Castle for Rent Read Online Free Page B

harpoon. But the jhalrakk had other ideas. It was content to stay where it was, just out of reach, half submerged in the shallow icy waters of the inlet. It had been feeding all day, ingesting vast quantities of water and filtering out what was edible. Only when it had its fill would it move out to sea again, and maybe—just maybe—its course would take it near Snowy's position.
    Snowclaw knew it was a big jhalrakk (the word was sort of a growl, done with a snap of the jaws). He'd wanted to bag a big one all his life. This might be his chance.
    It was cold. It was always cold here; the perennial question was how cold. Today, it was very cold. Bone-freezing cold. You had to watch when you took a leak outside, so as not to wind up stuck to one end of a pisscicle. It was cold.
    Snowclaw hadn't moved for a very long time. Slowly he brought his four-digited hand to his belly, where the fur was a little thinner and finer than that which covered the rest of him, but just as milk-white. Bone-white claws extruded from the ends of his fingers. He scratched carefully, exhaling.
    His feet, which were huge and padded with thick spongelike tissue at sole and heel, were cold. His left knee was cold. His butt was cold.
    Damn, he thought. I'm cold.
    He didn't know whether he'd be better off bagging the jhalrakk or not. If he did, he'd be all night gutting it, cutting it, and dragging the carcass back to his shack. And tomorrow would go to rendering blubber, seasoning hide, and doing a hundred different other things with all the products and by-products that jhalrakks produced. He didn't look forward to any of that; it was all hard work. He just might freeze if he had to stay outdoors any longer. On the other hand, if he didn't bag something soon, he would starve. But at least he wouldn't have to break his back doing all that damn work.
    It had been a very lean hunting season. He needed a little luck, or he didn't know what he was going to do.
    The jhalrakk suddenly began moving. Snowclaw tensed, his left hand coming up to grip the front of the harpoon's shaft, his right moving back along its length.
    The jhalrakk was heading straight for the floe. Snowclaw rose to a crouch and brought the point of the harpoon in line with the sharp, spiny back of the jhalrakk as it cut through the water, steaming toward him like a great ship, the kind Snowclaw would spy far out to sea sometimes. The spine rose, revealing the broad rubbery expanse of the beast's flanks. Then the head came out of the water. Its six eyes seemed to focus right on Snowclaw. The beast's great maw opened, revealing row on row of needlelike teeth.
    Snowclaw swallowed hard and ran his tongue across his frost-white fangs. He stood up.
    Come on right at me, big fellow.
    Snowclaw made his shot. The harpoon skidded off the blubbery flank of the jhalrakk and plopped into the water. Snowclaw grabbed the line but his numbed hands couldn't stop it until it had paid all the way out, pulling taut against the iron anchor spike which had been pounded into the ice. Snowy growled and pulled on the line, but the jhalrakk had run over it, and now the big animal was diving. The beast slid out of sight, disappearing into the frigid, blue-black depths of the inlet.
    Big it was, the largest that Snowy had ever seen. The jhalrakk was now underneath the floe. Snowy prayed that it would stay submerged and pass on out to sea. But the way it had looked at him...
    The floe lifted out of the water, tilting sharply to the right. Snowclaw threw himself flat and hung on to the iron spike.
    The floe soon became almost vertical and seemed about to tip over. Snowy knew he was in for a dunking, anyway, so he let go and slid into the water, hoping that he could swim away before the huge slab of ice flipped over on him.
    It didn't. Snowclaw surfaced and watched the massive ice island slide off to one side and slip back into the water edgewise. The jhalrakk appeared satisfied that it had done enough damage. With a