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Zark checked the lashed-down equipment and cursed at its bulk He said suddenly, "We&039;re a realized he had called to the dogs, the sledge shuddered and tore away up the incline with Michael running alongside and Zark cracking his whip over the head of the lead animal
The beasts clier and happy to be running in the snow The sledge passed between the sharp outcroppings of rock and in a fewout on the open ice plain with the wind howling a noted that Zark seeatuk had been The man only occasionally used his whip or shouted to the team; they seemed to understand his co handlebars The ht, through long hard years of companionship He&039;d heard stories of the fierceness of Arctic dogs, of their sudden savage attacks on both their own kind and Eski race
Michael did not seea was downcast He felt a childish frustration and a si resentment at the way Zark had tried to bait him at the hut Zark didn&039;t understand the importance of their search for Baal; probably he was the kind of stubborn man ould act no differently even if he did understand But Virga felt useless and afraid His long travel and the great expense it had incurred was noasted because one man - one man - refused to show them the way He cursed If Baal could not be found how could he, Virga, return to the university and his day-to-day life knowing the full extent of Baal&039;s power, knowing that for a brief instant he had al that he could possibly still be What could he say to Judith? What would he feel when he awakened in his Boston aparthtened of the future than he had ever been before?
He glanced over and saw that Michael&039;s sharp features had become a taut, deter under skies as black as the door of death, there was no way to go but forward
They reached a pressure ridge after a mile or so Great chunks of ice were scattered in disarray like concrete blocks Zark lowered his head against the wind and chopped with his ice-axe until he had cleared a narrow place for the dogs to struggle over Then they were across the rough terrain andtherees frohted the path
Soa&039;s eyebrows and his new beard and he saw nothing but the dark wastes beyond, Zark waved a hand and slowly braked the team with his heels "We&039;ll rest here for a while," he said against the wind "This is the halfway point"
Zark unpacked the bearskin tent and staked it out withit loose to absorb the wind&039;s force As the dogs voided themselves in the snow and Zark uncereh the tent opening with Zark&039;s lantern and warlow
Inside the tent they were still cold but at least shielded from the harsh wind Zark crawled in and lit his bone pipe, then checked his exposed flesh for frostbite sores He held the lamp up to examine the faces of the other e, he set the lamp in the midst of them, where it cast their broad black shadows on the walls
Virga painfully rubbed the warmth back into his hands "How cold is it out there?" he asked Zark
"Warm compared to some I&039;ve known Maybe forty below but not any runted "When it&039;s forty below your piss freezes as it hits the ground At fifty below it freezes on the way down At sixty you try to piss and your dick falls off" He blew a billowing cloud of blue smoke and watched as it rose to the conical top of the tent and hung there
"You&039;re not a full Eski here?"
He rubbed his hands around the warmth of the bone pipe as if he hadn&039;t heard the question There was no indication that he was going to answer Virga was about to ask his withstood the weather when Zark said, "I&039;h to know I belong here"
"You were born in Greenland?"
"Hell, I&039;m not a Dane I was born in Gor&039;kiy My father was a breed, Eskirandfather was an Eskimo and damned if I can rereat leader in his tribe I don&039;t re about hi narith a bone harpoon We had a small flat in Gor&039;kiy and my father was a welder; that place we had, that place was so small we couldn&039;t even wipe our noses My father couldn&039;t stand it but he wanted to please my mother He wanted to live on the northern coast and she loved the city"
The smoke whirled around Zark&039;s head His eyes were cold and blue, glistening, Virga thought, like the ice listen beneath a white summer sun
"He tried to please her," Zark said, "but you can&039;t please wo and finally lost her I re at her, wide-eyed, in that place She was leaving, she said, and he could keep the child because they were both alike Both of the around people That was just after I alht, but that&039;s another story And she was right My father and I were alike; we shared a love of freedom Inside us the Eskimo wanted a return to the ice"
Zark was quiet for a moment The north-born wind shook the tent; Zark see to it He looked warily at the faces of the two men, uncertain as to whether he should continue
"And so you both caa asked, both interested in theinto that cold blast
"No," Zark said "He went fro And every place as closer to the northern sea There here ere headed; he didn&039;t have to say it I knew it already But before we reached the coast he took sick, sos I worked full-time at whatever I could find, which wasn&039;t ht for a while inand I saw a lot of strong o down You ever see a bare-knuckle a
"No, I haven&039;t"
"I didn&039;t think so Too brutal for your blood, uh? Some of those men scarred their hands and let the calluses thicken until theybrass knucks They could punch into brick Those fights would go on until neither of us knehere ere; we&039;d just stu to hit The last ood in those days But , always pleading with , just like he&039;d fallen asleep the night before That was the only night he didn&039;t cough until he&039;d choked, and I reh to travel It snowed on the day he was buried Well," Zark shrugged his shoulders and sucked furiously at the pipe to clear his vision, "I reached the sea I landed a job on a freighter hauling scrap iron Holy Man, you ever work on the sea?"
"No"
"It&039;s tough work But it teaches you a hell of a lot It teaches you when to fight and when to lay back, when to plant your feet and when to run like hell I worked in and out of the freight docks for a few years hauling on old buckets that almost came apart at the rivets out in the Baltic I like the ways of the sea; itweakens that thunder But then I landed a a up into the White Sea I didn&039;t get along with the bosun He was a lying sonofabitch and a card cheat; I can&039;t even reh God knows I had to look at hi at all, to get at hed suddenly, a hoarse bark that s "Daht on the foredeck under a half-moon Two blows to the head Two fine bloould&039;ve been proud of in any ring" He e fist "He went down like a fucking sack of grain They were going to put ive me up But there were other men who had taken trouble off that bastard, and they were daht out in the Barents Sea they turned their backs and I lowered ht I&039;d died out there, thatout to co away as fast as I could row"
He regarded Michael and Virga through his whirling blue smoke curtain Over the black bush of beard his eyes had become dark and hollow "You don&039;t knohat it&039;s like to be alone in the sea, surrounded by nothing but ice, great huge pieces like frozen cities Nothing around but the deep water and the bergs that blinded you with their colors: bone-white, deep blue, pale green You could see the depths of the ocean reflected in that ice And sorowl as ice crushed against ice and broke off into a s as my boat would rise up al up in the depths and rising to capsize me in that cold water
"On the third day," Zark went on, "I was lost I couldn&039;t sainst the white sky looked like gray slabs of dirty concrete I was going in fucking circles; everything looked the sa to eat for threebut the low clouds and the white sea and those berg mountains And on the seventh day I woke up and saw him"
Zark sat motionless, his pipe clenched between his teeth, his eyes black and brooding
"Hied abruptly "I don&039;t know I don&039;t knoho the hell it was but he was off s, an Eski after hih to see his face Never But it was a ht; I could tell by the way he handled that kayak Even though I grit my teeth and rowed after him until I was almost dead, he paddled Eskimo-style, always ahead of me I followed that kayak for two days He never said a word though I shouted and cursed for hi and then he&039;d go on He wound s in Moscow He knew those fucking waters, that&039;s for sure But after three days I lost his and when I rounded theone That&039;s when I saw, overfroood meal of broth and walrus meat and slept for two days When I asked them who had led me out they didn&039;t seem to know They didn&039;t have any idea; they told one that far from land before So I still have no damned idea who that was I wonder about hi He said, "The vision of a shaman"
"Huh? Hell with that Anyway, I followed the nomad Eskimos over the ice plains into Greenland and here I&039;ve stayed The hunting is daood and a man answers to no one but himself That&039;s as it should be"
The threeTobacco burned in Zark&039;s pipe with a faint crackling sound After a few moments he stirred and said, "Tiitak in another couple of hours"