Fargoer (24 page)

“Show yourself, and I’ll stop your screeching,” the young man stated while fiddling with his bow. He was the only one in the group to carry one.

They heard the swish too late. An arrow with goose-feather fletching struck the young man’s thigh, sticking from it like a crooked feather. The man cried out, gasped and grabbed convulsively the arrow that had appeared in his leg. The others threw themselves to the ground, looking wildly in the direction the arrow had come from.

Their eyes only met the calm forest of the afternoon. Not even a rustle of a twig betrayed the location of the shooter. Starkhand yelled from the ground to the brothers:

“Find the fiend and kill it!”

The brothers looked at each other without moving. Starkhand pulled a rusty shortsword from his belt.

“Now.”

The men got up reluctantly and looked around, scared. As no more arrows came their way, they started to cautiously walk toward the forest, to the direction where the arrow had come from.

“Show me that arrow,” Starkhand growled as he got up arduously. He walked to the young man who held his leg in agony. The large man felt around the wound for a moment with rough and experienced hands.

“A notched head. I can’t get it out without cutting it. When we reach the shore, I can dig it out, but after that you won’t be able to walk for a long time. Now I’ll just cut the shaft and you’ll have to try...”

The sentence was interrupted by a muffled cry of pain from the forest. It was followed by a scream of rage that ended in a croak. In a split second the silent forest had become filled with brooding shadows. Amid the trees, a silent and merciless death waited for them.

Starkhand and the wounded looked at each other for a moment. Starkhand grabbed the red-haired woman by the arm and dragged her to her feet. He half carried and half dragged the woman along with him as they started to flee through the woods without looking back.

Despite his burden, Starkhand soon outdistanced the wounded man. The slower man wept and gnashed his teeth while he tried to keep up with Starkhand, but it was futile. Soon the large man heard the familiar scream of death behind him.

Sweat burst off Starkhand’s brow and hands in streams, and he stopped running. Shaking, he turned around and waited with the red-haired prisoner under his arm, for what was to follow. He didn’t have to wait for long.

A black-haired woman stepped out of the woods. A few beads of sweat sparkled on her forehead, but no other signs of fatigue were visible. Breathing evenly she sang, with an effortless and clear voice.

Death by my hand for you stranger
Wretched scoundrel goes to ground
Writhe there with worms of the earth
Until no more flesh is found

The words were carried along with a hunting bow that was ready to fire, the arrowhead pointed straight and unwavering toward the large man’s chest. The woman watched Starkhand along the shaft of the arrow.

It wasn’t the first time Starkhand met death eye to eye. Licking his lips, he pushed his red-haired prisoner aside.

“Let’s settle this with these.” He tapped the shortsword on his belt. “It seems like you have a blade of your own on your belt.”

She responded with laughter. Starkhand rushed forward, drawing his weapon. He never got to a distance he could have used it from.

Old friends

A campfire that burned in the evening dark flared warmth to the faces of the silent women who sat by it.

The usually talkative Rika was silent following the enthusiastic gratitude she bestowed on the black-haired woman for saving her life. Her hands shook as she put pieces of the fish, caught and cooked by Vierra, in her mouth.

“Who were those men?” Rika finally asked with a trembling voice.

“Slavers. They follow the rivers inland, looking for people to grab and sell as slaves either beyond the sea or to Turian witches,” said Vierra looking up from whittling a piece of wood. “What on earth are you doing here, so far from home?”

Rika’s dark stare and squeezed fists told Vierra that she shouldn’t ask more. They were silent for a moment.

“Vierra,” Rika started wary, which was not common for her. “Is it true what they say? The ones that came back from the war?”

“Well, what did they tell?”

“That you killed Aure.”

Vierra threw pieces of wood she had whittled into the fire and was silent for a moment. She nodded. Rika’s anguished expression told her that this was not what she had wanted to hear.

“Why?”

“I had no choice. It wasn’t Aure that I killed. It was something else, something dark.”

“What do you mean, an evil spirit? Why didn’t I notice anything different about her?”

“How should I know,” Vierra answered with an involuntary snap. “Maybe you had something else on your mind.”

Rika’s angst flamed quickly to anger.

“So you mean that I don’t have what it takes to be a witch, is that it?”

“Even witches make mistakes.”

“You’ve been named as a traitor of the tribe. I should try to kill you with my bare hands for what you did.”

Vierra smiled a stern, cold smile.

“The men who captured you tried, they each had a turn.”

Rika shuddered, and she huffed audibly.

“Could you try to explain?”

Vierra shook her head. “I couldn’t even if I wanted to, and I don’t want to go back there even in my mind.”

“But then you can’t return to the tribe anymore.”

“True, I can’t.”

“Then why did you come?”

“Because of this,” Vierra said and lifted up the necklace that she’d been carrying under her moose skin jacket. It was skillfully made of countless claws and teeth of different animals, and wearing it Vierra looked like a chieftain. She took the necklace slowly from her neck, remembering briefly something that had happened a long time ago. “I know how important it is to you.”

Vierra presented the necklace to Rika. In the campfire, the resinous wood crackled and sent clouds of sparks up into the dark evening every now and then. Rika reluctantly took the necklace from Vierra’s hands.

“Thank you.”

She put the necklace around her neck distractedly as she gazed silently at the fire.

“Where will you go?”

“I will take you back to our tribe’s lands. After that who knows.” Vierra looked at the treetops, barely distinguishable in the dark. “Let’s go to sleep, tomorrow will be a long day.”

Without saying anything more she wrapped herself in her furs and lay down beside the fire. Rika remained sitting by the campfire eating the remainder of her fish. She had always been a slow eater when it came to fish, as she was afraid she’d get bones stuck in her throat. For a moment she looked at her friend who was already twitching in her sleep.

Rika was about to say something, but then just sighed and lay down on her side of the fire. She turned around many times before falling asleep.

The morning sun glimmered in the trees and slowly dried the rich dew that the autumn night had given. Vierra and Rika were doing their chores, huffing with the cold of the night. They rubbed their hands, stiff and cold because of the damp, together over the embers of last night’s campfire, and got ready to leave.

Vierra tried the traps she had left around their camp. One small hare had strayed into one of the traps, providing a little food for the speedy return home. Rika watched from the side as Vierra handled the animal with confident hands.

“Always a hunter,” Rika blurted silently to herself. Not silently enough, though.

“You’re still punishing yourself over that?” Vierra asked.

“How could I forget?” And Rika sang:

Forest is the place for Kainu
Blessed be the use of bow
Flesh of game, the sweetest reward
Fishes fatty make us grow

“How about this one,” Vierra replied with her own song.

Best of luck is witches’ council
Theirs to know is birth and name
May their spirits grow old mellow
Source of our tribe’s flame

“Yes,” Rika admitted with a sigh. She fiddled with the necklace that hung from her neck, not noticing she was doing it. “Shall we?”

They traveled as fast as Rika, the much slower of the two, could manage. They were traversing the same path back that the men had used the day before, with Rika as their prisoner.

The sunny and warm autumn weather made their trip pleasant, and late in the afternoon they stopped by a small creek, to eat the hare they had caught in the morning. They roasted the meat on sticks in a fire while looking at the pleasant creek view. The trees on the riverbank had already dropped the first of their leaves, which floated on the surface of the water, slowly moving toward the sea that waited downstream.

“Tomorrow we’ll reach Kainu lands,” Rika said while gnawing on a piece of meat on the stick.

Vierra looked at the river.

“Could you go alone from here to our people?”

“Come at least a bit further.” Rika’s gaze followed leaves that swam away from them. “Where will you go?”

Vierra was silent for a long time.

“I don’t know, but I’ve known for a long time that I would have to leave some day.”

Rika wiped her eyes so that her companion, deep in her thoughts, didn’t notice.

“Shall we continue?” Rika asked and got up unnecessarily fast.

Their route now left the path Rika and the men had come through before. The orienteer in Vierra said that by doing that, they would reach their tribe faster.

The pathless wilderness took them toward a grand esker, which slopes were completely covered with a dark spruce forest. They approached it diagonally and soon started to go up the brae, shaded with those evergreen trees.

After reaching the summit they took a moment to catch their breath. Up there the forest was sparse and the earth rocky. Wherever they turned their eyes they could see wilderness, tinted by eskers, valleys and lakes, bordered in one direction by the billowing sea.

Vierra took a deep breath, as if trying to draw it all inside her, to store everything she could see, hear, smell or feel in her heart. The thought of leaving it all pressed heavily on her shoulders. Rika walked beside her and wrapped her arms around her friend. They stood there for a long time without saying a word, just looking into the distance.

“Remember how we used to climb eskers and hills?” Rika finally said, breaking the silence. Vierra smiled for a moment, and for the first time in a long while without any bitterness.

“Those were good times,” Rika continued without waiting for Vierra’s answer. “When nobody mocked me.”

“You weren’t mocked. At least not after a few of them had been given black eyes,” Vierra said.

“Maybe not out loud, but I knew what they all thought. Red-haired orphan stranger, who can’t hunt and who the old witch took in because she felt pity for her.”

Vierra didn’t answer. She was a bad liar.

“Have I ever asked why you didn’t join in with the other bullies?”

“We were both strangers, in our own way. But when Eera leaves, you’ll be a witch and you won’t be a stranger anymore. Of that I can be happy. Let’s continue.”

Vierra started to walk down from the top of the esker. Behind her Rika sighed deeply, but the wind, roaming up in the hilltop, consumed the sound.

Under the slope, an oval lake surrounded by a fair grove opened before the travelers. The sun, moving toward evening, threw its last rays upon the lake’s surface, and the travelers descended rapidly along the slope and toward the shore. The forest was so thick along the shore that they had to work really hard in order to reach the water. Here and there, large mushrooms grew in the forest like red-white bobbles.

“Snake mushrooms,” Rika stated and tried her best to avoid the branches which Vierra, who walked before her, bent and released toward her without meaning to.

“Didn’t you eat them at one time? I remember never seeing Eera so angry.”

“I did, but I don’t want to remember that.”

“Snake mushroom, the mushroom of the witch. You must have eaten them many times after that.”

“Well, I have of course.”

Vierra disappeared into an especially strong thicket. From there, however, she hissed a warning to the woman following her. Rika crouched down into the bushes and tried to see what had caused this change in her companion’s behavior.

Before them the beach opened up. The surrounding thicket had been chopped down and long, straight wooden poles were lying on the ground. They had apparently been used as support beams for a lean-to. Neither the hut skins nor the dwellers were anywhere to be seen, but here and there on the ground were cutlery and other goods, left behind for some reason when the camp was abandoned.

The reason for Vierra’s warning became obvious when Rika saw a large number of ducks walking around in the glade and swimming in the lake, near the shore. Vierra had already armed her bow and approached them slowly, sneaking from one shadow to another and looking for a position to shoot from.

The bow sang, and the arrow it had sent impaled an unsuspecting bird. The others rose to their wings in a blink of an eye, and the calm beach turned into a flapping chaos of birds. Vierra’s bow spoke again, and a bird that had already taken off spiraled slowly down to the ground, a wing pierced by an arrow. Vierra dashed after it and soon returned, both ducks dangling from her hand.