Breathing heavily the giant, picking up the canine tooth, torn from the animal’s jaw, turned about, and looked down on the far side of the drift, where the third animal was turning about, putting its paws up, here and there, trying to find footing. It looked up at the giant, and growled.
Then the beast turned about, gathered its hind legs under it, leapt up, and, slipping, tried to scratch its way up, out of the depression.
It slipped back.
In a moment or two, of course, it would find, or would have packed, firmer snow, and might scratch, or even, in effect, have swum its way to freedom.
Its frustration, its discomfiture, the giant did not doubt, would be alarmingly temporary.
The giant, whose blood was now, despite the bitter cold, racing in his great body, measured the distance from the summit of the drift to the pit below, and to the center of the backbone, fifteen feet below, of the restless, moving animal.
He leapt down, legs flexed, he caught by gravity, plummeting, hurtling, and struck the animal in the back, which produced a sudden, snapping sound, and a startled squeal of pain.
In moments, using the canine tooth as a knife, the giant had opened the belly of the wild-eyed animal, and then, rejoicing, thrust, in turn, his feet and hands into the throbbing, blood-filled, heat-rich cavity. Then he embraced the carcass, pressing himself to it. He bathed in its blood and fluids. Then, crouching beside it in the snow, he drank blood, cupping it in his hands, and fed on the liver and heart. Then he began to cut its skin away.
He could hear, on the other side of the drift, the feeding of the fourth and fifth dog.
CHAPTER 22
It was late at night on the plains. It was extremely dark. Neither the moon nor stars could be seen. The giant, crouching in the snow, clad in the skins of dogs, booted in their fur, cowled, helmeted even, in the head and neck of the leader, peering out through what had been its mouth, watched the tiny light of the lantern in the distance.
It was carried by a rider.
That could be told from its movement.
The giant had known little of the location of the Otungs. He had been moving south in the plains of Barrionuevo when, caught in a new storm, freezing, starving, half-blinded in the snow, lost, he had had to slay the horse. It had been his intention to cross the Lothar, to seek the Basung Vandals, whom he recalled, from his days in the festung village of Sim Giadini, lived in the forests west of the Lothar. From them he had hoped to learn the whereabouts of the Otungs, if any survived. He now knew there were still Otungs, from the information he had obtained from the Herul in the wagon of Mujiin, who had been the leader of the men who had captured him. Indeed, he had even made rich and diverse use, in the same wagon, for several nights, of a lovely slave girl, a former Otung noblewoman, one who had been captured by Heruls only two years ago.
At times it had seemed almost as though she had thought herself still free.
Sometimes the older Herul, who had seemed to be his keeper, or warder, had removed one of his shackles, to put it more loosely, but unslippably, about her own ankle, that she would be chained with him, to the same couch, so that she could not run from him, but might be, when he wished, drawn to him.
It seemed she might think of herself as free, but he had had her kick like a slave, the slave she was.
“What is your name?” he would ask.
“Hortense!” she said. “Do not stop, I beg you!”
“What is your name?” he would inquire.
“Yata!” she would cry. “Yata, the slave! Please do not stop, Master! Yata, only a slave, begs you not to stop! Please do not stop, Master!”
But he did not know where he was, really, where the camp of the Heruls was, its relation to the Otungs, and such. He did not know how long the trip to the camp had taken. He did know he had been unconscious for four days in the camp. He had dim recollections of the trip itself, of being delirious, of being bound, of being in pain, of being forced awake, and fed, some sort of white clods, like watered cheese, and having snow jammed in his mouth for drink, and being beaten, and then again losing consciousness. Too, in the days he had been with the camp, the wagons, which were few in number, as is common with a winter camp of Heruls, had moved, apparently from one cache of fodder to another. When he had been unchained and brought forth from the wagon, to be stripped and run for the dogs, he had seen only some twenty wagons, perhaps some fifty or sixty horses, and a similar number of cattle. There had been a low, open-sided, snow-covered shed in the distance. Tracks led to it. He could see hay within it. There was straw about. There was a rich smell of manure. Such sheds are used for the storage of fodder, and the sheltering, at times, of beasts. The camp, this far north for the season, was presumably an outpost camp. Such commonly serve as bases for hunters, for scouts and outriders. In such a way, by such scattered camps, far from the winter pastures, which for the great herds are far to the south, and for many smaller ones nestled in sheltered mountain valleys, the Heruls keep themselves apprised of what occurs on the flats of Tung, on the plains of Barrionuevo. He had been chained. The wagon had been closed. He had been able to conjecture little, save, by the sunlight, bright in cracks about the door, and the single, shuttered window, that they had been moving north, and then northeast. He was probably much closer to Venitzia now than he had been when he had slain the horse.
The giant watched the light coming closer.
He knew it must be a Herul, for who else might be abroad at this time, in this place.
The giant removed the stained canine tooth from its makeshift sheath at his skin belt.
His bag of meat, which, in the cold might last for days, was in the snow, beside him.