Chapter 8
Marcus pushed himself back in a quick jerk, too quick, hoping that he didn't dislodge any snow to reveal his presence. Then, tapping his forehead with the binoculars, he realized that he also had not tilted them back toward his head when moving. This could have very well flashed light right at the people he was trying to avoid, that he really wanted to avoid now. He stopped moving and held his breath, waiting for a yell or the distinct sound of armed men running toward his position. There was nothing.
Faint voices, talking as they had been, assured him that it was safe to move. He decided to crawl backwards and slide down into the trench, where he could make better time back to the shelter and stay out of sight at the same time. He slid down as quietly as he could, using his hands like two snow rakes to slow his descent. At this distance, with a winding path this deep, there was no real danger of being heard.
He ran the last few yards to the opening and the breathing hole. He couldn't help but notice the rumpled surface, brimming with the backs and heads of dozens of horned whales. He was wondering what they had to do with all this, when one whale abruptly blew air out and slapped its tail hard, launching it forward at a startling speed. The whale had closed half of the fifty-foot width of the hole, when Marcus realized it was charging. He stopped in his tracks...
Charging? Do whales charge? he pondered. He was looking right at it, contemplating what to call a charging whale, when the animal's massive, eight-foot spiral horn rose out of the water, followed by its head, followed by half of its body, missing Marcus by about two feet. The ice broke into three massive pieces, all of which were stood immediately on end by the whale's weight. Marcus was underwater before he realized what had happened.
COLD!!!COLD!!!COLD!!!COLD!!!
It was damn cold, not just cold. This was the kind of all-encompassing cold that caused heart attacks, aneurisms and strokes. The kind of cold that causes every fiber of every muscle to flex as hard as it can, all at once, the kind of sudden cold that could make him bite his own tongue off. He was dead and he knew it.
A whale was swimming around him. His eyes were locked tight; he didn't want to open them in saltwater, especially thirty-degree saltwater, but he could feel it circling. It was nudging him now, and each bump was causing him to expel precious air. He was trying to swim, but the shock of immersion had his muscles in grid-lock, and the weight of his gear was holding him down. There were several whales bumping him now and his air was nearly gone.
Well.. he thought, at least I'll drown before they eat me, and let the last bit of air out of his lungs. He started to inhale the water and get it over with, when something smacked him, hard, in the forehead, forcing his eyes open for a second. The cold saltwater burned like acid. The impact caused him to take a gasping breath, but it was not the burning, choking sensation he had expected.
Something smacked him again, much harder. His eyes stayed open this time; abandoning his query into why he wasn't drowning, he saw a whale, up close. Its eye was about a foot from his own. The whale smacked him with its horn... not so hard this time, and Marcus realized it was trying to get him to look up. There was another whale just above him, floating upside-down, blowing bubbles at him.
Cute.. Marcus thought sarcastically, then realized this was why he wasn't drowning. The whale horn again... Marcus almost yelled out loud, “OK... I get it!” but restrained himself. He looked up again, and the whale put its blowhole right up to his mouth and blew out, thankfully much more gently than it expelled air on the surface, or his face and lungs would have exploded.
The whale was breathing for him. He held onto its spiraled, javelin-like horn to keep from sinking. He also noticed that he was engulfed in bubbles now, all around him, lots of them. Once again, he was putting together a sarcastic comment in his head when it hit him that they were keeping him warm, not post-toastie warm, but he was not shivering and dying either.
The bubbles from below stopped and all but the breathing whale were swimming and making frantic buzzes and clicks. A whale darted to the far side of the hole, exploding with the same force of the whale that had sunk him, followed by a blast of muffled noise, smacking and cracking sounds.
One of the invaders was descending about fifteen feet away in a stream of small bubbles. The whales were swimming around him as he struggled to get his pack off, which was sinking him like a stone. The whales were not helping him, though they were watching, intently. Marcus suddenly realized that they were killing him...
Movement caught his eye and again another whale darted from the opposite side, except this one wasn't going up, it was staying straight and level, heading right for the sinking man. The man must have seen it too, as his efforts increased and then changed to a pathetic defensive posture, which consisted of both arms and legs straight out in front of him, as if he were falling sideways through the water.
The whale hit him hard, and his already straightened arms and legs became just a little straighter with the force. His waving hair straightened out, covering the terrified look on his face. Blood was immediately trailing from the wound and out of his nose and mouth, streaming out, over and around the horn and the head of the animal.
The whale's mark was dead-on, left side of the chest, the heart. The man was not dead though, not yet anyway, and was holding the eight-foot long horn between his hands as the whale pumped its tail for more propulsion. The whale swam straight into the ice shelf, slamming its horn all the way through the man and into the ice behind with a dull, echoing thud. The whale had hit so hard, in fact, that it became stuck, thrashing back and forth as it tried to break free. The man went totally limp upon impact, though the whale's thrashings made his limbs and head drift from side to side, like he was swaying to music.
Two narwhals swam up fast, one putting its horn between the ice and the dead man, levering the body farther up on the horn, while the other whale speared the ice around the stuck whale's horn, until it was free. With a powerful thrash of the whale's tail, the invader's body was dislodged and drifted into the deep, streaming a red trail, but no bubbles, behind it.
The breathing whale suddenly stopped and moved away; luckily, Marcus had a full breath in him and sealed his mouth off right away. He was starting to drift down now too, and he was getting cold. Is it my turn now? his mind questioned. He saw a dark shape below, and for a moment thought it might be the dead guy swimming back up, but this was way too big and way too fast to be anything close to a man, even one recently back from the dead.
It was a huge narwhal, really huge, nearly twice the size of the others he'd seen so far, and it was coming up fast. It was coming up fast toward him. Marcus figured the big guy wanted his turn and closed his eyes, waiting for the nearly twelve-foot long, double twisted horn to stab into his heart.
Instead, it stabbed into his arm, his left arm, and pinned him to the ice. The tip of the horn was surprisingly small and sharp, and the whales used them with precision. This one had pierced the skin, and the skin only, though being speared to ice is never pleasant. Then his vision went completely white as a jolt of what seemed like lightening passed through his body.
That wasn't so bad... he thought, as he slipped away.