Breakaway: Clan of the Ice Mountains (24 page)

The only means of escape to dry land now was that narrow strip of ice. It would take Attu half a sun’s journey to reach the women, around the new chasm that was opening in front of them. There was no way Rika could get Elder Nuanu across the mess of tossed about ice hunks, some taller than Attu. If that last path to safety broke off the rest of the ice, the two women would be completely surrounded by water on a chunk of ice the size of a small encampment. It was large enough to be steady in the water, but they would be unreachable.

As the ice continued to move away, Attu had the sinking feeling they must already be surrounded by water. The end of the ice strip was just too far away for Attu to see if it was still connected to the land or floating free.

Attu stood at the chasm with the others, his heart in his throat. He couldn’t make a leap across; it was far too wide.

Was this the dream coming to life before him?

He considered trying to jump to Rika anyway. Perhaps he could somehow make it across the water and climb the rope to save her. His muscles tensed at the thought, and his father’s hand came down on his shoulder, holding him steady. Paven and Ubantu had climbed back up to the very edge of the chasm and now stood, one on each side of Attu.

“You can’t make it,” his father said. “Wait. One of the hunters might yet survive.”

Moolnik and Banek continued to fight one another, flailing around in the water, oblivious to the clan watching them, oblivious to the danger they would still face if they made it up the rope. Like tooth fish, each fought to stay on a rope while trying to knock the other off. Over and over one of them would fall into the water, only to somehow scramble back up a rope again, knocking the other one off.

But both Moolnik and Banek were weakening; Attu could see that. They had been in the frigid water far too long, and the longer they remained in it, the more desperate they seemed to become.

The clan shouted at them. The other hunters yelled at both men, calling them fools, trying to anger them into helping each other. But it did no good.

Moolnik slipped off the rope again as Banek struck him from behind. Banek grabbed the rope and pulled himself up using each rope, wrapping them both around his arms, then lifting himself with one, grabbing the other one higher up and rewrapping it with a twist around his other arm. Attu winced at the thought of how painful the rope pressure must be on Banek’s forearms, even through the man’s parka, but Banek was making swift progress out of the water this way. Only his feet still dangled in the dark depths. All the while the entire ice chunk continued to move away from land.

Suddenly, Moolnik screamed, a cry that froze Attu’s blood and silenced the clans. Moolnik launched himself out of the water where he had been struggling just moments before. Attu realized he had somehow gotten a foothold on a large ice chunk floating in the water behind him, and it had given him the leverage to push himself up out of the water again.

Moolnik began to climb up Banek’s legs and onto his back. But, this time, he wasn’t just climbing. He was stabbing Banek and climbing up the handholds his knives were making.

J
ust like Yupik had done up the back of the ice bear.

Attu shuddered.

Banek had twisted both arms into the ropes to hold himself, and now he was trapped. Moolnik stabbed and climbed, stabbed and climbed, while the dark water and the ice around it became stained with Banek’s blood. Being a hunter, Moolnik knew just where to stab so the knives would hold his weight... above the knee joint, above the hip bone... Banek screamed.

Tulnu, Moolnik’s woman, screamed as if in answer to Banek and buried her face in her son Kinak’s parka. Suanu turned away, falling to the ground, her hands over her face. Women grabbed their children and turned them away from the grisly sight.

Still Moolnik stabbed and climbed. He threw his arms onto the lip of the ice chunk using Banek’s dead or nearly dead dangling body to push himself up the rest of the way onto the ice’s surface. Banek hung now from impossibly loose arms, his feet still in the water, his head lolling to the side. Moolnik knelt and made two quick slices with his knife, cutting the ropes. Banek’s body slipped into the dark waters and disappeared.

R
ika, seeing the blood soaked Moolnik walking toward her, let out a cry and fell unconscious to the ice. Moolnik turned back to look at the clan. He raised both knives in triumph above his head.

“As if he were a warrior, not an abomination,” Attu heard Paven whisper to himself as he stood beside him.

Attu realized that one of those knives must be Banek’s. Moolnik had somehow grabbed it in their fighting over the rope, then used it, killing Banek with his own knife.

The knife Banek cut me with this very day.

Attu’s hand slipped up to his throat of its own accord, and he shuddered. Now, Banek was dead.
And,
Attu thought,
as much as I hated the man, Banek did not deserve to die this way.

Kinak climbed up to the chasm opening and stood beside Paven, above the rest of the clan. He held up his arm and shook his spear.

The clan grew quiet.

“The man Banek is dead!” Kinak shouted. “But the man Moolnik is also dead!”

Suka was standing on the shoreline below, one hand on his mother Tulnu’s shoulder, the other on his brother Shunut’s head. He nodded. “We no longer have a father,” he said, his voice catching when he said, “father.” Suka struggled to continue. He cleared his throat and looked to Attu and Ubantu. His eyes pleaded with theirs for understanding.

Ubantu nodded and said, “Moolnik is no longer of our lamp fire. And he is not of our clan,” Ubantu added as he nodded at Suka. His strong voice carried far.

Attu knew if the men of his clan didn’t cut off all ties with the murderer Moolnik right now, they faced immediate retribution from Paven’s clan. That Paven’s daughter had been promised to Banek made him as high in status as if he were Paven’s own son. His murder at the hands of one of Attu’s clan must be avenged. Only the shock of watching the horrific scene played out before them had given Moolnik’s family and Ubantu the chance to speak before Paven’s hunters attacked them.

A few hunters from Paven’s clan brandished their spears, but when Paven raised his arm, all became quiet again.

Paven looked at the hunters of Attu’s clan. He studied the two older brothers, Tulnu, and young Shunut. Then he spoke.

“Moolnik has murdered Banek and for this he must pay!”

“Revenge! Revenge!” Paven’s hunters cried.

What did this mean?
Attu thought. He looked to his father.

Ubantu jerked his head to the side.

Wait.

But what about Rika?

Attu was frantic as he watched the ice sheet move further and further from them. Rika still lay slumped to one side. Moolnik was over by the sled, rummaging through Elder Nuanu’s furs, but when he heard the noise of the shouting, Moolnik looked up from where he had been pulling furs off of Elder Nuanu to dry and warm himself, to see the clans, spears up, yelling for revenge.

Moolnik stood and rushed to the side of the large moving ice. He began shouting obscenities back at Paven’s clan from the safety of his ice across the chasm. He made lewd gestures with his hands, spinning on the ice and swearing at them all. The hunters beside Attu screamed back at him.

He’s going to get us all killed.

Attu felt his whole body begin to tremble.

As if seeing it for the first time, Moolnik stopped his gyrations and looked behind him. He dropped to his knees as he saw the open water. As he did, the ice moaned again.

The noise of the shouting, even Moolnik’s craziness, had not roused Rika. Attu feared the shock of seeing Moolnik murder Banek had made Rika’s spirit flee from her body. He stood silently amongst the others, trying to stop shaking, to think.
What can I do?

Paven raised his hand for silence, and as he did, another crack ripped through the air. The clans watched dumbstruck as the ice Rika, Elder Nuanu, and Moolnik were on broke away from the rest of the narrow strip.

The air ripped again with another crack, this time from further north. Attu gasped as a sheet of ice in the distance, the size of a small piece of land the clan might camp on, simply upended. The women screamed and grabbed the children, running back from the shoreline as the mass towered in the air, its shadow almost reaching them even though it was quite far away. The ice hovered like a giant sea creature leaping out of the water before falling again, flipping completely upside down, crashing the ice around it to splinters.

A gigantic wave of water rose up as the ice crashed. It was too late for them to try to get down off the top of the chasm. The men fell to the ice, and Attu clung to a frozen hunk near him, hoping they were high enough to avoid being washed away in the great wall of water that was now rushing toward them.

A fierce rush of wind hit the shoreline as everyone else ran for the hills close behind them. Seconds later, a mammoth wave swept across the ice, the shoreline, and the open water.

Attu watched in horrified fascination as it hit the ice sheet where Rika, Moolnik, and Elder Nuanu were. The ice slowly spun away as the huge wave pushed it up and up before it slipped down the other side, carried forward with the wave. Attu saw Rika, awake now, struggling to hold onto the sled and Elder Nuanu. He saw Moolnik using the cut ends of the rope to keep himself and the sled from slipping off.
He must have wrapped the rest of the rope attached to the sled around the protuberance of ice near the edge again, like I did to keep it steady before,
Attu realized.
In saving himself, it would also help Rika and Elder Nuanu.

The ice sheet seemed to be moving away fast for its size as the wave carried it south. Miraculously, the water had not raised high enough to reach the hunters, but the lower ice behind them was now sheeted with water.

“Rika,” Attu shouted.

I can’t lose her.

He leaped over the other crevice and slid on the watery ice onto the rocky beach, tumbling when he hit the land. He leaped back to his feet and began running after the now disappearing chunk of ice, slipping and sliding on the drenched shoreline.

“Attu,” his mother cried, but Attu didn’t stop running.

Suddenly Kinak was at his side, running with him, carrying Attu’s pack and his new spear.

“Your father says you’ll need this,” he said, and passed the spear off to Attu as they ran. He kept the pack.

Suka raced up to Attu on the other side, his own pack still on his back. They ran along the shoreline, dodging hunks of ice and rocks, trying to catch up with the ice that was still moving, even though the wave had passed.

“The water is flowing, carrying them,” Suka said between breaths.

“But slower now,” Kinak added. Indeed, they were catching up with the floating ice.

“Look, ahead... do you see that higher piece of land... jutting out over the water?” Suka asked.

Attu saw a high point of land just a short distance ahead, sticking far out into the unfrozen water.

If I run just a bit faster...

“Yes!” Kinak said. “The chunk... when it comes close... jump down to Rika. Too high for her... to leap up.” Kinak could barely speak as they ran flat out down the shoreline.

“But fath...” Suka hesitated, “that man... he might...” Suka gave up trying to say anything.

Attu saw the tears streaming down Suka’s face. Having denounced his father from their lamp fire and clan, Moolnik was no longer anything to Suka and Kinak but an evil stranger.
The pain for them both must be almost unbearable
.

“That man... might try... to kill you, too,” Suka finally managed to say.

“I’m sorry... cousin,” Kinak added.

“I have to... try to... save her,” Attu gasped. “I just... have to.”

Suka and Kinak nodded their understanding.

The three young hunters ran up the slope to the crest of land and stopped. The ice chunk was coming fast.

“Wait until the ice... is at its closest to us,” Kinak said, catching his breath. “I’ll throw your pack across to Rika. Suka, throw mine. It has a lamp and oil in it.”

Suka nodded.

“Thank you,” Attu said.

“If we aim true... perhaps both packs will make the ice. You aim true also,” Suka said, his sides still heaving from the run. He grabbed Attu and pounded him twice on the back. Kinak took his turn at grabbing Attu into a hunter’s fierce grasp. He released Attu as suddenly the ice was upon them. The point had somehow deflected it, and it began spinning as it flowed, further out from the land than they’d anticipated.

“Rika!” Suka called first, and he flung the pack with all his strength. Moolnik saw it coming and grabbed it just before it hit. He looked up to smile at his son, but Suka turned away, refusing to look at his father.

Kinak threw his pack next. The ice chunk was closer now, and he easily made the throw. His pack landed neatly beside Elder Nuanu’s sled.

But a pack is not a person,
Attu thought as his eyes measured the expanse of water over which he must jump.
I’ll never make it.

Attu looked up to see Rika’s face. Almost half a spear throw away, now closer, a bit closer. Suddenly, Attu’s spirit spun from his body, up over the ice and rocks of the point. He looked down on himself as he had before, when the ice bear attacked. He saw the distance he must jump and knew he would have to have a running start to make the leap.

Somewhere, mid-leap, Attu’s spirit slammed back into his body. He didn’t remember running a few feet back down the slope. He didn’t remember turning and pushing with his legs, driving himself up to the crest of the hill again in a few bounds, and he didn’t remember leaping toward Rika over the moving water, his feet still running as he launched himself into the air, as if he could run on the very spirits who inhabited it. His spirit fell back into his body, and he was Attu again, flying through the air, and all he could see was Rika.

It was Rika, the Rika of his dream, reaching out to him, calling to him, as if her desire for his safety could reel him in like a tooth fish, land him like a nuknuk onto the ice. He felt her spirit pull him the rest of the way, and Attu crashed, one leg on the moving ice, one dangling in the air. Rika pulled him to her, and Attu fell on top of her as she fell backward onto the ice.