The Golden Compass hdm-1 Read online

  Eager to try, she snapped a stick off a snow-laden bush, trimmed all the side shoots off, and swished it from side to side like a rapier. lorek Byrnison sat back on his haunches and waited, forepaws in his lap. When she was ready, she faced him, but she didn't like to stab at him because he looked so peaceable. So she flourished it, feinting to right and left, not intending to hit him at all, and he didn't move. She did that several times, and not once did he move so much as an inch.

  Finally she decided to thrust at him directly, not hard, but just to touch the stick to his stomach. Instantly his paw reached forward and flicked the stick aside.

  Surprised, she tried again, with the same result. He moved far more quickly and surely than she did. She tried to hit him in earnest, wielding the stick like a fencer's foil, and not once did it land on his body. He seemed to know what she intended before she did, and when she lunged at his head, the great paw swept the stick aside harmlessly, and when she feinted, he didn't move at all.

  She became exasperated, and threw herself into a furious attack, jabbing and lashing and thrusting and stabbing, and never once did she get past those paws. They moved everywhere, precisely in time to parry, precisely at the right spot to block.

  Finally she was frightened, and stopped. She was sweating inside her furs, out of breath, exhausted, and the bear still sat impassive. If she had had a real sword with a murderous point, he would have been quite unharmed.

  «I bet you could catch bullets,» she said, and threw the stick away. «How do you do that?»

  «By not being human,» he said. «That's why you could never trick a bear. We see tricks and deceit as plain as arms and legs. We can see in a way humans have forgotten. But you know about this; you can understand the symbol reader.»

  «That en't the same, is it?» she said. She was more nervous of the bear now than when she had seen his anger.

  «It is the same,» he said. «Adults can't read it, as I understand. As I am to human fighters, so you are to adults with the symbol reader.»

  «Yes, I suppose,» she said, puzzled and unwilling. «Does that mean I'll forget how to do it when I grow up?»

  «Who knows? I have never seen a symbol reader, nor anyone who could read them. Perhaps you are different from others.» He dropped to all fours again and went on gnawing his meat. Lyra had unfastened her furs, but now the cold was striking in again and she had to do them up. All in all, it was a disquieting episode. She wanted to consult the alethiome-ter there and then, but it was too cold, and besides, they were calling for her because it was time to move on. She took the tin boxes that lorek Byrnison had made, put the empty one back into Farder Coram's kit bag, and put the one with the spy-fly in it together with the alethiometer in the pouch at her waist. She was glad when they were moving again.

  The leaders had agreed with Lee Scoresby that when they reached the next stopping place, they would inflate his balloon and he would spy from the air. Naturally Lyra was eager to fly with him, and naturally it was forbidden; but she rode with him on the way there and pestered him with questions. «Mr. Scoresby, how would you fly to Svalbard?» «You'd need a dirigible with a gas engine, something like a zeppelin, or else a good south wind. But hell, I wouldn't dare. Have you ever seen it? The bleakest barest most inhospitable godforsaken dead end of nowhere.»

  «I was just wondering, if lorek Bymison wanted to go back…» «He'd be killed. lorek's in exile. As soon as he set foot there, they'd tear him to pieces.»

  «How do you inflate your balloon, Mr. Scoresby?» «Two ways. I can make hydrogen by pouring sulfuric acid onto iron filings. You catch the gas it gives off and gradually fill the balloon like that. The other way is to find a ground-gas vent near a fire mine. There's a lot of gas under the ground here, and rock oil besides. I can make gas from rock oil, if I need to, and from coal as well; it's not hard to make gas. But the quickest way is to use ground gas. A good vent will fill the balloon in an hour.»

  «How many people can you carry?»

  «Six, if I need to.»

  «Could you carry lorek Byrnison in his armor?»

  «I have done. I rescued him one time from the Tartars, when he was cut off and they were starving him out—that was in the Tunguska campaign; I flew in and took him off. Sounds easy, but hell, I had to calculate the weight of that old boy by guess-work. And then I had to bank on finding ground gas under the ice fort he'd made. But I could see what kind of ground it was from the air, and I reckoned we'd be safe in digging. See, to go down I have to let gas out of the balloon, and I can't get airborne again without more. Anyway, we made it, armor and all.»

  «Mr. Scoresby, you know the Tartars make holes in people's heads?»

  «Oh, sure. They've been doing that for thousands of years. In the Tunguska campaign we captured five Tartars alive, and three of them had holes in their skulls. One of them had two.»

  «They do it to each other?»

  «That's right. First they cut partway around a circle of skin on the scalp, so they can lift up a flap and expose the bone. Then they cut a little circle of bone out of the skull, very carefully so they don't penetrate the brain, and then they sew the scalp back over.»

  «I thought they did it to their enemies!»

  «Hell, no. It's a great privilege. They do it so the gods can talk to them.»

  «Did you ever hear of an explorer called Stanislaus Grumman?»

  «Grumman? Sure. I met one of his team when I flew over the Yenisei River two years back. He was going to live among the Tartar tribes up that way. Matter of fact, I think he had that hole in the skull done. It was part of an initiation ceremony, but the man who told me didn't know much about it.»

  «So…If he was like an honorary Tartar, they wouldn't have killed him?»

  «Killed him? Is he dead then?»

  «Yeah. I saw his head,» Lyra said proudly. «My father found it. I saw it when he showed it to the Scholars at Jordan College in Oxford. They'd scalped it, and all.»

  «Who'd scalped it?»

  «Well, the Tartars, that's what the Scholars thought….But maybe it wasn't.»

  «It might not have been Grumman's head,» said Lee Scoresby. «Your father might have been misleading the Scholars.»

  «I suppose he might,» said Lyra thoughtfully. «He was asking them for money.»

  «And when they saw the head, they gave him the money?»

  «Yeah.»

  «Good trick to play. People are shocked when they see a thing like that; they don't like to look too close.»

  «Especially Scholars,» said Lyra.

  «Well, you'd know better than I would. But if that was Grumman's head, I'll bet it wasn't the Tartars who scalped him. They scalp their enemies, not their own, and he was a Tartar by adoption.»

  Lyra turned that over in her mind as they drove on. There were wide currents full of meaning flowing fast around her; the Gobblers and their cruelty, their fear of Dust, the city in the Aurora, her father in Svalbard, her mother….And where was she? The alethiometer, the witches flying northward. And poor little Tony Makarios; and the clockwork spy-fly; and lorek Byrnison's uncanny fencing…

  She fell asleep. And every hour they drew closer to Bolvangar.

  Fourteen

  Bolvangar Lights

  The fact that the gyptians had heard or seen nothing of Mrs. Coulter worried Farder Coram and John Faa more than they let Lyra know; but they weren't to know that she was worried too. Lyra feared Mrs. Coulter and thought about her often. And whereas Lord Asriel was now «father,» Mrs. Coulter was never «mother.» The reason for that was Mrs. Coulter's daemon, the golden monkey, who had filled Pantalaimon with a powerful loathing, and who, Lyra felt, had pried into her secrets, and particularly that of the alethiometer.

  And they were bound to be chasing her; it was silly to think otherwise. The spy-fly proved that, if nothing else.

  But when an enemy did strike, it wasn't Mrs. Coulter. The gyptians had planned to stop and rest their dogs, repair a couple of sledges, and get all thei
r weapons into shape for the assault on Bolvangar. John Faa hoped that Lee Scoresby might find some ground gas to fill his smaller balloon (for he had two, apparently) and go up to spy out the land. However, the aeronaut attended to the condition of the weather as closely as a sailor, and he said there was going to be a fog; and sure enough, as soon as they stopped, a thick mist descended. Lee Scoresby knew he'd see nothing from the sky, so he had to content himself with checking his equipment, though it was all in meticulous order. Then, with no warning at all, a volley of arrows flew out of the dark.

  Three gyptian men went down at once, and died so silently that no one heard a thing. Only when they slumped clumsily across the dog traces or lay unexpectedly still did the nearest men notice what was happening, and then it was already too late, because more arrows were flying at them. Some men looked up, puzzled by the fast irregular knocking sounds that came from up and down the line as arrows hurtled into wood or frozen canvas.

  The first to come to his wits was John Faa, who shouted orders from the center of the line. Cold hands and stiff limbs moved to obey as yet more arrows flew down like rain, straight rods of rain tipped with death.

  Lyra was in the open, and the arrows were passing over her head. Pantalaimon heard before she did, and became a leopard and knocked her over, making her less of a target. Brushing snow out of her eyes, she rolled over to try and see what was happening, for the semidarkness seemed to be overflowing with confusion and noise. She heard a mighty roar, and the clang and scrape of lorek Byrnison's armor as he leaped fully clad over the sledges and into the fog, and that was followed by screams, snarling, crunching and tearing sounds, great smashing blows, cries of terror and roars of bearish fury as he laid them waste.

  But who was them? Lyra had seen no enemy figures yet. The gyptians were swarming to defend the sledges, but that (as even Lyra could see) made them better targets; and their rifles were not easy to fire in gloves and mittens; she had only heard four or five shots, as against the ceaseless knocking rain of arrows. And more and more men fell every minute.

  Oh, John Faa! she thought in anguish. You didn't foresee this, and I didn't help you!

  But she had no more than a second to think that, for there was a mighty snarl from Pantalaimon, and something— another daemon—hurtled at him and knocked him down, crushing all the breath out of Lyra herself; and then hands were hauling at her, lifting her, stifling her cry with foul-smelling mittens, tossing her through the air into another's arms, and then pushing her flat down into the snow again, so that she was dizzy and breathless and hurt all at once. Her arms were hauled behind till her shoulders cracked, and someone lashed her wrists together, and then a hood was crammed over her head to muffle her screams, for scream she did, and lustily:

  «lorek! lorek Byrnison! Help me!»

  But could he hear? She couldn't tell; she was hurled this way and that, crushed onto a hard surface which then began to lurch and bump like a sledge. The sounds that reached her were wild and confused. She might have heard lorek Byrnison's roar, but it was a long way off, and then she was jolting over rough ground, arms twisted, mouth stifled, sobbing with rage and fear. And strange voices spoke around her.

  «Pan…»

  «I'm here, shh, I'll help you breathe. Keep still…»

  His mouse paws tugged at the hood until her mouth was freer, and she gulped at the frozen air.

  «Who are they?» she whispered.

  «They look like Tartars. I think they hit John Faa.»

  «No—»

  «I saw him fall. But he should have been ready for this sort of attack. We know that.»

  «But we should have helped him! We should have been watching the alethiometer!»

  «Hush. Pretend to be unconscious.»

  There was a whip cracking, and the howl of racing dogs. From the way she was being jerked and bounced about, Lyra could tell how fast they were going, and though she strained to hear the sounds of battle, all she made out was a forlorn volley of shots, muffled by the distance, and then the creak and rush and soft paw thuds in the snow were all there was to hear.

  «They'll take us to the Gobblers,» she whispered.

  The word severed came to their mind. Horrible fear filled Lyra's body, and Pantalaimon nestled close against her.

  «I'll fight,» he said.

  «So will I. I'll kill them.»

  «So will lorek when he finds out. He'll crush them to death.»

  «How far are we from Bolvangar?»

  Pantalaimon didn't know, but he thought it was less than a day's ride.

  After they had been driving along for such a time that Lyra's body was in torment from cramp, the pace slackened a little, and someone roughly pulled off the hood.

  She looked up at a broad Asiatic face, under a wolverine hood, lit by flickering lamplight. His black eyes showed a glint of satisfaction, especially when Pantalaimon slid out of Lyra's anorak to bare his white ermine teeth in a hiss. The man's daemon, a big heavy wolverine, snarled back, but Pantalaimon didn't flinch.

  The man hauled Lyra up to a sitting position and propped her against the side of the sledge. She kept falling sideways because her hands were still tied behind her, and so he tied her feet together instead and released her hands.

  Through the snow that was falling and the thick fog she saw how powerful this man was, and the sledge driver too, how balanced in the sledge, how much at home in this land in a way the gyptians weren't.

  The man spoke, but of course she understood nothing. He tried a different language with the same result. Then he tried English.

  «You name?»

  Pantalaimon bristled warningly, and she knew what he meant at once. So these men didn't know who she was! They hadn't kidnapped her because of her connection with Mrs. Coulter; so perhaps they weren't in the pay of the Gobblers after all.

  «Lizzie Brooks,» she said.

  «Lissie Broogs,» he said after her. «We take you nice place. Nice peoples.»

  «Who are you?»

  «Samoyed peoples. Hunters.»

  «Where are you taking me?»

  «Nice place. Nice peoples. You have panserbjorne?»

  «For protection.»

  «No good! Ha, ha, bear no good! We got you anyway!»

  He laughed loudly. Lyra controlled herself and said nothing.

  «Who those peoples?» the man asked next, pointing back the way they had come.

  «Traders.»

  «Traders…What they trade?»

  «Fur, spirits,» she said. «Smokeleaf.»

  «They sell smokeleaf, buy furs?»

  «Yes.»

  He said something to his companion, who spoke back briefly. All the time the sledge was speeding onward, and Lyra pulled herself up more comfortably to try and see where they were heading; but the snow was falling thickly, and the sky was dark, and presently she became too cold to peer out any longer, and lay down. She and Pantalaimon could feel each other's thoughts, and tried to keep calm, but the thought of John Faa dead…And what had happened to Farder Coram? And would lorek manage to kill the other Samoyeds? And would they ever manage to track her down?

  For the first time, she began to feel a little sorry for herself.

  After a long time, the man shook her by the shoulder and handed her a strip of dried reindeer meat to chew. It was rank and tough, but she was hungry, and there was nourishment in it. After chewing it, she felt a little better. She slipped her hand slowly into her furs till she was sure the alethiometer was still there, and then carefully withdrew the spy-fly tin and slipped it down into her fur boot. Pantalaimon crept in as a mouse and pushed it as far down as he could, tucking it under the bottom of her reindeer-skin legging.

  When that was done, she closed her eyes. Fear had made her exhausted, and soon she slipped uneasily into sleep.

  She woke up when the motion of the sledge changed. It was suddenly smoother, and when she opened her eyes there were passing lights dazzling above her, so bright she had to pull the hood further ov
er her head before peering out again. She was horribly stiff and cold, but she managed to pull herself upright enough to see that the sledge was driving swiftly between a row of high poles, each carrying a glaring anbaric light. As she got her bearings, they passed through an open metal gate at the end of the avenue of lights and into a wide open space like an empty marketplace or an arena for some game or sport. It was perfectly flat and smooth and white, and about a hundred yards across. Around the edge ran a high metal fence.

  At the far end of this arena the sledge halted. They were outside a low building, or a range of low buildings, over which the snow lay deeply. It was hard to tell, but she had the impression that tunnels connected one part of the buildings with another, tunnels humped under the snow. At one side a stout metal mast had a familiar look, though she couldn't say what it reminded her of.

  Before she could take much more in, the man in the sledge cut through the cord around her ankles, and hauled her out roughly while the driver shouted at the dogs to make them still. A door opened in the building a few yards away, and an anbaric light came on overhead, swiveling to find them, like a searchlight.

  Lyra's captor thrust her forward like a trophy, without letting go, and said something. The figure in the padded coal-silk anorak answered in the same language, and Lyra saw his features: he was not a Samoyed or a Tartar. He could have been a Jordan Scholar. He looked at her, and particularly at Pantalaimon.

  The Samoyed spoke again, and the man from Bolvangar said to Lyra, «You speak English?»

  «Yes,» she said.

  «Does your daemon always take that form?»

  Of all the unexpected questions! Lyra could only gape. But Pantalaimon answered it in his own fashion by becoming a falcon, and launching himself from her shoulder at the man's daemon, a large marmot, which struck up at Pantalaimon with a swift movement and spat as he circled past on swift wings.

  «I see,» said the man in a tone of satisfaction, as Pantalaimon returned to Lyra's shoulder.

  The Samoyed men were looking expectant, and the man from Bolvangar nodded and took off a mitten to reach into a pocket. He took out a drawstring purse and counted out a dozen heavy coins into the hunter's hand.