Breakaway: Clan of the Ice Mountains (28 page)

“She’s still here with us,” Rika said, finishing Attu’s thought. She smiled up at Attu. “That’s what you were going to say, isn’t it?”

“Yes. You feel her, too?”

Rika nodded, her face lighting up with a smile that turned to a frown as Moolnik moaned. She walked back to check on him.

Attu continued watching for an ice chunk to spear. “Got it!” he called out as his spear landed in the center of the ice he was aiming for. He began hauling in the rope.

“You son of a trysta and an ice bear!” Rika swore, a few moments later.

Attu spun around, almost dropping the rope he was holding. “What’s wrong?”

“Moolnik is feverish again. He was flailing around just now, and he knocked the sleeping potion out of my hands. It spilled in the snow.” Rika looked at the dark stain spreading across the ice in front of her.

Attu’s stomach fell. “Is that all you had?”

“Yes. I’m sorry.” Rika brushed away fresh tears of frustration. “Help me!” she cried as Moolnik began thrashing again.

“I can’t let go of the rope!”

Moolnik rolled onto his back and suddenly stopped thrashing and started snoring loudly instead, punctuated with nasal grunts. Attu started laughing at the ridiculousness of their situation with Moolnik, but one look at Rika stopped him. She’d sat down next to Moolnik again, and her face was a mask as she stared off at some distant horizon only she could see. Her tears sparkled as they fell.

“Come here,” Attu called to her. “Please?”

Rika looked up when he called. Attu could see she was trying to come back to him, trying to stop crying.

“Please?” Attu asked again, more softly this time.

Rika sighed, and slowly rising, she walked to stand beside Attu.

Attu bunched the rope he was reeling in into one hand and reached up with the other to wipe the tears off her face.

At his touch, Rika flinched away.

“It’s all right to cry, Rika,” Attu said. He didn’t try to touch her again.

“I’m sorry.” Rika scrubbed at her own face. “It’s my fault the potion got spilled. What will we do now?”

“Do you have anything else you can give Moolnik to keep him in the Between of dreaming?”

“I have one other potion, but it’s dangerous.”

“How?”

“It’s tricky to give the right amount. Just the slightest bit too much and it can make a person’s spirit flee out of his body.”

“Well,” Attu said, his voice as gentle as he could make it. “I think it’s better than the alternative for Moolnik, don’t you?”

Rika looked at him. He saw her fear. He thought about how when he’d first met Rika, she had sat, the hair across her face, as if trying to hide herself from others. He knew Banek had struck her and Paven had apparently been satisfied with Rika being given to such a harsh man. Meavu had warned Attu about Paven not respecting women. Paven had hinted he might be ruthless to acquire one, even Attu’s own mother if he’d chosen to fight Ubantu for her. It made sense that Paven had also been cruel to Rika, his own daughter.

Was Rika scared of him because he was a man? Attu needed to let her see he wouldn’t hurt her, that theirs was an equal partnership. He believed in the true way of the Nuvikuan-na, not the way some hunters behaved. But he knew his words alone wouldn’t calm her fear. He would have to earn her trust.

What should I do?

What you can...
Attu suddenly heard Elder Nuanu’s voice as if she were next to him, whispering in his ear on the breeze. It startled him so much that he jumped, and looked at Elder Nuanu’s body, checking to make sure she truly was dead.

Attu looked back to see Rika studying him.

“I trust you to give Moolnik just what you need to keep him asleep, no more.”

Rika exhaled, and Attu realized she must have been afraid he would tell her to kill Moolnik with the potion.

“I would never ask you to go against what the spirits in your dreams have told you to do,” Attu said.

Rika studied him. The fear was fading from her eyes. She turned and walked to her pack, pulling out her bag of potions. She began rummaging through them.

Attu continued to haul on the rope. His back and legs were aching, but he had to get them as close to shore as he could while they still had so many ice chunks floating by.

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T
wice more that sun, ice hit them as they traveled south. Once, Attu almost fell into the water, and after that he tried to stand further back from the edge. It made the pulling harder, but the ice upon which they floated was growing increasingly unstable and by late in the day, they were standing on ice only about the size of a large gathering snow house. Attu didn’t think they’d make it through the night without either being broken up by another ice chunk or by simply melting. And they still had half the distance to go. Each time he threw the spear, they only gained a few spear lengths toward the shoreline, and sometimes it seemed the water flowing along pulled them back out almost as fast as he could pull them in. They could see the land more clearly now, though; if a person had been standing on the shoreline, Attu thought he might have been able to tell who it was, but of course there was no one but them as far as they could see, and the icy water still held them trapped.

Attu began to take chances, throwing the spear further, dragging them toward the ice chunks faster, causing theirs to rock. Rika stood by him, pulling when she could, then going back to check on Moolnik, who continued to moan and thrash occasionally, although Rika said his fever had subsided.

Late in the day, they were approaching a large peninsula, not high like the one he had jumped off to reach Rika, but flat, curving out like a bent finger far into the water. Attu scanned the water for another ice piece to spear. Judging the distance they had to go and the speed they were traveling along the shore, it looked like they wouldn’t be able to reach the peninsula, but would float by it. Attu ignored the pain in his arm and shoulder muscles as he raised the spear and took aim at the next available floating ice. He had to try to get them to that peninsula.

Rika screamed.

Attu whirled around, spear in hand, to see the largest animal of the Nuvikuan-na rising out of the water behind them.

Attu ran to Rika, and she clung to him as the huge beast continued to rise up, up, and up out of the water, its body seeming to have no end. Attu saw its hide was sleek, a grey color not unlike some older nuknuks, but that was where the resemblance ended. This animal was like the landmass that had upended, sweeping away the ice chunks, and it was so close it blocked out the whole western sky. The late afternoon sun behind it made the huge animal seem to glow.

A whale fish!

Once the whale fish had surfaced, it seemed to rest, allowing the water’s movement to carry it along like a huge ice sheet. It was moving a bit faster than they were.
Will it hit us with its side as it floats by, crushing us, ice and all?

Drawing alongside them, the animal paused. One snow house-sized eye looked at them. Attu saw intelligence in its eye, and suddenly he was no longer afraid. This animal was the most amazing thing he’d ever seen, even more amazing than a land with trees or water where there should have been the Great Frozen.

Attu loosened his grip on Rika and stood, stepping closer to the animal on the ice.

“No,” Rika whispered.

“It’s all right,” Attu said. He bowed to the whale fish and spoke. “Mightiest of all hunters, ruler in the Here and Now of Attuanin’s Kingdom and of the whole world of water below, I am Attu, poor hunter of the above ice, and I give you honor.”

Attu struck his spear shaft across his chest three times. “I have always thought of you as ruler only in the Between. Please accept my apology. I was ignorant.” Attu dropped his head, as one shamed.

The whale fish seemed to dip his massive head as well before plunging back into the water. Attu had a moment of wonder as the sleek body disappeared into the deep before he saw the huge flippered tail above him.

“Rika!” Attu warned, and fell to the ice.

He heard Rika’s answering yell as the whale fish’s tail flippers hit the water. It missed the ice chunk, but sent them careening through the water on a wave at least three spear lengths in height. The salt water of the Great Deep sprayed over their heads, and they were pushed toward the shore at a tremendous rate.

Attu tried to stand up, but the swirling ice chunk was rocking back and forth in the water. He fell down and stayed there, afraid he might be thrown off the ice if he didn’t. As they continued to speed toward shore, Attu realized if they didn’t break up, the wave made by the whale fish’s tail might carry them all the way to the peninsula.

“Rika, are you all right?” Attu hollered.

Nothing.

“Rika!” Attu tried to stand up again, but fell. He spun in circles on his stomach, searching, but he couldn’t see Rika anywhere on the ice.

Oh no,
Attu thought.
Attuanin, is this how you treat your namesake, by hitting him with a whale fish and drowning his woman?

“Rika,” Attu yelled again, this time out over the water back the way they had come.
She can’t have fallen off...

Then he heard something, a noise coming from behind Elder Nuanu’s body.

“Rika?” Attu cried, scrambling toward the sound on all fours as the ice continued to spin toward shore.

“I’m...” she said, but her voice cut off.

“Hang on!” Attu said. “I’m coming.” He saw Rika sitting up near Elder Nuanu’s body, and relief poured through him at the sight of her. He began crawling even faster toward her, but a sudden jolt dropped him flat again, and he looked to his left to see them ricocheting off another ice chunk. An arm’s length of ice fell off the side.
If we get hit again,
Attu thought, it might be the end...

Their ice slowed, and with a few back and forth movements and some slight tipping, it was once again riding on the smoother water.

“Attu,” Rika said.

Attu scrambled to his feet again and looked to where Rika was sitting, just in front of him.

“Rika, are you all...” Attu began.

“She will be fine, as long as you do exactly what I tell you to do.”

Moolnik was kneeling behind Rika, half-hidden in some furs and crouching low. One arm was around Rika’s neck, Banek’s knife at her throat.

“Moolnik!” Attu yelled. “What are you doing? That’s Rika. She’s been taking care of you ever since you got out of the water.”

“Drugging me, you mean,” Moolnik snarled. “But I’ve been more in the Here and Now than she thought. I’ve tricked you all into thinking I was still Between, when I have seen you throwing your spear and dragging us to land. I will hold her here, so she can’t give me any more of her foul potions, and you’re going to get us the rest of the way.”

Attu looked past Moolnik. They WERE within a spear’s throw of the peninsula. Ahead of them lay a large icy shoreline. If Attu could spear it, he could pull them to land.

Attu took in a deep breath, trying to calm himself. This was their chance. But he needed to know what Moolnik’s plan was, so he could think of some way to get Rika away from him before he hurt her.

“Then what, Moolnik?” Attu asked. “We just go our separate ways, like nothing happened? I give you some supplies, and Rika and I head south while you go wherever it is you want to go?”

“You don’t get it, do you, you fool?” Moolnik spat off to the side. A look of smug satisfaction crossed Moolnik’s sunken face. “You pull us to land and I will let you live. I take the supplies and the woman. That’s the way it’s going to be.”

Rika started to struggle at Moolnik’s words, but Moolnik twisted her arm behind her back with his free one until she screamed.

“Stop that!” Attu yelled.
Why didn’t I kill him earlier? I know what kind of man he is. Why did I allow Rika to convince me to show mercy?

“Get us off this spirit forsaken hunk of rotting ice right now, or I’ll hurt her again.” Moolnik smiled. He looked like he hoped Attu would continue to protest, just so he could make Rika scream again.

Elder Nuanu was right. Even Moolnik was never this cruel before. The Moolnikuan spirit must be controlling him.

Attu looked at Rika. Her face was pale, her eyes hard. He saw that glint of fire in their golden depths.
She is not beaten, not yet.

“I’ll do what I can,” Attu said, and hoped the tone of his voice would convey his message to Rika. He wouldn’t let Moolnik take her, would not let him live to see another sun rise. But first, he had to get them off the water onto solid ground.

Attu turned and picked up his spear. He’d have impaled Moolnik with it in a second, if Moolnik wasn’t holding Rika’s back up against his chest, using her as a shield.

Coward.

Attu gathered up the rope in readiness and hurled the spear to the closest point of the ice-covered land. It stuck firmly. He began pulling what little remained of their ice sheet to shore.

A
ttu was exhausted from the day’s throws and pulls across the ice, but his fury at Moolnik and his fear for Rika fueled his muscles to pull them all toward the shoreline, even though it was harder this time with the land being stationary. Something tore deep in his back muscles as Attu pulled, and he bit his lip to keep from crying out from the pain. He kept on pulling, the taste of blood in his mouth.

The whale fish had probably saved their lives, pushing them almost to shore, past where any other ice chunks had been floating, but all Attu could think about now was Rika, with Moolnik holding Banek’s knife at her throat.

Attu pulled as more pieces fell away. He glanced back to see Moolnik watching him as he dragged Rika around in front of himself, using a free hand to pull on his old fur leggings and inner vest and gathering up items to carry off the ice. Once he was ready, Moolnik moved with Rika toward Elder Nuanu’s body, instructing her to push it off to the side, away from the rest of the supplies.

Rika was silent the whole time she worked, doing what Moolnik told her to do, not even protesting when Moolnik made her unwrap the large fur from around Elder Nuanu’s body, leaving her laying on the ice just in her own clothes, marked with the signs of the dead Rika had painted on her face.