The sea was sealed in icebound blue-white, and the distant mountains were covered in accumulated snow. The meadows beneath the snow rose and fell with the contours of the mountains, while sparse cedars thrust up straight trunks. Barren mountains, heavy snow, long grass, scattered trees—nature used the simplest and coldest strokes to outline a high-standing island mountain range, to sketch an "ancient ankylosaur" lying upon the sea, just as it had millions of years ago.
From time immemorial to this day, the ice-and-snow mountain range crossing the island seemed never to have changed. No matter how many generations of hunting tribes had lived and breathed upon this island, they had not altered its savage face. And right now, the only changes on the entire great island were the natural harbor at the northeastern corner, that small cluster of newly built sheds, the potato fields covered in snow, and the two longships and several dozen canoes frozen into the harbor.
This was the Kingdom's Divine Whale Port (N58, W152), and it was also the harbor High Priest Chimer had chosen for wintering. The tribal population of the port had already grown to more than four hundred people, but compared with a great island of nine thousand square kilometers, it was still just a tuft of hair on a cottontail rabbit's short tail. And now, in March, Great Whale Island was in its icebound season. There was no endless chorus of whales from the summer days to be heard; all there was...
"Woo! Whoa-ao! Awooo!!..."
"Neighhh!!..."
"Ah! High Priest, have the samurai pull the dogs farther away! Hurry! The mares are about to get angry!..."
"Koubao, go, pull the big dogs farther away!..."
"Yes!..."
Hearing the order, Samurai Captain Koubao nodded and saluted, then pulled the two strong, long-haired black-and-white big dogs