«Are you with these people?» the bear said to Lee Scoresby as he worked.
«Sure. I guess we're both hired hands, lorek.»
«Where's your balloon?» said Lyra to the Texan.
«Packed away in two sledges,» he said. «Here comes the boss.»
John Faa and Farder Coram, together with the sysselman, came down the quay with four armed policemen.
«Bear!» said the sysselman, in a high, harsh voice. «For now, you are allowed to depart in the company of these people. But let me tell you that if you appear within the town limits again, you will be treated mercilessly.»
lorek Byrnison took not the slightest notice, but continued to rub the seal blubber all over his armor, the care and attention he was paying the task reminding Lyra of her own devotion to Pantalaimon. Just as the bear had said: the armor was his soul. The sysselman and the policemen withdrew, and slowly the other townspeople turned and drifted away, though a few remained to watch.
John Faa put his hands to his mouth and called: «Gyptians!»
They were all ready to move. They had been itching to get under way ever since they had disembarked; the sledges were packed, the dog teams were in their traces.
John Faa said, «Time to move out, friends. We're all assembled now, and the road lies open. Mr. Scoresby, you all a loaded?»
«Ready to go, Lord Faa.»
«And you, lorek Byrnison?»
«When I am clad,» said the bear.
He had finished oiling the armor. Not wanting to waste the seal meat, he lifted the carcass in his teeth and flipped it onto the back of Lee Scoresby's larger sledge before donning the armor. It was astonishing to see how lightly he dealt with it: the sheets of metal were almost an inch thick in places, and yet he swung them round and into place as if they were silk robes. It took him less than a minute, and this time there was no harsh scream of rust.
So in less than half an hour, the expedition was on its way northward. Under a sky peopled with millions of stars and a glaring moon, the sledges bumped and clattered over the ruts and stones until they reached clear snow at the edge of town. Then the sound changed to a quiet crunch of snow and creak of timber, and the dogs began to step out eagerly, and the motion became swift and smooth.
Lyra, wrapped up so thickly in the back of Farder Coram's sledge that only her eyes were exposed, whispered to Pantalaimon:
«Can you see lorek?»
«He's padding along beside Lee Scoresby's sledge,» the daemon replied, looking back in his ermine form as he clung to her wolverine-fur hood.
Ahead of them, over the mountains to the north, the pale arcs and loops of the Northern Lights began to glow and tremble. Lyra saw through half-closed eyes, and felt a sleepy thrill of perfect happiness, to be speeding north under the Aurora. Pantalaimon struggled against her sleepiness, but it was too strong; he curled up as a mouse inside her hood. He could tell her when they woke, and it was probably a marten, or a dream, or some kind of harmless local spirit; but something was following the train of sledges, swinging lightly from branch to branch of the close-clustering pine trees, and it put him uneasily in mind of a monkey.
Twelve
The Lost Boy
They traveled for several hours and then stopped to eat. While the men were lighting fires and melting snow for water, with lorek Byrnison watching Lee Scoresby roast seal meat close by, John Faa spoke to Lyra.
«Lyra, can you see that instrument to read it?» he said.
The moon itself had long set. The light from the Aurora was brighter than moonlight, but it was inconstant. However, Lyra's eyes were keen, and she fumbled inside her furs and tugged out the black velvet bag.
«Yes, I can see all right,» she said. «But I know where most of the symbols are by now anyway. What shall I ask it, Lord Faa?»
«I want to know more about how they're defending this place, Bolvangar,» he said.
Without even having to think about it, she found her fingers moving the hands to point to the helmet, the griffin, and the crucible, and felt her mind settle into the right meanings like a complicated diagram in three dimensions. At once the needle began to swing round, back, round and on further, like a bee dancing its message to the hive. She watched it calmly, content not to know at first but to know that a meaning was coming, and then it began to clear. She let it dance on until it was certain.
«It's just like the witch's daemon said, Lord Faa. There's a company of Tartars guarding the station, and they got wires all round it. They don't really expect to be attacked, that's what the symbol reader says. But Lord Faa…»
«What, child?»
«It's a telling me something else. In the next valley there's a village by a lake where the folk are troubled by a ghost.»
John Faa shook his head impatiently, and said, «That don't matter now. There's bound to be spirits of all kinds among these forests. Tell me again about them Tartars. How many, for instance? What are they armed with?»
Lyra dutifully asked, and reported the answer:
«There's sixty men with rifles, and they got a couple of larger guns, sort of cannons. They got fire throwers too. And… Their daemons are all wolves, that's what it says.»
That caused a stir among the older gyptians, those who'd campaigned before.
«The Sibirsk regiments have wolf daemons,» said one.
John Faa said, «I never met fiercer. We shall have to fight like tigers. And consult the bear; he's a shrewd warrior, that one.»
Lyra was impatient, and said, «But Lord Faa, this ghost—I think it's the ghost of one of the kids!»
«Well, even if it is, Lyra, I don't know what anyone could do about it. Sixty Sibirsk riflemen, and fire throwers…Mr. Scoresby, step over here if you would, for a moment.»
While the aeronaut came to the sledge, Lyra slipped away and spoke to the bear.
«lorek, have you traveled this way before?»
«Once,» he said in that deep flat voice.
«There's a village near, en't there?»
«Over the ridge,» he said, looking up through the sparse trees.
«Is it far?»
«For you or for me?»
«For me,» she said.
«Too far. Not at all far for me.»
«How long would it take you to get there, then?» «I could be there and back three times by next moonrise.» «Because, lorek, listen: I got this symbol reader that tells me things, you see, and it's told me that there's something important I got to do over in that village, and Lord Faa won't let me go there. He just wants to get on quick, and 1 know that's important too. But unless I go and find out what it is, we might not know what the Gobblers are really doing.»
The bear said nothing. He was sitting up like a human, his great paws folded in his lap, his dark eyes looking into hers down the length of his muzzle. He knew she wanted something.
Pantalaimon spoke: «Can you take us there and catch up with the sledges later on?»
«I could. But I have given my word to Lord Faa to obey him, not anyone else.»
«If I got his permission?» said Lyra. «Then yes.»
She turned and ran back through the snow. «Lord Faa! If lorek Byrnison takes me over the ridge to the village, we can find out whatever it is, and then catch the sledges up further on. He knows the route,» she urged. «And I wouldn't ask, except it's like what I did before, Farder Coram, you remember, with that chameleon? I didn't understand it then, but it was true, and we found out soon after. I got the same feeling now. I can't understand properly what it's saying, only I know it's important. And lorek Byrnison knows the way, he says he could get there and back three times by next moonrise, and I couldn't be safer than I'd be with him, could I? But he won't go without he gets Lord Faa's permission.»
There was a silence. Farder Coram sighed. John Faa was frowning, and his mouth inside the fur hood was set grimly.