ICE BURIAL: The Oldest Human Murder Mystery (The Mother People Series Book 3) (39 page)

Lief saw the movement and followed cautiously
.
He could feel a
nger emanat
ing
from the man he was watching, and he did not want to get too close. Like his quarry, he hid behind a tree and waited for
another revealing movement.

Hours seemed to pass
. Lief’s
head kept sinking onto his chest. It seemed to
him
that he had not slept in days. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw
Zena
hug Mara and then return wearily to their sleeping place.

Too
tired
to watch any longer, Lief was about to join her when he saw another
movement
, so slight he wondered if he had imagined it. He heard a soft thump then, and realized it had probably been an owl landing on a rabbit or other small animal. He had
heard
an owl
hooting earlier. He watched a little longer and then gave up. I
n
the morning, he would look for footprints.

Weary now almost beyond endurance, he
checked on the water
again and then
lay down beside
Zena
.
For a long time he
lay there restlessly,
unable to sleep despite
his
ex
h
austion
, trying to think who the man in the trees could be.

Finally he lapsed into a fitful doze. In it he saw pictures of a stranger firing arrows at them from the trees. He sat bolt upright. Of course, that was who their mysterious watcher must be, the man who had shot arrows at them when they left one of the villages, the man who traveled with Korg and the Leader but was never seen. If that was so, did he
know
that
Korg and the Leader
were dead?
How would he react if he did
know
?

Lief
’s lips tightened.
With
even greater
anger. He was sure of it.

Zena
half rose from their sleeping place and regarded him anxiously.

Lief gave her a comforting smile.
“
It was only a dream,
”
he said
,
u
nwilling to
upset
her with
such vague fears just when she was finally at peace.
She would only worry and there was nothing
to be done
until
he
found out more about the mysterious watcher. Right now, all
he had was questions. Besides, he was p
robably letting his imagination run away with him
,
as
Zena
always accused herself of doing.
After all, if the man
was
real,
as he thought,
why
was he the only person who had seen him, and why had only
one group of villagers ever spoken of him?

Gurd
watched
him lie down again and felt triumph. He had fooled the man who had once seen him, first by standing still and then by making
the owl sound. He too had heard
an owl
hooting,
so he had
hooted again and then
thrown down a clump of moss, to sound like the owl striking its prey
. It h
ad worked well.

He waited patiently until he was certain
the man and
all
the
other
people in the clearing were asleep
again
;
then he slid noiselessly between the trees
and made his way west, toward the village where the
Korg had made him take the
girl
.

He frowned. To get t
o that village
he must cross the ravine where the ice had fallen. Was it possible? But he must, he decided. Another thought came, and he was suddenly afraid.
Korg and the Leader
must have crossed
the ravine too.
Perhaps these people
’s
words
were
true
and the water had taken them.

Gurd
shook off the fear. Korg and the Leader would have crossed earlier, before the water was so strong
. After such an effort, the Leader would want mead, would go to the secret
supply
Gurd
had hidden for him
among some tall trees on
the hillside across the ravine.
The water had not gone that high; he had seen that the trees were still standing when he had looked down the ravine.

That was where the
Leader must be
,
Gurd
realized,
not in the village where
he had taken
the
girl.
Probably he had drunk the mead and was lying insensible on the
wet ground
a
bove
the water
. Korg
might have found him, but he would have been unable to carry the Leader alone, would have left him
to make his own way
further
up the hill
when he awoke from his stupor
.
Gurd
hurried on.
If that was so, he must find the
Leader
right away
, before the water reached him.

He must
get across the ravine quickly, too
,
Gurd
realized, when he came closer to the water. It
was still rising
.

Apprehension
made him clumsy
and noisy, but
he
ran on
anyway, not caring now if he was seen or heard.
The
racket
made by
falling ice and water
would
drown out all other sounds
anyway
. Down and down he went into the maelstrom below,
uncaring of his safety
, intent only on finding a place where he could
cross the
ravine.
The
Leader
might
be
lying helpless
somewhere
on the opposite hill
,
calling for him
, as he so often did when he had drunk too much mead…

The water almost took him when he made a careless step and slipped.
Gurd
slowed his pace. The Leader needed him, so he
must be more careful. Cautiously he
stepped over
rocks that gleamed with wetness and
ducked
u
nder fallen trees, twisting
their
branches savagely when they were in his way.
And all the time he watched for any sign of the Leader
on the slope above
the water
on the other side
.
On
ly the Leader mattered now. All else
was meaningless.

He
came finally to a place that
slowed
the flooding a little. A
peninsula of land jutted
out into the ravine, making a sharp bend in the stream’s route. Debris
that had been
carried down by the raging torrents and the great hunks of ice
had
been
caught in the bend
.
He
thought briefly of trying to walk across it
,
but the masses of foaming water that
churned over and around the piles of rocks and trees and muddy earth
made that
impossible.

Gurd
sat down to rest while he thought what to do. He must get
across the water
somehow. But how?

Abruptly,
h
e
remembered
a
marshy
place
not far from here where
the ravine ended. All the
water
and debris from the high peaks
would
surge into
the marshy area and
eventually spread out, making it shallow
.
If he could
keep going down
on this side of the water, he might be able to
go a
cross at
that place
and then
search the
hills on the
other side.
The marsh
would be wet
,
but the water would not be so deep and would
not
move
so fast
there.

Slowly, he made his way
down
until he reached
the marshes
, though they did not look like marshes any more
. They were so covered with the trees and branches and everything else that had been
washed down by the floods that
he
could not see the grasses that had once flourished there.
Torrents of w
ater
from above
still poured into the area, but it
had not yet risen above the
debris.
Gurd
looked at the tangle of trees and branches and stones for a long time
.
If he was careful,
very careful,
he might be able to walk across the
m
.
He could always jump back if he had to.

He stepped cautiously onto a big log and from there to a pile of branches that looked solid.
A
bundle
of
fur
ahead
caught his eye
as he
moved carefully
from one foothold to the next.
A
n animal
, he thought.
It looked like a bear. He had not thought the water
c
ould take a bear but that showed him how powerful it was. He went still more carefully
, lest it
t
ake
him
.
And then he saw it – a white arm sticking up from beneath a tree. A white arm, and then a head that he knew…

Fear slashed through
him
and he almost fell. After it
he felt
a surge of relief
so great he
stumbled again.
Not the Leader.
Korg. So the water had taken Korg.

Gurd
did not stop to examine the body
but crept cautiously ahead,
his scarred face a mask of fear. If Korg was here,
the Leader could be too.
Except the Leader
was stronger, much bigger and stronger
,
he
reassured himself
, would have been able to
fight his way out of the water - u
nless he
was
insensible with mead.
What would happen if he could not walk by himself?
Even if
Korg
had been t
here, he was not strong
enough to
help
the Leader
out of the
terrible deluge
…

M
ore whiteness
ahead
. Panic hit
Gurd
lest it be the Leader. Stumbling now with fear, he tried to
run. The Leader; that was
him -
his head, his shoulder.
But
that was good; his head was out of the water so he could breathe. That meant he could be
alive; surely he was
alive, breathing
.

Except
the face
and
head were deathly white
…
Still,
t
he
Leader
looked that wa
y
sometimes when he was insensible with mead
, only now he was too white
…

Sobbing soundlessly with fear,
Gurd
reached down
with both hands
for
the Leader
and struggled to
haul
him
away from the huge limb that had trapped
him
.
The big body felt cold, clammy.
But he
could not be dead,
he could not. The Leader
could not die…
He would get him out, care for him as he always had and
he would be the Leader again.
He would pull him out, make him breathe and then he would…