Broken Spear: Part One

           

By Christoper Mitchell

Broken Spear knelt to inspect the steaming scat of his hunted prey. It smelled of digested lichen and willow buds. He looked in the direction of Osu—The Giver. The glare hurt his eyes, and he raised his hands to blot out the face of the father god. Osu’s brother, Uru, had been defeated sometime in the night. Not a wisp of The Taker’s grey pelt could be seen in the sky.

The battle raged elsewhere. Thought Broken Spear. He let out a sigh of relief. Good.

He remembered the gods’ clashing spears, sending bolts of light through Uru’s great skins and slamming into a tree. It had caught fire. A feat during the great frosts. He knew then that they were great gods. Great, and terrible.

Broken Spear shook himself from his thoughts. He thanked Osu for his yellow warmth and his great light and turned his gaze back to the nearby shoreline. Willow trees grew in abundance there.

 He crushed the scat between his fingers and looked back down at the pile. He wondered why it would have left an abundant food source and ventured out here on the ice.

He wiped his hands in the snow, feeling the slick surface of frozen water underneath, and continued following the tracks. He’d gone no more than a thousand paces before he noticed their pace quickened.  It went from a walk to a trot. Then, to a run, and finally to an outright panicked sprint. The tracks veered from direction to direction. They were the movements of something being hunted, but the tracks—

His searching eyes found what he was looking for. A set of tracks in the distance, moving at an angle, leading back from the north bank. He kept following the elk’s hoofprints until they merged with the new prints. He froze when he saw they carried a similar shape and size to that of his own.

Impossible. He bent down to inspect the outline of a man’s foot and felt a chill that he couldn’t attribute to the great frost around him. Whoever it was had been barefoot, the impression of six claws digging deep into the snow to find purchase, gouging the frozen lakebed beneath. He stood, placing his own foot within the print. It swallowed his own.

He unslung the bow he’d made from the stout hickories of the north wood, almost as tall as he was and dark brown. Grabbing an arrow from his quiver at his side, he followed the tracks and listened. The birds still chirped high overhead, and the wind still clawed gently at the sides of his face and threatened to dig into his skin.

A good sign: silence in this valley killed.

He followed the intermingled tracks until the human-like prints started to overtake the elk. Another impossibility. His heart quickened. What kind of man—

Handprints joined the footprints. The long-fingered claws added speed to the predator’s frame. It overtook the elk’s prints then, in two loping strides. To Broken Spear’s surprise, the predator’s tracks moved alongside the elk.

It was taunting its prey. This was no longer a man in Spear’s mind. No man could move this quickly, nor possess the audacity to mock their prey’s desperation.

The tracks rushed towards a thicket of trees in the middle of the frozen lake. He ignored the rest of the tracks, using them as a guide as he picked up his pace and ran across the thick ice sheet. The hunger that had followed him for two days was ignored; only the tracks ahead and a faint smell of blood in the air told him that he’d find the elk soon.

He broke through the brush, weaving between ash and elm and birch in pursuit of his game. Birds squawked overhead and broke through the canopy of leafless fingers. Broken Spear ignored them. He was close. Game signs were everywhere. Broken limbs, the intermingled imprints of hooves in frozen dirt and snow, the parting of the brush as something large pursued the elk in unfettered frenzy. Broken Spear passed a tree that had been splintered at waist level. The shrapnel of splinters arced in the direction of pursuit. No elk could have broken a frozen tree in half like this. What manner of creature hunted Broken Spear’s quarry?

The scent of blood overtook him, and he became momentarily overwhelmed with the mixing fragrances of blood and scat and fear.

One moment, he was focused on his peripheral vision, reaching out his senses for a trap. Next, he was lumbering toward the elk’s dead frame, almost on top of it. He tried to halt his momentum, but his foot was snarled in a patch of mischievous roots. He was sent collapsing forward.

Right toward the mangled corpse of his pursued game.

He cried out, releasing his bow so it wouldn’t snap under the weight of his fall. He made an impact with the elk’s solid frame, becoming entangled in its frozen entrails. He grasped for purchase, slicing his hand on a jagged edge of the animal’s broken ribs. He cursed, trying to wipe the flash of frozen snow and blood from his eyes, kicked up during his fall. He needed to regain his footing, lest he become the unknown predator’s next meal.

Finally, his feet met with the wooded island floor, and he was able to rise to his knees and claw himself out of the cavities of dead game. He drew his flint knife when he regained his footing. He spun wildly, roaring out to dissuade any would-be predators from falling under his blade.

No attack came. He stopped his spin and opened his ears to The Mother’s heartbeat. Ina’s children still sang in the canopy overhead, and she sighed through naked branches, causing the mighty pines to dance in ritual to her whispered songs. She remained unfazed by Osu’s prideful glare and to Uru’s desire to usurp Osu’s throne.

His breath eased, and his grip loosened on the handle made of caribou antler. All was still right in this land.

Broken Spear stowed the knife and knelt to inspect the mangled mass of pelt and bone. He ignored the pain in his hand. It was shallow, only penetrating enough to scrape the first layer of flesh. He’d have to mend his hide gloves, but he’d cut some of the pelt away from this kill to fix it.

It will be the only way to save its soul.

Osu demanded that killing be necessary only to sustain life. Broken Spear, and the tribe he’d been exiled from, did not hunt for sport. Every piece of their quarry would be used within the village, from bone tools to salves excreted from the animal’s bladder. What he saw before him now was blasphemy. He followed the wide arcs of blood and meat that had been tossed from the creature in its pursuer’s predatory frenzy and noted very little of the animal was missing. This was a kill of pleasure. Broken Spear felt the pain of such desecration wrench the heart within him.

 “Brother Elk.” He said, closing his eyes and placing his hand reverently over the creature’s still-opened ones. “You did not deserve this death. Sleep now. And may you find peace in the green lands on the other side of the Great Above.”

He lifted his hands from the elk’s eyes and kissed his fingers. He raised them upward in prayer to Osu, begging his god to carry this animal’s spirit into the great above with all the honors he could bestow on a beast this majestic. He curled his fingers into a fist and placed them ardently over his beating heart, sealing the prayer away.

That’s when he saw the strange-colored snow.

It was up near the antlers, a fine coating of orange-red pooling at the base near the skull.

He knew that color. His blood froze in recognition.

It was the same color as the creature he’d—

“It can’t be.” Broken Spear said aloud.

He remembered. His family’s torn and butchered remains. Black eyes and grey skin of gnawing teeth. A guttural snarl and swiping claws…

His knife, piercing the ribcage of the thing and sending it howling into the Woodline of their village.

Then…

Of seething condemnation of the elders. And his exile.

Wendigo, they called him… eater of souls.

He drew back out his knife and began to cut away strips of untainted flesh from the backside of the hide where claws had not desecrated the flesh.

“I’m sorry, Brother Elk.” He stashed the pieces of raw meat in a pouch until he could finish the curing process. “I need your strength.” He scraped away some of the frozen blood from the ribcage and let it melt in his now ungloved hand. The cut was indeed shallow, and he watched as the frozen blood thawed and mingled with his own. “I will use it to avenge you.” He wiped the mixture of his life essence with that of the elk and used it to coat the outside of his bow. “You will be with me. Always.”

He stood and looked down at the near-human footprint, his heart growing colder than the air around him.

“You will be my vengeance.”

HOPE YOU ENJOYED PART ONE! Stay tuned next Wednesday for Part Two