Killer

Once again they faced each other, a little more than five yards apart. Oblivious of the battle still raging around them they held themselves motionless in the water, each waiting for the other to make the first move; then they began to close. The walrus reared its head back again, staring over the great bridge of its nose. The killer put his sleek head down and thrust his body forward at increasing speed, stretching forward, his mouth opening, seemingly going for the throat. At the last moment the walrus, its nerve broken, brought its chin down to protect its chest and neck from the killer’s teeth. The killer, shifting his attack, opened his mouth delicately, and caught hold of the walrus’s upper lip, pulled up by the movement of its head down through the water. It was the walrus’s only weak spot, and the leader had caught it perfectly. With a great wrench of his long, sleek body, he dragged the old bull’s head down further and, keeping clear of the wildly slashing tusks, he dragged the walrus into the depths. The old bull’s breath, already short, ran out in the next few moments, and long before the leader felt the need to breathe, the walrus had ceased to struggle and the last silver bubbles of its breath were struggling towards the surface.

Almost as slowly, the leader followed them up.

What had been a battle was now a rout. Thirty of the walruses were dead or too badly wounded to swim, for the loss of five whales. The family units, their flanks and rear protected by the remnants of the old males and females who had borne the brunt of the killers’ attacks, were in full flight towards the only protection which offered – that of the floe. The whales, their killing instincts still fully aroused and, if anything, extended by the ten or fifteen bloody minutes of the battle, were in full and wild pursuit. The grey water all along the east side of the floe was alive with screaming brown and maroon heads with their dully flashing tusks. All were heading through the steel-grey foam towards the safety of the ice.

The leader, seeing all of this, and as yet unaware of the fact that the survivors of his early attacks were still on the floe, gave a great cry and thrust himself back into the attack.

He had swum perhaps five yards before the first shots rang out.

iv

“Good Christ, they’re coming back!” yelled Simon Quick. He ran to the edge of the ice overlooking the churning water and turned unsteadily on the ice. “They’re coming back!”

Job’s lips moved silently as he watched the first moments of the attack. He was a religious man, and he was not about to call Quick to order for calling upon his God. His own prayers, however, were addressed to an older, wilder deity – Aipalookvik the Destroyer. But Innuit are a practical race, and he knew well enough that prayers unsupported by action weigh little with any god; so, with the words still moving his lips, he turned towards the supply tent and the rifles.

Kate, not understanding the implication of what she saw, asked Job what he was doing.

“I’ve told you. They’ll tear the floe apart, destroy us. We must keep them off.” And he was gone.

She turned to Ross, who was rushing towards the sleeping tent where the clothes were. “Colin, are we really – ”

She was going to ask were they really going to kill these poor creatures caught between two forces they did not understand. Ross answered her question before she had even formed it.

“Yes. We have to. Job’s right – they’ll bury us. We have to keep them off . . . Now come and get the warm clothes: this may be a long job. Hurry!”

He turned and gestured to Simon who began to stumble towards them. They waited a moment, and when he arrived, the three of them set off together towards the tent and the warm damp clothes.

While they were dressing, Job was busy in the second tent where they had moved the guns during the rainstorm. He made sure the Remington and the Weatherby were fully loaded, and put aside twenty more shells for each; then he started work on the carbines, making sure the action was free, whispering a prayer to Kaila, great God of the sky, and another to Torgasoak, tall one-armed protector of Innuit, that the mechanisms would function properly in the cold. Then he laid out the magazines ready. There were five guns in all. Many less than they needed. As he was making his preparations, his mind sped through the possibilities. Obviously, even if the automatic carbines worked perfectly, they would be unable to keep all the walruses from coming on to the ice, so they would need something for close fighting. He sorted out the three silver gleaming harpoons and laid them beside the guns. And they could use the axe as well, he thought. If the carbines jammed they would need to use the axe, the harpoons, anything.

God help them if the carbines seized.

Ross, Kate and Simon were dressed in moments, and were rushing back across the net towards the tent as Job came out through the flap, a rifle in each hand.