Shadows

by Ken Altabef

  Tugto flinched but did not run. “We’ll be trampled.”

  “Stand firm,” said Vithrok. “He will hear you.”

  Tugto called out again, sending his deep rumble of a voice to fill the space between the drumbeat footfalls.

  Punnik ceased its lament. It paused, squinting down at them. “What is that there?” it said in a booming voice.

  The great questing trunk lunged sinuously toward them. Tugto fell to his knees before it. The appendage, as wide across as a man was tall, swooped over his head. The tip writhed and quivered for a moment and then with a monstrous whooshing sound it sniffed the ether, nearly drawing Tugto inside.

  “Stand up,” said Vithrok. “He can barely see us as it is.”

  He stepped forward, waving his arms. “Over here.”

  The behemoth seemed at last to notice them for it said, “Curious. How very curious.”

  The vast seething cloud of shaggy vapor condensed into a smaller, more human-like form. It sat cross-legged on the plain. Its gray, thick-skinned body was wrapped in a golden robe, open in the front to reveal a round belly bulging over a jeweled belt. A pair of brawny arms with human hands clasped around this prodigious middle. A second pair of arms, adorned with bracelets and armbands of carved ivory, rested on wide hips.

  Punnik had the wide face and proud trunk of an ancient mamut. A gilded crown rested on the tips of its gigantic flapping ears. The sign of a trident was emblazoned on its gray forehead. Many necklaces of baubles and beads wreathed its sturdy neck.

  Long sloping tusks, gilded at the tips with balls of blue light, made a thoughtful arc in the air. “If I am not mistaken,” it said, “you two are creatures called men.”

  “We are men,” affirmed Vithrok.

  “And there’s a funny thing,” added Punnik before Vithrok could continue. “You wear the furs of others. Why would you do such a thing?”

  “We are cold without them,” replied Vithrok.

  Though deep, Punnik’s voice was light and blissful, and its lips curled in a wry and peaceful way as only an elephant could smile. “Why, it hadn’t occurred to me before, but I suppose you would be.”

  “We come to you as supplicants,” said Vithrok. “We beg for your aid.”

  Punnik waved a huge gray hand at them, thick fingers splayed wide. “I’m afraid you’ve come to the wrong turgat, my friends. My people are simple, they only want to graze and live and dream. They have such powerful and wondrous dreams, my mamut. They dream a world unknown.”

  Its gaze grew wistful for a moment. Then it stood up on four thick, powerful legs. “Be gone.”

  “We’ve no turgat of our own,” insisted Vithrok. “No one speaks for us.”

  Punnik squinted down at him as if it didn’t quite understand the concept. “It is not my concern. You are amusing little creatures and I wish you well, but we of the great herd…”

  It flopped back on its haunches. Apparently it had no need of a seat, due to plenty of padding in the rear. “We want only to munch and to move along. We don’t meddle in the affairs of others, no matter how tiny and pink and pathetic they may be. Wearing the skins of others on their backs. Shouting with such large puny voices. And you seem to have misplaced your tails. It’s no wonder such mixed-up creatures go without a guardian. Take my advice and look to your own affairs, little man.”

  Punnik’s big brown eyes drifted closed as if it had decided upon a nap instead of a stroll.

  “And what of Savikkigut?” shouted Vithrok.

  Punnik shifted uncomfortably. “The other turgats do as they will.”

  “He hunts us. The Tunrit are helpless before him.”

  “Again, it is not my concern.”

  “He hunts your charges as well,” noted Tugto. “I have seen it. I have seen the mamut crossing the plain in their slow measured way, harming no one, keeping to themselves. And I have seen the dagger-tooths leap upon them. Claws driven into the back, teeth flashing. I’ve seen them take down a mamut, slaughtering it with no care at all.”

  “It happens,” said Punnik casually. “Such is the way of the world. All are doomed in the end, at least that’s the way it seems to me.”

  “Why not prolong their stay a little while, if you can?” asked Tugto.

  The mamut’s trunk twisted thoughtfully in front of its face, but it said nothing.

  “And Savikkigut?” said Vithrok.

  “What of it?” boomed Punnik.

  “You are afraid of him.”

  The turgat snorted.

  “But you don’t have to be,” said Tugto.

  Vithrok pointed an accusatory finger up at Punnik. “I’ve heard Savikkigut roar in pleasure after taking one of my people. I think he does the same with the blood of the mamut smeared across his mouth. Does that sound rankle your heart as it does mine?”

  “My, aren’t you an annoying little creature?” A flash of anger darkened Punnik’s jolly eyes. “What do you want, little man?”

  “A bargain,” said Vithrok.

  Using the broad flat of his hand, Tugto pounded the drum.

  “It doesn’t sound right,” said Vithrok. He stirred the thick red blood in the vessel before him. They had been at it so long the cat blood on his chest had dried and was flaking off. With two fingers, he repainted a pair of ruby streaks down each half of his bare chest and across his cheeks. “It needs to be lower,” he said.

  Tugto warmed some snow between his palms and rubbed the water onto the drumhead. The dagger-tooth skin they had used to make the drum was unusually tough, but as he rubbed the water in, it relaxed a little. When he beat the drum again the pitch was considerably lower.

  “Again!” commanded Vithrok. He felt the vibration resounding in the blood covering his chest. The streaks of crimson suddenly grew hot, warming his skin.

  “That’s it!” said Vithrok excitedly. “Oh yes. That’s it!”

  Tugto took up the rhythm in earnest. Vithrok held a dagger-tooth skull above his head, gripping it by the large round eye sockets. The large bowl of the skull, with the two foot-long incisors still attached, dripped hot blood on his forehead.

  “Savikkigut,” he intoned. “Coward who attacks from the rear, who slinks low to the ground, hiding in darkness…”

  A rumble of thunder split the air of eternal night. But of course it wasn’t thunder at all. It was the growl of a great beast.

  Vithrok screamed as the sting of a hundred scouring knives raked his body, tearing him apart. The pain was incredible, but he relaxed into it, letting the turgat carry him away. His spirit-man took flight, ripped from his body by unseen hands and sent on a journey outside of his control.

  Everything faded to white. Vithrok struggled to maintain awareness, telling himself the pain was an illusion of the body. He couldn’t entirely convince his soul of the matter however, and his spirit-man spun wildly, battered this way and that, lost in a haze of pain.

  After what seemed an eternity of suffering, he found himself deposited on a strange and unknown spiritual plane. Vithrok knew many places and many types of terrain. He remembered them from the Beforetime when every landscape was defined by whim and fantasy, and limited only by imagination. But he, or one of his kindred spirits, had never concocted an environment like this. A profusion of tall keen-edged grasses, of spiked trees with dripping tendrils, a solid canopy above, a forest of leafy fronds below. The purplish hues of the spirit-vision gave way to scintillating green. The luminous souls of the many plants collided in competition for his attention in a stunning jumble of life. Green, and more green. But even so, there were many shadows — black spots where he could not see. Places to hide. He did not like it.

  Here his inuseq, or spirit-body, could not fly. He could only walk on the ground, forcing his way through the thick growth of the underbrush. Shoots and branches snatched at him with thorn and tendril, tripping him up.

  Hair-raising sounds rang out among the shadows. Snarls and snapping jaws, hidden in the foliage to one side or the other. His imagination
ran wild with images of the frightful beasts that must belong to such heavy animal breathing, the vicious, frothing throats that produced those low growls. Vithrok moved along, avoiding the places where ambush might easily be accomplished.

  The leaves to his left shook violently, driving Vithrok to the right. In an instant he realized he had been tricked as a clawed hand struck out from the underbrush, carving a bloody streak along his leg. Vithrok kicked out at the place where the attack had originated, but there was nothing there.

  A low snarl bubbled up from his right side, but he refused to be baited again and continued going straight forward. A giant paw, invisible to his spirit-eye, smacked him full in the face. The force of the blow knocked him backward, but with practiced reflexes he rolled to his feet and stood poised on alert.

  Was he being led somewhere, or was he simply being toyed with?

  Alone in the jungle, Vithrok was afraid. The pain he could bear. The humiliation as well, though it was the more difficult of the two. He was prepared to die here if his gamble should play out that way, but the prospect of sudden death coming from cover of darkness frightened him, as that would ruin his plan. And leave the Tunrit to suffer.

  And yet, he didn’t think such a thing would happen. Unless he had grossly misjudged his adversary, Savikkigut must appear.

  Cat’s laughter hissed from the darkness. It skipped through the jungle, taunting its prey, a sibilant whisper darting in and out among the fronds and foliage. Vithrok broke into a run, aware that at any moment that terrible invisible paw might strike out again without warning.

  The jungle gave way to a small circular clearing. Vithrok thought this a perfect place to make his stand but just as the idea came full into his mind, Savikkigut leapt.

  The turgat came charging at him, having taken the form of an ordinary dagger-tooth, as if certain that nothing more would be necessary. In that it was certainly correct; its weight crashed full upon Vithrok’s spirit-form, pounding him into the ground. The cat ran a quick circle around Vithrok, then turned sharply and came at him again. One raking paw carved up his shoulder as the other pinned him by driving one of its long claws through the center of his thigh. Vithrok felt as if his soul had been set on fire, the pain was so intense.

  Savikkigut’s face drew close to Vithrok’s own, the long curved incisors pushing his head back. The great cat regarded him with cold yellowed eyes.

  “Too easy,” hissed the cat.

  Vithrok smarted at the words. What was it Punnik had called him? Little man.

  Savikkigut leaned down, driving its claw deeper into Vithrok’s thigh.

  “Does it hurt?” asked Savikkigut playfully.

  It withdrew the claw halfway, then paused. Blackened lips drew back in a diabolical mockery of a smile. Then without warning it drove the claw back in, the pain a lance of white-hot fire.

  Vithrok cried out again. As soon as he was able to speak, he said, “Why don’t you just kill me?”

  “I don’t want to kill you,” purred the cat. “Not yet.”

  A pink tongue flicked out across one of its deadly incisors. “I give you one chance to cower in fear before me and learn your place on this world. Or else the next time we meet I will tear you to pieces and be done with it.”

  Vithrok gathered himself against the pain. “You want me to cower?”

  “Yes,” Savikkigut hissed.

  “You want me to beg?”

  “Yes!”

  “And that will stop the killing?”

  The cat’s laugh, an all-too-human sound, rang out again. Its head swayed from side to side in a horrible semblance of amusement.

  “No. I just want to hear you whimper. There’s nothing you can do to stop the killing. You Tunrit are nothing to me. A tasty snack here and there, that’s all.”

  “Maybe if you’d spent enough time crawling up from the mud as I have,” said Vithrok, “you might think differently.”

  Vithrok looked up, to see that Tugto had appeared next to him.

  Savikkigut cast a disdainful glance at Tugto, then dug the claw a little deeper into Vithrok’s thigh. “He can’t help you,” it said.

  “Look again.”

  A gigantic shape had materialized out of the ether beside Tugto. It was Punnik. This time the spirit had assumed a huge bestial form rather than the elegant, bejeweled self of their previous encounter. It towered above them, a dark shaggy beast, a killer.

  Savikkigut snarled at Punnik. Still full of its tremendous confidence the cat said, “This is my jungle. Get out, or die.”

  On the other side of the Tunrit another gigantic form appeared. Stepping forth from a seething gray mist, the spirit guardian of the ground sloths took shape. These creatures were large and powerful but slow-moving and stupid. When sparked to rage they could be ferocious and deadly. And this turgat looked menacing indeed as it rose up, its front paws slicing the air, its spiked tail curling backward. Vithrok recalled observing a sloth as it was attacked by a bear. The sloth had risen up on its hind legs and grasped the bear’s head in its long forepaws. Immobilized on either side by the piercing claws, the bear struck out helplessly as the sloth took its head off at the shoulder with one bite of its powerful jaws.

  Turning to face this new challenge, Savikkigut withdrew its claw from Vithrok’s thigh. Black lips curled back, its jaw opening wide to show off the long, deadly incisors. Savikkigut put its back up, its head bent low. Shoulders tensed, it hissed back at the sloth.

  Another form appeared behind the cat. This animal, the turgat of the creatures the Tunrit called the maguruq because of their distinctive howl, possessed a hide so thick the cat’s claws were useless against it. It snapped a long pointed snout full of monstrous teeth. A pair of short tusks curled from the lower jaws and matching horns spiked from the upper. The beast was front-heavy, carrying a massive humped back and shoulders, and sharply pointed cloven hooves. Its eyes, set far back along the snout, blazed pure mindless ferocity. This horror of horns and teeth made the third point of a triangle formation as the turgats closed in.

  Vithrok stepped backward out of the triangle. “Are you still beating the drum?” he whispered to Tugto.

  “Of course,” the other answered softly, “just as we planned. Are you ready to return?”

  “Not yet,” said Vithrok. He limped backward, pressing a hand to his torn shoulder.

  For a moment, Savikkigut knew fear as the other turgats closed in around it. The battle was short. Even the ferocious dagger-tooth could not long stand against three such powerful foes. The cat growled and hissed as the spirit guardians set about their grim work.

  The ultimate fate of these other turgats was easy for Vithrok to predict. The mamut, the sloths, and even the ferocious maguruq, were all doomed to fade and die away before long. There were not enough fertile grounds to feed them and the long grasses were being rapidly stripped away by their insatiable hunger. Once the dagger-tooths were out of the way, the Tunrit would survive them all.

  “Let’s go,” urged Tugto.

  “Let’s wait just a moment longer,” Vithrok added. “I want to remember the sound of Savikkigut’s dying scream.”

  CHAPTER 19

  THE TROUBLE STARTS

  The caribou hunt at Silver Tongue was a great success. The Anatatook summer encampment hummed with hopeful excitement. Loads of fresh meat were hauled in, the dogs’ feet raw and bloody from pulling the heavy sleds across the rough trail.

  With so much work to do, nobody slept. The women crouched among the river stones, expertly stripping the hides with their ulu blades. The splayed carcasses stood out in vivid red, stark against the patchy snow and gray gravel that covered the ground. Alaana sat among them. Working silently, her long blade of sharpened bone cut through the joints with precise strokes, separating the meat in big chunks. The tender organs were put aside for immediate consumption.

  The men gathered before the drying racks with Aquppak in charge of the distribution of the choicest parts. His hands dripped with gore as h
e hung the red-purple meat on the rack to dry. His nostrils flaring with the smell of blood and offal, he sorted the portions on the racks as if it was all his to give away.

  “Six hind quarters go to Nuralak,” he said, “the high part up to the neck to be divided among Ahjoonik and Itusarssuk.”

  Nuralak said nothing. He stood behind the younger hunters, nodding gratefully in acceptance of the best cuts.

  “Three for Maguan,” added Aquppak.

  “Three?” objected Maguan, stepping forward. “I had twice as many kills as Nuralak.”

  “He is my hunting partner,” said Aquppak firmly.

  “And I took down as many as you, for that matter,” continued Maguan. “Your family's stomachs are no larger than mine or any of the others.”

  A rumble of agreement threatened rebellion from the men. Aquppak acted deliberately unconcerned. He stepped a few paces to the side, keeping Nuralak and several others carefully at his back.

  “You did well in the hunt, Maguan, and I praise you for that,” he said, smiling. “Perhaps you are the best of us.” A disingenuous lilt to his voice indicated he thought otherwise. “But I was the one who led the Anatatook to the meat. Without my guidance there would be nothing at all. Where was it you said we should go? South of the Tongue? What meat would there be if we had followed your advice?”

  Maguan had no ready answer for this charge but a slight reddening of his face.

  Kigiuna stepped up, saying, “Tugtutsiak never took an extra share for himself.”

  “We each get only what we deserve, and nothing more,” said Aquppak. He brushed absently at a stray clot of blood smeared across the front of his light summer parka. “But someone has to divide the portions. That’s my responsibility. Now as to Ben, whose ability with the bow matches any of the old women, he shall have five hindquarters as well.”

  The laughter of the men indicated a growing confidence in their new leader. Ben brushed aside the insulting remark. It was true. He was unskilled. His left arm, which had been damaged by the Yupikut raiders and restored by Alaana, was still weak.