The Glaciermen #37: Substitution

Early access prepublication manuscripts of "The Glaciermen"

Happy Tuesday Everyone,

A warm welcome to any new readers! There’s quite a few more of you rummaging around these parts lately, so here’s some helpful links:

If you happened upon The Glaciermen recently and want to start from the beginning, click here. If you’re looking for the beginning of Part Two, click here.

If you’re not sure exactly where you are in the story, check out the Index to find where you left off.

(Here’s the previous segment if you missed it, and the first chapter and index, if you’re new).

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Recap (spoilers!): Upon learning how to navigate the tunnels, Lee ended the life of Taqtu, a tunlaq hunter turned groveling guide. Now he and Tyra make their way toward the Killing Pit along with the corpse of a blonde woman—and we have yet to learn why.

Substitution

Lee and Tyra made their way down the ice tunnel toward the killing pit. It was dark and cold, curving gently into the blackness ahead. They had only passed one juncture, a single smaller passage going off perpendicularly from the main tunnel. Above the opening of the passage was a new symbol which Lee could not decipher: a box with two lines crossing from the top to the bottom. Since it was not the way, they continued onward, but something about the symbol gave Lee an unsettling feeling.

They trekked on, Lee carrying the corpse of the blonde woman over his shoulder, and Tyra using her newly given spear like a walking stick in one hand while holding their godseye-soaked-shirt-on-a-stick lantern in the other. He brooded as they walked, reliving the moment he had forced the knife into the back of Taqtu’s head. This was the third time he had killed, and all of it had happened in the last two days, but the first two deaths hadn’t bothered him—he had killed those hunters to save the girl in a moment of desperate necessity. As far as he was concerned, they had deserved their fate.

But Taqtu was different. He had been defenseless—harmless, even—when Lee took his life. True, he was willing to take advantage of the girl when given the chance, and he would have warned the others had he been left alive. But that was before, when the godseye’s power had held him in its thrall. Without it, Taqtu had shriveled into a sniveling husk, a pathetic caricature of a once proud hunter. Innocent or not, Lee had killed him in cold blood, snatching his life while he was distracted like a child with a toy.

Lee could still feel the smooth sliding of the blade as it had scraped between the base of Taqtu’s skull and his uppermost vertebra—the way the pressure had changed when the point passed beyond the tough layer of bone and sinew and into the soft fatty tissue of the brain.

He knew should be feeling something—regret, sadness, nausea even—but his heart was steady and, if anything, his body was invigorated. Yet he did not feel much of any emotion at all, but rather a plain, steady drive to keep moving forward, a simple urge to stay alive. His thoughts competed with cool calculating that did not pause over the need to kill as it came up in various hypothetical paths forward.

Before Lee could make anything of his strange feelings, he began to feel a rhythmic thumping reverberating through the ice. Then, echoing dully out from the dim blackness ahead, the faint vestiges of chanting in cadence with the thumping began to writhe their way through the frigid air.

Tyra stopped, staring fiercely into the darkness before them. She turned to Lee and began shaking her head, eyes wide with fear. Eyes that reminded him of someone… of Sandy.

Suddenly Lee was nine years old again, trapped in memories which forced themselves upward from their long, cold hibernation. Memories he had tried not to remember.

He watched as a fat man in a red jacket stripped naked and froze against the icy floor of the pit. As chanting rose and fell, and a skull headed creature murdered an old wizened man with a hawk tattoo. As the freezing mists descended and took Sandy from him. Darkness. The darkness of closed eyes and forced warmth, but this time, there was no warmth. Only creeping, frozen fingers sliding around his torso, pulling him deeper into icy blackness.

Lee was jerked from the darkness, his eyes flying open to Tyra desperately shaking him by the shoulders, harshly whispering at him in a language he could not understand.

How long was I… remembering? Lee thought, as the girl continued to shake him while casting furtive glances down the tunnel in the direction they had been headed.

He was down near the floor, slumped against the side of the tunnel, his back pressed directly against the ice. The girl stopped shaking him and pointed to her ears.

Listen? Lee thought, confused. To what?

It was silent, there was nothing to listen for. He looked up the passage. A thin mist was clinging to the floor of the tunnel, wafting lazily down from the way ahead. As he stared into the darkness of the passage, out of the blackness the faintest shift began to materialize. 

About a hundred yards ahead, where the line of sight ended behind the gently curving walls of the tunnel, the inky darkness began to thicken, slowly twisting into a cloying gray, then intensifying into a dim blue glow.

Lee suddenly understood what the girl was so riled up about. Adrenaline surged into his veins, snapping him to instant attention. The chanting had stopped, which meant the tunlaq had finished their killing ritual, and they were coming down this tunnel—directly toward them, right now.

He jumped to his feet and scooped up the corpse of the blonde woman and his spear. 

“Run!” he hissed, then took off with the girl close behind.

Lee’s mind raced furiously as his feet pounded against the crunchy floor of the passage. Even though he was slowed by both the lack of stimulation from the godseye and the extra weight of the corpse over his shoulder, the girl was barely able to keep up, and her breaths came in wheezes. The light from their gel-soaked lantern cast wild shadows as it swung in her grip while they ran.

Lee glanced behind them, slowing momentarily and twisting while shifting the corpse on his shoulder to see. The blue glue had not faded—they were not going fast enough. He could dump the corpse and outpace the girl, leaving them to delay the hunters while he made his way through the tunnels and tried to escape. But that went against every fiber of his being. He could not leave her after all he had done to save her, not now. Not after Taqtu. But what could he do? There was no way they could reach the storage chamber to hide before the hunters caught up to them.

“Come on,” he whispered loudly, more for himself than the girl, “Just a little faster.” 

Another glance back revealed the blue glow had deepened. The tunlaq were gaining on them. They would pass around the curve of the tunnel any second now and see Lee and Tyra fleeing, and it would all be over. Lee had witnessed what the tunlaq did to their captives. He could only imagine what they would do to traitors.

Suddenly out of the darkness ahead came a passage leading off from the main tunnel. How could I have forgotten? Lee thought, The side passage!

He skidded to a halt, then grabbed the girl by the arm, yanking her sideways as he abruptly changed course, leading them into the unknown passage just as the band of tunlaq hunters rounded the curve of the tunnel a hundred yards behind.

Lee had no way of knowing if they’d been spotted, but their only option was to keep moving. They raced down the passage, passing a dozen small openings on either side, until they reached an abrupt dead end—a smooth, curving wall of ice with no way forward.

Lee desperately backtracked, dragging the girl with him and leaning into one of the side openings. Just inside the opening was a sturdy wooden frame, crossed with horizontal and vertical boughs tied in a lattice and fastened to the ice with metal hinges. Through the boughs he could see a small empty chamber, and it had no other way in or out. He scurried to the next opening, Tyra in tow, and found the same.

These are cages, Lee realized. But he had no time to ponder the revelation, as he could hear the sound of the hunters approaching the opening to the side passage.

He grabbed the bars of the nearest cage door and yanked hard. It shifted, but didn’t open. Gritting his teeth, he heaved again, harder. A sharp twinge shot through his shoulder as the door finally flew open. He quickly tossed his spear inside, then shoved Tyra through the gap. Just as he was about to follow, a gruff voice called out behind him.

“Halt! Who there?”

Lee turned slowly, the lifeless body of the blonde woman still slung over his shoulder. A tunlaq hunter stood at the entrance to the main tunnel, just forty feet away, spear poised for a throw. At that distance, in such tight quarters, Lee knew he had no chance of rushing him.

“Come to the light!” the hunter commanded.

Lee blinked, looked down at himself, realizing he was almost entirely shrouded in darkness. Tyra must have covered up the glow torch as soon as she had gone into the cell.

The tunlaq hunter lifted back his spear to throw it down the passage.

“Wait!” Lee cried, and saw the spear pause, “I come out, brother.”

He mimicked the gruff dialect of the hunter as much as he dared. This wasn’t how the plan was supposed to go, but now he had no choice but to improvise. Anything less than full commitment to the ruse would mean a slow, certain death for both him and the girl.

Lee walked slowly down the passage toward the hunter, forcing as much confidence into his stride as he could muster. As he came into view, he could see the confusion wrinkling across the hunter’s face at the sight of the corpse slung over his shoulder. Lee couldn’t afford to give the hunter time to form his own conclusions, so he launched into weaving his deception without hesitation.

“Ha! Such weakness in these light-skinned surface dwellers!” Lee said. 

The hunter looked even more confused, and switched his grip on the spear to hold it toward Lee defensively.

Lee continued, presenting a mask of lighthearted frustration, “I take her off to fill her belly with my seed, but she die from the ice before I get a chance. Pathetic!”

To add to the effect, Lee casually dumped the body down in front of the hunter, who could not help but let out a short, amused huff. More tunlaq gathered behind him, drawn by the commotion and curious about its source. A large, grizzled hunter with a bulbous nose stepped forward and questioned the one who had first spotted Lee. 

“What’s happening here, Inqtink?”

Inqtink gestured with his spear, “Adopted One take this woman to fill with seed. She die like weak fish when on ice.”

The lumpy-nosed hunter raised an eyebrow at the proffered explanation, then squinted at Lee with a distinctly unfriendly glare.

“I heard Adopted One take yellow-hair paleface for himself,” he said to Lee. “But why do you not wait to spread seed until all brothers together, as is our way? And why you in this wrong place? This is for First Trial. Breeding women not taken here.”

Lee tried to hide a swallow, then said with a deep, earnest tone, or at least so he hoped, “This is the first time for me, I got excited and wanted to take the girl right away. This looked like a good place to me.”

Lump Nose nodded slowly, as if he found the explanation plausible, but then suddenly squinted even tighter.

“Why you not wear the blessing of the spirits? Where your godseye?”

Oh shit, Lee thought, glancing down at his pale, decidedly non-iridescent-blue skin. In the desperate intensity of the exchange, he had forgotten that he took off his coating of the godseye gel earlier. His mind scrambled fast.

“I, uh…”

Lump Nose began lowering his spear toward Lee.

“I, um, didn’t want to get it on the girl. She is not allowed the blessing, no?”

The logic of his statement seemed to give pause to Lump Nose, but he still seemed unconvinced. Inqtink, however, was nodding agreeably, clearly buying it wholesale. Lee decided to change tactics. He stepped forward and casually pushed Inqink’s spear aside.

“If you are done with your questions,” Lee said, forcing a bothered superiority into his tone, “I have somewhere to be.”

Inqtink began to move aside to allow Lee to pass, but Lump Nose stepped into his path.

Lee moved around his spear and stood directly in front of him, holding his face only inches away and staring fiercely into his eyes.

A few seconds passed. The tension in the passage thickened as the only sound was the breathing of many men. Inqtink shuffled nervously back and forth. Some of the others readied themselves for violence.

Lee spoke first, “How about you get out of my way, and while you’re at it, take this worthless paleface corpse with you on your way to the sleds. I’m sure the shaman would not want it to go to waste.”

Lump Nose glared back at him, the insulting tone of Lee’s command finding purchase.

“Where your godseye?” Lump Nose asked again, “Why listen to a dog with no blessing?”

Lee stepped even closer, nearly pressing against him, and whispered in his ear, “You think I need godseye to be blessed by the spirits? I am blessed in ways you cannot imagine. I am the boy who killed the bear. I am the one with whom the shaman shares his secrets. I do not even need this blade to end you.”

As he spoke, he quietly pulled his knife from his waist and gently pressed its cold edge against Lump Nose’s belly, hidden from the others' view.  The hunter's eyes widened, but he remained still, silent. Lee had him now—if he could just bring this to a smooth conclusion."

He continued to whisper, careful to keep his voice low enough that only Lump Nose could hear him, “I’m willing to let this insult pass and spare your life, even let you save face in front of the others, but you must leave me to do as I wish. I have special plans which must not be interrupted, and I will end anyone or anything that gets in my way. Do you understand?”

Lump Nose gave a nearly imperceptible nod. Lee then stepped away, discreetly stowing his knife.  After exchanging a subtle nod in return, he let out a raucous belly laugh. Lump Nose caught the cue and added his own forced laughter. The others exchanged puzzled glances, but then Inqtink joined in the laughter, pulling in others until the entire group of hunters was laughing—none quite sure why.

“Ha!” Lee exclaimed, speaking between laughs. “I cannot believe I brought this pathetic surface-dweller to the wrong place—only for her to die! What a weakling!”

This only served to amplify the laughter further. As it continued, Lee picked up the corpse and carried it over to Lump Nose, thrusting it into his arms. Once the laughter began to fade, Lee spoke again, infusing his voice with a tone of authority.

“Now off with you all,” he cheered, “The shaman has no place in his heart for those who waste time! Go brothers, go!”

That was all it took. After a second’s hesitation, the entire group of hunters charged down the tunnel, shouting and hooting, Lump Nose among them with his new cargo, still dumbfounded at how quickly the tables had turned on him, yet relieved to be away from the unexpectedly threatening Lee.

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And that’s it for now folks

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– Xavier Macfarlane
Author, The Glaciermen

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