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The big black birds cautiously approached the body and then, deciding that it was not playing possum, tore at it. The eyes disappeared down black throats; the lips were pecked and stripped away; the tongue began to shred away in sharp beaks.
Gribardsun watched the eating indifferently. If anything, he approved. Ravens were one method for getting rid of garbage, of keeping the world clean.
But Silverstein could not stand the sight. He fired, and a raven flew apart in a spray of black feathers. The others took off cawing and flew around describing black interrogation marks. When they fluttered back to the original corpse, they were scared away by another shot. This missed them but struck the head of the corpse and split it open. The ravens returned a second time and began to eat the blood and the brains. Silverstein did not shoot at them again.
Gribardsun stuck his head completely around the tree trunk, only to jerk it back. He was too late, of course, but the bullet gouged out a big piece of trunk and screamed off to the right. A few pieces of wood were stuck in the left side of his face. He picked them out while the blood froze on his cheek.
A few minutes later he jumped. Something had cracked loudly in the woods behind him.
It could have been the cold splitting open a branch, but he could not afford not to investigate. He crawled away, keeping the tree between himself and Silverstein until he got over a low ridge. His scouting revealed nothing except a fox which exploded from beneath a snow-heavy bush, and, a minute later, the hare which the fox had been hunting.
Gribardsun watched the rodent with its big hairy feet bound along on top of the thin frozen crust of the snow. And then darkness exploded in him. When he awoke, he had a sharp pain in the back of his head. He was lying on his side, and his hands were tied behind him. A pair of bison-hide boots were directly in front of his eyes. He looked up along wolf-hide trousers and a spotted black and white horse-hide parka. The man had a long dark beard with red undertones, thick black eyebrows and greenish eyes. He held a reindeer antler-tipped spear.
Gribardsun turned over slowly and saw six other strangers.
A moment later, three more came through the snow with a fourth whose hands were tied behind him.
'This is a fine mess you've gotten us into!' Drummond said.
Gribardsun might have smiled at this if his head had not hurt so much. A stone axe must have been thrown at him. That had to be so, since he was sure that not even an aboriginal woodsman could get close enough to hit him with a weapon in hand before he heard him.
He was sure that they had not arrived after the firing had ended. They must have been burrowed down in the snow, able to see him without his seeing them. Then, when he turned his back, one had gotten up slowly and thrown his axe.
He was surprised that he was still alive, but he was glad. While he lived, he had hope.
A big man lifted him up and set him on his feet. Then he knocked him down again with a fist in his solar plexus.
Gribardsun writhed around for a while, sucking in air, though he was not so badly hurt as he pretended. He had had time to tense his muscles and also to throw himself slightly backward to ride with the blow.
The big man picked him up again, raised his fist, probably expecting Gribardsun to wince, and then lowered it at a word from a man who seemed to be the chief.
Gribardsun and Silverstein were led away to the south with a spearman behind each to prod him if he lagged. Their snowshoes had been left behind. Either the strangers had not seen them use them, and so did not understand their use, or they were ignoring what they had seen because they did not fully comprehend it. But one man carried Drummond's revolver in his belt. The chief carried Gribardsun's rifle. They had gone roughly half a mile when they saw a dozen or so gray shapes drift along the side of the hill, sliding in and out between the trees. The wolves were on their way to the feast.
After two miles of hard walking - or wading - through heavy snow that was sometimes waist-deep, they came to the camp. This was pitched against the south side of a steep hill and consisted of thirty-three wigwam-like tents. Trenches had been cut through the twenty-foot-high drifts to co
At the moment, Gribardsun was in no position to make detailed observations. Some of the women, on hearing of the disastrous casualties, launched screams and wails to the skies and their nails at the faces of the prisoners. Both men suffered deep gashes before the men pulled the women off. Gribardsun, however, kicked three women in the stomach, knocking out two and making the third vomit. He could have killed all three but thought he would be better off if he did not.
The big man who had hit him with his fist laughed when the women went sailing out of the pack. He slapped Gribardsun several times in the face after he had rescued him, but not in a vengeful spirit. The man was gri
The prisoners were led through a trench of snow which rose high over Gribardsun's six-foot-three head. The central tent of the three concentric circles of tents was the largest. The chief lived in this with two adult women - his mother, apparently, and his wife - two juvenile females, a juvenile male, a six-year-old boy and a year-old girl. Wooden frames held the butchered carcasses of a deer and a quarter of a bison and other frames held spears and axes and cutting and chopping stones and sewing equipment of bone and sinew. A single fire in the center, confined in a stone hearth, sent blue smoke upward to the narrow opening in the top. It also sent much of the smoke around the tent.
The occupants were naked except for loin strips, though the temperature was about ten degrees above zero Fahrenheit except very near the fire. The tent stank of stale sweat, saliva burning in the fire, wet furs near the fire, rotting teeth, gummy dirt, rotten meat on some bones in a corner, and excrement in two open dug-out trunks of wood used as chamber pots.
After being out in the open, the stench was almost as bad as a fist blow. But both men had encountered this every time they had entered a winter tent of the Wota'shaimg. Gribardsun had adapted - or at least had not complained - almost immediately. Silverstein had never really become at ease in the stench.
Three men pointed their spears at the two while the women removed the packs from their backs. All their clothes except their shorts were taken off. To get the parkas and undershirts off, their hands were untied. Gribardsun estimated his chances of breaking loose and decided against them. Even if he could get past the spears inside the tent and the mob outside, he would be naked. He still might escape freezing if he ran all the way back to camp. He did not have these people's tolerance for cold, but he had more than most twenty-first centurians.
However, his chances at this time were just too slim. He would wait.
When his hands were retied, they were fastened in front of him. This was an advantage, but his ankle was tied by a tough sinew to the bottom of a tent pole. Silverstein was similarly tethered. The sinew was long enough for them to sit by the fire, which they did without objection from anyone. The chief and the big man seemed amused by the shivering of their prisoners.