As his mind continued to memorize twists and turns, he thought about how animals must feel when being hunted. Suddenly, his foot stepped onto cold hard ground covered with soft pine straw.
He looked around and saw a snow-covered forest reflected in the light of the half-moon up in the night sky. The trees were spaced further apart, and when he walked forward, time and space did not distort. Without even knowing it, he had somehow freed himself of the ghostly forest.
Not knowing what the next hours would bring, he took the bear claw and put scratch marks into two of the trees that marked the border of the Shaman’s forest, just in case he had to come back this way to find the others—assuming he lived long enough to do so.
He only allowed himself a moment of rest before moving along.
The good news was that he could walk more freely through the normal forest. The bad news was that it would be much easier for the Hunter to track him once he made it out as well.
Trent scurried as quickly as possible, slipping every other step on the snow. He didn’t want to waste the time, but he had to tie off the wound in his leg and had to deal with the arrow in his shoulder.
His left arm was mostly useless, but he needed the use of both legs if he was going to stay ahead of the Hunter.
He stopped and looked at his leg. It was still bleeding—slow but steady. He took off his belt and wrapped it around his thigh, several inches above where the arrow had gone clean through him. He gritted his teeth as he pulled his belt tight—but not too tight so as to completely cut off his circulation. He wanted to slow the blood flow, but he still needed to use the leg as much as he could.
Once his leg was as stabilized as it was going to get, he turned his attention to the harder problem. The arrow in his left shoulder had not gone all the way through. The fletching protruded in front of his shoulder, and even though he couldn’t see it, he knew that the arrowhead was sticking out of his shoulder blade.
He reached back carefully with his right hand, but as soon as his finger touched the arrowhead, it felt as if the razor-sharp metal jumped up and bit him.
He pulled his hand back quickly and sucked on his bleeding finger.
Pulling out his silk kerchief, he wrapped it around the end of his thumb, index, and middle fingers. He wasn’t a weapons expert by any means, but he took a chance that he could unscrew the arrowhead from the end of the shaft. If he could do that, he could pull the arrow out from the front. If he tried that with the arrowhead in place, he would shred the insides of his shoulder permanently.
Trent stepped up to a tree and leaned his right shoulder into it as hard as possible. This had the effect of bringing his right arm directly across the front of his body without him having to exert any force to keep it in place.
With the fingers of his right hand bandaged as heavily as possible, he reached around and very carefully grabbed the arrowhead and twisted.
At first, there was no movement.
He tried again. The arrowhead broke loose and slowly started to turn.
After several rotations, the rotating arrowhead fell to the ground, and Trent exhaled powerfully.
Without allowing himself time to think things through, he turned his body so that his back was braced against the trunk of one of the spruce trees, and he pulled the arrow out of his shoulder.
With a wet, sucking sound, the shaft came free, and Trent threw it to the ground.
He wanted to rest, but he was taking too much time as it was, and blood was starting to flow from the hole in his shoulder.
Trent packed some blissfully freezing snow into his shoulder wound. The cold felt wonderful as it helped to numb his flesh. Then he quickly unwrapped his fingers and shoved his kerchief into the hole in his shoulder as far as the material would go.
He hadn’t experienced such raw pain before, but he kept himself together enough to staunch the bleeding with the wadded-up piece of silk.
At least, he had taken care of his wounds for now. He’d be lucky if he didn’t suffer from infection, but under the circumstances, he’d done his best.
And now, he had to keep moving.
His next priority was to find someplace to hide and to regroup—and to look for a way to gain some kind of advantage over the Hunter. He decided that it would make the most sense in his weakened state to travel downhill as much as possible, while also staying as close to the edge of the Shaman’s forest so that he wouldn’t lose sight of it.
He started down the mountain, still using the stick to help him walk and trying not to slip on the freshly fallen snow. He moved as fast as he could, expecting at any moment to feel another arrow enter his body or to at least hear one whiz past his head.
Instead, after stumbling down the mountain for ten minutes, he heard a loud growl, followed by a moan—close by and off to his left.
By now, he knew the sounds of bears, and wondered if this one would still be his protector even without the spirit of Ka’a dwelling inside him.
Somehow, he doubted it.
Chapter 40
THE HUNTER tracked Walker through the misty forest.
He was still amazed at the unearthly feel of the woods surrounding the bone pit. The laws of physics didn’t seem to apply, but he was still able to see Walker’s prints and the blood he was shedding on the snow-covered ground.
After following more twists and turns than he thought possible, at last, the Hunter emerged into the crisp, cold air of a clear night. For a moment, he was surprised to see that night had fallen—a fact that had not registered with him back in the Shaman’s screwy forest. With the light from the half-moon overhead, it only took him a few moments to pick up Walker’s trail.
He followed the path no more than twenty feet, before coming to a large area where the white snow looked as if it had been painted bright red. In the middle of the blood-soaked ground, he saw one of his arrows.
The Hunter grinned. Pulling that out must have hurt Walker pretty badly.
Then he picked it up and saw that the arrowhead was missing.
He frowned as he tossed the shaft back onto the ground.
Stop admiring your damn handiwork and keep after him. After you kill him, we have to get back to the pit and burn them bones. Time to put those filthy animals and their spirits back where they belong.
The Hunter nodded and continued down the mountain. He could tell from the tracks that Walker was moving slowly. Next to the footprints, he saw holes poked in the ground, probably from a walking stick of some kind that he was using.
He hated Trent Walker, but he had to admit that the man was resourceful.
Resourceful—yes. Immortal—no.
The Hunter felt his heartbeat quicken and his mouth salivate as he readied his crossbow and moved forward.
Chapter 41
THE GROWLS from the bear made Trent hug the tree line of the ghostly forest even closer. He wasn’t sure it would do him any good, but if the bear charged him, he might have enough time to duck into the forest and hope that its bizarre properties would keep him hidden enough to save him.
He thought about the Shaman as he continued down the mountain and hoped that Zana and Christina could somehow heal him, maybe by applying some of the salve the Shaman had used on Zana. The old man may have made a horrible mistake when he was a younger man, but he had more than paid his penance by helping the animal spirits take their revenge and dedicating his life to guarding their bones.
As he limped along, he heard more growls and grunts on his left, but the bear seemed to be keeping its distance.
Soon, he came to a shallow stream running down the side of the mountain. He slogged through its icy water, to the other side, almost slipping on some moss-slick rocks along the way. He turned around so he could see if the Hunter was there. With only the empty, dark forest in front of him, he knelt down to drink from the frigid waters. Despite its temperature, he splashed some water on his face before drinking some more.
The water tasted better than alcohol ever had, even th
ough he grinned, thinking of how he would not turn down a shot of Jägermeister, if offered the opportunity.
Trent drank until he was full, then stood up and scanned the woods again for any sign of the Hunter.
Nothing.
Maybe his pursuer hadn’t made it out of the woods after all. Perhaps the spirits that attacked him at the bone pit had ended his life, and Trent was running from nothing.
Although he wanted to believe that, he couldn’t.
He had made the mistake once of assuming the Hunter was dead. He wouldn’t do so again.
As he started downhill again, the tree line of the Shaman’s forest curved and began to stretch across the breadth of the mountain. Moving across the mountain was harder on his wounded leg than going straight downhill, but he had to keep sight of the forest so he could find his way back to Zana and Christina.
For the last ten minutes, the bear that was following him had been silent. Maybe it had not crossed the stream. And with still no sign of the Hunter, Trent rested at the base of a cluster of large boulders.
He only allowed himself to sit still for only two minutes before looking up at the boulders and deciding whether there was a way he could use them to his advantage.
Even though his walking stick would be essentially useless climbing up the rocks, he held on to it and did the best he could scrambling up to the top of the first large boulder. This was the only real change in terrain he had come across in a while, and it gave him the idea that he might be able to use the boulders to hide or to jump out from and ambush the Hunter.
He fumbled across the top of the boulders, from one to the next, checking along the way to make sure that he wasn’t dripping any blood in an easily detectable location. He saw a few drops of blood on the snow that covered the boulders and bent down to cover it with fresh powder.
At one point, he looked down to his left and saw a medium-sized expanse of ground, surrounded by massive boulders on all sides. From what he could see, it looked like there was an entrance to a cave down there as well.
His first thought was to give the cave a wide berth, for fear of a grizzly waiting inside, but his aching body convinced him that the shelter might afford him a place to rest or even to hide long enough for the Hunter to pass him by.
He eased himself down the boulders and gingerly landed in the clearing. He approached the cave as quietly as he could and listened closely, but he heard nothing.
He bent down and tried to peer into the darkness of the opening, then moved his body into the front part of the mouth of the cave. The moonlight barely reached down there, and inside the cave, it was pitch black.
Trent took out a book of matches that he always carried with him and lit one.
The glow from the single match wasn’t very bright, but it allowed him to see that the cave went farther back than he would have imagined and that, after four or so feet, the ceiling was high enough for him to stand.
He took out a deck of cards from his suit pocket and lit one of the plastic playing cards—using it as a mini-torch for the thirty seconds or so that he expected it to burn.
As he went deeper into the darkness of the cave, he realized that, despite Ka’a’s absence, he felt strangely at home.
When he lit his third playing card, he looked up at a wall illuminated by its flame. He saw ancient cave drawings depicting what appeared to be the people who were natives to the area. As he moved along the wall, he saw a depiction of a man on all fours, with the head of a wolf—and another man, but this one had the head of a raven. A few inches from him, a larger man walked on all fours. It had the head of a grizzly bear.
Trent’s playing card burned out, and he lit another.
The wall fresco ended with a scene depicting dozens of natives, all in animalistic poses, fighting what appeared to be another tribe of native Alaskans.
He gazed at the cave paintings in awe, realizing that animal spirit possession was not only an ancient phenomenon, but also one that had been used in the past to fight battles—to turn groups of regular warriors into armies of unstoppable, fierce creatures.
He laughed quietly. The American soldiers who had established the military base at Whittier had not been alone or unique in their desire to harness the power of the spirit world after all.
Chapter 42
THE HUNTER stood under the light of the half-moon, staring up at the grouping of large boulders in front of him. Climbing to the top of the rocks would prove challenging for Walker, to say the least, and doing so would have slowed him down quite a bit.
Then again, Walker had to know that it wouldn’t be long before the Hunter caught up with him. In a straight sprint down and around the mountain, Walker was too wounded to win.
The Hunter dug a small flashlight out of his pack, flicked it on, and shined the light across the rocky surfaces, looking for any traps his prey might have left.
He saw none.
The Hunter cautiously climbed to the top of the first boulder, accidentally straining something inside his gut that felt like it had been beaten to a pulp by the spirits, earlier.
He doubled over and held his stomach while trying to take a few deep breaths.
The pain subsided enough for him to continue across the top of the boulders, searching for additional signs of Walker’s passing. There were no footprints, but he saw fresh scuff marks in the thin layer of snow beneath him.
With each step, his wounds from the bone pit stung, but he gritted his teeth and continued.
If Walker could make it by going this way, so could he.
The Hunter almost missed them in the dark, but he spied two lone drops of blood on one of the boulders and knew he was on the right track still.
Then he looked ahead and saw that the snow on top of the boulders in front of him was untouched. Somehow, Walker had vanished, or more likely, found a place to hide.
Then he saw it—a cave opening down and to his left, in a crevice, with a medium-sized, flat clearing. He looked closer and saw a faint, but noticeable blood trail leading directly into the cave’s entrance.
He sat on his haunches and thought of his next move. He hurried back down to the forest floor and gathered branches and anything that looked dry enough to burn.
He carried them back up the boulders and down to the cave entrance, stacking them as quietly as he could just inside the cave’s entrance.
He pulled out his Zippo, flicked it open, and thumbed a flame to life.
Now, you’re thinking straight, boy. He’s not going anywhere this time.
Then he lit the branches on fire.
The Hunter would deal with Walker the same way he would treat any animal trapped in a cave.
He would smoke him out.
Chapter 43
TRENT’S FOURTH CARD burned to the nub, and he let it drop to the cave floor. As he was about to light another card, he smelled heavy smoke coming from the cave’s entrance. He lit a new card and could clearly see large billows of black smoke rolling into the cave.
He cursed silently. The Hunter had tracked him after all, and he was trying to smoke him out. His only chance was if the cave had another entrance.
“I know you’re in there, Walker,” the Hunter’s voice cried out.
Trent remained silent, trying not to cough.
“I appreciate that you’re finally trying to make things interesting, but it’s time for all of this to end.”
Trent made his way deeper into the cave, looking for signs of another exit. He held his lit card up to see if the direction in which the flame was blowing would reveal a hidden passage to the surface, but the bright yellow fire flickered in a chaotic dance that revealed nothing.
“You’ll die of smoke inhalation if you don’t come out. It doesn’t really matter to me either way, but I would rather shoot you than listen to you cough to death.”
Trent ignored the Hunter’s ensuing laughter and kept moving. The smoke was filling the cave quickly, and he could not contain his coughing. He covered his mouth
with his sleeve as he moved deeper still into the cave.
He coughed again. This time, however, the noise from his throat was met with a loud roar and the stench of dead-fish that was so foul, it made him gag.
He knew a bear was somewhere close by, but the creature remained hidden in the darkness beyond the light of his flaming playing card.
Trent watched as his makeshift torch dwindled and then snuffed out—the last of its curled plastic floating to the cave floor.
He stood in complete darkness—still and as quiet as possible—as the heavy thud of something large moved closer.
Trent coughed involuntarily again.
He heard the sound of giant claws scraping along the cave floor.
He took out another card and lit it with a match.
This time, the light from the fiery card illuminated a giant grizzly bear standing only a few feet away from him. The mighty beast glared at Trent, looking directly in his eyes.
The bear leaned its gigantic head in closer to Trent’s face.
Trent looked at the ground and remained still like a statue, gritting his teeth and tensing his throat to keep him from coughing.
Even though Trent was facing likely death, no prayer to a higher being jumped to his lips.
No mantra asking for the forgiveness of a divine being filled his mind.
The only thing he felt was raw instinct.
When Ka’a had been inside him, Trent had begun to develop a feeling of kinship with bears. He had started to identify with them. But standing so close to a grizzly, without Ka’a’s spirit around to help, Trent realized how very different he and the bear were from each other.
In front of him stood a massive beast, weighing close to 1500 pounds. Each of its paws was wider than Trent’s head, and standing on all fours, it was still taller than he was. If it came down to a fair fight between the two of them, Trent would stand absolutely no chance of surviving.
Despite his best efforts to remain quiet and unmoving, he coughed again involuntarily.
The Whittier Trilogy Page 49