This month is the month of NaNoWriMo. I have too many commitments to write an entire novel, so here is a short story. I hope you enjoy this, even if it’s a bit different from the normal fare.
The Battle of The Bear
Snow swirled around him as he pushed through drifts above his knees. He worked in a small world walled off from the rest by a curtain of snow. He was alone in this little world. Alone in more ways than he cared to think.
He staggered, the quick movement restarting the flow of blood from the hole in his right thigh. With movement came the pain. This time it threw him face first into a drift. He lay there. It was over. They had beaten him. They had beaten the entire village. Nobody had gotten away.
Around him the pines sang their winter song, swaying and rocking to the play of the wind. Behind them, up this slope and over was freedom, he could escape. Maybe move south and find his brother and uncles. They offered a sanctuary from his current life.
He could start again outside the reach of his enemies. In spite of the pain, he lifted his head and looked down at the red stain his face had left in the snow. Slowly he rose touching the gash in his scalp. Wiping the blood from his hand he looked around. In his mind was the thought, uphill is safe, downhill is death. He turned into the wind continuing up the slope. If he slid his left leg to break the snow it was easier to move his wounded right leg.
He had never been one to quit, but now he had. They had beaten him, by killing his wife and her family. The riders had come out of the snow and darkness in the early morning. They had torn through the encampment on horseback pulling logs tied between their horses. The logs had easily smashed the willow frame houses, then the riders shot anything that moved. He saw them shoot down his wife and her mother … and now he was through.
Yes, he would quit. They had taught him how to quit. The snow intensified further reducing his world. The man went on until he saw the dark opening of a cave. He turned to it for shelter, as men have always done. Though there are tents and wickiups, grand halls and palaces, in his direst need man always returns to the cave.
The cave wrapped him in rock, sheltering his battered body from the wind and snow. But it was still cold, so cold. Shivering, he gathered sticks and some old leaves from a pack rat’s nest near the cave’s entrance. He sat with his back to the wall and built a drill and hearth board from dry willow gathered by the rodent. Cutting a strip from his leggings he twisted a cord and from an arm-long stick built a bow. For a time, he struggled to kindle a fire, failing, he slept, waking even colder. With a touch of fear, he worked the bow drill again and this time a coal, then a flame. The flame stretched tentative, exploring fingers and found food to its liking.
He added fuel; the fire took hold, crackled, and gave off heat. The man leaned closer, feeling the warmth upon his hands, his body. Firelight played shadow games upon blackened walls where the smoke from many fires had etched their memories … for how many generations of men?
This time he really was finished. There was no use going back. His enemies were sure he was dead, and he could not imagine any survivors. They had taken his family. In a sense he was free. He had done his best, so now a little rest, a little healing, and then over the pine-clad ridge to freedom. Yet freedom does not always bring contentment.
He found more fuel further into the cave. He squeezed the dampness from his garments, then huddled between the fire and the cave wall, holding tight against the cold.
There was no end to the snow … gusts of wind whipped at the cave mouth and dimmed the fire. It was insanity to think of returning. They had killed everyone and burnt the shelters and the winter’s store of food. He had heard the gunfire and shouting as he lay semi-conscious at the edge of the forest. He was shot trying to get back to his wife and struck on the head by a passing rider … only by the slimmest of margins had he escaped trampling.
He had not been able to move for hours, wavering in and out of consciousness as the horsemen destroyed the little village. Somehow, he managed distance. He crawled, walked, staggered, fell. He fainted, then revived, lay for a time mouth open in the snow, eyes blank and empty.
By now any possible survivors would believe him dead… Well, he was not dead. But he had nothing to return to. He had watched his wife die. She was his only tie to the group. Well, her and a common enemy.
He scooped a small depression in the sand of the cave floor then removing the legging from his wounded leg he spread it over the small depression forming a bowl. Into the make-shift bowl, he placed snow to melt. Then with a couple sticks he transferred small rocks heated in the fire to melt the snow.
He used more snow to rub the dried blood from his head and face. When the melted snow had warmed, he again bathed his head and face. He carefully washed the blood from the wound in his leg. He felt better then, the cave seemed warmer. He leaned back against the wall and relaxed.
Peace came to his muscles. After a while he heated more stones and added them and snow to his bowl. Peering into the blowing snow he drank some of the warm water. He would need more fuel. Slowly, using the wall of the cave for help, he stood and rummaged further into darkness of the cave. He gathered more sticks, one long and straight enough to use as a crutch, and carried them back to his fire. And then he found the skull.
At first, he believed its whiteness was another stick, imbedded as it was in the sandy floor. He tugged it loose, becoming more curious as its enormous size became obvious. It was the skull of a gigantic bear. The largest he had ever seen. There were no bears of this size here.
Sitting in the firelight he examined it. Wedged into an eye socket was a chip of obsidian. He pulled it free of the bone, needing all his strength. It was a finely crafted arrowhead … a bit larger than he would have made, but its edges were still sharp.
The arrow could not have killed the bear. Blinded him, yes, enraged him, certainly, but not killed him. Yet the bear had been killed. Probably by a blow from an axe, for there was a crack in the skull, and at another place, a spot near the ear where the bone was crushed.
Using his crutch stick he dug around, finding more bones. One was a shattered foreleg of the monster, the bone fractured by a blow. And then he found the head of a stone axe. But nowhere did he find the bones of the man.
Despite the throbbing in his skull and the raw pain in his leg, he was excited. Within this cave, many years ago, a lone man fought a battle to the death against impossible odds … and won.
Fought for what? Surely, he could have found easier game? And with the bear half blinded the man could have escaped, the cave mouth was wide. In the whirling fury of the fight there must have been opportunities. Yet he had not fled. He had fought on against the overwhelming strength of the wounded beast, pitting against it only his lesser strength, his primitive weapons, and his man-cunning.
Venturing outside the cave for more wood to burn, he dragged a log within, although the effort made him gasp with agony. He drew the log along the back edge of his fire so that it was at once fuel and reflector of heat.
Burrowing a little into the now warm sand of the cave floor, he was soon asleep. Later he awoke to the cold. The fire had burned low. He thought of the cold, and the bear, and the arrowhead. He thought of what they meant … together and separately.
It was time to move. Now he could go over the ridge to safety, into the sun. He pulled himself to his feet and pulling the legging back over his wounded leg he gathered his fire tools. Using his digging stick as a crutch he set out. In less than an hour he stood in the smoking remains of the village checking the bodies. Hunting for his wife and for her family.
The snow had stopped, the clouds had lifted to expose the iron-grey mountains to the east. Her body was not where he had seen her fall. In the churned snow he plainly saw signs of her struggles to drag her mother’s body into the forest. Following the trail with growing excitement he found her lying next to her parents.
He nearly fell bending down to touch her. The tears came and he shook. She was barely warm. Quickly he gathered fuel and a few smoldering sticks from a wikiup to kindle a fire. Once he had it burning, he left her to search the remains. From the snow next to an unburned shelter, he gathered two rabbit-skin blankets and wrapped her into them. From another a brass kettle, some dried tapa’kogi, and a skin of dried meat.
The soup was nearly ready when she woke. They looked into each other’s eyes, she smiled. He tucked the arrowhead back into his neck pouch.
“What is that?” she asked.
“An arrowhead,” the man said. “Only an arrowhead.”