Read Allan and the Ice Gods for Free Online Page A

little.
    Urk the Aged-One, who had seen the birth of all who lived in the
    tribe, said that his grandfather had told him, when he was little,
    that in his youth the face of this glacier was perhaps a spear’s cast
    higher up the valley than it stood to-day, no more. It was a mighty
    threatening face of the height of a score of tall forest pines set one
    upon the other, sloping backward to its crest. For the most part, it
    was of clear black ice which sometimes when the gods within were
    talking, cracked and groaned, and when they were angry, heaved itself
    forward by an arm’s length, shaving off the rocks of the valley which
    stood in its path and driving them in front of it. Who or what these
    gods might be, Wi did not know. All he knew was that they were
    terrible powers to be feared, in whom he believed as his forefathers
    had done, and that in their hands lay the fate of the tribe.
    In the autumn nights, when the mists rose, some had seen them: vast,
    shadowy figures moving about before the face of the glacier, and even
    at times advancing toward the beach beneath, where the people dwelt.
    They had heard them laughing also, and their priest, N’gae the
    Magician, and Taren the Witch-Who-Hid-Herself, who only came out at
    night and who was the lover of N’gae, said that they had spoken to
    them, making revelations. But to Wi they had never spoken, although he
    had sat face to face with them at night, which none others dared to
    do. So silent were they that, at times, when he was well fed and happy
    hearted and his hunting had prospered, he began to doubt this tale of
    the gods and to set down the noises that were called their voices to
    breakings in the ice caused by frosts and thaws.
    Yet there was something which he could not doubt. Deep in the face of
    the ice, the length of three paces away, only to be seen in certain
    lights, was one of the gods who for generations had been known to the
    tribe as the Sleeper because he never moved. Wi could not make out
    much about him, save that he seemed to have a long nose as thick as a
    tree at its root and growing smaller toward the end. On each side of
    this nose projected a huge curling tusk that came out of a vast head,
    black in colour and covered with red hair, behind which swelled an
    enormous body, large as that of a whale, whereof the end could not be
    seen.
    Here indeed was a god—not even Wi could doubt it—for none had ever
    heard of or seen its like—though for what reason it chose to sleep
    forever in the bosom of the ice he could not guess. Had such a monster
    been known alive, he would have thought this one dead, not sleeping.
    But it was not known and therefore it must be a god. So it came about
    that, for his divinity, like the rest of the tribe, Wi took a gigantic
    elephant of the early world caught in the ice of a glacial period that
    had happened some hundreds of thousands of years before his day, and
    slowly borne forward in the frozen stream from the far-off spot where
    it had perished, doubtless to find its ultimate sepulchre in the sea.
    A strange god enough, but not stranger than many have chosen and still
    bow before to-day.
    Wi, after debate with his wife Aaka, the proud and fair, had climbed
    to the glacier while it was still dark to take counsel of the gods and
    learn their will as to a certain matter. It was this: The greatest man
    of the tribe, who by his strength ruled it, was Henga, a terrible man
    born ten springs before Wi, huge in bulk and ferocious. This was the
    law of the tribe, that the mightiest was its master, and so remained
    until one mightier than he came to the opening of the cave in which he
    lived, challenged him to single combat, and killed him. Thus Henga had
    killed his own father who ruled before him.
    Now he oppressed the tribe; doing no work himself, he seized the food
    of others or the skin garments that they made. Moreover, although
    there were few and all men fought for them, he took the women from
    their parents or