Travellers #2 by Jack Lasenby

Author:Jack Lasenby [Jack Lasenby]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781775532279
Publisher: Random House New Zealand
Published: 2014-07-26T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 13

Taur the Hunter

Fog’s wet cloth dragged across my face, lifted, and dragged again. I blinked around. We must find where we were. Shelter. Warmth. In silence an ice island emerged from the fog; slow it turned end for end, and vanished. Jak and Jess woke and searched the kelp, cocking their ears at crabs scuttling between rocks, leaping to catch them, pawing, whining. Taur lay and snored, surrounded by broken shells.

A quick look around. We were marooned on that strip of sand and rocks between unclimbable cliffs and the sea. I killed a seal at the far end and returned with the liver. Taur had woken and joined Jak and Jess catching crabs, roaring and laughing, and I was grateful for his recovery. We shared the liver, still warm, the four of us.

I had found a rivulet of fresh water. The falling tide left fish in rock pools. Jak and Jess learned to stick their heads under and pull them out. We threw up a shelter of driftwood against the dripping mist and fog. In front Taur got a fire going, striking sparks from his flint and steel. Fluff out of the bottom of his pack began to glow. He added scrapings from dry sticks, shavings, splinters, twigs, and bits of wood.

We were there several days, before a southerly came up. Waves scoured the beach, swept away our fire, slewed wet embers across the floor of our shelter. We could see a real storm would thump waves halfway up the cliffs.

While Taur rolled drift logs together, I climbed and cut flax that grew in pockets on the cliffs. We plaited ropes, made a raft, and put aboard the packs filled with seal meat and smoked fish. Up to his waist in water, Taur shouted to hurry, Jak and Jess whined, and I ran to the white cliff with a lump of charcoal and sketched a horned Bull Man scything down his enemies.

“Urgsh!” I flung myself aboard, laughing. The sea rushed out, sucked the raft up and over the back of a returning comber, and the current carried us away. “Grawgh!” Taur pointed. Across the strait, orange light shone – an egg yolk – through the fog’s white bank: the sun rising.

“That means we’ve crossed the strait! We’re safe!”

“Gurgh!” Taur roared and smacked my back, and I remembered how dangerous he was when well.

Wave caps broke and frothed across the logs. Lashed on the platform in the middle, our gear was dry inside seal skins. I made rough harnesses and tied Jak and Jess fast to the platform. Hoping to find a safer beach Taur tried to steer with a pole towards the cliffs we saw appearing and vanishing through the murk.

My ears ached with a sudden change. We were in still air. Around us, instead of waves, a jobble of chopping water. Sharp tongues that poked up, slopped back, seethed between the logs of our raft. Hiss! Paddling was useless. The logs jostled against my feet. As I tightened their lashings, Taur flung a huge arm around me, roared louder than the sea.

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