'Hurry, Imnak!' I called. I could not understand why he still cut blocks, which he had no time to place in the walls. Too, I did not understand why Poalu should be busying herself with melting snow over the flat, oval lamp. This seemed a strange time to engage in such domestic chores.
The sleen were now, like a black cloud, breaking apart in the wind, and then rejoining, flooding toward us over the ice. The cloud was no more now than a quarter of a pasang away.
'Is this the end, Master?' asked Arlene.
'It would seem so,' I said. 'For my part, it will be a good fight. I am sorry, however, that you are here.'
'Will you not free me?' she asked.
'No,' I said.
If we were to die beneath the fangs of the sleen I would be torn apart as a free man, and she as a slave. It was what we were.
'Yes, Master,' she said.
The hideous crying of the sleen was nclw piercing to our ears. We could hear, too, in the cold air, even the panting of the animals, their gasping, the scratching of their claws scattering snow and ice behind them, on the ice.
Imnak now, with a knife, cut down at the ice some twenty feet from the partially erected shelter.
The sleen were now some two hundred yards away, swift, frenzied.
Imnak hurried to the low wall of the half-erected shelter. There, instead of joining us, he took from Poalu a slice of meat and, in the other hand, the handle of the water kettle. He hurried to the hole he had cut in the ice. He thrust the meat on the blade of the knife and then thrust the handle of the knife down into the hole he had cut in the ice. He poured the water then into the hole in the ice, about the handle of the knife. He waited only a moment, for the water, poured into the icy hole in the subzero temperatures, froze almost instantly, anchoring the knife with the solidity of a spike in cement.
'Hurry!' I cried.
A sleen was on Imnak. He fell rolling with the animal. I leaped over the low wall and ran to him, driving the lance into the animal, then holding it down on the ice, it snapping at the lance, while Imnak, his furs torn, leaped up. He kicked at a sleen which was leaping toward me, striking it in the snout. I pulled the lance free of the wounded animal which scrambled up, fangs wide, and, with the butt of the lance, struck back another sleen. Imnak was shouting in my ear. With the point of the lance I fended back the jaws of the wounded sleen. Then there were other sleen about us, twisting, circling. Imnak, shouting, kicking, dragged me back toward the shelter. Another sleen brushed past me. I felt another tear at the fur on my boot. Then Imnak and I stood within that small, low rampart, each armed with a lance. The full flood of sleen, the pack at large, not the lead animals, then swept about the small, circular shelter, hissing and squealing. Their eyes blazed in the moonlight. I thrust one back from the wall with the lance. Imnak, too, thrust animals away. Our own sleen was frenzied at our feet, struggling. An animal leaped into the snow circle and I, bodily, under it, lifted it over the wall and hurled it among others. Audrey screamed. Poalu threw oil from the lamp, burning, into the face of another animal. Arlene, screaming, reeled back from another animal, half over the wall, her sleeve torn open. I caught the animal under the throat with one hand and, getting another hand on its left foreleg, thrust it back over the wall among the others. Imnak thrust back another sleen. I again seized up the lance which I had carried. I thrust it into the face of another sleen, its head up, crouching to spring at the wall. It twisted away, hissing and snarling.
Then the sleen were outside, some twenty or thirty feet away, dark on the ice, though they were snow sleen. Some circled the shelter.
One sped toward the shelter and leaped upward but I managed to meet its charge with the lance point and it, its face bloodied, twisted, the lance through the side of the mouth, and I managed to deflect its charge to the side and it fell, snarling, slipping free of the lance, to the side of the shelter, Imnak thrust two others back.
Then it was quiet for a time.
'There are so many,' said Arlene.
'It is a large pack,' I said.
I could not well count the animals in the uncertain light and shadows, and with their dark minglings and changings of position, but it was clear that there were a large number of beasts there, probably more than fifty. Some sleen packs run as high as one hundred and twenty animals.
'I wish you well, Imnak,' I said.
'Are you going somewhere?' he asked. 'This is not a good time to do so.'
'There are a great many sleen out there,' I said.
'That is true,' said Imnak.
'Are you not ready to die?' I asked him.
'Not me,' he said. 'Red hunters do not expect to die,' he said. 'They may die, but it always comes as a surprise to them.'
I threw back my head and laughed like an idiot.
'Why do you laugh, Tarl, who hunts with me?' he asked.
'In the strait circumstances in which we now find ourselves immeshed, I gather,' I said, 'that you have no intention of dying.'
'That is exactly it,' he said. 'You have hit it. That is not something I have planned on.'
'Imnak,' said Poalu, 'does not fear the sleen of death.'
'If he comes around me,' said Imnak, 'I will hitch him to my sled.'
'I would be proud to die beside you, Imnak,' I said.
'I am an even better fellow to live beside,' said Imnak. 'This is my view of the matter.'
'I will accept that,' I said.
I looked down into the eyes of Arlene.
'Is there no hope?' she asked.
'All is lost, I fear,' I said. 'I wish you were not here.'
She put her head against my arm. She looked up at me. 'I would rather be nowhere else than here,' she said.
'I would rather be in the feasting house,' said Imnak.
'All is not lost,' said Poalu.
'Look,' said Imnak.
I looked out, several feet across the ice. 'No,' I said, in repulsion.
'Do you wish to live?' asked Imnak.
'Yes,' I said.
'Then we must do what is necessary to achieve that aim,' he said.
I looked out, across the ice, understanding then the effectiveness, the hideous efficiency, of the sleen trap which Imnak had so swiftly constructed, the sleen pack nearing the shelter as he had worked.
One of the larger animals circled the meat on the knife twice and then, suddenly, bit at it, to tear it from the blade. He ripped the meat from the blade, making away with it, his jaws cut by the knife's edge. There was then hot fresh blood on the knife. Another sleen, frenzied with the smell, ribs protruding from its fur, racked with hunger, hurried to the knife, licking at the blood. As it did so, of course, the blade, anchored fixedly in the ice, cut its mouth, its lips and tongue. In the frenzy of its hunger the sleen, further stimulated by the newly shed blood, redoubled its efforts to lap it up. Another animal, larger, bit at it, and shouldered it from the blade, it then licking at the blood, unwittingly cutting itself, its mouth and tongue, as well. There was dark blood, frozen about the stained, exposed blade. One sleen attacked the first animal, which was profusely bleeding at the mouth. In a raging, vicious tangle of whirling fur and snapping jaws the two animals fought. One's throat was ripped open and, instantly, four or five dark shapes on the ice attacked the fallen animal, thrusting their heads, fangs tearing, feeding, into its belly. It squealed hideously. Other sleen tried to thrust into the orgy. Two or three scrambled literally onto the backs of the feeders, trying to push down between them. Other sleen ran to the knife. The blood on it, in the moment it had been left alone, had frozen on the steel. Two sleen fought to lick the frozen blood from the blade. Instantly as the blade cut their lips and tongue there was again hot, fresh blood on the steel. A sleen can kill itself in this manner, licking at the blade until it bleeds to death.
Arlene and Audrey looked away.
But no sleen that night bled to death, a victim of the simple, cruel trap, for there were too many animals
