Manari, taking advantage of the scuffle in which Ne Tarveg was attempting to wrench the gun out of his opponent’s hand, managed to free herself and ran straight into the arms of Omrek, who clasped her to his chest, caressing her hair and whispering soothing words. Scott experienced a momentary surge of relief, but that was short-lived, for two more shots rang out in succession — one made a dent in the ice wall behind Nash, and another hit Ne Tarveg, who finally managed to twist Nash’s hand and throw the gun away, and was now straddling Nash from behind, keeping him motionless and, at the same time, smearing his enemy’s clothes with a steady drip of his own bood. Nash, his face pressed against the rock, issued a string of muffled curses.
“Tarveg, are you hurt?” Omrek cried out as they all rushed forward.
“Nothing… to signify,” Ne Tarveg panted, wrestling with Nash. “Come, give me some rope and let’s tie him up.”
Suddenly, there was an ominous sound. It came from the ice wall. Scott looked up, and saw great cracks running from the place where the bullet hit the ice. His heart sank. An ice slide of this magnitude would doom them all. “Run for your lives!” he yelled.
It was too late, however. The crack widened with alarming rapidity and, as the sound of breaking ice grew louder and the wall finally collapsed, they were all engulfed — not in fragments of solid ice, but in a flow of water.
The geysers surrounding the Anai valley, ever shifting and unstable, have been at work here for a while, without anyone being aware of it. The hot water and steam had melted the ice sheet from behind, until the front wall had become, in essence, a dam, thinning day by day. The gunshot was just the final stroke to finish it off.
Scott, gasping for air, was desperately focusing on holding his head above water, even while he looked around for his companions. Petri Karhu, who often boasted of swimming in ice-floe covered rivers in Finland, seemed to be doing fine. He was cursing in quite a vigorous manner as he took hold of Ne Tarveg’s arm and hoisted it around his shoulders. “Hold on, pal, don’t drown,” he said, though it was doubtful Ne Tarveg could understand.
No far from there, Omrek was supporting his wife, while his legs worked desperately under the water surface. Like most Anai men, he was a good swimmer, and the light sealskins were well fit to function as water-gear, but Manari was clearly in no condition to swim, and her weight was dragging him down. Scott began swimming in their direction to help them out. Nash, ever pragmatic and cool, was doing his best to get away from the rest of the party, while holding the radio transmitter between his teeth. Frankly, Scott didn’t care three straws for him right now.
In the first moments of confusion, he was unaware of another change wrought by the breaking of the ice dam — namely, that the ice surrounding the ancient monster had fallen away, and the beast had collapsed in an enormous dark heap. But then something else happened.
The scaly heap stirred and omitted a loud, rumbling sound. At first, Scott was certain it must be another slide of ice or rock, but no — it came from the beast itself.
Incredible as it was, the monster was alive.
It raised its great scaly neck, threw back its mighty head, and roared, baring its countless long teeth. Everybody looked at it, mesmerized by horror.
The water level was dropping as it was spreading down to other, lower parts of the narrow valley. It was about waist-high now, which, for the beast, was no more than a shallow puddle. It got up on its massive hind legs, stretched, and flapped its scaly wings. In a horrible, grotesque way, it resembled a cat getting up from its nap.
Then, which was even more horrifying, it turned its head toward them and fixed its great yellow eyes upon them. It let out a growl.
“The bane of the First Anai,” Omrek whispered with bloodless lips.
The beast’s long, flexible neck twisted in the direction of the people. Scott had hardly any doubt that it was carnivorous and, after its long hibernation, it was sure to be hungry.
The wings of the monster opened, flapped, and covered the sky in a great black shadow as it rose into the air. It made a circle above the rocky, rapidly lowering pool, and there was a scream, a desperate, high-pitched human scream, as it made a sharp dive down, snatched Victor Nash up between its long teeth, rose up again with its prey, and flew away in the direction of the sea.
The others, soaking wet and horrified, remained standing in the water, which now only reached up to their knees. In the shock of what had just happened, it took them a few seconds to realize how cold they were. The freezing air was blowing from above, and their waterlogged clothes froze in icy sheets upon their bodies.
“Come on,” Scott said, his teeth chattering. “Let’s get back to the valley, quick, before we all freeze to death.”
Chapter 21
Freezing, shivering and slipping on the sheet of ice that was formed by the rapidly re-frozen water in the parts of the valley untouched by geyser activity, the companions descended back into the wider portion of the bay passage, and started back to the Anai Valley. Their teeth were chattering, their limbs were stiff and rapidly losing feeling, and every step was sheer agony, but they knew they had to keep going — they had no way to start a fire and thaw and dry their clothes, and staying in this place would mean freezing to death. Gritting their teeth, they progressed. Manari pulled herself together and now was walking at a good pace, Omrek’s arm around her waist. Scott and Petri were supporting Ne Tarveg between them, each with an arm of the wounded man around his shoulders.
Scott was starting to get worried about Ne Tarveg’s wound. They had sacrificed the hem of Manari’s tunic to bandage the wound and stop the bleeding, but the bullet had lodged in his shoulder, and he was clearly in great pain, though he gritted his teeth and would not own it. He started by declaring he could walk as well as any of them, but now he and Petri were practically dragging him along, and with the heavy muscular weight of the warrior, this was no easy task. A weaker man would have passed out long ago. Ne Tarveg was clearly in need of medical help, and fast.
Finally, they sighed with relief as the geyser activity was felt again, and they could slow down without the fear of freezing. Omrek spotted a smallish geyser jutting up its welcoming steam from a crevice between two rocks, and they all crowded around this blessed source of warmth for a bit of much-needed rest. Their clothes began to drip water at once, which was not very pleasant, but they forbore and turned around so that they could dry evenly on all sides.
They laid Ne Tarveg down on a patch of last year’s soft moss, close to the source of warm steam and as comfortable as they could get him without adequate bedding. He leaned his head back without speaking, and his lips grew white with pain.
“I’m no doctor, but I sure hope this isn’t lung collapse,” Petri said to Scott in a low voice. “He’s in no condition to walk. We’ll have to carry him. I wish we had a stretcher.”
Scott nodded. He was engaged in the feat of trying to wring his clothes without actually taking them off. He turned his back to the geyser, and a cloud of vapor rose from inside his waterproof parka, where his underclothes had become drenched. It was extremely unpleasant. The Anai fared much better — they were dressed entirely in water-repellent sealskins, which were now drying quickly in the heat.
“I’m starving,” Omrek declared, “but I guess we’ll hold on until we make it back. I wish we had something to give Ne Tarveg a bit of strength, though.”
After Scott had translated his words from Anai, Petri pulled out a small, tightly capped metallic flask from an inner pocket of his parka. “Here’s something,” he said, “that might do your friend good. Be careful, though — I doubt he’s used to strong stuff like this.”