by Inmon, Shawn
Alex would have thought that he couldn’t jump off the ground to save his life, but he was wrong. In an instant, he was up gyrating, jumping, slapping at himself. He grabbed the pinecone off the ground, shook it to make sure it wasn’t also carrying ants, and hustled up the trail.
The trip back was uneventful. As he passed each lookout’s blind, they shouted down, “Gunta!”
Alex wasn’t enthusiastic in his replies, but he did manage a tired, “Gunta,” to each of them as he marched by at double-time.
He emerged into the clearing and the children—who were only a few inches taller than he was—ran to him, laughing. They tried to touch and grab the giant pinecone, but Alex held it away from them, saying, ‘Kel!’ which was Winten-ah for ‘No!’
At the base of the cliff, Alex saw Dan. Monda-ak also saw him and sprinted toward him. When he got close, Alex began to back up, saying, “Whoa, whoa, whoa!” but it didn’t matter. The pup had all the grace of a hippo on ice skates and hit Alex at a full gallop, almost knocking him over. Alex looked down at the dog, whose entire posterior was wagging, not just its tail, and couldn’t manage to be even slightly angry.
Dan looked over his wounds and said, “Good thing this is the easy one, eh? It looks like you’ve been shot at and missed but shit at and hit.”
“You’re hilarious. Let’s get this to Sekun-ak. I can hardly wait to see what he’s got for me tomorrow.
When they tracked Sekun-ak down in one of the upper caves, he looked slightly surprised to see Alex lugging his giant pinecone. He recovered quickly though, saying in Winten-ah, “Tomorrow will be harder. Find me at apex.” Alex was pleased to realize he understood. He was adapting, learning.
Apex was what the Winten-ah called noon, or a close proximity. It was the time when the sun was at its highest point each day.
Alex did his best not to limp as he walked away, but when they were down several levels, he said, “Maybe I should go see Niten-eh. I don’t want all these cuts to get infected.”
An hour later, Niten-eh had bandaged him up, laughing a bit while Alex told the story of recovering the pinecone and how he almost died.
“These people have a morbid sense of humor,” Alex said.
“It’s the image of you tumbling ass over teakettle, holding on to that giant pinecone that got her. You’ll be the talk of the tribe by tonight.”
“Great. At least I’m still alive to be gossiped about.”
Alex was too tired to even eat, and he and Monda-ak retired to one of the communal sleeping chambers. He was asleep almost before he laid down.
ALEX, MONDA-AK AND Dan met just outside the armory at midday. Alex still looked like he was on the losing end of a heavyweight boxing match, but Monda-ak was full of puppyish joy, bouncing ahead of Alex, then retreating to make sure he was still coming, then tripping over nothing and falling face-first.
“Come on, great white hunter,” Dan laughed.
Inside the armory, Sekun-ak stood over a large shallow box. Inside the box was sand—the same dark sand that Alex had seen at the beach when he stepped through the door. Again, he was surrounded by his hunters—six men and two women. None of them looked happy to see them.
Guess they thought they’d get rid of me yesterday.
Dan and Sekun-ak convened at the table and had a long conversation with Alex looking on and eavesdropping as best he could. As they spoke, Sekun-ak used a piece of wood to draw lines in the sandbox.
After a few minutes of rapid conversation, Dan turned to Alex.
“I don’t know what trick he’s got up his sleeve this time. It seems pretty simple and straight-forward.”
“Which makes me nervous,” Alex said.
“Right. I mean, they didn’t exactly cheat yesterday, but it wasn’t as easy as we thought.”
“Nothing we can solve by worrying about it. What’s the task?”
“Sekun-ak says he wants to test your stamina and endurance. That’s the method they use most often in their hunting. They form huge rings around whatever they’re hunting and chase it toward each other until the animal is exhausted.”
“Got it,” Alex said, nodding.
“He says he sent a hunter to a specific spot today and placed a household item—a simple wooden plate. All you have to do is run to the location, retrieve the plate, and bring it back here. The rub is that it is more than seven miles each way. So, a fifteen-mile round trip, over some dangerous, uneven ground, and you have to be back here before the sun disappears over the hills.”
“That gives me what, seven hours? That’s barely a two-mile an hour pace. No problem.”
“I seem to remember you feeling this confident yesterday, then you were mostly dead when you stumbled back into camp.”
“Whatever. Just show me where I need to go.”
Dan showed Alex the route Sekun-ak had drawn in the sand. Into the forest once more, then at the northern end, where the trees give out, turn east and run along a game path until it ends at a river. It’s a big river, you can’t miss it. He says the plate is sitting on a flat rock right by the river. All you’ve got to do is grab it and bring it back here before sundown.”
Alex knew the clock was ticking, so he leaned down and patted Monda-ak on the head and said, “Stay with Dan. I’ll be right back.”
“You’re going to have the only multi-lingual dog in the world.”
Monda-ak whined when Alex moved away. He was already completely bound to him and hated to be separated.
Alex came back, scratched his ears again, then turned and jogged toward the forest. He had done dozens of long marches in Special Forces training, so he knew what he was doing. Don’t start too fast. Stay hydrated.
He was equipped the same way he had been the day before—nothing but the carry-bag on his back, his water bag, and the same borrowed cudgel. That meant he was light. By the time he had gone half a mile in the forest, the stiffness and soreness from the previous day had mostly left him.
He set a metronome in his head—tic, tic, tic, tic—and matched his steps to it.
Again, he greeted each guard sitting in the trees, although he might have been a little less cocky about it this time.
He made great time to the end of the forest and found the game trail easily. If this really was an endurance test and didn’t have any hidden issues, he was confident he would be back long before the sun touched the hilltops.
Alex kept his head on a swivel as he marched. He had asked Dan about what wildlife he might run into on the journey, but he hadn’t known. He was on a game trail, though, and where there is game, there are predators. If they were lying in wait for whatever came along, he had not seen them.
Two hours after he left, the trail widened out and he could hear the burbling of a running river. He slowed his pace and approached the river carefully.
Water sources were often great hunting grounds and he wanted to determine as best he could that he would not be on the menu.
Alex had known that there would be water at the river, so he hadn’t conserved his water bag on the trip. It was a hot day and he wanted to avoid dehydration, which might lead to cramping.
He laid on his belly and dunked his head in the water. When he came up for breath, he stuck his face back down into the cold water and drank. Not his fill—he also didn’t want to risk a side-ache on the march back—but enough to slake his thirst.
He filled his water bag, then turned his attention to finding the plate. He was ready to return to camp.
It didn’t take him long to find the first wrinkle in the quest. There was only one flat rock in the area, and it was perched precariously on top of a pile of rubble that was over his head.
Bastards can’t make anything too easy, can they?
Alex approached the rubble cautiously, looking for any other tricks they might be playing on him. None were in evidence, so he put one foot a few feet up the pile of rocks. As he did, the shale shifted under his feet and he found himself back on solid ground.
Thi
s is going to take a lighter touch.
He stepped again, but more cautiously this time. He made it two steps before everything shifted and he once again found himself where he had started.
He calmed his breathing and closed his eyes for several long moments. He stepped as lightly as he possibly could, holding each step for several seconds before shifting his weight and taking another. This method worked, as he worked his way higher and higher up the rubble pile.
Another challenge was that the flat rock was large—maybe ten feet across. If he had climbed up on the wrong side, he would also have to work his way around the pile to reach the plate, which might be in the very middle.
Tentatively, he touched the edge of the flat rock and looked up over the edge.
He could see the wooden plate.
He could also see a western diamondback rattlesnake curled up around it, rattling a warning.
Chapter Fourteen
A Quest III
“Gah!”
Alex was so surprised by the appearance of the snake that he forgot about his tenuous foothold on the shale. He jerked backwards, lost his balance, and tumbled down the small hill. He wasn’t high up—no more than twelve feet—so nothing was hurt but his pride.
He sat at the bottom of the hill and tried to calm his heart, which was racing at the sudden appearance of the deadly threat.
Holy shit. That thing must have been ten feet long. I didn’t think rattlers grew that big. But of course they do. I am in Kragdon-ah where everything that is deadly is bigger and badder than you expect. I was lucky it didn’t strike when I poked my head up there. Does this heat make it sluggish? I don’t think I want to count on that.
Alex stood, dusted himself off and paced back and forth.
Now what do I do? That massive thing was curled up around the plate. There’s no way it got up there itself, so Sekun-ak or one of his hunters must have put it up there. How? That’s a problem for another time. I’ve got more urgent concerns.
Alex walked away from the flat rock, hoping a new perspective would help him solve the puzzle. He racked his brain for ideas and came up blank. Eventually, he remembered a show he had seen on the National Geographic channel. It had been about snake handlers. Most of it had been about people who handled snakes with their bare hands, but he wasn’t about to try to do that with the monster up on the rock.
While he contemplated, the sun moved inexorably toward the horizon. Whatever he was going to do, he needed to do it fast.
That show had also shown someone in India corralling a huge poisonous snake using a long piece of wood with a forked end.
That’s it. That’s what I can do.
Alex looked around desperately. The woods had thinned out to just a few scrub trees near the river, so he hurried back the way he came, looking for a tree with a limb that could work. After a quarter mile of stopping and starting, examining each tree, he found an elm tree that looked like it might serve his purpose.
The next challenge was that he was only equipped with his cudgel, which wasn’t much use in cutting off a limb. He searched around the trail until he found a sharp-edged rock. He used that to hack at the limb until he was able to break it free. It had a forked end like he wanted, but the tree was green and the limb was springy. Once he held it in his hands, though, the springiness made him wonder if it would lift the behemoth he had just seen on that rock without dropping it. The last thing he wanted to do was try to lift it and have it fall.
A twelve-foot rattlesnake was bad enough. He couldn’t imagine what a twelve-foot pissed off rattlesnake would be like.
Alex looked up and saw another limb, thicker than the first that was a little higher up the tree. He weighed the time it would take to retrieve it now versus the time it would take to run to the rock, try the other limb and run back here if it failed.
He glanced at the sun and decided to play it conservatively for once.
He climbed up the tree a few branches—an activity he had hoped to avoid for a long time after what he’d gone through the day before—and again hacked at the limb until he was able to tear it free.
He climbed quickly down, gathered up the stronger limb and ran for the flat rock.
Back at the rock, he hurriedly plucked the stray small limbs and leaves from it until he had a reasonable facsimile of the forked stick he remembered.
He moved around so that he was behind where he remembered the snake’s head had been and climbed the shale. He was impatient. He could feel time ticking away. Halfway up, he slipped back to the bottom.
Slow is smooth. Smooth is fast.
He patiently put one foot after the other until he again got close enough to the top that he could peer over the edge of the flat rock. The snake was facing away from Alex.
Perfect.
He lifted the stick up and held it parallel to the flat rock. As he extended it, it got heavier and he was worried he would scrape it against the rock and alert the snake. His muscles quivered, but he managed to keep it aloft.
When the forked end of the limb was just a few inches from the thick body of the rattler, he gathered his strength and simultaneously lowered the stick and jabbed it forward.
The snake immediately raised its head and tail and twisted around toward Alex. Its rattles echoed like a deadly warning that Alex knew he had no choice but to ignore. Muscles bulging, Alex leveraged the branch against the edge of the rock and leaned his weight into it.
That lifted the snake up, up, up. Alex had overestimated how much force was required. The rattler flew straight toward his face.
For the second time, Alex jumped backward in surprise, fear, and shock. He stumbled down the shale hill and this time fell face first onto the hard ground. A split-second later, he pushed himself to his feet and backpedaled with lightning speed. The flight and fall had momentarily stunned the rattler, but it recovered quickly, coiled itself and prepared to strike. A rattlesnake can strike at a distance between one-third and one-half its body length—quite a distance for a snake this size. By the time it sprang, Alex was out of range.
The snake recoiled itself, lifted its magnificent rattles into the air and shook them in frustration.
Alex hurried around to the other side of the hill and slowly climbed back up, keeping one wary eye on the snake.
This time when he peeked over the edge, there was nothing but the plate sitting there. He reached out, grabbed it, and jumped down, landing on his feet for once.
He glanced at the sun, which seemed perilously low in the sky.
No time to think. I’ve gotta move.
Alex slipped the plate into his pack and took off. He set the pace he had long ago learned was the fastest he could move without dropping from exhaustion after a mile or two.
His moccasin-clad feet pounded against the game trail. After just a quarter mile, he slowed a little. His optimal pace was based on starting at full health and not already being exhausted. After his adventure with the sugar pine the previous day, neither of those things were true. He was tempted to keep one eye on the sun’s progress but decided instead to blank everything out of his mind except for the mechanical motion of putting one foot in front of the other.
He made steady progress. After a mile, he saw a long, thick stick lying across the path in front of him, twenty-five yards away.
Don’t remember that being there on the way to the river.
Rather than maneuver around it, he decided to just jump over it. It wasn’t until he was right on top of it that he saw that it was no stick. It was another western diamondback rattler, sunning itself. This one wasn’t as immense as the specimen he had encountered at the flat rock, but it no doubt had fangs and venom.
Alex had competed in both the long jump and the triple jump in high school. That served him well. He planted his right foot, sprang off his left, and soared above the snake. It saw him coming and struck upward, but Alex’s leap carried him well over it.
Mental note: don’t jump over any more long sticks.
That turned out to be a good strategy. Where the path had been clear on his trip to the river, he came across four more rattlers of various sizes before he reached the forest. Once he knew what they were, they were easy to avoid. Only the first one had posed any real danger to him.
When he reached the forest, Alex knew that he would be almost completely out of sight of the sun for the rest of the trip. He stopped, measured where it hung in the sky and estimated how long it would take him to reach the cliffs. He didn’t like the answer he came up with.
A steady pace has to go out the window. I’ve gotta give it all I’ve got. Be all that I can be, like the old ad used to say.
He took one long drink from his water bag and ran—not jogged—toward the settlement. He moved so fast that he didn’t have time to exchange any kind of greeting with the lookouts as he ran past them.
When he reached the cutoff toward the cliffs, he turned left and glanced up, but couldn’t see the sun, which was blocked by the tall trees to the west. It was possible he had already lost.
It didn’t matter. Alex sprinted toward what he had already come to think of as home. He had been a jumper in high school because he wasn’t fast enough to run any of the sprints or middle distances. On this occasion, though, he ran like he had a stiff wind pushing him along.
He was dirty, beyond exhausted, and hurt in a hundred places.
And he ran on.
When he hit the meadow, he saw something completely unexpected. The children of the tribe were lined up, waiting for him. When he reached them, they turned and ran alongside him, cheering for him with the wild abandon of children of any era.
Alex had thought his tank was empty, but the cheers of the children gave him one last spark. He increased his speed again and sprinted straight toward the armory.