On the walk to the shelter Wayland spotted four or five foxes. They were a real pest.
He inserted himself into the chamber and looked up at Syth. ‘Don’t wander too far from the cave.’ He cradled the dog’s jaw. ‘Keep good care of her.’
Syth retreated. The falcon sat with her head sunk into her shoulders. He agitated his left hand to make the pigeon flutter. The falcon paid no attention. A fox trotted past with a lemming in its jaws and stopped to stare at the pigeon. Wayland hissed and it bounded away. Despite the extra fleeces he’d brought, he grew torpid with cold. Sunlight glaring off the glacier made his forehead throb.
His attention wandered. He was daydreaming about Syth’s breasts and her pliant waist when a spot floated across his vision. He blinked to dislodge it. The spot grew larger and he realised it was the falcon, gliding towards him on half-closed wings. Her velocity was deceptive. From fifty yards away he could hear the air whining through her pinions. Fifteen yards from the hide she feathered her wings, rowed back and landed on the snow. She was nervous. She kept staring at the pigeon and then glancing away. She’d never seen one before and couldn’t understand why it didn’t fly. At last she decided it was prey and ran towards it at a bandy-legged trot. She stopped again and now she was so close that Wayland could see the scales on her crocus yellow feet. He was easing the mitt off his right hand with his teeth when she bobbed her head at something behind the trap. She bobbed again and flung herself into the air with a harsh cry. Her wingtips whisked the snow and she was gone. Wayland groaned and sank his head on to his forearm. He was sure that the falcon hadn’t seen him. A fox must have spooked her.
Rock clunked on rock. Wayland’s neck prickled. Foxes were too light of foot to make a noise as loud as that. Syth must have grown worried and come to make sure he was all right. He forced back his irritation and waited for her to declare herself.
No call and no footfalls. Some instinct honed during his years living wild warned him not to make a sound. He waited. A sharp report made him jump. Only the glacier fracturing. The silence stretched. He lay listening with his mouth open and his eyes cocked upwards. The glacier groaned. The ice was always contracting and expanding, producing unsettling noises. The knocking sound he’d heard was probably just a stone released from the melting snow. But why had the falcon cried out in alarm? Lying in his cold pit, he remembered Orm’s campfire tales of polar giants with bodies of stone and ice patched with the flayed skins of humans.
Something snorted. Wayland’s scalp crawled. He listened unbreathing, his throat tight. The pigeon was terrified and lay splayed on the snow as if dead. He snatched it inside and felt inside his sleeping bag for his knife. His belt had twisted beneath him and he couldn’t locate the sheath. He heaved himself up and ran his hand around his waist until his fingers contacted the knife. Before he could draw it, he heard snow creak. He choked back a gasp as a shadow fell across the entrance.
He brought the knife up. His bow lay beside him, useless. Another snuffle from outside — the sound of a predator homing in on prey. He knew what it was, had known almost from the start without daring to acknowledge it.
Two giant white legs dropped across the entrance, almost blocking out the light. The bear was on top of the hide. Two more legs appeared as it climbed down. The bear turned to face the hide. He could see only its huge shaggy legs clothed with yellowish fur that looked translucent against the sun. Its paws were as wide as trenchers and armed with black claws as long and thick as his thumbs.
Its head appeared, weaving from side to side. Shock made Wayland jerk back and crack his skull against the roof. The bear rammed its head into the entrance and blew a gust of foul fishy breath into his face. It snarled, exposing yellow fangs and black gums. He’d crammed himself back in his shelter and the bear’s jaws were less than a foot from his face. It shoved forward, gaining another few inches. He gave a throat-lacerating scream and the bear grunted and pulled its head out.
He lay gasping. Moments later it was back, feeling with one paw. Claws scraped across rock and hooked into the top of his sleeping bag. It began to pull the bag out with him inside it. He braced against the walls. The bear increased its pressure and the bag ripped open. Eider down floated out into the sunlight. The bear reached in again.
‘Here!’ Wayland shouted, throwing the pigeon forward.
A pathetic flutter, a strike too fast to see, and the pigeon had gone. Wayland heard its bones being crunched like eggshells. He knew he had very little time before the bear resumed its attack and he used it to struggle out of his sleeping bag. He drew his knees up almost to his chin and struggled back into a foetal position. The paw reached in again. Cramped against the back of the hide, Wayland watched the armoured mitt feel this way and that. It took all of his strength to maintain his contorted posture and he knew that eventually he’d have to relax his limbs and then the bear would have him.
He raised his knife, waited for the paw to complete a sweep, and drove the blade into the meat of the paw. The bear squealed and pulled its paw away before Wayland could withdraw the knife. It spun out of his grasp and bounced into the snow beyond the entrance.
A long silence. Had the bear gone? The knife lay just out of reach. To retrieve it he’d have to expose his head and shoulders. He remembered how fast the bear had struck at the pigeon. Wait a little longer. His joints burned. Soon he wouldn’t be able to move. He straightened out his legs with his hands and hissed with the pain of returning circulation. He flexed his knees. Still no sign of the bear. He’d given it a sore thrust. It must have gone. He eyed the blade lying on the snow. If the bear had turned tail, he didn’t need the weapon, but unarmed he felt so defenceless.
The bear had gone. He was sure of it. Slowly he slid forward. He was about to extend his hand when he heard a crunching sound directly above. He shrank back and rolled on his side and looked up. The bear was on the roof scraping away the snow. Its claws gouged across rock and he knew that it was trying to dig him out. Impossible, he told himself. The roof was a one-foot-thick slab more than seven feet long, welded to its foundations by ice.
He remembered what Orm had said about bears flipping seals over their shoulders as if they were herrings. Something else Orm had told him. Sometimes a white bear would overturn a boulder the size of a hut just to get at a nest of mice. Wayland moaned with dread.
A paw groped down and hooked under the lip of the roof. It heaved up and with that single move the ice cracked along the foundations. The bear strained again and the roof lifted and slid a few inches sideways before crashing back. Wayland could see part of the bear’s flank through the gap. One more effort and he’d be exposed like some helpless larva. He grasped his bow and howled with cries such as men must have given before they’d discovered speech. The roof swung further askew and he felt a draught on his lower legs and knew they were exposed. The bear didn’t have to pull him out. It would start eating him alive from his feet up. He didn’t stop to think. Still screaming, he scurried out on his elbows.
He stumbled to his feet, lost his balance and skittered over the snow on knuckles and toes. He jumped up and spun, jabbing with his bow. The bear was only feet away, staring in the opposite direction, swinging its head in slow puzzlement. It was the dog. It came tearing over the broken ground giving tongue with a frantic two-tone baying. Wayland backed away and the bear turned and peered at him. He froze. For a long moment it studied him, then it swung its head back to face the dog. Wayland retreated and fumbled an arrow from his quiver. He dropped it.
The dog skidded to a stop in front of the bear. Still barking, it made furious rushes and retreats. The bear roared and galloped towards it. The dog danced off, playing the decoy. Wayland had drawn another arrow and was trying to string it when he saw Syth running towards him.
‘Get back!’
She paid no attention.
The dog darted behind the bear and nipped one of its hams. The bear whirled and lashed out and the dog sprang to one side with a hair’s-breadth to spare. The bear reared up on its hind legs and only when Wayland saw it towering over his giant dog did he appreciate its awesome size. The dog dodged and feinted and the bear dropped back on to all fours and loped towards Syth.
‘Run!’ Wayland shouted. He drew his bow and aimed, aware that the chances of killing the bear with a single arrow were remote.
The dog sprinted to cut off the bear and crouched with its head between its elbows. Syth stood only a few yards behind it. She reached down and scooped up a handful of snow and threw it. The pathetic missile didn’t even carry as far as the dog.
