by R Magnusholm
As he stepped into the piebald sunlight under the overhanging boughs, the vague unease he’d felt since setting off on the boat journey solidified into cold dread. The ursines were planning something. He didn’t know what or when, but it was the same feeling as when he woke up after a nap last winter and just knew they were coming.
With Spot dead, and his control of the wolf pack so tenuous, he had no one to send to spy on the damn ursines.
Later, sitting by the fire, they ate the goose with roasted mushrooms and waited for the tide to return and fill the wetland channels, so they could sail home. With the strong contrary wind, it felt like too much work to row two miles down the main river.
“Don’t look so glum,” Liz said. “We’ll sail again another day.”
“It’s not that.”
She looked him in the eyes. “What is it?”
He told her about the unease he had felt for the last two days, and how he suspected that he could sense the thoughts of foxes and perhaps even ursines.
“You think they’ll be back?” Liz asked.
“Yes.”
“How much time do we have?”
He shrugged. “The wolves sniffed no sign of them. Yet. The attack’s not imminent.”
Liz blew a sigh of relief. “I hope to bring the hazel harvest in. Make new baskets, too. We’ve been playing with boats and loafing on the river instead of preparing for winter. Or a possible siege.”
“I don’t want another siege.”
She looked at him uncertainly. “The ursines never broke through the brambles. Our main problem was a shortage of water.” She paused, frowning. “But now we have water to last a month, even without rain. And with fall coming, we’ll get plenty of that.”
He glanced at the clear sky. There had been no rain for weeks, and the woods were parched. “We had Spot to harass the enemy and spy for us. Now we’d be fighting blind.”
“What do you suggest?”
“We come here.” He spread his arms wide. “And then we’ll check out the big island we saw in winter.”
She gazed at the reed beds beyond the water for a long time. Wind whipped her loose hair around her face, and she tied it into a ponytail with a leather ribbon. “We must consider our options very carefully.”
“Yes.”
He watched wavelets glittering in the golden light of early morning. Such breadth of view. Such freedom. Then he imagined what it’d be like in winter and shuddered. The wind that was merely a nuisance now would chill them to the bone.
Chapter 83
A Rotten Day
When the tide returned three hours later and refilled the shallow passages between the reed beds, John and Liz rowed the boat home. With fresh wind bending and shaking the reeds all around them, they pulled the Ra onto the low-lying islet in the swamp, propped it up on lumps of driftwood to dry out, and waded ashore.
Back in the sheltering woods and out of the chilly wind, it felt much warmer. But now they had to walk with their weapons at the ready, alert for any sign of an ambush, as if they were an army unit on patrol.
A branch creaked behind him, and he spun around, his spear raised. No one. As he lowered his weapon, a thought flew across his mind: That’s no way to live.
Their stockade stood as they’d left it, and his spirits lifted. Liz swept cold ashes from the hearth and started a new fire from the coals in her pot, while John went to check the outer bramble defenses.
After a prolonged dry spell, the previously lush grass of the clearing had wilted and crackled underfoot. Even the vigorous brambles appeared tired and less vital. He discovered no signs of the ursines visiting while he and Liz had been away. Half a dozen tomatoes had ripened in their tiny garden, and new mushrooms had cropped up around their glade. He checked the hazelnuts that festooned every branch this year but found them too green for harvesting.
In the shade under the biggest hazel bush, the mound of dug-up earth over Spot’s grave was still fresh, and the three white river stones lined on top gleamed dully.
“Rest well, old friend,” he thought-spoke in his mind.
The soughing of the wind in the treetops was his only answer. As he turned to go, he thought he heard a contented grunt, like that of a weary old dog lying down to rest on a hearthrug.
He found Liz weaving a basket in the entrance to the wigwam. A mushroom-and-herb stew was simmering in the cooking skin behind her.
He said, “The nuts are still green, but there are lots of them.”
“We’re gonna go nuts for hazelnuts!” Liz chuckled. “I want every basket full and a huge pile of them in that corner.” She thrust her thumb over her shoulder.
“Mice will get them.”
“We’ll put them in leather sacks and hang them from the rafters where it’s smoky.”
They spent the next week lugging in firewood and drying mushrooms for winter. It would have been a pleasant task—if Liz didn’t have to stand guard with an arrow nocked in her bow every time they left the bramble enclosure.
We can’t carry on like this, he thought one morning, peering between the logs of the stockade at the surrounding forest. The woods which had once felt majestic now filled him with dread. In frustration, he kicked an upright log.
It crumbled under the impact.
He stared at it incredulously. Under the thin veneer of solid wood, the core was punky and soft. The aspen log must have been rotten when they’d dragged it into the clearing, or the frequent watering of the tomatoes that grew on the other side had ruined it. After going around the wall and thumping each log with a lump of wood, he found two more bad logs. Several others didn’t sound too good, either. All aspens. When they had been building the stockade, they’d been unaware that aspen rotted so quickly, and now the bad logs would have to be replaced with more durable birch.
Liz came out of the wigwam holding a dried side of salmon at arm’s length. “What’s that banging?”
“Several logs need replacement. Rotten. What’s with the fish?”
She wrinkled her nose. “Rotten.”
“You’re joking!”
She handed it over to him.
He took one sniff, then hurled it over the wall in disgust. “I don’t understand. We dry-cured all that tiger and bear meat in winter. It’s perfect quality.”
“We got lucky with freeze-drying in the wind. Beginner’s luck.”
He sighed. “Is the smoked venison okay?”
“The one we made in winter is. As for the rest—if we boil it well . . .”
“What a rotten day,” he cried, praying silently that nothing else would go wrong. Two things in a day was bad enough. He made a quick estimate of how long the food would last if they were besieged. Ten days, twelve?
***
“Sin in haste, repent at leisure,” he told Liz as they headed to the beaver pond to look for replacement logs.
“We were in a rush,” she said distractedly. Her bow held at the ready, she scanned the shadows under the trees.
“Oh, I rememb—”
Suddenly, she pulled the bowstring all the way back and let loose. The string slapped against her leather wrist guard and thrummed like a string on a double bass.
He tensed, bringing up his javelin. Liz, a second arrow nocked to her bow, started backing off. He glanced over his shoulder. All clear. No one was trying to cut off their retreat.
No one was attacking them at all. Yet.
She lowered her bow and pointed. An ursine stood bolt upright, except its head sagged on its chest. A feathered arrow shaft protruded from its shoulder. However, it wasn’t the arrow that had killed it, but a sharp stake lashed to the spring trap made of a bendy pine sapling. Silently, they checked the undergrowth for more enemies.
“Seems like there’s no more of them,” Liz said.
He listened to the birds chirping ahead of them. Squirrels scuttled along branches. If the ursines lay in ambush, the woods would’ve been silent.
“They’re gone. For now,” he said, head
ing toward the dead enemy. “Traps terrify them. They probably think it’s something supernatural.” He prodded the body. Stiff as a board. “Rigor mortis. Been dead for hours.” He began working the arrow out. The point made a sickening scrr-r of flint on bone.
Liz’s eyes were calm, but her face seemed paler than usual. “What now?”
He didn’t reply at once. Yes, the traps had made the ursines break off their night attack, but traps hadn’t forced them to lift the siege. Hunger and low morale had. He felt as if a great weight was about to crush him and Liz, as if they stood on a sidewalk with a grand piano plunging from the hundredth floor toward them. More ursines were coming. He knew it as surely as he knew that night followed day. Should they hole up in Fort Bramble and wait for the enemy to arrive? Their water stores would last a month, but they had little food. Moreover, John refused to live in constant fear of an ambush.
“We load the Ra and get the hell off the mainland,” he said.
“How much time do we have?”
He closed his eyes and cast his mind outward to the wolf pack. He imagined his psychic awareness expanding in concentric circles, like waves on a still pond spread around a dropped stone. He sensed the wolves far away to the east, but hard as he tried, he couldn’t establish a solid connection.
“What’s wrong?” Liz asked.
“The pack leader’s dead. And he was the only one I could control to some extent. Let’s go.”
George must have picked up their negative vibes and started bawling and kicking his little legs and struggling in his sling.
John ruffled his hair. “Not now, Georgie.”
They hurried back to camp. John started tearing animal skins from the roof, while Liz went inside to collect food and settle George.
Ten minutes later, they headed down the path through the aspen grove on the way to the peat bogs and the marshland where they’d hidden the boat. The first yellow leaves spun through the air, settling on the moss where orange-topped boletes grew.
John carried their baby in a sling and lugged a huge bundle of skins over his shoulder. His bow, quiver, harpoon, and the long-spear were wrapped within. In his free hand, he held his javelin, and an axe hung at his belt. Liz had strapped a leather sack of smoked venison and dried mushrooms to her back. She also had his rucksack, her canvas bag with the firepot, and two quivers of arrows. She kept her hands free to use her bow.
Liz said, “We might be overreacting.”
Loaded to the limits of his endurance, he didn’t reply, but he was wondering the same thing.
Chapter 84
The Blasted Tub
Leaving the aspen grove behind, John and Liz climbed up an incline, dry moss and lichen crunching underfoot, making it hard to move silently. At the top of the ridge, they paused to listen for sounds of pursuit. So far nothing. Briefly silenced by their passage, birds resumed piping and twittering behind them.
Liz lowered her sack of food to the ground. “Let’s rest.”
He dropped his bundle of skins and sat down astride it, wiping sweat off his forehead. His mouth was parched, and he wished he’d had a good drink of water before leaving. But at least George wasn’t bawling his head off.
He tried to read the minds of the distant wolves, but the connection was too tenuous to provide any useful insights on ursine movements.
Liz said, “If they were after us, we would’ve heard them.”
He nodded.
“But you sense them?”
“They’re coming, all right. I feel . . . pressure, same as last winter when we stopped their invasion with a single fire arrow. But then we had Spot to scout for us . . .”
“But you sensed them before Spot did.”
John looked up, brightening up on the inside. He sure had sensed the ursines coming then, and they had been many hours away. And that meant that he and Liz had as long as a day. Or even longer. But could he rely on extrasensory perception for their safety? He cleared his mind and cast his awareness outward again, this time searching for the ursines directly. He detected a bright focus of malevolence to the north and also to the east and west. But how far were they? No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t gauge the distance. Were they days, hours, or mere minutes away? He opened his eyes and said, “Large enemy bands are approaching from three directions.”
“How far?”
He shook his head. “Some way off. But I’m not sure. Let’s go.”
They reached the islet where the Ra lay hidden and dragged it into the water. The tide was ebbing, and they hastily stowed the cargo amidships and poled down the shallow channel to the main arm of the river before the passages between reed beds turned dry.
With the main river in sight, the bottom of the boat scraped against rhizome roots and mud, and they stopped. John took off his moccasins, leaped over the side, and pushed. The water only came up to his ankles, and the level kept dropping in front of his eyes. Liz slid overboard by the bow and pulled on the mooring rope. The sludgy silt oozed between his toes, and his feet sank deeper and deeper. He struggled forward, pushing against the stern.
The Ra was light, and it should have been easy to move, except his feet could find no purchase. Liz wasn’t doing much better. George looked at him from where he lay under the mast, smiling, probably thinking it was a new game his parents were playing.
Finally, John’s foot found a solid clump of roots and he pushed, just as Liz tugged on the rope. The boat slid forward, and John fell on his face. He crawled through the mud, like some amphibian creature, pushed the boat again, and then they broke into deeper water that came up to his waist. After ducking under to sluice the mud and silt off, he climbed aboard.
They were drifting in a wide passage between two reed beds. The main channel lay some hundred yards ahead. The north wind was slowly carrying them away from shore. Safe at last. Their chests heaving from their exertions, he and Liz exchanged a weary grin.
He picked up a paddle. “To Oat Island?”
She hesitated before replying. “We’ve left so many things behind. I couldn’t find your Arsenal mug, where did you put it?”
“By the water tub.”
“And then we only carried away half of the skins,” Liz said.
The mouth of the Fleet came into view on the left. Without thinking, he paddled that way. No way would he leave his Arsenal mug behind. They’d be in and out in an hour.
As they sailed up the tidal inlet, he thought he could smell smoke. He glanced at Liz’s canvas bag with its firepot. “Liz, I hope it’s not your bag burning.”
She peered inside. “Nope. The pot’s closed.”
With the tide now fully out, they had to climb overboard to lighten the boat and drag it upstream by the mooring rope. Some two hundred yards below the beaver dam, the stream became too shallow, and they parked the Ra under the drooping willow branches. The tip of the mast stuck out like a red flag from the willow crown, but the place was secluded, and John had no time to camouflage it.
Cautiously, they made their way through the grove of junipers to Fort Bramble. John sensed the enemies were still some way off, in three large groups. Both he and Liz carried weapons at the ready. Should they meet any advanced enemy scouts, he felt confident that he and Liz could fight their way out. He adjusted the baby sling at his chest, hoping that George would keep quiet for the next half hour.
John caught sight of their abandoned home through the trees, and a sinking feeling tugged at his gut. The little fort stood as they had left it, the sharpened logs of the stockade pointing at the sky in silent reproach: We have sheltered you. And you’ve forsaken us . . .
Once inside, John found his lost Arsenal mug at the bottom of the water tub. He and Liz drank their fill; then they bundled up the remaining skins, baskets, wooden bowls, spoons, and bunches of dried herbs and roots. Liz found his Employee of the Year glass paperweight tucked into the corner by the sleeping area, forgotten.
She looked about slowly. “I think that’s it.” She turned to go.
“You missed the most important thing.” He took the small clay pot of tiger fat from the shelf and added it to the pile of their possessions. “Might come in useful, eh?”
She rolled her eyes. “Let’s go.”
On their way back to the Ra, John again smelled smoke on the dry northerly wind. A forest fire? No matter. Soon, they’d be out of here.
As they waded downstream toward the boat’s hiding place, the reek of burning intensified.
“Do you smell smoke?” he asked.
She sniffed the air and shook her head. “Just the firepot.”
Under the sheltering willow branches, it was cool and shady. Water lisped peacefully by the reed hull. As he reached to unfasten the mooring rope, he saw the mental image of the auroch hide tub, standing forgotten behind the wigwam. They had no choice but to abandon the heavy wooden troughs, but the leather tub was perfectly portable.
“We left the bathtub,” he said.
“Damn! I love that tub. How will we bathe in winter?”
“We must get it.”
“How far is the enemy?”
He sat down cross-legged on the deck. “I’ll listen to the ether.” He closed his eyes, pressed his hands to his ears to cut out the ambient noise, and cast out his mind. Yes, the three ursine bands were on the way.
“Anything?”
He shrugged, uncertainly. Birds chirped and piped as usual, and small creatures rustled in the undergrowth. He sensed the ursines were some distance off, perhaps encamped miles away. “I sense nothing near, but . . .”
“Maybe we should leave while we can.”
“We won’t find another auroch hide,” he said. “It was Spot’s gift to us.”
“Yes, it was . . .”
John picked up his bow and glanced down at George dozing in his sling. He stepped overboard. “Funny how in horror movies, people always investigate strange noises coming from abandoned buildings and such, while the audience is screaming: ‘What are you doing, fool? Don’t go there. The monster will get you.’ And yet they always go.”