Kim Robinson - Shaman

—I’ll get snowshoes for all of us, Loon said.

—Good, Thorn said.—Take Click and get them while I get Elga.

—She’s in the women’s house.

—I know! Get what you have and follow Click, he knows where we’re to meet. I’m going to make it so all the men here are putting out fires for a while.

—They’ve got wolves! They’ll set their wolves on us.

—I know! In fact the captive wolves were now howling.—Fuck the wolves, they can’t stop us.

He ran off toward the women’s house, and Loon led the old one up into the boulder field, found his hole and slipped down into it, handing out the sacks to Click as fast as he could. The opening was smaller than ever as he tried to hurry in the dark, and he didn’t feel he was moving as well as he should have, given how often he had told himself the story of this event. After the first shock it had struck him as something he recognized, so now it was happening as in certain dreams, wherein he watched himself act from above or behind.

They ran back down to the jende’s camp, and Loon watched himself go to the shelter next to the big house where they kept their outside things and grab four pairs of snowshoes and give them to Click, then take up a stone wedge blade and smash it down on the front curve of all the rest of their snowshoes, breaking each cleanly lengthwise. He was startled to watch himself do this, as he had never thought to do it. But it was a good plan, and he smashed the bent spruce frames as if cracking the jende’s skulls. When he was done the old one clicked rapidly and led Loon downstream to a little brake of alder. Thorn was there with Elga; she was draped in a fur cape, but other than that wore only the leggings the jende wore in their houses. The four of them stood there staring at each other, eyes wide. The night was old, the half moon would be setting soon.

—She needs clothes! Loon said.

Thorn said,—We’ll make them out of her cape. For now it will have to do.

—I’ll be fine, Elga said, and took one of the sacks Loon had hidden. She was wearing soft boots.—Let’s hurry, they’ll cut their way out of those houses.

They stuffed two backsacks with what Loon had taken, and Loon put his own boots on, and stuck his arms through the straps of one of the sacks. Elga took the other one. Thorn tied the stolen snowshoes onto Loon’s pack and the old one’s, and then they were off through the night, headed south.

They walked over the frozen snow as fast as they could without actually breaking into a run. When the moon set they had to slow a little, but under the stars the suncupped snow still glowed enough to see it pretty well, and they hurried on at almost full speed. All that night they continued in silence, except for the times when Thorn yelped,—Skai! and they would go hard, running in a kind of wolf lope until one of them would slow down, and then they would all stop running and walk hard again. Across one long descending slope the snow had melted and refrozen so many times that the suncups were flattened out, the hard snow left as slippery as ice. There they stopped to put on the snowshoes Loon had taken. Loon showed Thorn and Click how to tie their boots to the foot platforms. Elga tied hers on, and Loon saw that the snowshoes would give her soft boots some needed support.

Thorn set a pace that the rest of them had to work to keep up with. It got colder as dawn neared, but aside from their noses and ears Loon was warm all through his body, even in his toes and fingers. This could only happen when throwing oneself forward, even breaking into a little run from time to time on level ground or on downhills. Thorn always urged them on by example, and with an occasional look back; to Loon his face was like a slap from a dream, a vision of Otter Man, implacable and intent after killing the beavers in their den and taking one of their women away. The sight sparked Loon, and his body flew after the others without awareness of the effort. It was like a dream and yet he had never been more awake, not ever in his life.

Coming back into himself a little as dawn grayed the eastern sky, he could not help noticing that Badleg had not had a walk this rigorous in many a moon, and was speaking up to voice its protest. He needed a stick, and the first time they passed a lead in a streambed, curving swiftly at a kink in a little gorge, he took a hand blade from his sack and hacked an alder branch that was a bit too short, but otherwise sturdy, and after that used it to lighten all the impacts on Badleg. Being three-legged in such a manner was not as easy as simply walking, but it was worth the extra effort.

When the whole sky lightened to gray, Thorn redoubled his efforts.—We have to be out of their sight all day today. I don’t know how much of a lead we got on them, but they’ll be fast.

Loon and Elga could only nod at that. Click threw himself onward with a heavy long tread, puffing hard at every exhale, although it also seemed he would be able to carry on like that for a long time. Loon realized he didn’t know much about the old ones’ abilities. Of course his encounter with them during his wander remained firmly in mind, indeed just the thought of the memory was enough to put an extra thrust in his walking. He had escaped old ones, but he didn’t know what that meant about them. He realized that of all the kinds of animals in the world, this one hurrying beside them was the one he knew least. Of course they were the ones who hid most carefully from people, so maybe it was just that: they didn’t want people to know them.

The jende, however, Loon knew. They were very fast over snow when they wanted to be. Of course every pack’s hunters were fast and could go long; that was part of being a hunter. But the jende, with all their summer treks, and quarrels with their norther neighbors, were both fast and used to the snow. Snow was their home ground, and so anywhere there was snow they were on home ground, and would be faster over it than people from elsewhere. Or so Loon feared.

And they had wolves to set on their prey.

The eastern sky was red, the sky overhead was that gray that would soon reveal itself to be thin clouds or clear sky. Thorn directed them to stop in a depression in the snow that included a little wall of rock they could hide behind. There they remained until the sky was bright with the coming day, a cloudless day as it turned out, and the sun soon to crack the horizon. Thorn directed the others to stay low, while only he looked back to the north, with a patch of fur placed on his head and held out by his hands to each side, so that he would present a mere bump to anyone looking their way. He held himself motionless as he looked. Then he hissed and pulled his head down slowly.

—They’re there, he said.—They’re coming this way, with some wolves tied to ropes. They probably have our track. We’ve got to go.

—Won’t they see us?

—Yes. We’ll have to outrun them today, and lose them tonight.

He looked at each of them in turn.—We have to go fast. If we go fast all day, they can’t catch up to us. We can’t be the ones to get tired of the pace. We have to tire them. We have to be fast enough to keep a good distance, even if they charge. We have to outlast them at their charge pace, and then at whatever pace they can keep to after their charge. Understand?

—What if they let their wolves loose on us? Loon asked.

—We’ll kill the wolves and they’ll have lost their trackers. Anyway they might not be able to let those wolves off their ropes this far away from home without them running away. If we keep our distance, they can probably only use them as trackers.