by R Magnusholm
The warriors gathered around them muttered fearfully under their breath.
Gnorrk listened to the shaman with rising alarm. How am I going to do that? Monster wolves the size of an auroch! He hefted his oaken club. Heavy and lumpy as it was, it now seemed an inadequate weapon. With fire in their veins. If he struck one of them, the fire might burst out and—
The shaman snapped out of it and looked owlishly around as if he didn’t know where he was. “I have a headache. Let’s go home.”
“Huh? Home?” Gnorrk grabbed him by the shoulders. “But you said we must kill them.”
“Kill who?”
“The monsters.”
The shaman rubbed his head. “What monsters?”
Gnorrk peered about at his warriors, but none met his gaze.
“We must go back,” the shaman implored. He lifted his muzzle and sniffed the air. “Don’t you feel it? The burning death is getting nearer.”
***
John held the fire arrow nocked as Liz crumbled pieces of dry tree-fungi into the firepot and blew in air through a hollow hogweed stem. An ember glowed red, and she moved aside. He dipped the arrow into the pot. It sputtered but didn’t catch.
He peered above the tangle of frozen bramble vines. Two hundred yards downhill, the bears were still engaged in animated discussion, bunched conveniently. Such a tempting target. As he had stronger arms and a stiffer pull on his bow, he’d do the shooting today. For this particular shot, precision was less important than range.
“You’re sure I can hit them from here?” he asked.
“Only one way to find out. Oh, why wouldn’t it burn? It burned fine in the test. Burn, please . . . burn!”
“Try tinder, Liz.”
She pulled a clump of dry reed fluff from her pocket and stuffed it into the pot. A waft of smoke rose up. She pushed the hollow stem in and blew a long stream of air.
Flames shot up from the pot. John held the fire arrow over the flames. It caught, sputtered, went out, then flamed again. “The fat froze. That’s the problem,” he muttered under his breath. “Come on, come on. Burn! Burn, motherfucker . . . burn!”
Finally, the bundle of grease-soaked hay caught aflame. When it burned steadily, he stood up, pulled the bowstring back, angled the arrow up for a maximum range, and let fly. The arrow arced up, trailing black smoke, reached the apex of its trajectory and began plunging.
***
“There!” the shaman yelled.
Gnorrk heard an ominous buzzing like that of an angry hornet. A hornet in winter? How preposterous.
The smell of burning grew stronger. Everyone stopped talking and stared around fearfully. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a streak of light lancing from the sky, heading directly for him. Before he could as much as blink, it struck one of the warriors in the shoulder, the liquid droplets of flames spraying wildly. The reek of scorched fur filled the air.
His pelt smoldering, the bear bellowed, dropped his club and bolted downhill to the ford. He waded across, roaring with fear and pain. The rest of the Woodlanders initially scattered, then also fled toward the stream. Quite a few had abandoned their weapons, so they could run faster. At least one bear had heroically voided his bowels.
“Cowards!” Gnorrk yelled, but not very convincingly, for his own feet were carrying him toward the bank, seemingly against his will. He slipped on an icy stone, fell muzzle first into the water, and dropped his club. He grabbed for it, but the current had carried it out of his reach. Great. What kind of chief he was to lose his weapon?
He waded ashore and scrambled up the bank.
“I told you so. I told you so,” the shaman kept repeating as he huffed and puffed beside Gnorrk. “Doom. Doom. Doom!”
Once safely across, Gnorrk dared to look back. On the other side, the woods stood somber and silent. They weren’t on fire. Nobody was pursuing them. No one visible, in any case.
From the fir thicket to the right came a rustle, and something gray and toothy leaped at him. Bright pain flared in his rump. A monster wolf! The attacker sprung again, missed, its teeth snapping on empty air, for Gnorrk had ignominiously fled after his routed army.
Two days later at dawn, a shamefaced Gnorrk sneaked into his village at the head of a small group that included the shaman and eleven warriors. The rest of the scattered warband arrived by the evening in ones and twos. No one knew what happened to the hunter struck by the flying fire. Two more bears also never came back, presumably eaten by tigers.
Well, bad things happen to cowards who throw down their weapons and flee alone into the woods.
Chapter 34
The Needle
North of Camp Bramble
John stepped back from a bent pine sapling and examined the trap critically. The sharpened stake tied to it was still visible among the fronds. He draped a branch over the point, hiding it from view. This was the seventh devil’s device guarding the trails around their camp.
“This will do,” Liz said. Her breath plumed in the frosty air. She put two crossed sticks on the snowed-over ground and snapped a couple of branches overhanging the path to act as warning markers for the world’s first minefield. “Anyway, I don’t believe the ursines are coming back.”
“We can’t take chances.”
“The traps will kill an innocent animal instead.”
He watched her out of the corner of his eye and said nothing. Who cares about dumb animals? One day he or Liz might miss the warning signs and die in their own trap. Hoisted by your own petard. How’d you like that, monsieur? Not much, eh? The corners of his mouth twitched involuntarily, and he struggled to suppress a bray of laughter. In his mind’s eye, his dad’s stern face glared down at him. How can you laugh at horrible things, son? Have you no sense of propriety? John had been too young then to explain that if he didn’t laugh, he’d howl in despair instead.
Liz must have seen the expression on his face, for she spoke in a slightly flustered tone. “Well, I don’t want to kill a poor deer for no reason. We already have more pelts and meat than we can use. Do you think killing poor animals is fun?”
“Erm no, but petards are fun.”
“Huh? Petards? Did you eat a wrong mushroom this morning?”
“No. Maybe. I don’t know,” he said. “Honestly, I don’t want to slot no Bambi.” He sat in the snow and started laughing hysterically. Tears streamed down his face as he struggled to pull himself together.
She knelt by his side and put an arm around his shoulders. “It’s all right, Johnny boy, that’s just battle fatigue.”
“Wasn’t much of a battle . . .”
The image of the bears skedaddling across the half-frozen stream brought a new paroxysm of laughter, and he doubled over. And then Liz was laughing too, rolling in the snow, and even Spot began prancing about in excitement.
He danced and frisked about them with laughing eyes and a wagging tail until he ran past the warning markers and dislodged the trigger stick. The bent sapling sprung forward viciously, the sharp spike slicing through the air a foot above Spot’s head. It swung back and forth as Spot backed off, growling.
“Thanks buddy,” John said, his merriment cut off as with a knife. He reset the trap, then blew into his cupped hands to warm up his raw fingers. “Oh, what I wouldn’t give to have gloves.”
Liz wrapped her arms around herself and pushed her hands into her armpits. “Oh, what I wouldn’t give for a sewing needle.”
“What a shame we office workers don’t keep sewing kits in our desks. Such decadence.” A thought struck him. They used an unbent paperclip to burn holes in the leather and to thread thin strips of rawhide through the holes to stitch the scraps of deerskins together, but he wondered if he could make an actual needle from a humble paperclip. “Wait, I’ve got an idea.”
He jogged back to their camp with Liz in tow and Spot ranging about: now in front, now at this side, now at that. The cardboard box issued to him on the day of his forced departure from the office stood in the corner of
their old reed hut where Spot now slept. John pulled the box out and rummaged inside, finding a middle-sized paperclip.
After unbending it, he banged it straight with a nut-cracking stone. He folded the resulting length of wire in two, inserted a small twig into the fold to form an eye of the needle, then twisted the wire ends together and hammered them flat. When he pulled the twig out, he had a weird large needle, but it had a proper eyelet for threading in thin strips of rawhide or cured gut. He handed it to Liz.
“Jesus, John, this is crazy. We’ve been here four months and . . . ah, I don’t know what to say. Now we can make stitches at least ten times faster.”
He shrugged modestly. “I’m sure it took the cave people longer than four months to invent a needle.”
“Oh, I’m sure it did.”
A couple of bearskins had been soaking in the tannin tub for several days. John and Liz pulled both pelts out and stretched them on frames made of stakes, which stood propped up against the wigwam.
“They’ll stiffen when they dry,” she said. “But if we stretch and work them too much, the hair might fall out.”
“Well, we’ve got plenty of hides for practice.”
“Uh-huh.”
He began scraping one pelt with a shard of his old breakfast bowl. The hide was large enough to fully dress one extra-large person with space to spare. Their wigwam was clad in frozen pelts, two more pelts were spread over the old reed shelter and another three were soaking in the peat bog. Yes, they had enough hides to dress a small tribe.
Liz brought out a few misshapen scraps of deerskin that had been cured and dried. “Put your hand on it and stick your thumb out.”
John did as told, and she outlined his hand with a piece of charcoal, adding half-inch margins all around. Then they repeated the process to outline three more handshapes. While she was cutting them out with scissors, he heated up their special hide puncturing tool that consisted of a large paperclip wire pushed into a split stick. As he sat cross-legged by the fire, burning stitch holes along the margins, she cut several long strips of leather to use as threads. John made a second needle, and they began sewing the parts together.
Half an hour later, Liz held the completed mittens up. With the stitching outside, they were the roughest pair he’d ever seen. He didn’t mind.
“What do you think?” she asked.
“They’re perfect.”
“Really?”
“Yep.”
“What low standards you have, Johnnie boy.” She turned the mittens inside-out, so that the fur was on the inside. With the rough stitching hidden, the seams were as straight and neat as if the mittens had come from a shop. “Now they are perfect.” She put them on, balled her fists, straightened them, shook them off, and passed them to him. “Here, try them on.”
He put them on and flexed his hands. So warm. He forgot what it felt like to have warm hands. He tried to pick up a stick from a pile of firewood, but it slid out of his grasp.
She smiled. “They’re a bit stiff but should get more supple with use.”
John wrapped a mittened hand over the handle of his axe. He couldn’t feel the haft, but his grip was solid. “Not bad.”
She yawned. “I don’t know about you, but I’m taking a nap.”
With the ursines no longer a threat—at least for now—he had no objection. They pulled the entrance flap of the wigwam shut and added more fuel to the fire. Low to the ground, the air was clear of smoke. John watched the flickering flames, then closed his eyes. As he slept, he prowled with Spot in the woods surrounding their camp, sniffing the air every few steps. He detected tigers and aurochs and other wolves, but no ursines.
Chapter 35
A Life Too Smoky
John and Liz spent the rest of the day softening the tannin-cured, partially dry bear pelts. To stop the hides from stiffening, they oiled them with bear fat and worked them some more. It was hard and monotonous work, but at least the odor of strong tea and marinated meat wasn’t too unpleasant.
“I hope to wear a bearskin jumpsuit one day,” John said. His fingers ached from squishing the tough hide. Some people allegedly chewed the leather to soften it, but he couldn’t imagine chewing a whole pelt. He flexed a corner of it repeatedly and tested the fur to see if the hairs fell out. So far none did, which meant they could work the hide some more.
“A long parka is more practical,” she said. “A jumpsuit made of such stiff material might restrict movement too much.”
“It might not.”
“There’ll be toileting problems,” she said.
He smacked his forehead. Sometimes, he could be such a child.
Liz laughed. “Don’t worry. We’d still pass for bears. At least from a distance.”
He wondered what the ursines would think of people wearing bearskins. They probably wouldn’t be amused, but with temperatures falling, he and Liz didn’t have much choice.
Toward the evening, the sky turned the color of old pewter, and the wind died. Peace and quietude pervaded the land in that magical twilight hour between day and night. Snowflakes, huge and intricate, sifted lazily down, covering the clearing and adding an inch-thick puffy layer atop the pelts lining the wigwam’s roof.
John stomped through the snow, checking the barricades blocking the entrances to their clearing. At the back where the two bears had broken through, he and Liz had piled deadfall branches—broken off sharp limbs pointing outward. He’d dragged strands of spiky brambles over the deadfall. That should stop anybody from getting in that way.
He paused to admire the stockade they were building. It already stretched for ten feet along the north side of the wigwam, and every day he brought a couple of long, thin trunks and dug them in. Every stake in the palisade was of different length and thickness, but he tried to keep the average height of the wall at twelve feet. Bears were supposed to be excellent tree climbers, but he couldn’t readily imagine them vaulting a twelve-foot wall of sharpened logs. Later, he would add steps on the inside, at head height, for him and Liz to climb up and shoot their bows while safely out of reach of bear clubs.
He supposed he might dig some foot traps around the stockade and trail lots of thorny bramble vines around it, leaving only one approach open. And they’d use a ladder to get into their fort and pull it up at night.
Liz was using the second axe he’d made to chop deadwood into manageable chunks to take into their wigwam. She looked up, grinning in the fading light. “It’s all work in this world.”
“I really miss the old life of shuffling papers around the desk and writing memos.”
“Yep, it was so meaningful.” She gathered an armful of firewood. “So fulfilling.”
He held the wigwam entrance flap open for her, then dragged in a rather hefty log and dropped it across the fire pit. The flames would cut it in half, saving them the trouble of chopping it into smaller lengths.
They ate their evening meal in silence, watching the falling snow through the open entrance. Spot poked his long nose out of the old reed hut, then trotted over. John threw him a thin sliver of smoked bear meat.
The wolf watched the snack with disdain: “Too smoky.” He pawed it, then gobbled it up.
“That’s how we preserve our food, you stupid mutt,” John said affectionately.
“Huh?” Liz said.
“He says the meat’s too smoky.”
She rolled her eyes. Their life was seriously romantic, John thought. They had dry-cured meats of four kinds: tiger, deer, auroch, and bear. Their home was a smoky wigwam. He could talk to Spot and spirit-walk with him. He flexed his aching shoulders and rubbed a line of calluses marching across his right palm. If only they didn’t have this cursed, endless toil . . . He supposed that once they made their clothing and completed the stockade, they’d be able to relax and take it easy. Sleep, hunt, eat. They could fill up the tannin basin with clear water and have a bath and then get frisky in the firelight.
He stared into the darkness, and his mind drifted
to his previous life where he had a wife, children, a house, two cars, and a mortgage. Was he dead in that world? If so, his family should be doing all right financially. The mortgage was small, and he had a modest life insurance—enough to pay it off. But if a version of John Summers remained alive in the old world, he imagined he’d be temping through an agency while looking for a permanent post. He might’ve found something by now.
A stick cracked in the fire, breaking his reverie. Liz passed him a mug of blueberry tea to wash down the evening meal.
He nodded his thanks and sipped the lukewarm, ash-flavored brew. He glanced at the wolf still loitering by the entrance. “All right, Mr. Spot, if you don’t want to come in, then guard the camp.”
He pulled the entrance flap closed, and they climbed under the tiger pelt. The fire burned cleanly, crackling as it settled. With the night being so still, there was no backdraft, and the smoke rose straight up, filling up the top half of the wigwam as if it were an upturned bowl. Shadows thrown by the firelight danced on the walls and coiled around the central roof-support column, climbing up to the hunks of meat and strings of dried mushrooms hanging under the rafters.
A ferocious tiger roar split the night outside—some way off to the west—and he picked up panicky imagery from Spot.
“Hush, Spot,” he thought-spoke to him. Tiger roars meant there’d be no bears prowling outside. In the war against the urso sapient enemy, tigers were allies.
Chapter 36
Gnorrk Dreams of Fire
The Woodlander Village
Gnorrk munched on frozen rowanberries and watched the golden orb of the sun rising over the eastern woods. With every bear still asleep, the old chief enjoyed the quiet hour away from the hustle and bustle and the responsibilities of his high station.