by Inmon, Shawn
That afternoon, when Alex saw Monda-ak appear at the edge of the forest, he whistled one shrill blast.
Monda-ak’s ears pricked up and he ran full speed toward Alex.
Alex stood and pointed at Monda-ak. All the workers and guards turned toward him. The first guard raised his crossbow and aimed. As he did, Alex dove across the space that separated them. The second guard wheeled and pointed his crossbow at Alex. As he released the bolt, the old man from Stipa-ah stepped between them.
The bolt from the second guard slammed into the throat of the old man just as Alex swung his shovel, hitting the crossbow of the first guard. The second bolt flew high and over the head of Monda-ak, who never slowed.
As the one standing guard reached for his cudgel, Monda-ak slammed into him, knocking him to the ground in a twisted mess of dog and man.
Alex looked at the old man who had sacrificed himself. He was gurgling blood and could not speak, but waved Alex away.
The guards on the tower saw the fight and unleashed their own bolts, but as Alex had guessed, they were out of range.
Alex whistled at Monda-ak, who dispatched the man and ran to Alex’s side. Sekun-ak raised his shovel and brought it down on the second guard’s head.
The gate had already been opened to allow workers and guards to go in and out and men poured out of it.
The slaves, who were slaves no more at that moment, scattered and ran for the trees.
Alex, Sekun-ak and Monda-ak did not run for the path they had used originally. Alex was afraid that the tree would still be across the trail there and there would be more armed men waiting for them. Instead, they ran for the part of the forest where Monda-ak had sprung. The going would be slow, but that would be true for their pursuers as well.
With everyone running a different direction, it slowed the response. The guards didn’t know which of the runners to chase. Eventually, Dunta-ak ran through the gates and directed a group of men to pursue Alex, who was just disappearing into the forest with Sekun-ak and Monda-ak. That gave them a five-minute head start.
As they ran, Alex gave a signal to Monda-ak to lead the way. He was a wide body and protected from the thorns of bushes by his thick coat, so he made an easier path for the humans.
Monda-ak zigged and zagged as he ran, checking over his shoulder to make sure Alex was close behind and slowing down if he needed to. They were breaking a trail as they went, which would make them easy to follow, but it was the only way to keep a distance between them and their armed pursuers.
They broke through into a clearing and heard the sound of rushing water nearby. They moved to the edge of a small cliff and saw a river running below them, heading west.
Behind them, they could hear the crashing of the guards through the trees. Alex looked into the frothing gray water.
He looked at Sekun-ak and shrugged, then gave Monda-ak the signal to follow and jumped.
Chapter Twenty-Three
The Journey Home
Alex had known the river would be cold, but when he hit the water, he had a hard time drawing a breath.
Not going to be able to stay in this water for too long without risking hypothermia.
He finally managed to draw a breath and looked desperately around. Monda-ak had followed closely, because he was swept along not far behind Alex. As heavy as he was, Monda-ak was an excellent swimmer and had the additional advantage of his thick fur.
The Winten-ah were not great swimmers, but Sekun-ak had also taken the plunge. The river represented a better chance at life than staying to face an unknown number of armed men intent on killing him. He splashed his arms and did his best to keep his head above water, but Alex could see the river would not be a long-term strategy for him.
Beyond Sekun-ak, there was nothing but a long stretch of river. None of the guards had wanted to pursue them into the water. Alex had no doubt they would follow them, but they wouldn’t be able to move as quickly as the river was carrying him.
Alex called to Monda-ak and turned to swim for the far shore. As long as he didn’t try to fight his way back upstream, he made progress toward reaching the opposite bank.
Ahead, he saw a spot where the riverbank sloped gently down into the river. He swam for it, doing his best to give a whistle for Monda-ak to find him. He scrambled ashore, exhausted, but knew he didn’t have a moment to waste if he was going to grab Sekun-ak. He looked desperately around for a fallen limb he could extend out into the water, but there was nothing there. When he glanced up, Sekun-ak was already past him.
Alex knew he couldn’t run as fast as the river, but he and Monda-ak ran through the thin underbrush alongside the river anyway. He shouted to Sekun-ak that he was coming, and to try to swim to the shore.
He can barely keep his head above water. What are the odds he can manage to swim to the shore?
Alex ran on, heedless of the branches and vines that snagged him. After half a mile of hard running, he came to a pool that had been created when a massive tree had fallen completely across it, creating a natural dam.
His heart sank when he saw Sekun-ak’s body bumping lifelessly into the tree, face down in the water. Alex splashed out into the pool and grabbed him under the arms. The pool wasn’t deep, but the rocky bottom was slippery and Sekun-ak, even after a week of starvation diet, was heavy. Still, Alex managed to bring him ashore.
Alex touched his carotid artery but couldn’t find a pulse. He put his ear against his chest but there was no heartbeat. Alex tilted Sekun-ak’s head back and opened his mouth, looking for obstructions in the airway.
Alex straddled his waist, placed his hands over Sekun-ak’s chest and pressed down. When he had been taught CPR, his instructor had used the Bee Gees song Stayin’ Alive to show the proper rhythm. He compressed the chest in time with the old disco song, then covered Sekun-ak’s mouth and blew into his lungs.
It might be hopeless, just the two of us lost a hundred miles from home, hunted by men who want to kill us, with wet clothes and no way to start a fire, but things would be much better with two of us. Come on!
In between compressing Sekun-ak’s chest and blowing air into his lungs, Alex glanced up and across the river. Their pursuers had been right behind them when they jumped. How long would it take for them to catch up?
Alex continued the CPR for long minutes. Long enough that he thought all hope had passed.
Then the spark of life returned. Sekun-ak coughed up river water, gasped for air and looked wildly about. Alex had believed that drowning was a peaceful way to die but seeing Sekun-ak’s response to waking up on this side of life’s curtain, he reevaluated that.
Alex helped him to sit up and pounded on his back to expel the last of the water from his lungs.
“We need to move away from the bank. We’re too exposed here.”
Alex helped Sekun-ak to his feet and half-carried him to a hidden spot deep in the trees. They were no more than tucked away than Alex heard the pounding of feet across the river. Monda-ak growled quietly, deep in his chest, but Alex quieted him with a gesture.
There were six men chasing them. Two were armed with crossbows, but the other four carried the typical weapons of Kragdon-ah—long cudgels and hammers.
When they came to the spot opposite Alex, they paused and looked at the bank where he had resuscitated Sekun-ak.
I should have erased any sign of us. Are there drag marks?
The men stared in their direction for a long minute, then continued down the river.
Alex relaxed, but only a little. They were still in a precarious position. Both he and Sekun-ak had already begun to shiver. It would be a cold night spent without a fire. Even if they had the ability to start a blaze, they couldn’t risk it being seen. Their clothes were wet and unlikely to dry in the near-freezing overnight temperatures.
Alex had Monda-ak lie next to Sekun-ak while he explored their immediate area. With their hunters gone past them, they could stay and rest for the night. Surviving it without hypothermia was the challe
nge.
Alex scouted for anything that would give them shelter from the night’s winds and rain but couldn’t find anything resembling a cave or rock overhang. Finally, he found a huge, hollowed-out tree.
Best we’re gonna do, I think.
He hustled back to Sekun-ak as the weak light of the afternoon faded into dusk. He helped him to his feet and noticed how beat up Sekun-ak had gotten in his trip down the river. He was cut and bruised in a dozen spots. He was also shivering dramatically.
Alex led him back to the tree, put Sekun-ak inside and clambered in behind him. It was a tight squeeze, but he called Monda-ak and arranged him over the top of both of them—a massive breathing, farting comforter. They huddled together and hoped for sleep to arrive.
As Alex dropped off, the last thought that went through his mind was “Even this is better than where we were at the beginning of the day.” Then he slept.
Alex awoke in the middle of the night to see two golden eyes staring back at him and Monda-ak growling softly. Rutan-ta had come for a visit. With no weapon other than Monda-ak’s claws and fangs, Alex hoped that she was not looking for a midnight snack.
The gigantic cat stared into their hidey-hole for a long minute. Out of the corner of his eye, Alex saw that Sekun-ak was also wide awake and staring back.
Rutan-ah gave them one last sniff, then turned and padded silently away.
Neither man slept again that night.
When the earliest light showed in the east, they untangled themselves from Monda-ak and walked stiffly back to the river. They laid and drank deeply of the cold water. It might be the only thing they had to put in their bellies for the near future.
They were both banged up and sore, but they knew they needed to move if they were going to make it home.
They searched the riverbank until they found stones they could sharpen into a blunt cutting instrument. They cut branches down from a red alder tree, measured them to a proper length and sharpened one end. It made for a crude weapon, but if they were forced to fight, they didn’t want to be empty-handed.
Sekun-ak also found thin vines that could be used as cordage and found a sturdy stick and rock that he could bind together into another basic weapon.
Their clothes had mostly dried overnight, but if they stopped moving for long, the cold seeped into their bones.
Without the trail that they had followed on their way to Denta-ah, they were essentially traveling blind. They knew they had traveled east on their journey out, and that the river, although it twisted and turned, eventually flowed west. They decided to do their best to follow the path of the river and hope that Sekun-ak would begin to recognize landmarks when they got closer to Winten-ah.
The underbrush was tangled and difficult to move through, but from time to time they found game trails that they could follow until it inevitably moved away from the river. It made for slow going.
Alex estimated on the journey to Denta-ah, they had traveled as many as fifteen miles in a single day. He didn’t think they were making more than four to five miles traveling through the brush, stopping and listening for their pursuers every hundred yards.
Their stomachs had already been empty when they escaped, as they had never been given enough of the weak stew to do anything but survive. After three more days of burning calories through steady hiking, they were flagging.
Eventually, they came upon another spot that had been dammed. This time it was beavers who had built their home in a spot where the river narrowed. That had formed a pool where the water moved very slowly before crashing over the small dam.
Sekun-ak said, “Wait,” and stripped off his buckskin breeches. He waded waist-deep out into the freezing water and stood still for several minutes, then came back to shore and said. “Genta-ta.”
Genta-ta was a fish that the Winten-ah often ate, particularly when hunts were unsuccessful. It was much like a trout, but naturally, it was more the size of a salmon.
“How can we catch it? We don’t have anything for fishing line or a hook.”
Sekun-ak smiled—an expression that touched his face only on the rarest of occasions.
He picked up his crude spear and waded back into the water, where he went completely motionless. He was so quiet, Alex wasn’t even sure he was breathing. He posed like a statue, one arm holding his spear slightly above his shoulder.
For long minutes, he didn’t move.
Then, lightning quick, his right arm flashed down. He held on to his spear, but only just barely. As big and strong as Sekun-ak was, the genta-ta put up a titanic struggle. Sekun ah dropped the spear low to keep the fish from wriggling off, then braced his feet and lifted it over his head. Freed from the spear, the fish flew backward onto the bank where it flopped and strained to reach the river.
Alex jumped on the fish and threw it further up the bank. He grabbed the hammer Sekun-ak had made him and bashed the fish on the head, once, twice, three times.
Alex grabbed the fish by the tail and lifted it up, smiling for the first time in many days. He held the tail at eye level and the head reached below his knees.
Wading out of the water, even Sekun-ak gave a satisfied smile.
Sekun-ak kneeled over the fish, chanted his thanks for its life and strength, then found a sharp rock and cut the fish open. He scooped out the entrails and piled them for Monda-ak to eat, who gobbled them in seconds and looked for more. Sekun-ak cut the head off the fish and threw it into the river, then removed the spine. Roughly, he cut two large slabs of meat.
He handed one to Alex who accepted it gratefully. They both sat on the ground and devoured the raw fish. Almost immediately Alex felt strength coursing through his body. Even eating all they could hold, they ate less than a quarter of the meat.
Sekun-ak cut more slabs off then walked into the forest. He reemerged a few minutes later with a handful of leaves the size of a man’s chest. He made small holes in the leaves, then used more of the thin vine to sew the leaves into makeshift bags. He divided the meat equally and placed half in each of the bags.
“The meat won’t stay good for long, but we can eat it tonight and in the morning.”
Alex nodded. Sekun-ak, you’re a good dude to get lost in the woods with.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Blizzard
The next morning, snow began to fall.
Alex, Sekun-ak and Monda-ak had started hiking along the river just before dawn. By the time the first light showed in the east, fat, heavy flakes fell, sticking almost immediately onto the frozen ground.
They walked on for another mile, ignoring the gathering puffs of fallen snow around their feet. It became apparent that, at least in the short-term, the storm wasn’t going to let up. Being stuck in an early winter snowstorm without fire or adequate clothing was a recipe for frostbite or hypothermia.
Alex turned to Sekun-ak and said, “No one is going to be looking for us in this storm. We need to find a place to hole up.”
Sekun-ak didn’t hesitate but turned away from the river immediately. Monda-ak got the idea and jumped in front again, breaking trail and pushing snow out of the way like an overgrown St. Bernard.
Within minutes, the falling snow increased to near-blizzard conditions, essentially blinding them. A howling wind sprang up, which caused the snow to swirl in small tornados.
Alex began to think it was hopeless and maybe they should return to the river so that at least they wouldn’t lose their way in the snow, when they nearly walked into a steep cliff.
Alex shielded his eyes with both hands and looked up the cliff, but there were no friendly caves they could climb up and into.
The face of the cliff stopped them from going any further north, so they turned back toward the west. Both Alex and Sekun-ak kept their right hand against the cliff for balance against the wind. Alex nearly fell over when the cliff seemed to disappear. He stumbled but regained his balance, then reached out to Sekun-ak.
There was a narrow opening into a cave.
Al
ex whistled for Monda-ak, who had continued on. The two men and the giant dog stepped inside, momentarily out of the swirling snow and whistling wind. Inside the cave, the snowstorm seemed surreal in its ferocity.
All three shook themselves to get the coat of snow off.
Alex turned to see how deep the cave was. The day was so deep and dark that the feeble light didn’t reach far back. Alex took one tentative step when a blur of fur, talons and teeth bowled into him, ripping and tearing at his buckskin clothing.
The attack was so sudden that even Monda-ak was caught unaware.
Alex landed on his back, doing his best to fend off the clawing, biting creature. He used his crude spear to throw his attacker off, then scrambled to his feet and got his first look at what was trying to kill him.
It was a giant badger. Pound for pound, one of the meanest animals on the planet, and this badger had a lot more pounds than any Alex had ever seen or heard of.
Alex and Sekun-ak were armed only with their crude spears, which were somewhat ineffective in the narrow space of the cave.
Monda-ak did not suffer from any restrictions and threw himself bravely at the badger. As big as the badger was, Monda-ak outweighed it by a multiple of seven or eight, but the badger had ferocity on its side.
Monda-ak got the shoulder of the badger in his mouth and bit down. The badger made a sound like a growl that turned to an unnerving squeal of pain. Its claws tore at Monda-ak, ripping through his thick coat.
While Monda-ak had the writhing creature held at least partially stable, Sekun-ak managed to get his spear positioned and drove it into the badger’s body just behind the opposite leg. That did not quiet it. Instead, the frequency and pitch of its cries increased as it thrashed.
Sekun-ak leaned on his spear, which was only a sharpened branch. As he did, it snapped off, with the pointed end buried deep inside the badger.
Alex lifted his spear high above his head and plunged it down on the badger.