By day's end there were four inches of snow on the frozen ground. The next morning the weather station at Burnt Woods registered eight below zero, and it had scarcely topped zero at noon. It was sixteen below the next morning, and colder still on the morning following. Test holes found the river ice up to eight inches thick.
Then the weather moderated. Marine air moved in from the southeast, and midday temperatures rose well above freezing. The next cold front moved in four days later, and before the sky cleared, what was left of the old snow was covered by twenty-five inches of new—an unusually heavy fall—and the temperature was near zero again. It wasn't truly winter yet, the locals assured Romlar, but with the solstice little more than six weeks away, a major thaw was unlikely.
Kelmer Faronya had ridden a freight sleigh thirty-five miles to Jump-Off. This fall no trapping parties had moved into the Great North Wild; most of the trappers were in the army. But several parties of old ex-trappers were preparing to trek north for something more important now than furs. They would hunt meat—erog and porso—and send it back on sleighs. Kelmer was there to record their leaving. Such a hunt was a violation of the rules governing the Confederation reserve, but the meat was badly needed, and the game populations would recover quickly enough from a single year's heavy hunting, just as it recovered from the heavy die-offs of the occasional extreme winter.
So said his guide, the local fur broker, an old man called Hanni. And Kelmer had no reason to disbelieve; these people had lived intimately with the land and its creatures for generations.
Each party had a sleigh to haul its supplies and gear. Just now they were parked before the combined store and fur warehouse, loading supplies: flour, beans, and dried fruit mostly, and cartridges. Beyond that they'd live off the land. Most of the village was there: fifty or so besides the hunters.
What impressed Kelmer most about the hunting parties were the animals hitched to their sleighs: long-legged erog geldings, their heavy shoulders higher than a man's head, with long necks that raised their antlers ten feet above the ground, and prehensile noses to aid in browsing. He'd glimpsed them before, in the forest and along the roads farther south, and been awed. They were even more impressive up close.
"What's their advantage over horses?" Kelmer asked.
"Well, first off their legs are so much longer. Helps in deep snow. But mostly, horses need hay in winter; they can't make do on twigs, 'specially jall 'n fex twigs, which along with kren is what we mostly got up 'round here."
"Why don't the farmers use erog?"
"They ain't no farmers up here."
"I mean farther south. Around Burnt Woods, for example."
"Ah. Erog ain't no way tame as horses. These here was either took as foals or dropped by a penned mare. And gelded. Ain't nobody could harness an erog stallion; the geldings are bad enough. One of them big old hooves hits a loper, his head is broke right then, maybe 'long with his neck. They'd do the same to you. And they bites worser'n a horse. Horses'll bite, sure, but them boogers"—he gestured at an erog calmly chewing its cud—"can truly take a chunk outta you. You don't go up to him and stroke his nose."
"Do people ever ride them?"
Hanni crowed with laughter. "No how! Too mean!"
"Horses can be mean, but people ride them."
"Sure. But these long-neck critters could reach around 'n bite you in the saddle. Maybe take yer knee off!"
Kelmer nodded thoughtfully. "I don't suppose all the hunters will go to the same place."
"No no. They'll go up the river together 'bout thirty mile, then a party'll peel off every ten, twelve mile up different side branches to different trapping bounds. All told, they'll hunt over a big territory. They'll hunt porso a lot more 'n erog, 'cause porso runs in bands of twenty or thirty, sometimes more.
"One man in each party'll keep camp while three cast around till they come on tracks. Then one'll go back 'n fetch the gelding and sleigh, while the other two catches up to the porso and kills all they can of 'em—maybe five or six—'fore they scatter too bad. Then they'll leave the guts and heads for the jackwolves, use the gelding to drag the carcasses to the sleigh, and haul 'em to the river, where one man'll camp by 'em. Some fellers'll go up the river every couple weeks with big sleighs and teams, and bring back what's out."
The sleighs were ready, and the hunters. Men who seemed mostly to be in their sixties, tough old men with their earlappers up in the zero cold. They climbed together onto the sleighs, and the men at the reins slapped their geldings on the rump. The erog started off, mostly with a jerk, drawing the sleighs down the riverbank and onto the ice. Kelmer watched them through his visor, recording.
And wished he were going with them, to live and record a week in their life. He wasn't a warrior, he told himself, he was a photojournalist. He'd gotten into this job to record an interesting way of life—interesting and exciting scenes and events.
"And they'll hunt all winter?" he asked.
The old fur broker raised an eyebrow at the question. "Not likely. They'll come out when they ain't much porso or erog left 'round where they're huntin'. When what they ain't killed has scattered, maybe moved out of the district."
Kelmer lost himself in visualization for a moment. "They'll have killed a lot of animals."
"Son," Hanni said, "with all the folks down in them refugee camps, all we can kill won't begin to be enough. All we can do is help. Make a difference."