As everyone gathered round, Uuundaamp called to his wife as an afterthought. She rolled off the shelf she had shared and came forward, bundled in bedding. All that was visible of her was a round face with black eyes much like Uuundaamp’s. She made no attempt to join the greedy circle of men. Instead, she stood meekly behind Uuundaamp, deftly catching a scraggy slice of meat when he tossed it to her over his shoulder.
While Shokerandit chewed his meat, he observed the hands of the men. They were narrow and sinewy, and bore eight fingers. The blunt clawlike nails were uniformly black, gleaming with filth and fat lodged under them.
‘Gumtaa,’ said Uuundaamp, with his cheeks bulging.
‘Gumtaa,’ agreed Shokerandit.
‘Gumtaa,’ agreed the other Ondod. The woman, being a woman, was not called upon to say whether she thought the food was good or not.
Soon, nothing but bones and horns were left of the kid. Uuundaamp rose immediately, wiping his hands on his suit of fur. ‘By way, chief,’ he said, still chewing, ‘this horrid bag behind me with belly full of gas and babies is my woman. Name Moub. You can forget. She come together us. You no mind.’
‘She is as welcome as she is beautiful, Uuundaamp. I am carrying this blanket for myself, which I did not intend to give away, but in view of Moub’s loveliness, I wish you to give it to her as a present.’
‘Loobiss. You give, chief. Then she not lose it. She kiss you.’
So Shokerandit presented the yellow-and-red striped blanket to Moub.
‘Loobiss,’ she said. ‘Far too good for any bag belong this vile Uuundaamp.’ She hopped nimbly forward and kissed Shokerandit with her full and greasy lips.
‘Gumtaa. Any time you want biwack, chief, you use Moub. She look horrid but she got all that stuff there, ishto?’
‘Loobiss!’ Their friendship had been properly cemented. Happiness swept through Shokerandit, as he recalled sleigh rides with his mother when he was a child, and playing with Ondod children on their estates. His mother had always found the Ondod coarse and beastly, perhaps because of the peculiar conventions between the sexes, which relied on insult. Later, he and his friends had visited a shack on the edge of the caspiarn forests. His first sexual experiences had been with Ondod females. He remembered a rotund girl called Ipaak. To Ipaak he had always been ‘the pink stinker’.
Stern discipline for asokins, stern discipline for travellers. That was the rule for journeys between Kharnabhar and the outside world.
Uuundaamp sat at the front of the sledge with the whip, Moub lumpish just behind him. The phagor, Bhryeer, rode at the back, standing upright to steer the long vehicle, often jumping off to left or right, sometimes pushing when the incline was steep enough for the asokins to require help. The three humans sat astride the tarpaulin-covered supplies, on one side or the other according to the direction of the wind.
It was easy to fall off the sledge. An eye had to be kept on the driver, for a hint of which way they might be turning. Sometimes Uuundaamp could hardly be seen for the snow that fell in flurries from the heights of the chain above them. They had crossed the treacherous Venj by wooden bridge, and were now proceeding on a roughly north-northeasterly course under the high spine of Shivenink, where ice prevailed above the ten-thousand-metre line for all of the Great Year.
Even when the air was clear of snow, the breath of the dogs rose like steam and concealed them from the passengers. The team included one bitch, to keep the other seven doing their utmost. The dogs frequently broke wind at the start of a new lap of the journey. Their panting could be heard above the shrill of the metal runners. Otherwise, sounds were muffled. There was no visibility, except for white walls on either side. The smell of the dogs and of stale clothes became part of the scene. Monotony dulled the sense of danger. Weariness, the reflections of the snow, reveries that ran half-formed through the mind, these filled the days.
The asokins were attached to the sledge by twenty feet of leather harness. They were allowed to rest for ten minutes every three hours. Then all eight would lie down except for Uuundaamp the leader. The man Uuundaamp was at least as close to his asokins as he was to Moub. They were his life.
During the break, Uuundaamp did not rest. He and Moub would walk restlessly about, studying natural phenomena — the shape of clouds, the flight of birds, any nuance of change in weather, tracks of animals, sounds and signs of landslides.
Sometimes they met pilgrims coming or going, making the great journey on foot. There were other sledges on the route, bells ringing. Once they were caught behind a slow herring-train and forced to tag along slowly before the vehicle moved into a passing place. The herring-train was a land version of the herring-coach. It bore barrels of pickled fish up to the distant rendezvous.
The asokins barked furiously whenever they met with another vehicle, but the rival drivers never moved a muscle in greeting.
The night’s break also had its set pattern. Uuundaamp pulled the team off the track in selected places he knew about. He then immediately went about settling the dogs, which had to be staked separately and away from the sledge, so that they did not eat its skins. Each asokin was fed two pounds of raw meat every third day; they worked best when starved. But each night they got a herring apiece, which Uuundaamp threw to each asokin in turn, starting with Uuundaamp. They caught the fish in midair, swallowing it at a gulp. The bitch was last to be fed. The lead dog slept some way from the rest of the team. If snow fell during the night, the dogs remained under it, in small caverns carved by their own heat. Bhryeer the phagor slept with them.
At a night’s stop, everything had to be made ready for the evening meal inside fifteen minutes.
‘It’s not possible. What’s the point?’ Fashnalgid complained.
‘The point is that it’s possible and must be done,’ Shokerandit said. ‘Stretch the tent, hold tight.’
They were stiff with cold. Their noses were peeling, their cheeks blackened by frost.
The sledge had to be unloaded. The tent was pitched over it and secured, which often entailed a battle against wind. Skins were stretched across the sledge. On this, the five of them slept, to be off the ground. Belongings required overnight were arranged nearby: food, stove, knives, oil lamp. Although the temperature in the tent generally remained below zero, they found themselves sweating in the confined space, after the cold of the journey.
When Uuundaamp entered on the first night, he found the three humans quarrelling.
‘No more speak. Be good. Anger bring smrtaa.’
‘I can’t stand four weeks of this,’ Fashnalgid said.
‘If you disobey him, he will simply leave,’ Shokerandit said. ‘All he asks is that you put your personality away to sleep for the journey. The cold will not allow quarrels, or death will strike.’
‘Let the sherb leave.’
‘We’d die here without him — can’t you understand that?’
‘Occhara soon, soon,’ said Uuundaamp, nudging Fashnalgid. He handed Moub a pair of silver foxes to cook. They came from traps he had set on his previous journey.
A pleasant fug arose in the tent. The meat smelt good. They ate with filthy hands, afterwards drinking melted snow water from a communal mug.
‘Food ishto?’ asked Moub.
‘Gumtaa,’ they said.
‘She bad cook,’ Uuundaamp said, as he lit up pipes of occhara and handed them round. The lamp was providently extinguished and they smoked in peace. The howl of the wind seemed to die away. Good feelings overcame them. The smoke filtering through their nostrils was the breath of a mysterious better life. They were the children of the mountain and it had them in its care. No harm comes to those who have eaten silver fox. For all the differences between men and women, and between men and men, all have this good thing in common — that the divine smoke pours from their noses, and perhaps from eyes and ears and other orifices. Sleep itself is but another orifice in the mountain god. Sometimes in sleep men become the dream of the silver fox.