* * * * *
When spring came Steve Schroeder was leader, as Lake had wanted. It was
a duty and a responsibility that would be under circumstances different
from those of any of the leaders before him. The grim fight was over for
a while. They were adapted and increasing in number; going into Big
Summer and into a renascence that would last for fifty years. They would
have half a century in which to develop their environment to its fullest
extent. Then Big Fall would come, to destroy all they had accomplished,
and the Gerns would come, to destroy them.
It was his job to make certain that by then they would be stronger than
either.
* * * * *
He went north with nine men as soon as the weather permitted. It was
hard to retrace the route of the summer before, without compasses, among
the hills which looked all the same as far as their binoculars could
reach, and it was summer when they saw the hill with the monument. They
found Lake's bones a few miles south of it, scattered by the scavengers
as were the little bones of his mocker. They buried them together, man
and mocker, and went silently on toward the hill.
They had brought a little hand-cranked diamond drill with them to bore
holes in the hard granite and black powder for blasting. They mined the
vein, sorting out the ore from the waste and saving every particle.
The vein was narrow at the surface and pinched very rapidly. At a depth
of six feet it was a knife-blade seam; at ten feet it was only a red
discoloration in the bottom of their shaft.
"That seems to be all of it," he said to the others. "We'll send men up
here next year to go deeper and farther along its course but I have an
idea we've just mined all of the only iron vein on Ragnarok. It will be
enough for our purpose."
They sewed the ore in strong rawhide sacks and then prospected, without
success, until it was time for the last unicorn band to pass by on its
way south. They trapped ten unicorns and hobbled their legs, with other
ropes reaching from horn to hind leg on each side to prevent them from
swinging back their heads or even lifting them high.
They had expected the capture and hobbling of the unicorns to be a
difficult and dangerous job and it was. But when they were finished the
unicorns were helpless. They could move awkwardly about to graze but
they could not charge. They could only stand with lowered heads and fume
and rumble.
The ore sacks were tied on one frosty morning and the men mounted. The
horn-leg ropes were loosened so the unicorns could travel, and the
unicorns went into a frenzy of bucking and rearing, squealing with rage
as they tried to impale their riders.
The short spears, stabbing at the sensitive spot behind the jawbones of
the unicorns, thwarted the backward flung heads and the unicorns were
slowly forced into submission. The last one conceded temporary defeat
and the long journey to the south started, the unicorns going in the run
that they could maintain hour after hour.
Each day they pushed the unicorns until they were too weary to fight at
night. Each morning, rested, the unicorns resumed the battle. It became
an expected routine for both unicorns and men.
The unicorns were released when the ore was unloaded at the foot of the
hill before the caves and Schroeder went to the new waterwheel, where
the new generator was already in place. There George Craig told him of
the unexpected obstacle that had appeared.
"We're stuck," George said. "The aluminum ore isn't what we thought it
would be. It's scarce and very low grade, of such a complex nature that
we can't refine it to the oxide with what we have to work with on
Ragnarok."
"Have you produced any aluminum oxide at all?" Schroeder asked.
"A little. We might have enough for the wire in a hundred years if we
kept at it hard enough."
"What else do you need--was there enough cryolite?" he asked.
"Not much of it, but enough. We have the generator set up, the smelting
box built and the carbon lining and rods ready. We have everything we
need to smelt aluminum ore--except the aluminum ore."
"Go ahead and finish up the details, such as installing the lining," he
said. "We didn't get this far to be stopped now."
But the prospecting parties, making full use of the time left them
before winter closed down, returned late that fall to report no sign of
the ore they needed.
Spring came and he was determined they would be smelting aluminum before
the summer was over even though he had no idea where the ore would be
found. They needed aluminum ore of a grade high enough that they could
extract the pure aluminum oxide. Specifically, they needed aluminum
oxide....
Then he saw the answer to their problem, so obvious that all of them had
overlooked it.
He passed by four children playing a game in front of the caves that
day; some kind of a checker-like game in which differently colored rocks
represented the different children. One boy was using red stones; some
of the rubies that had been brought back as curios from the chasm.
Rubies were of no use or value on Ragnarok; only pretty rocks for
children to play with....
Only pretty rocks?--_rubies and sapphires were corundum, were pure
aluminum oxide!_
He went to tell George and to arrange for a party of men to go into the
chasm after all the rubies and sapphires they could find. The last
obstacle had been surmounted.
The summer sun was hot the day the generator hummed into life. The
carbon-lined smelting box was ready and the current flowed between the
heavy carbon rods suspended in the cryolite and the lining, transforming
the cryolite into a liquid. The crushed rubies and sapphires were fed
into the box, glowing and glittering in blood-red and sky-blue
scintillations of light, to be deprived by the current of their life and
fire and be changed into something entirely different.
When the time came to draw off some of the metal they opened the orifice
in the lower corner of the box. Molten aluminum flowed out into the
ingot mold in a little stream; more beautiful to them than any gems
could ever be, bright and gleaming in its promise that more than six
generations of imprisonment would soon be ended.
* * * * *
The aluminum smelting continued until the supply of rubies and sapphires
in the chasm had been exhausted but for small and scattered fragments.
It was enough, with some aluminum above the amount needed for the wire.
It was the year one hundred and fifty-two when they smelted the
aluminum. In eight more years they would reach the middle of Big Summer;
the suns would start their long drift southward, not to return for one
hundred and fifty years. Time was passing swiftly by for them and there
was none of it to waste....
The making of ceramics was developed to an art, as was the making of
different types of glass. Looms were built to spin thread and cloth from
woods goat wool, and vegetable dyes were discovered. Exploration parties
crossed the continent to the eastern and western seas: salty and
lifeless seas that were bordered by immense deserts. No trees of any
kind grew along their shores and ships could not be built to cross them.
Efforts were continued to develop an inorganic field of chemistry, with
discouraging results, but in one hundred and fifty-nine the orange corn
was successfully adapted to the elevation and climate of the caves.
There was enough that year to feed the mockers all winter, supply next
year's seeds, and leave enough that it could be ground and baked into
bread for all to taste.
It tasted strange, but good. It was, Schroeder thought, symbolic of a
great forward step. It was the first time in generations that any of
them had known any food but meat. The corn would make them less
dependent upon hunting and, of paramount importance, it was the type of
food to which they would have to become accustomed in the future--they
could not carry herds of woods goats and unicorns with them on Gern
battle cruisers.
The lack of metals hindered them wherever they turned in their efforts
to build even the simplest machines or weapons. Despite its dubious
prospects, however, they made a rifle-like gun.
The barrel of it was thick, of the hardest, toughest ceramic material
they could produce. It was a cumbersome, heavy thing, firing with a
flintlock action, and it could not be loaded with much powder lest the
charge burst the barrel.
The flintlock ignition was not instantaneous, the lightweight porcelain
bullet had far less penetrating power than an arrow, and the thing
boomed and belched out a cloud of smoke that would have shown the Gerns
exactly where the shooter was located.
It was an interesting curio and the firing of it was something
spectacular to behold but it was a weapon apt to be much more dangerous
to the man behind it than to the Gern it was aimed at. Automatic
crossbows were far better.
Woods goats had been trapped and housed during the summers in shelters
where sprays of water maintained a temperature cool enough for them to
survive. Only the young were kept when fall came, to be sheltered
through the winter in one of the caves. Each new generation was
subjected to more heat in the summer and more cold in the winter than
the generation before it and by the year one hundred and sixty the woods
goats were well on their way toward adaptation.
The next year they trapped two unicorns, to begin the job of adapting
and taming future generations of them. If they succeeded they would have
utilized the resources of Ragnarok to the limit--except for what should
be their most valuable ally with which to fight the Gerns: the
prowlers.
For twenty years prowlers had observed a truce wherein they would not go
hunting for men if men would stay away from their routes of travel. But
it was a truce only and there was no indication that it could ever
evolve into friendship.
Three times in the past, half-grown prowlers had been captured and caged
in the hope of taming them. Each time they had paced their cages,
looking longingly into the distance, refusing to eat and defiant until
they died.
To prowlers, as to some men, freedom was more precious than life. And
each time a prowler had been captured the free ones had retaliated with
a resurgence of savage attacks.
There seemed no way that men and prowlers could ever meet on common
ground. They were alien to one another, separated by the gulf of an
origin on worlds two hundred and fifty light-years apart. Their only
common heritage was the will of each to battle.
But in the spring of one hundred and sixty-one, for a little while one
day, the gulf was bridged.
* * * * *
Schroeder was returning from a trip he had taken alone to the east,
coming down the long canyon that led from the high face of the plateau
to the country near the caves. He hurried, glancing back at the black
clouds that had gathered so quickly on the mountain behind him. Thunder
rumbled from within them, an almost continuous roll of it as the clouds
poured down their deluge of water.
A cloudburst was coming and the sheer-walled canyon down which he
hurried had suddenly become a death trap, its sunlit quiet soon to be
transformed into roaring destruction. There was only one place along its
nine-mile length where he might climb out and the time was already short
in which to reach it.
He had increased his pace to a trot when he came to it, a talus of
broken rock that sloped up steeply for thirty feet to a shelf. A ledge
eleven feet high stood over the shelf and other, lower, ledges set back
from it like climbing steps.
At the foot of the talus he stopped to listen, wondering how close
behind him the water might be. He heard it coming, a sound like the
roaring of a high wind up the canyon, and he scrambled up the talus of
loose rock to the shelf at its top. The shelf was not high enough above
the canyon's floor--he would be killed there--and he followed it fifty
feet around a sharp bend. There it narrowed abruptly, to merge into the
sheer wall of the canyon. Blind alley....
He ran back to the top of the talus where the edge of the ledge, ragged
with projections of rock, was unreachably far above him. As he did so
the roaring was suddenly a crashing, booming thunder and he saw the
water coming.
It swept around the bend at perhaps a hundred miles an hour, stretching
from wall to wall of the canyon, the crest of it seething and slashing
and towering forty sheer feet above the canyon's floor.
A prowler was running in front of it, running for its life and losing.
There was no time to watch. He leaped upward, as high as possible, his
crossbow in his hand. He caught the end of the bow over one of the sharp
projections of rock on the ledge's rim and began to pull himself up,
afraid to hurry lest the rock cut the bowstring in two and drop him
back.
It held and he stood on the ledge, safe, as the prowler flashed up the
talus below.
It darted around the blind-alley shelf and was back a moment later. It
saw that its only chance would be to leap up on the ledge where he stood
and it tried, handicapped by the steep, loose slope it had to jump from.
It failed and fell back. It tried again, hurling itself upward with all
its strength, and its claws caught fleetingly on the rough rock a foot
below the rim. It began to slide back, with no time left it for a third
try.
It looked up at the rim of safety that it had not quite reached and then
on up at him, its eyes bright and cold with the knowledge that it was
going to die and its enemy would watch it.
Schroeder dropped flat on his stomach and reached down, past the massive
black head, to seize the prowler by the back of the neck. He pulled up
with all his strength and the claws of the prowler tore at the rocks as
it climbed.
When it was coming up over the ledge, safe, he rolled back from it and
came to his feet in one swift, wary motion, his eyes on it and his knife
already in his hand. As he did so the water went past below them with a
thunder that deafened. Logs and trees shot past, boulders crashed
together, and things could be seen surging in the brown depths;
shapeless things that had once been woods goats and the battered gray
bulk of a unicorn. He saw it all with a sideward glance, his attention
on the prowler.
It stepped back from the rim of the ledge and looked at him; warily, as
he looked at it. With the wariness was something like question, and
almost disbelief.
The ledge they stood on was narrow but it led out of the canyon and to
the open land beyond. He motioned to the prowler to precede him and,
hesitating a moment, it did so.
They climbed out of the canyon and out onto the grassy slope of the
mountainside. The roar of the water was a distant rumble there and he
stopped. The prowler did the same and they watched each other again,
each of them trying to understand what the thoughts of the other might
be. It was something they could not know--they were too alien to each
other and had been enemies too long.
Then a gust of wind swept across them, bending and rippling the tall
grass, and the prowler swung away to go with it and leave him standing
alone.
His route was such that it diverged gradually from that taken by the
prowler. He went through a grove of trees and emerged into an open glade
on the other side. Up on the ridge to his right he saw something black
for a moment, already far away.
He was thirty feet from the next grove of trees when he saw the gray
shadow waiting silently for his coming within them.
Unicorn!
His crossbow rattled as he jerked back the pistol grip. The unicorn
charged, the underbrush crackling as it tore through it and a vine
whipping like a rope from its lowered horn.
His first arrow went into its chest. It lurched, fatally wounded but
still coming, and he jerked back on the pistol grip for the quick shot
that would stop it.
The rock-frayed bow string broke with a singing sound and the bow ends
snapped harmlessly forward.
He had counted on the bow and its failure came a fraction of a second
too late for him to dodge far enough. His sideward leap was short, and
the horn caught him in midair, ripping across his ribs and breaking
them, shattering the bone of his left arm and tearing the flesh. He was
hurled fifteen feet and he struck the ground with a stunning impact,
pain washing over him in a blinding wave.
Through it, dimly, he saw the unicorn fall and heard its dying trumpet
blast as it called to another. He heard an answering call somewhere in
the distance and then the faraway drumming of hooves.
He fought back the blindness and used his good arm to lift himself up.
His bow was useless, his spear lay broken under the unicorn, and his
knife was gone. His left arm swung helplessly and he could not climb the
limbless lower trunk of a lance tree with only one arm.
He went forward, limping, trying to hurry to find his knife while the
drumming of hooves raced toward him. It would be a battle already lost
that he would make with the short knife but he would have blood for his
going....
The grass grew tall and thick, hiding the knife until he could hear the
unicorn crashing through the trees. He saw it ten feet ahead of him as
the unicorn tore out from the edge of the woods thirty feet away.
It squealed, shrill with triumph, and the horn swept up to impale him.
There was no time left to reach the knife, no time left for anything but
the last fleeting sight of sunshine and glade and arching blue sky----
Something from behind him shot past and up at the unicorn's throat, a
thing that was snarling black savagery with yellow eyes blazing and
white fangs slashing--the prowler!
It ripped at the unicorn's throat, swerving its charge, and the unicorn
plunged past him. The unicorn swung back, all the triumph gone from its
squeal, and the prowler struck again. They became a swirling blur, the
horn of the unicorn swinging and stabbing and the attacks of the prowler
like the swift, relentless thrusting of a rapier.
He went to his knife and when he turned back with it in his hand the
battle was already over.
The unicorn fell and the prowler turned away from it. One foreleg was
bathed in blood and its chest was heaving with a panting so fast that it
could not have been caused by the fight with the unicorn.
_It must have been watching me_, he thought, with a strange feeling of
wonder. _It was watching from the ridge and it ran all the way._
Its yellow eyes flickered to the knife in his hand. He dropped the knife
in the grass and walked forward, unarmed, wanting the prowler to know
that he understood; that for them in that moment the gulf of two hundred
and fifty light-years did not exist.
He stopped near it and squatted in the grass to begin binding up his
broken arm so the bones would not grate together. It watched him, then
it began to lick at its bloody shoulder; standing so close to him that
he could have reached out and touched it.
Again he felt the sense of wonder. They were alone together in the
glade, he and a prowler, each caring for his hurts. There was a bond
between them that for a little while made them like brothers. There was
a bridge for a little while across the gulf that had never been bridged
before....
When he had finished with his arm and the prowler had lessened the
bleeding of its shoulder it took a step back toward the ridge. He stood
up, knowing it was going to leave.
"I suppose the score is even now," he said to it, "and we'll never see
each other again. So good hunting--and thanks."
It made a sound in its throat; a queer sound that was neither bark nor
growl, and he had the feeling it was trying to tell him something. Then
it turned and was gone like a black shadow across the grass and he was
alone again.
He picked up his knife and bow and began the long, painful journey back
to the caves, looking again and again at the ridge behind him and
thinking: _They have a code of ethics. They fight for their
survival--but they pay their debts._
Ragnarok was big enough for both men and prowlers. They could live
together in friendship as men and dogs of Earth lived together. It might
take a long time to win the trust of the prowlers but surely it could be
done.
He came to the rocky trail that led to the caves and there he took a
last look at the ridge behind him; feeling a poignant sense of loss and
wondering if he would ever see the prowler again or ever again know the
strange, wild companionship he had known that day.
Perhaps he never would ... but the time would come on Ragnarok when
children would play in the grass with prowler pups and the time would
come when men and prowlers, side by side, would face the Gerns.
* * * * *
In the year that followed there were two incidents when a prowler had
the opportunity to kill a hunter on prowler territory and did not do so.
There was no way of knowing if the prowler in each case had been the one
he had saved from the cloudburst or if the prowlers, as a whole, were
respecting what a human had done for one of them.
Schroeder thought of again trying to capture prowler pups--very young
ones--and decided it would be a stupid plan. Such an act would destroy
all that had been done toward winning the trust of the prowlers. It
would be better to wait, even though time was growing short, and find
some other way.
The fall of one hundred and sixty-three came and the suns were
noticeably moving south. That was the fall that his third child, a
girl, was born. She was named Julia, after the Julia of long ago, and
she was of the last generation that would be born in the caves.
Plans were already under way to build a town in the valley a mile from
the caves. The unicorn-proof stockade wall that would enclose it was
already under construction, being made of stone blocks. The houses would
be of diamond-sawed stone, thick-walled, with dead-air spaces between
the double walls to insulate against heat and cold. Tall, wide canopies
of lance tree poles and the palm-like medusabush leaves would be built
over all the houses to supply additional shade.
The woods goats were fully adapted that year and domesticated to such an
extent that they had no desire to migrate with the wild goats. There was
a small herd of them then, enough to supply a limited amount of milk,
cheese and wool.
The adaptation of the unicorns proceeded in the following years, but not
their domestication. It was their nature to be ill-tempered and
treacherous and only the threat of the spears in the hands of their
drivers forced them to work; work that they could have done easily had
they not diverted so much effort each day to trying to turn on their
masters and kill them. Each night they were put in a massive-walled
corral, for they were almost as dangerous as wild unicorns.
The slow, painstaking work on the transmitter continued while the suns
moved farther south each year. The move from the caves to the new town
was made in one hundred and seventy-nine, the year that Schroeder's wife
died.
His two sons were grown and married and Julia, at sixteen, was a woman
by Ragnarok standards; blue-eyed and black-haired as her mother, a
Craig, had been, and strikingly pretty in a wild, reckless way. She
married Will Humbolt that spring, leaving her father alone in the new
house in the new town.
Four months later she came to him to announce with pride and excitement:
"I'm going to have a baby in only six months! If it's a boy he'll be the
right age to be leader when the Gerns come and we're going to name him
John, after the John who was the first leader we ever had on Ragnarok."
Her words brought to his mind a question and he thought of what old Dale
Craig, the leader who had preceded Lake, had written:
_We have survived, the generations that the Gerns thought would never be
born. But we must never forget the characteristics that insured that
survival: an unswerving loyalty of every individual to all the others
and the courage to fight, and die if necessary.
In any year, now, the Gerns will come. There will be no one to help us.
Those on Athena are slaves and it is probable that Earth has been
enslaved by now. We will stand or fall alone. But if we of today could
know that the ones who meet the Gerns will still have the courage and
loyalty that made our survival possible, then we would know that the
Gerns are already defeated...._
The era of danger and violence was over for a little while. The younger
generation had grown up during a time of peaceful development of their
environment. It was a peace that the coming of the Gerns would
shatter--but had it softened the courage and loyalty of the younger
generation?
A week later he was given his answer.
He was climbing up the hill that morning, high above the town below,
when he saw the blue of Julia's wool blouse in the distance. She was
sitting up on a hillside, an open book in her lap and her short spear
lying beside her.
He frowned at the sight. The main southward migration of unicorns was
over but there were often lone stragglers who might appear at any time.
He had warned her that someday a unicorn would kill her--but she was
reckless by nature and given to restless moods in which she could not
stand the confinement of the town.
She jerked up her head as he watched, as though at a faint sound, and he
saw the first movement within the trees behind her--a unicorn.
It lunged forward, its stealth abandoned as she heard it, and she came
to her feet in a swift, smooth movement; the spear in her hand and the
book spilling to the ground.
The unicorn's squeal rang out and she whirled to face it, with two
seconds to live. He reached for his bow, knowing his help would come too
late.
She did the only thing possible that might enable her to survive: she
shifted her balance to take advantage of the fact that a human could
jump to one side a little more quickly than a four-footed beast in
headlong charge. As she did so she brought up the spear for the thrust
into the vulnerable area just behind the jawbone.
It seemed the needle point of the black horn was no more than an arm's
length from her stomach when she jumped aside with the lithe quickness
of a prowler, swinging as she jumped and thrusting the spear with all
her strength into the unicorn's neck.
The thrust was true and the spear went deep. She released it and flung
herself backward to dodge the flying hooves. The force of the unicorn's
charge took it past her but its legs collapsed under it and it crashed
to the ground, sliding a little way before it stopped. It kicked once
and lay still.
She went to it, to retrieve her spear, and even from the distance there
was an air of pride about her as she walked past her bulky victim.
Then she saw the book, knocked to one side by the unicorn's hooves.
Tatters of its pages were blowing in the wind and she stiffened, her
face growing pale. She ran to it to pick it up, the unicorn forgotten.
She was trying to smooth the torn leaves when he reached her. It had
been one of the old textbooks, printed on real paper, and it was fragile
with age. She had been trusted by the librarian to take good care of it.
Now, page after page was torn and unreadable....
She looked up at him, shame and misery on her face.
"Father," she said. "The book--I----"
He saw that the unicorn was a bull considerably larger than the average.
Men had in the past killed unicorns with spears but never, before, had a
sixteen-year-old girl done so....
He looked back at her, keeping his face emotionless, and asked sternly,
"You what?"
"I guess--I guess I didn't have any right to take the book out of town.
I wish I hadn't...."
"You promised to take good care of it," he told her coldly. "Your
promise was believed and you were trusted to keep it."
"But--but I didn't mean to damage it--I didn't mean to!" She was
suddenly very near to tears. "I'm not a--a _bemmon_!"
"Go back to town," he ordered. "Tonight bring the book to the town hall
and tell the council what happened to it."
She swallowed and said in a faint voice, "Yes, father."
She turned and started slowly back down the hill, not seeing the unicorn
as she passed it, the bloody spear trailing disconsolately behind her
and her head hanging in shame.
He watched her go and it was safe for him to smile. When night came and
she stood before the council, ashamed to lift her eyes to look at them,
he would have to be grim and stern as he told her how she had been
trusted and how she had betrayed that trust. But now, as he watched her
go down the hill, he could smile with his pride in her and know that his
question was answered; that the younger generation had lost neither
courage nor loyalty.
* * * * *
Julia saved a child's life that spring and almost lost her own. The
child was playing under a half-completed canopy when a sudden, violent
wind struck it and transformed it into a death-trap of cracking, falling
timbers. She reached him in time to fling him to safety but the
collapsing roof caught her before she could make her own escape.
Her chest and throat were torn by the jagged ends of the broken poles
and for a day and a night her life was a feebly flickering spark. She
began to rally on the second night and on the third morning she was able
to speak for the first time, her eyes dark and tortured with her fear:
"My baby--what did it do to him?"
She convalesced slowly, haunted by the fear. Her son was born five
weeks later and her fears proved to have been groundless. He was
perfectly normal and healthy.
And hungry--and her slowly healing breasts would be dry for weeks to
come.
By a coincidence that had never happened before and could never happen
again there was not a single feeding-time foster-mother available for
the baby. There were many expectant mothers but only three women had
young babies--and each of the three had twins to feed.
But there was a small supply of frozen goat milk in the ice house,
enough to see young Johnny through until it was time for the goat herd
to give milk. He would have to live on short rations until then but it
could not be helped.
* * * * *
Johnny was a month old when the opportunity came for the men of Ragnarok
to have their ultimate ally.
The last of the unicorns were going north and the prowlers had long
since gone. The blue star was lighting the night like a small sun when
the breeze coming through Schroeder's window brought the distant
squealing of unicorns.
He listened, wondering. It was a sound that did not belong. Everyone was
safely in the town, most of them in bed, and there should be nothing
outside the stockade for the unicorns to fight.
He armed himself with spear and crossbow and went outside. He let
himself out through the east gate and went toward the sounds of battle.
They grew louder as he approached, more furious, as though the battle
was reaching its climax.
He crossed the creek and went through the trees beyond. There, in a
small clearing no more than half a mile from the town, he came upon the
scene.
A lone prowler was making a stand against two unicorns. Two other
unicorns lay on the ground, dead, and behind the prowler was the dark
shape of its mate lying lifelessly in the grass. There was blood on the
prowler, purple in the blue starlight, and gloating rang in the squeals
of the unicorns as they lunged at it. The leaps of the prowler were
faltering as it fought them, the last desperate defiance of an animal
already dying.
He brought up the bow and sent a volley of arrows into the unicorns.
Their gloating squeals died and they fell. The prowler staggered and
fell beside them.
It was breathing its last when he reached it but in the way it looked up
at him he had the feeling that it wanted to tell him something, that it
was trying hard to live long enough to do so. It died with the strange
appeal in its eyes and not until then did he see the scar on its
shoulder; a scar such as might have been made long ago by the rip of a
unicorn's horn.
It was the prowler he had known nineteen years before.
The ground was trampled all around by the unicorns, showing that the
prowlers had been besieged all day. He went to the other prowler and saw
it was a female. Her breasts showed that she had had pups recently but
she had been dead at least two days. Her hind legs had been broken
sometime that spring and they were still only half healed, twisted and
almost useless.
Then, that was why the two of them were so far behind the other
prowlers. Prowlers, like the wolves, coyotes and foxes of Earth, mated
for life and the male helped take care of the young. She had been
injured somewhere to the south, perhaps in a fight with unicorns, and
her mate had stayed with her as she hobbled her slow way along and
killed game for her. The pups had been born and they had had to stop.
Then the unicorns had found them and the female had been too crippled to
fight....
He looked for the pups, expecting to find them trampled and dead. But
they were alive, hidden under the roots of a small tree near their
mother.
Prowler pups--_alive!_
They were very young, small and blind and helpless. He picked them up
and his elation drained away as he looked at them. They made little
sounds of hunger, almost inaudible, and they moved feebly, trying to
find their mother's breasts and already so weak that they could not lift
their heads.
Small chunks of fresh meat had been left beside the pups and he thought
of what the prowler's emotions must have been as his mate lay dead on
the ground and he carried meat to their young, knowing they were too
small to eat it but helpless to do anything else for them.
And he knew why there had been the appeal in the eyes of the prowler as
it died and what it had tried to tell him: _Save them ... as you once
saved me._
He carried the pups back past the prowler and looked down at it in
passing. "I'll do my best," he said.
When he reached his house he laid the pups on his bed and built a fire.
There was no milk to give them--the goats would not have young for at
least another two weeks--but perhaps they could eat a soup of some kind.
He put water on to boil and began shredding meat to make them a rich
broth.
One of them was a male, the other a female, and if he could save them
they would fight beside the men of Ragnarok when the Gerns came. He
thought of what he would name them as he worked. He would name the
female Sigyn, after Loki's faithful wife who went with him when the gods
condemned him to Hel, the Teutonic underworld. And he would name the
male Fenrir, after the monster wolf who would fight beside Loki when
Loki led the forces of Hel in the final battle on the day of Ragnarok.
But when the broth was prepared, and cooled enough, the pups could not
eat it. He tried making it weaker, tried it mixed with corn and herb
soup, tried corn and herb soups alone. They could eat nothing he
prepared for them.
When gray daylight entered the room he had tried everything possible and
had failed. He sat wearily in his chair and watched them, defeated. They
were no longer crying in their hunger and when he touched them they did
not move as they had done before.
They would be dead before the day was over and the only chance men had
ever had to have prowlers as their friends and allies would be gone.
The first rays of sunrise were coming into the room, revealing fully
the frail thinness of the pups, when there was a step outside and
Julia's voice:
"Father?"
"Come in, Julia," he said, not moving.
She entered, still a pale shadow of the reckless girl who had fought a
unicorn, even though she was slowly regaining her normal health. She
carried young Johnny in one arm, in her other hand his little bottle of
milk. Johnny was hungry--there was never quite enough milk for him--but
he was not crying. Ragnarok children did not cry....
She saw the pups and her eyes went wide.
"Prowlers--baby prowlers! Where did you get them?"
He told her and she went to them, to look down at them and say, "If you
and their father hadn't helped each other that day they wouldn't be
here, nor you, nor I, nor Johnny--none of us in this room."
"They won't live out the day," he said. "They have to have milk--and
there isn't any."
She reached down to touch them and they seemed to sense that she was
someone different. They stirred, making tiny whimpering sounds and
trying to move their heads to nuzzle at her fingers.
Compassion came to her face, like a soft light.
"They're so young," she said. "So terribly young to have to die...."
She looked at Johnny and at the little bottle that held his too-small
morning ration of milk.
"Johnny--Johnny----" Her words were almost a whisper. "You're
hungry--but we can't let them die. And someday, for this, they will
fight for your life."
She sat on the bed and placed the pups in her lap beside Johnny. She
lifted a little black head with gentle fingers and a little pink mouth
ceased whimpering as it found the nipple of Johnny's bottle.
Johnny's gray eyes darkened with the storm of approaching protest. Then
the other pup touched his hand, crying in its hunger, and the protest
faded as surprise and something like sudden understanding came into his
eyes.
Julia withdrew the bottle from the first pup and transferred it to the
second one. Its crying ceased and Johnny leaned forward to touch it
again, and the one beside it.
He made his decision with an approving sound and leaned back against his
mother's shoulder, patiently awaiting his own turn and their presence
accepted as though they had been born his brother and sister.
* * * * *
The golden light of the new day shone on them, on his daughter and
grandson and the prowler pups, and in it he saw the bright omen for the
future.
His own role was nearing its end but he had seen the people of Ragnarok
conquer their environment in so far as Big Winter would ever let it be
conquered. The last generation was being born, the generation that would
meet the Gerns, and now they would have their final ally. Perhaps it
would be Johnny who led them on that day, as the omen seemed to
prophesy.
He was the son of a line of leaders, born to a mother who had fought and
killed a unicorn. He had gone hungry to share what little he had with
the young of Ragnarok's most proud and savage species and Fenrir and
Sigyn would fight beside him on the day he led the forces of the
hell-world in the battle with the Gerns who thought they were gods.
Could the Gerns hope to have a leader to match?
* * * * *