The Birth of People's Republic of Antartica, стр. 118
We were just a mile short of the beach, at the edge of the glacier, when we heard Iceberg let out a howl. We had poor visibility, went to the defensive. My men were armed with harpoons and knives. Pistole had an automatic weapon. Gleb the Hewer and I ran up, Pistole followed at a distance. We found Iceberg and Beow standing legs firm in the gravel, heads back, yapping like talking, eyes searching the face of the mountain. Before them, nearly buried in a small crevasse of an ice formation, were two corpses—or what was left, arms and legs hacked off. I shall explain later, but that was the way Hielistos—some Hielistos—killed. The dead were not from our camp. Pistole panicked, “Mother of God! They come! Mother of God!” And then he fled.
“Ya nee guveroo, comrade, no ploka, ochen ploka,” said Gleb the Hewer, meaning that he knew this was bad. Beow started up the mountain; Iceberg barked him to halt, then snapped at me purposefully. I stood in the direction of a shelf overhead, took my harpoon and drove it into the ice. I had some notion I could bargain with them. I listened, heard the wind, the sea, the squawking skuas, and nothing else. Gleb the Hewer breathed hard. It is true that one can smell men in the Antarctica; one’s own smell is impossible, but a gang of men is a wrenching odor. He shook his head, pointed down to the rookery, meaning we had to get our men in. I waved him to wait, squinted as hard as I could up the pass. The Ice Cross also said if you can see them, they are not Hielistos.
Iceberg growled at me. I was wrong not to obey her. I had followed less tangible premonitions. I knew my error when I got back to the team and Pistole commanded us at gunpoint to return to the camps. We left the hunters to their ends.
That evening, Golgotha was awash with the frenzy of doom. Pistole had told Mosquite he had seen Hielistos, a lie that sent the Little Brothers into their nightmares. They clattered on the radio for the Ice Cross. I held my own council, and decided for caution. We pleaded with Mosquite for firearms. There was a riot in the most desperate part of the camp—the new arrivals and a party of Brazilians—and the Little Brothers fired into the barracks. Golgotha’s population was reduced to less than three thousand after the winter’s losses, and two thirds of these were children and the dying. At most, I had two hundred able-bodied men and women as fighters. Mosquite sent a message to me to get my best people away from the camp and not to return until after the attack. He said the Hielistos wanted food, weapons, recruits, and would not pursue us once they got what they wanted from the camp. Then he and his brethren retreated within the camp, to caves where I presumed they had always retreated when the Hielistos came. Germanicus and Motherwell, with Cavalobranco’s men, did what they could to set our defenses. There were so many approaches, we decided to defend the axis of the camp and risk sorties on our flanks. Germanicus took care to hide Jane and the children within as best he could. We pulled in our sentries from King James. It was a long night of defeated decisions. I remained aloof from the particulars, felt increasingly that I was making, had made, a profound miscalculation—that out there on the glacier I had missed my opportunity. I believed myself responsible for our peril. When I had looked up the face of the mountain, I had felt eyes on me, my own eyes.
The Ice Cross did not answer our pleas; but then, this was not of itself significant, because radio transmission in the Antarctic is haphazard. The weather worsened as the sun moved toward the horizon, long blue shadows across Aurora Bay. We prayed for a gusting snowstorm to pick up the sea and provide us a natural redoubt. The wind did increase, not enough, and as I made my rounds along the trench, I heard the sealers giving instructions to each other like eulogies. There was one rumor about the Hielistos that racked even them: that they ate the dead.
The waiting was of course the worst of it. I did not want to talk with Lazarus, or Longfaeroe, and felt too black to try to bolster Germanicus in his vigilance. I walked away from all of them, my two bodyguards trailing me, and made my way down through the tunnels to the service hut. I wanted to be with my friends, my wolves.
I meant to sit with Iceberg and her brood until the alarm was sounded. The kennel was a long, low-slung structure, with no more than a four-foot clearance, located a quarter mile down the peninsula from the camp entrance. There were wretches hiding even there, and I had my bodyguards clear the place, told them to wait outside for me. Grim Fiddle was absolute at Golgotha. He showed no mercy. He gave no charity except for self-interest. My face was fit for my audience, wolves with their blood up, howling and snapping. They were arranged in crisscrossing lines, tethered on short ropes to stakes in order to keep them from each other. I moved in a crouch along the empty stakes. I waved my harpoon at them, inciting them to wilder fits. I yelled nonsense at them. Grim Fiddle preached fury to his wolves. Then I tired of my taunting sport and turned