Killer

“Right, you bastard,” he said, and he began to heave himself up the killer’s shoulder, twisting the axe-head free as he did so.

The killer felt something moving on its back. It panicked. Terrified, it began to run, hurling itself through the ocean at top speed until the solid drag of the floe sixty feet behind it slowed it down again.

With massive, dogged, insane concentration, Simon pulled himself on to the killer’s back until he half knelt, half sat astride the monster’s shoulders, his back against the firm base of the huge black sail of the fin. Every joint screaming with the movement, he closed his fists on the axe handle and raised the long wooden shaft as high as he could and held it there for a moment.

Then, “DIE!” he screamed, and he brought the steel blade down in a glittering arc into the side of the killer’s head. The red and grey metal disappeared into the killer’s flesh. Simon felt it grate against the shattered bone. He pulled it free again. Moving like a clockwork toy, he jerked it up again, and down. Up and down. Up and down.

The killer, goaded to new heights of strength by the terrible pain, hurled itself with incredible power against the restraint of the shrieking rope.

On the floe, Colin, his trembling forgotten, was pushing his left hand with all his strength down on the peg holding the rope, right hand round Kate’s shoulders. But the killer’s last, terrible lunge was too much. Colin felt the ice crumble under his false hand, and the sharp steel peg jerked free. The rope howled as it whipped through the air, its steel-weighted end cracking like a pistol-shot.

Simon, his sanity completely gone, had the axe raised for another massive blow, when the whale lurched free. His body, twisting to keep its balance, swung away from the fin, and suddenly, incredibly, something was whirling round it. Simon looked down. An orange snake closed on his chest, covering the yellow of his lifejacket with magic coils. It was as well he could not feel his body then, for his back was broken and his ribs crushed. He tried to breathe but something slammed into him. He stared down dazedly. One moment there were only the magical orange circles climbing up from his waist, and then next there were two inches of steel peg sticking out in front of his lifejacket.

“S-I-M-O-N . . .” The echoes of Colin’s cry echoed over the ocean, curiously deadened by the looming bulk of the fog. But Simon wouldn’t hear. Colin straightened, and watched the tall black thorn of the killer’s sail disappearing like the conning-tower of a sinking submarine.

Kate stood up beside him and narrowed her eyes, but there was nothing to see except the thickening billows of the fog; the flat grey sea; the sky, light grey cumulus-clouds beginning to break, revealing a thin spread of cirrus; the restless floes . . . Their own floe, the size of a small room now – fifteen feet by twenty – shifted restlessly, water slopping over it. She spun round, eyes searching in panic. But there was nothing to see. She went to Colin who was standing, also silent, looking around. They slid their arms around each other and looked out as though there was something to look at in the billowing fog, but there was nothing.

Nothing at all.

iv

Colin Ross was dying. He lay, still wrapped in his freezing clothes, with his dark head cradled in Kate’s lap. He could not feel his legs. It required all his strength of will to stop his massive body convulsing with the cold as both heat and life drained out of him. Otherwise the energy used by the muscles as they tightened and relaxed would set up a strain on his heart that it would not be able to bear for very long. He gave himself an hour at the outside. Kate knew as well as he did what was happening, but neither of them mentioned it. They spoke quietly, contentedly of small, unimportant things, like husband and wife at the fireside during a long winter evening.

But then, gradually, as the fog thickened around them in warm clouds, out of the heart of it, quiet at first – unnoticed by either of them – but growing louder, there came a faint, almost subliminal throbbing.

Suddenly Colin’s eyes sprang open. “Listen,” he said.

The throbbing had grown almost solid. The fog seemed to shake with it, the ice to tremble.

“What is it?” whispered Kate, awed by the power of the sound.

“It’s an engine. A ship!” He heaved himself up on to his knees. The fog swirled around them, shaking with the sound.

And then abruptly there was silence.

“Where is it? Sweet Jesus, where is it?” Colin was searching the fog with almost insane eyes, but all he could see were vague and shifting shadows, looming huge but insubstantial.

“Help!” he yelled, his voice pitifully weak.

“There!” cried Kate, pointing. Something was moving in the lower skirts of the fog. They strained to see more clearly, calling out as loud as they could, “HERE! HERE! HELP!”

But what they could see moving were ten tall black thorn-shaped fins. The pack was back.