“I saw him fall. But he should have been ready for this sort of attack. We know that.”
“But we should have helped him! We should have been watching the alethiometer!”
“Hush. Pretend to be unconscious.”
There was a whip cracking, and the howl of racing dogs. From the way she was being jerked and bounced about, Lyra could tell how fast they were going, and though she strained to hear the sounds of battle, all she made out was a forlorn volley of shots, muffled by the distance, and then the creak and rush and soft paw thuds in the snow were all there was to hear.
“They'll take us to the Gobblers,” she whispered.
The word severed came to their mind. Horrible fear filled Lyra's body, and Pantalaimon nestled close against her.
“I'll fight,” he said.
“So will I. I'll kill them.”
“So will lorek when he finds out. He'll crush them to death.”
“How far are we from Bolvangar?”
Pantalaimon didn't know, but he thought it was less than a day's ride.
After they had been driving along for such a time that Lyra's body was in torment from cramp, the pace slackened a little, and someone roughly pulled off the hood.
She looked up at a broad Asiatic face, under a wolverine hood, lit by flickering lamplight. His black eyes showed a glint of satisfaction, especially when Pantalaimon slid out of Lyra's anorak to bare his white ermine teeth in a hiss. The man's daemon, a big heavy wolverine, snarled back, but Pantalaimon didn't flinch.
The man hauled Lyra up to a sitting position and propped her against the side of the sledge. She kept falling sideways because her hands were still tied behind her, and so he tied her feet together instead and released her hands.
Through the snow that was falling and the thick fog she saw how powerful this man was, and the sledge driver too, how balanced in the sledge, how much at home in this land in a way the gyptians weren't.
The man spoke, but of course she understood nothing. He tried a different language with the same result. Then he tried English.
“You name?”
Pantalaimon bristled warningly, and she knew what he meant at once. So these men didn't know who she was! They hadn't kidnapped her because of her connection with Mrs. Coulter; so perhaps they weren't in the pay of the Gobblers after all.
“Lizzie Brooks,” she said.
“Lissie Broogs,” he said after her. “We take you nice place. Nice peoples.”
“Who are you?”
“Samoyed peoples. Hunters.”
“Where are you taking me?”
“Nice place. Nice peoples. You have panserbjorne?”
“For protection.”
“No good! Ha, ha, bear no good! We got you anyway!”
He laughed loudly. Lyra controlled herself and said nothing.
“Who those peoples?” the man asked next, pointing back the way they had come.
“Traders.”
“Traders…What they trade?”
“Fur, spirits,” she said. “Smokeleaf.”
“They sell smokeleaf, buy furs?”
“Yes.”
He said something to his companion, who spoke back briefly. All the time the sledge was speeding onward, and Lyra pulled herself up more comfortably to try and see where they were heading; but the snow was falling thickly, and the sky was dark, and presently she became too cold to peer out any longer, and lay down. She and Pantalaimon could feel each other's thoughts, and tried to keep calm, but the thought of John Faa dead…And what had happened to Farder Coram? And would lorek manage to kill the other Samoyeds? And would they ever manage to track her down?
For the first time, she began to feel a little sorry for herself.
After a long time, the man shook her by the shoulder and handed her a strip of dried reindeer meat to chew. It was rank and tough, but she was hungry, and there was nourishment in it. After chewing it, she felt a little better. She slipped her hand slowly into her furs till she was sure the alethiometer was still there, and then carefully withdrew the spy-fly tin and slipped it down into her fur boot. Pantalaimon crept in as a mouse and pushed it as far down as he could, tucking it under the bottom of her reindeer-skin legging.
When that was done, she closed her eyes. Fear had made her exhausted, and soon she slipped uneasily into sleep.
She woke up when the motion of the sledge changed. It was suddenly smoother, and when she opened her eyes there were passing lights dazzling above her, so bright she had to pull the hood further over her head before peering out again. She was horribly stiff and cold, but she managed to pull herself upright enough to see that the sledge was driving swiftly between a row of high poles, each carrying a glaring anbaric light. As she got her bearings, they passed through an open metal gate at the end of the avenue of lights and into a wide open space like an empty marketplace or an arena for some game or sport. It was perfectly flat and smooth and white, and about a hundred yards across. Around the edge ran a high metal fence.
At the far end of this arena the sledge halted. They were outside a low building, or a range of low buildings, over which the snow lay deeply. It was hard to tell, but she had the impression that tunnels connected one part of the buildings with another, tunnels humped under the snow. At one side a stout metal mast had a familiar look, though she couldn't say what it reminded her of.
Before she could take much more in, the man in the sledge cut through the cord around her ankles, and hauled her out roughly while the driver shouted at the dogs to make them still. A door opened in the building a few yards away, and an anbaric light came on overhead, swiveling to find them, like a searchlight.
Lyra's captor thrust her forward like a trophy, without letting go, and said something. The figure in the padded coal-silk anorak answered in the same language, and Lyra saw his features: he was not a Samoyed or a Tartar. He could have been a Jordan Scholar. He looked at her, and particularly at Pantalaimon.