Killer

He was attacked by two old male walruses at once, and destroyed almost before he had had a chance to react. The first walrus plunged its tusks into the bulging muscles of his neck just behind his sleek head. With all the force in its massive chest the walrus drove its tusks more than two feet into the whale’s flesh, then it wrenched them sideways, tearing them free, and breaking its enemy’s neck. The other swam up under the sleek belly and used its great blunt ivory daggers to equal effect, disembowelling the whale with one massive jerk of its neck.

Others of the whales were in no better case. Although the slaughter of the walruses continued, there were casualties among the attackers also. Here, one tusk – the other was a broken stump barely protruding from the mouth – was driven down with such force that it split a sleek black head; there, two bodies slowly sank, the tusks of the dead walrus impaling the throat of a dead whale. For all the great maroon bodies torn and bleeding, there was a considerable toll of ragged slashes on harlequin faces, flanks, backs. Even the leader was held at bay by three old cows whose curving tusks cost him more scars on his head, before he broke the resolve of one, and the two who still could do so, then joined the slow, bloody retreat.

He tasted the diluted blood on the broad blade of his tongue and screamed with delight. Gaining speed, he was quickly back in the midst of the mêlée, whirling, diving, jumping, snapping, tearing and rending with the rest. The old bull with his slightly broken left tusk turned to meet him as he came. It had already crippled two whales and killed a third, using knowledge hammered past the thick bones of its head by a long full life in the Arctic; and as it saw the great bulk of its new adversary loom among the blood-thick foam it turned from the body of its last victim, pulling its long tusk from eyesocket and brain with a convulsive heave of its whole body.

For a moment they paused, circling around each other, then the leader attacked. The old bull jerked its head back in its time-honoured gesture of attack and defence. The leader swirled clear just in time to avoid the downward slash, but the charge that followed it caught him unawares, and the full force of the walrus’s huge body concentrated behind the heavy bones of its skull crashed with sickening force into his ribs. The air exploded from his lungs. He fought his way to the surface, dazed and sickened by the terrible force of the blow. For those moments he was totally defenceless. The old bull flipped over on to its back and swam up beneath its enemy, already jerking its tusks from side to side in anticipation of the disembowelling movement it would perform as it sank them into the leader’s unprotected belly. But the leader was not wholly unprotected. His consort, not far away, saw the danger clearly enough, and, with a great scream, she threw herself through the water between the walrus and her mate, totally unconcerned by the danger to herself.

But even before she came anywhere near the walrus, she was hurled aside by a young male who also dashed to the rescue. And to his death. Concerned only with protecting the leader he gave no thought to protecting himself, and it was into his belly the tusks were thrust. A great cloud of bubbles and blood exploded out of him as the ivory spears wrenched to one side, and he turned slowly on to his back, rigid and dying as his intestines were torn out.

The old bull turned to meet the big female as she followed up her attack, still fighting to give her mate time to recover; but before the battle was truly joined the leader had returned. The mate held back on his cry of command, and the leaders of the two battling herds closed again. Once again the old bull pulled its head back and charged at the leader, tusks out-thrust; again the leader swirled aside at the last moment before the longer tusk cut into his flesh, but this time he twisted his body through an extra few degrees so the walrus’s head rushed under his belly, and only its shoulder hit the white flesh. The leader whirled round, mouth agape, but the walrus had turned also, half on its back, tusks still thrust out. The leader went for the old bull’s rear flippers, but they were jerked beyond his reach, and the blunt broken tusk scraped the length of his back without doing any damage.