Allan and the Ice Gods by H. Rider Haggard Read Free Book Online

saying:
    “‘Let Wi my father go up at night to make prayer to the Ice-gods and
    seek a sign from them. If a stone fall from the crest of the glacier
    at the dawn, it shall be a token to him that he must fight Henga and
    avenge my blood upon him and take his chieftainship; but if no stone
    falls, then, should he fight, Henga will kill him. Also, afterward, he
    will kill Foh my brother, and take you, my mother, to be one of his
    wives.’
    “Now, Wi, I say that you will do well to obey the voice of our child
    who is dead and to go up to make prayer to the Ice-gods and await
    their omen.”
    Wi looked at her doubtfully, putting little faith in this tale, and
    answered:
    “Such a dream is a thin stick on which to lean. I know well, Wife,
    that for a long while you have desired that I should fight Henga,
    although he is a terrible man. Yet, if I do, he may kill me and then
    what would happen to you and Foh?”
    “That which is fated to happen to us and nothing else, Husband. Shall
    it be said in the tribe that Wi was afraid to avenge the blood of his
    daughter upon Henga?”
    “I know not, Wife, but I know also that, if such words are whispered,
    they will not be true. It is of you and Foh that I think, not of
    myself.”
    “Then go and seek an omen from the Ice-gods, Husband.”
    “I will go, Aaka, but do not blame me afterward if things happen
    awry.”
    “They will not happen awry,” answered Aaka, smiling for the first time
    since Fo-a died.
    For she was sure that Wi would conquer Henga, if only he could be
    brought to fight him, and thus avenge Fo-a and become chief in his
    place. Also she smiled because, for reasons of which she did not
    speak, she was sure also that a stone would fall from the crest of the
    glacier at dawn when the sun struck upon the ice.
    Thus it came about that, on the following night, Wi the Hunter slipped
    from the village of the tribe and, walking round the foot of the hill
    that ran down to the beach on the east, scaled the cleft between the
    mountains until he came to the base of the great glacier. The wolves
    that were prowling round the place, still winter-hungry because the
    spring was so late, scented him and surrounded him with glaring eyes.
    But he, the Hunter, was not afraid of the wolves; moreover, woe had
    made his heart fierce. So with a yell he charged at the biggest of
    them, the leader of the pack, and drove his flint spear into its
    throat, then, while it writhed upon the spear, gnashing its red jaws,
    he dashed out its brains with his stone ax, muttering:
    “Thus shall Henga die! Thus shall Henga die!”
    The wolves knew their master and sped away, all save their leader that
    lay dead. Wi dragged its carcase to the top of a rock and left it
    there where the rest could not reach it, purposing to skin it in the
    morning.
    This done, he went on up the cold valley where no beasts came, because
    here there was nothing to eat, till he reached the face of the
    glacier, a mighty wall of backward sloping ice that gleamed faintly in
    the moonlight and filled the cleft from side to side, four hundred
    paces or more in width. When last he was here, twelve moons gone, he
    had driven a stake of driftwood between two rocks and another stake
    five paces lower down, because of late it had seemed to him that the
    glacier was marching forward.
    So it was indeed, for the first stake was buried, and the cruel,
    crawling lip of the glacier had nearly reached the second. The gods
    were awake! The gods were matching toward the sea!
    Wi shivered, not because of the cold, to which he was accustomed, but
    from fear—for this place was terrible to him. It was the house of the
    gods who dwelt there in the ice, the gods in whom he believed, and who
    were always angry, and now he remembered that he had brought no
    offering to propitiate them. He went back to the place where he had
    killed the wolf, and with difficulty, by aid of his sharp flint spear
    and stone ax, hacked off its head. Returning with