Runestone

by Don Coldsmith

“There!” Snake whispered.

  A flicker of light blossomed at the far side of the village. It took only the space of a few heartbeats until there was a shout, then another. People were running, screaming, the whole town coming awake. They must hurry. As Nils tore aside the thatch at the back of the lodge, hacking at it with his short sword, he prayed that no one had been designated to kill the prisoners in case of an escape attempt.

  He half crawled, half rolled through the opening and collided with someone in the darkness.

  “Dove!” he called softly. “Where are you?”

  “Here … right here. My hands are tied, Wolf!” Quickly, he slashed the thong and she gave him a quick hug.

  “Where is Sky?” he asked.

  “Right beside me. He understands.”

  A dark form rushed at them, a weapon upraised, and Nils hacked at it with the sword. His attacker screamed and fell.

  The fire some distance away was shedding a growing, flickering light now. Figures in the lodge were silhouetted against the lighter square of the doorway, as someone tore aside the hanging skin.

  “Out,” urged Nils, pushing Dove and Sky toward the hole in the thatch. “Snake is outside.”

  A woman rushed toward them, swinging a short knife of some sort. Dove turned back.

  “Wait!” She spoke a one-word exclamation. With the fury of a wolverine, she was on the woman. Dove seized the outstretched arm, pulled the woman forward, tripped her, and wrested the knife from her hand, all in one motion. She paused for a moment, apparently considering further mayhem, as the other woman lay gasping, the breath knocked from her lungs.

  “Dove! Come on!” Nils cried urgently, pushing Sky on out through the hole.

  Reluctantly, Dove turned away.

  Outside, they drew in deep breaths of crisp night air and Snake led the way out of the village.

  “Where is my brother?” Dove asked in alarm.

  “He started the fire,” Nils explained. “He will join us later. Now let us hurry!”

  87

  They were almost clear of the area around the village when it happened. Snake, in the lead, was suddenly confronted by a large dog. The creature did not appear ready to attack, only to bark. Snake raised his bow and launched an arrow to silence it.

  Somehow in the poor light and flickering shadows, his aim was not true. It was not a complete miss, which might have been better, as it turned out. The dog gave a yelp of pain, and then began a thin, high-pitched squeal, running in a small circle and biting at the arrow in its flank. This would surely alert any pursuers to the direction of the fugitives’ retreat.

  Nils ran forward, swung his sword, and the dog stopped in midcry. But even that, he now realized, would help the Shaved-heads locate their position.

  “Hurry!” he called.

  They heard the sounds of people running toward them now. Three or four warriors, maybe. Nils could hear them calling to each other. He turned to Dove.

  “We are to meet Odin on that hill,” he pointed, “Go on. We will follow.”

  “No!” she insisted. “We must stay together.”

  Now he saw in the dim starlight that she carried a war club. Apparently she had picked it up as they left the lodge.

  “It is good,” he said, thinking to himself that it was not.

  They could see the warriors rushing toward them now. Snake loosed an arrow and the first man stumbled and fell.

  “Behind that tree, Sky!” Nils cried, giving the boy a gentle shove. Then he turned to face an assailant who rushed at him, swinging a club or ax. Nils ducked beneath its arc, coming too close for such a weapon to be effective. They grappled, wrestling for advantage. Nils thrust at the man’s legs with the sword, and knew from the other’s flinch that he had inflicted damage. He kneed the man’s groin, and as the Shaved-head doubled in pain, clubbed the sword’s hilt on the back of his enemy’s neck and the blade swung again. He turned to help the others.

  Snake was just finishing off another attacker, but yet another rushed him from behind. Nils started to his aid, but before he could reach the struggle, Dove stepped from behind a tree with a long looping swing of her war club.

  Quite possibly the Shaved-head never saw it. There was a sound like the bursting of a ripe pumpkin as the club struck him full in the face. He tumbled backward from his interrupted momentum, and struck the ground with a loud thump.

  “Come,” said Snake, trotting on.

  They would be tracked, but it would take a while, and their pursuers could not begin until daylight. By that time, they could be far away.

  It was not yet dawn when the hurriedly assembled council met. White Heron was seething with rage.

  “Three men, a woman, and a small child!” he ranted. “We have six, no, seven warriors dead! Four in the woods, two sentries, and one in his own lodge!”

  “But Otter—” someone began.

  “This is no longer Otter’s trouble,” Heron sputtered. “They have shamed us. We must catch them, teach them that no one does this to our people.”

  “Kill them all? The woman and child, too?” asked another man.

  “She is mine!” protested Otter.

  “Otter, you no longer have a say in this!” snarled White Heron. He paused, thinking. “Maybe we let one go, to tell that no one dares challenge us.”

  “Maybe the woman, after the warriors finish with her?” suggested someone. There was a chuckle or two, but no one dared to say much, with White Heron in his present mood.

  “Maybe,” Heron agreed. “But first we catch them. I will lead, and we will take … not too many. … Ten, twelve … A tracker … is Ferret here?”

  “Yes, Uncle,” answered the tracker.

  “Good! You will go?”

  The tracker nodded.

  “It is good. We start when there is enough light.”

  The fugitives paused on the hilltop as the yellow first light began to dawn. They had spent most of the remaining darkness laying out the false trail back toward the river.

  “Not too plain, but show the tracks of us all,” Odin had advised. He had joined the others soon after the skirmish in the woods.

  Now they stopped to rest and wait for light before starting on into unknown country. The pause would not be long, but they would need every bit of strength in the next days.

  Snake was a little apart from the others, head bowed. Odin glanced at him, then took a longer look, rose, and walked over to where he sat.

  “Snake … what … aiee! You are hurt!”

  There was a wide stain of blood around a hole in Snake’s buckskin shirt.

  Snake nodded. “An arrow … it is still inside.”

  “But you said nothing!”

  “What was there to say? There is nothing to do.”

  “You broke the arrow off?”

  “No. Pulled it out. The point stayed in. I can feel it when I take a deep breath. That is harder now, too.”

  “What can we do to help you?”

  Snake smiled. “Nothing. You know that, my friend. Today I will cross over and be with my wife.”

  He coughed, and wiped blood from his lips. Odin knew that his lungs were filling with blood, slowly drowning him.

  “I will wait here,” Snake went on. “If they find the trail soon enough, maybe I can take one or two to the other side with me.”

  Nils came over to join them. “What is it?”

  “An arrow,” explained Odin. “He is dying.”

  “But … when? When did it happen?”

  “It does not matter, Wolf.”

  Snake appeared to be weaker now. “Go on,” he told them. “You can be far away by dark.” He paused to catch his breath, and smiled grimly. “I can be, too, I am made to think.”

  There was little more to be done or said. They made the injured man as comfortable as possible, and left him a water-skin and a few bites of dried meat.

  “I will not need that,” Snake protested.

  “That is for your journey to the Other Side,�
�� Odin said.

  “But that is a short journey, my friend.” Snake smiled weakly.

  Dove paused a moment, trying to hold back tears. “Thank you,” she choked.

  “It is nothing,” Snake told her.

  They crossed over the ridge and found a trail heading northwest.

  “Let us try not to leave too many tracks,” Odin cautioned. He would bring up the rear, destroying such sign as he could as he went.

  Their hearts were heavy as they moved on.

  Snake was drowsy. He had lost track of time, but knew that he slept and wakened, and slept again. Now something roused him, the alarm call of a crow in a tree a little distance away. He looked up at the bird.

  “Thank you, Grandfather,” he muttered.

  He moistened his lips and waited, looking down the hillside along the trail toward the village. He was pleased to see that the sun was low in the west. Pleased for a number of reasons. It meant that his friends were far away now. Also, that the approaching Shaved-heads had spent an entire day trying to untwist the false trail. They would approach now into the sun, and would not see him until too late.

  He fitted an arrow to the string and raised the bow, hoping for the strength to draw it. The first of the war party emerged from the trees and came toward him. The crow flew away, cawing loudly.

  “Yes, I see them,” Snake said.

  The man in the lead seemed completely unaware as Snake held his breath and drew the arrow to its head, wincing against the pain in his chest. The string twanged and Snake knew that his arrow flew true. Otter fell backward, the feathered shaft jutting from just below the vee of his ribs. The other warriors scattered and flattened to the ground, as Snake lifted his voice in the Song of Death.

  “The earth and the sky go on forever,

  But today is a good day to die,”

  He tried to fit another arrow, but his sight was dimming and his fingers would not follow his instructions. He stared at his hands as if they belonged to someone else and he now saw them for the first time.

  The warriors spread out across the hillside, but it was a little while before they realized that a lone man stood in their path. Or rather, lay there. When they made their final rush they found him staring at the sun, with a contented smile on his face.

  White Heron stared at the dead man, and for a moment it seemed that he would attack the corpse.

  “Son of a dung-eating dog,” Heron hissed between clenched teeth, “you have beaten us. But your friends will regret it when we catch them.”

  88

  “I am made to think that we should mourn for our friend Snake,” said Calling Dove, as the fugitives stopped at dark.

  Unfamiliar country was questionable for travel at best. In the dark of night, it was impossible. There would be no moon, and they had decided at one of their brief rest stops to camp for the night when darkness fell. They should still be well ahead of their pursuers.

  There had been a slight hope before the escape that there might be no pursuit. The intensity of the fighting, the loss of life, had eliminated that hope. The erstwhile captors of Dove and Bright Sky would not likely forgive such a defeat.

  The fugitives had several advantages, if only at first. The surprise of the escape had apparently been successful, and it would have taken a little while to organize the pursuit. Then, Odin’s clever tricks with the misleading trail could be quite important. And if Snake still lived when the Shaved-heads solved the mystery of the trail they followed, he would have found a way to delay them further.

  All of these things were short-lived advantages when their entire plight was considered, however. They had not discussed it very much, but it was plain that their situation was desperate. It might be not whether they could escape, but how long they could survive at all. They would talk of it tonight, Nils knew, and make such plans as they could.

  “Is it wise,” he asked, in answer to his wife’s statement, “to raise the sound of the Song of Mourning?”

  Odin shrugged. “Why not? We are well ahead of them. Maybe a day, even. We see no signs of other people here. Yes, I think we should mourn our brother.”

  “We cannot do it right, for the three days,” Dove admitted, “but we can show that our hearts are good.”

  So they carried out a semblance of the ceremony of mourning, there in the darkness of a cold and uncomfortable camp, and then sat to talk.

  “Can we not have a fire?” asked Sky. “It is cold.”

  “Not tonight,” Odin told his nephew. “We do not know the spirit of this land yet.”

  “But is that not the purpose of the fire, Uncle, to learn of its spirits?”

  “Yes, Sky, but there are the men who hunt us, and we do not know where they are. So … maybe tomorrow. Here, wrap in your robe.”

  The boy was soon asleep, tired from the long day and hard travel. The three adults drew a little aside to talk of their predicament. All of them realized that the future, if any, was quite bleak.

  “First,” Odin suggested, “let us decide where we would go, and then how to do it, no?”

  “We have the canoe,” Nils observed. His heritage still spoke strongly to him. A man without a boat …

  “But it is not here,” Dove spoke. “It is two sleeps away, on the other side of the Shaved-heads.”

  “That is true,” admitted Nils. “But would it not be good to double back? Confuse them?”

  “I am made to think,” Odin mused, “that they would expect that. Let us think, now. … Our first thing is to escape those who follow us. Maybe they will lose our trail, but I think not. And they know the country, while we do not.”

  “So what are you saying?” Nils demanded.

  “That to use the canoe, we must be alive. Also, they may have destroyed it, or taken it away. We cannot depend on it. So let us set the canoe aside for now.” He paused to chuckle grimly. “The thoughts of the canoe, anyway.”

  Nils nodded agreement. “So?”

  “So,” Odin said simply, “the Shaved-heads are that way, we go the other way.”

  “Farther away from our canoe!” snapped Nils irritably.

  “Until we are sure we are no longer followed,” Odin answered. “Then, if we want, we could go back and look for it.”

  It was plain that the canoe, which seemed to Nils the answer to their problems, was seen quite differently by Odin. To him, to return to the area where they had left the craft actually presented more of a problem than it solved.

  “But we do not know the country ahead,” Nils argued.

  “And we never will, if we are dead,” Odin retorted. Then he took a more persuasive tone. “Look, almost-brother. We do know some things about this country. There is a river to the north of us, the one that runs into the Big River, the one that ate your canoe! We can go northwest toward it, while we escape the Shaved-heads. Then we can decide whether to follow it down, past them again, or follow it up, back toward the People.”

  “But the People are far upstream on the Big River.”

  “Yes, but on this side of it. We will have to winter somewhere else anyway, Wolf. I do not want it to be near the Shaved-heads.”

  “I had hoped to winter with my people, Odin.”

  “I know. But Wolf, we seem no closer to them than when we left the People. We are not to find them this season.”

  It was the first time that this idea had been voiced, and it dropped like the chill of ice sliding into the North Sea. There was, too, the unspoken implication that did not escape Nils: if it is ever to be.

  “We can try again, my brother,” said Odin gently, “but another season. For now, let us escape these Shaved-heads, no?”

  Nils was quiet for a moment. Always, Odin had a way of cutting straight to the heart of a matter. He was right, of course, and now Nils was wondering how he had overlooked the obvious for so long.

  “It is good,” he said in resignation.

  “At least, what we must do,” Odin agreed. “Now let us rest. We must travel as soon as light al
lows.”

  “Their tracker is skillful,” said White Heron. “It must be the one-eyed one. I am still not made to think that the white-hair sees well with his blue eyes.”

  “He sees some things,” said one of the other men. “The woman is his.”

  “Was his,” snapped Heron.

  Another spoke. “Maybe the man who killed Otter was their tracker. That would make it easier.”

  White Heron looked at him with indignant scorn. “That one was already dying when they laid the false trail,” he pointed out. “Besides, it is never easy, when the enemy is this skillful.”

  “If the white-hair is truly a holy man,” said still another, “is this not dangerous?”

  At this, White Heron became furious again. “I am dangerous!” he shouted. “If we cannot catch or kill these few, who have killed our warriors and set fire to our lodges, we are not men!”

  There was little more talk of that subject as they prepared to camp for the night. They were tired, having pushed since dawn. It had been late in the day when they found the dying Snake. Even in dying, he had taken another strong warrior with him. It had consumed even more daylight, for caution was required to assure that no one else lay in ambush. Finally, they realized that their quarry was gone.

  And then, there was still the need to assure themselves that the fugitives had really headed northwest.

  “Why would they go that way? They would want to return to the river!”

  Painstakingly, they had untangled the trail, and by dark, those whom they followed still traveled northwest. The war party had not followed far, because of the tricks and deceptions in the trail. A deliberate moccasin track here, a broken twig there, a suggestion that the fugitives had turned off on a branch of the trail that led somewhere else. With each of these distractions, White Heron had become more furious and more determined.

  Now they camped for the night. It had become too dark to untangle false trails.

  “We will do better tomorrow,” promised Heron. “We know them better now, and they are less than a day ahead.”

  It now appeared that those they followed were really headed north and west. An old trail meandered in that direction, used by deer and elk. It was roughly parallel to a more well-traveled trail along the river in that direction. The river trail, although plainer and usually easier, lay low and muddy at some seasons. This year, the heavy autumn rains had caused flooding, and the lower trail was virtually impassable in spots. In a time such as this, it was customary to revert to the higher trail, which followed along the uplands that paralleled the river. This upland trail was harder going, rocky and steep in places. But there were advantages to the fugitives. Higher points of observation allowed them to observe any possible pursuit. The rocky terrain allowed more opportunities to tangle and confuse their trail. There were, of course, more opportunities for ambush, so those who followed must be more cautious.