TWENTY - MORTAL COMBAT-2

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    lofur had noticed. He began to taunt lorek, calling him broken-hand, whimpering cub, rust-eaten, soon-to-die, and other names, all the while swinging blows at him frht a which lorek could no longer parry. lorek had to move backward, a step at a time, and to crouch low uhe rain of blows from the jeering bear-king.

    Lyra was in tears. Her dear, her brave one, her fearless defender, was going to die, and she would not do him the treachery of looking away, for if he looked at her he must see her shining eyes and their love and belief, not a face hidden in cowardice or a shoulder fearfully turned away.

    So she looked, but her tears kept her from seeing what was really happening, and perhaps it would not have been visible to her anyway. It certainly was not seen by lofur.

    Because lorek was moving backward only to find  dry footing and a firm rock to leap up from, and the useless left arm was really fresh and strong. You could not trick a bear, but, as Lyra had shown him, lofur did not want to be a bear, he wao be a man; and lorek was trig him.

    At last he found what he wanted: a firm rock deep-anchored in the permafrost. He backed against it, tensing his legs and choosing his moment.

    It came when lofur reared high above, bellowing his triumph, and turning his head tauntingly toward loreks apparently weak left side.

    That was when lorek moved. Like a wave that has been building its strength over a thousand miles of o, and which makes little stir in the deep water, but which when it reaches the shallows rears itself up high into the sky, ter<s>.</s>rifying the shore dwellers, before crashing down on the land with irresistible power—so lorek Byrnison rose up against lofur, exploding upward from his firm footing on the dry rod slashing with a ferocious left hand at the exposed jaw of lofur Raknison.

    It was a horrifying blow. It tore the lower part of his jaw  off, so that it flew through the air scattering blood drops in the snow many yards away.

    lofurs red tongue lolled down, dripping over his open throat. The bear-king was suddenly voiceless, biteless, helpless, lorek needed nothing more. He lunged, and then his teeth were in lofurs throat, and he shook and shook this way, that way, lifting the huge body off the ground and battering it down as if lofur were no more than a seal at the waters edge.

    Then he ripped upward, and lofur Raknisons life came away in his teeth.

    There was oual yet to perform. lorek sliced open the dead kings unprotected chest, peeling the fur back to expose the narrow white and red ribs like the timbers of an upturned boat. Into the rib cage lorek reached, and he plucked out lofurs heart, red and steaming, and ate it there in front of lofurs subjects.

    Then there was acclamation, pandemonium, a crush of bears surging forward to pay homage to lofurs queror.

    lorek Byrnisons voice rose above the clamor.

    “Bears! Who is your king?”

    And the cry came back, in a roar like that of all the sea-smooth pebbles in the world in an o-battering storm:

    “lorek Byrnison!”

    The bears knew what they must do. Every single badge and sash and et was thrown off at ond trampled ptuously underfoot, to be fotten in a moment. They were loreks bears now, and true bears, not uain semi-humans scious only of a t inferiority. They swarmed to the palad began treat bloarble from the topmost towers, rog the battlemented walls with their mighty fists until the stones came loose, and then hurling them over the cliffs to crash oty hundreds of feet below.

    lorek ighem and unhooked his armor to attend to his wounds, but before he could begin, Lyra was beside him, stamping her foot on the frozen scarlet snow and shouting to the bears to stop smashing the palace, because there were prisoners ihey didnt hear, but lorek did, and when he roared they stopped at once.

    “Human prisoners?” lorek said.

    “Yes—lofur Raknison put them in the dungeons—they ought to e out first a shelter somewhere, else theyll be killed with all the falling rocks—”

    lave swift orders, and some bears hurried into the palace to release the prisoners. Lyra turo lorek.

    “Let me help you—I want to make sure you ent too badly hurt, lorek dear—oh, I wish there was some bandages or something! Thats an awful cut on your belly—”

    A bear laid a mouthful of some stiff green stuff, thickly frosted, on the ground at loreks feet.

    “Bloodmoss,” said lorek. “Press it in the wounds for me, Lyra. Fold the flesh over it and then hold some snow there till it freezes.”

    He would any bears attend to him, despite their eagerness. Besides, Lyras hands were deft, and she was desperate to help; so the small huma over the great bear-king, pag in the bloodmoss and freezing the raw flesh till <s>..</s>it stopped bleeding. When she had finished, her mittens were sodden with loreks blood, but his wounds were stanched.

    And by that time the prisoners—a dozen or so men, shivering and blinking and huddling together—had e out. There was no point in talking to the professor, Lyra decided, because the poor man was mad; and she would have liked to know who the other men were, but there were many ent things to do. And she didnt want to distract lorek, who was giving rapid orders and sending bears scurrying this way and that, but she was anxious aber, and about Lee Scoresby and the witches, and she was hungry and tired.... She thought the best thing she could do just then was to keep out of the way.

    So she curled up in a quiet er of the bat ground with Pantalaimon as a wolverio keep her warm, and piled snow over herself as a bear would do, ao sleep.

    Something nudged her foot, and a strange bear voice said, “Lyra Silvertohe king wants you.”

    She woke up nearly dead with cold, and couldnt open her eyes, for they had frozen shut; but Pantalaimon licked them to melt the i he<q></q>r eyelashes, and soon she was able to see the young bear speaking to her in the moonlight.

    She tried to stand, but fell over twice.

    The bear said, “Ride on me,” and crouched to offer his broad back, and half-ging, half-falling, she mao stay on while he took her to a steep hollow, where many bears were assembled.

    And among them was a small figure who ran toward her, and whose daemon leaped up to greet Pantalaimon.

    “Roger!” she said.

    “lorek Byrnison made me stay out there in the snow while he came to fetch you away—we fell out the balloon, Lyra! After you fell out, we got carried miles and miles, and then Mr. Scoresby let some mas out and we crashed into a mountain, and we fell down such a slope like you never seen! And I dont know where Mr. Scoresby is now, nor the witches. There was just me and lorek Byrnison. He e straight back this way to look for you. And they told me about his fight....”

    Lyra looked around. Uhe dire of an older bear, the human prisoners were building a shelter out of driftwood and scraps of vas. They seemed pleased to have some work to do. One of them was striking a flint to light a fire.

    “There is food,” said the young bear who had woken Lyra.

    A fresh seal lay on the snow. The bear sliced it open with a claw and showed Lyra where to find the kidneys. She ate one raw: it was warm and soft and delicious beyond imagining.

    “Eat the blubber too,” said the bear, and tore off a piece for her. It tasted of cream flavored with hazelnuts. Roger hesitated, but followed her example. They ate greedily, and within a very few minutes Lyra was fully awake and beginning to be warm.

    Wiping her mouth, she looked around, but lorek was not in sight.

    “lorek Byrnison is speaking with his selors,” said the young bear. “He wants to see you when you have eaten. Follow me.”

    He led them over a rise in the snow to a spot where bears were beginning to build a wall of ice blocks. lorek sat at the ter of a group of older bears, and he rose to greet her.

    “Lyra Silvertongue,” he said. “e and hear what I am being told.”

    He didnt explain her preseo the other bears, or perhaps they had learned about her already; but they made room for her and treated her with immense courtesy, as if she were a queen. She felt proud beyond measure to sit beside her friend lorek Byrnison uhe Aurora as it flickered gracefully in the polar sky, and join the versation of the bears.

    It turned out that lofur Raknisons dominance over them had been like a spell.

    Some of them put it down<mark>?９９ｌｉｂ.</mark> to the influenrs. Coulter, who had visited him before loreks exile, though lorek had not known about it, and given lofur various presents.

    “She gave him a drug,” said one bear, “which he fed secretly to Hjalmur Hjalmurson, and made him fet himself.”

    Hjalmur Hjalmurson, Lyra gathered, was the bear whom lorek had killed, and whose death had brought about his exile. So Mrs. Coulter was behind that! And there was more.

    “There are human laws that preveain things that she lanning to do, but human laws dont apply on Svalbard. She wao set up aation here like Bolvangar, only worse, and lofur was going to allow her to do it, against all the  of the bears; because humans have visited, or been imprisoned, but never lived and worked here. Little by little she was going to increase her power over lofur Raknison, and his over us, until we were her creatures running bad forth at her bidding, and our only duty to guard the abomination she was going to create....”

    That was an old bear speaking. His name was S0ren Eisarson, and he was a selor, one who had suffered under lofur Raknison.

    “What is she doing now, Lyra?” said lorek Byrnison. “Once she hears of lofurs death, what will her plans be?”

    Lyra took out the alethiometer. There was not much light to see it by, and lorek ahat a torch be brought.

    “What happeo Mr. Scoresby?” Lyra said while they were waiting. “And the witches?”

    “The witches were attacked by another witch . I dont know if the others were allied to the child cutters, but they were patrolling our skies in vast numbers, and they attacked iorm. I didnt see what happeo Serafina Pekkala. As for Lee Scoresby, the balloon soared up again after I fell out with the boy, taking him with it. But your symbol reader will tell you what their fate is.”

    A bear pulled up a sledge on which a cauldron of charcoal was sm, and thrust a resinous branto the heart of it. The branch caught at once, and in its glare Lyra turhe hands of the alethiometer and asked about Lee Scoresby.

    It turned out that he was still aloft, borne by the winds toward Nova Zembla, and that he had been unharmed by the cliff-ghasts and had fought off the other witch .

    Lyra told lorek, and he nodded, satisfied.

    “If he is in the air, he will be safe,” he said. “What of Mrs. Coulter?”

    The answer was plicated, with the needle swinging from symbol to symbol in a sequehat made Lyra puzzle for a long time. The bears were curious, but restrained by their respect for lorek Byrnison, and his for Lyra, and she put them out of her mind and sank again into the alethiometric trance.

    The play of symbols, once she had discovered the pattern of it, was dismaying.

    “It says shes...Shes heard about us flying this way, and shes got a transport zeppelin thats armed with mae guns—I think thats it—and theyre a flying to Svalbard right now. She dont know yet about lofur Raknison beien, of course, but she will soon because...Oh yes, because some witches will tell her, and theyll learn it from the cliff-ghasts. So I re there are spies in the air all around, lorek. She was ing to...to pretend to help lofur Raknison, but really she was going to take over power from him, with a regiment of Tartars thats a ing by sea, and theyll be here in a couple of da<q></q>ys.

    “And as soon as she , shes going to where Lord Asriel is kept prisoner, and shes intending to have him killed. Because ...Its ing clear now: something I never uood before, lorek! Its why she wants to kill Lord Asriel: its because she knows what hes going to do, and she fears it, and she wants to do it herself and gain trol before he does....It must be the city in the sky, it must be! Shes trying to get to it first! And now its telling me something else....”

    She bent over the instrument, trating furiously as the needle darted this way and that. It moved almost too fast to foller, looking over her shoulder, couldnt eve stop, and was scious only of a swift nickering dialogue between Lyras fiurning the hands and the needle answering, as bewilderingly unlike language as the Aurora was.

    “Yes,” she said finally, putting the instrument down in her lap and blinking and sighing as she woke out of her profound tration. “Yes, I see what it says.

    Shes after me again.

    She wants something Ive got, because Lord Asriel wants it too. They  for this...for this experiment, whatever it is...”

    She stopped there, to take a deep breath. Something was troubling her, and she didnt know what it was. She was sure that this something that was so important was the alethiome-ter itself, because after all, Mrs. Coulter had wa, and what else could it be? A wasnt, because the alethiometer had a different way of referring to itself, and this wasnt it.

    “I suppose its the alethiometer,” she said unhappily. “Its what I thought all along. Ive got to take it to Lord Asriel before she gets it. If she gets it, well all die.”

    As she said that, she felt so tired, so bone-deep weary and sad, that to die would have been a relief. But the example of lorek kept her from admitting it.

    She put the alethiometer away and sat up straight.

    “How far away is she ?” said lorek.

    “Just a few hours. I suppose I ought to take the alethiometer to Lord Asriel as soon as I .”

    “I will go with you,” said lorek.

    She didnt argue. While lave ands and anized an armed squad to apany them on the final part of their journey north, Lyra sat still, serving her energy. She felt that something had go of her during that last reading. She closed her eyes and slept, and presently they woke her a off.

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