Beyond the Sea of Ice by William Sarabande

Author:William Sarabande [Sarabande, William]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Thriller
ISBN: 9789992775486
Publisher: Domain
Published: 1987-01-02T05:00:00+00:00

He smiled as she came to him. All thoughts of the great mammoth left his mind as he drew her close. Life was good. The future promised much to him. With Lonit as his woman, Torka was no longer ready to throw his life away. Galeena's people ate as though they feared that they would never eat again. They stuffed themselves until it seemed that they could eat no more, but they did eat more. And more. Until Lonit protested to Torka that soon all of their winter provisions would be gone.

Galeena overheard her. "Woman no worry! Tomorrow men hunt. Both bands together, we take much meat. Have plenty eat for all come dark time winter."

The sun stood high in the sky. Exhausted by what Galeena said was a very long trek to the mountain, his people lounged upon their own filthy sleeping skins and upon the hides and furs that they had freely seized from Lonit's stores. Scratching at their vermin-infested bodies, some of them slept; others gnawed bones, wolfed meat, gulped fat, cut wind, belched, and coupled freely. Now and again, some of them rose to defecate or vomit; then, thus purged, they ambled back to their sleeping skins to doze or eat or copulate within full view of the unruly boys who scoured the cave for leftovers.

Never in their lives had Torka's people seen others behave in such a despicable manner, nor had they ever seen such rowdy, offensive youths. Torka would have asked Galeena why the boys had no one to feed them; it did not seem logical to him that they could all have been orphaned. And there were simply too many women in Galeena's band. No young girls. No toddlers. No infants. And no elderly, either, for that matter just men and women in their prime and a pack of nearly a dozen animalistic boys who ran wild amid the adults, foraging for food and harassing everyone, especially two greasy matrons who sat by themselves beside a sloppily made fire where no man joined them. They were evidently widows; Torka had seen them fight for their share of food as savagely as the boys. Now, as he watched, one of them whacked at the boys with the thighbone of an antelope as the other one stared wistfully across the cave at Umak. The old man ignored her, and Galeena showed no concern over the screechings of her embattled hearth mate or for the brawling boys. The headman was too busy beneath his sleeping skins with his appropriated food and the two giggling, guffawing women who were his wives. Torka knew that he would get no answers from Galeena until the man was rested and sated.

Torka was sickened by the stench and crowding, and at his insistence, his little band had relocated their fire stones, sleeping skins, and what Galeena had left them of their personal belongings. They moved well out of the center of the cave, almost onto the exposed lip of the cornice. The new site was not without drawbacks.

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