one day he would awake and break out of the ice and

come rushing down the mountain. That he might see him better, Wi rose

from his knees and crept timidly to the face of the glacier to peer

down a certain crevice in the ice. While he was thus engaged, the sun

rose in a clear sky over the shoulder of the mountain and shone with

some warmth upon the glacier for the first time that spring—or rather

early summer. Its rays penetrated the cleft in the ice so that Wi saw

more of the Sleeper than he had ever done.

Truly, he was enormous, and look, behind him was something like the

figure of a man of which he had often heard but never before seen so

clearly. Or was it a shadow? Wi could not be sure, for just then a

cloud floated over the face of the sun and the figure vanished. He

waited for the cloud to pass away, and well was it for him that he did

so, for just then a great rock which lay, doubtless, upon the extreme

lip of the glacier, loosened from its last hold by the warmth of the

sun, came thundering down the slope of the ice and, leaping over Wi,

fell upon the spot where he had just been standing, making a hole in

the frozen ground and crushing the wolf’s head to a pulp, after which,

with mighty bounds, it vanished towards the beach.

“The Sleeper has protected me,” said Wi to himself, as he turned to

look after the vanishing rock. “Had I stayed where I was, I should