CHAPTER EIGHTEEN:

pRIDE

 

            Tyree took Shuyah to the eagle mountains. It was the place that had been shown to Tyree by his grandfather when Tyree was twelve. Grandfather and Tyree were bear hunting in the twisted forest when Grandfather became alert. He read the wind and told the boy to follow him quickly. Leading two empty pack ponies, the two Kodiak rode away from the twisted forest. The Logalla war party found their tracks and began to follow. Grandfather knew this, and led young Tyree two days’ ride to the eagle mountains. The way became steep and rocky. Grandfather jumped from his pony to a patch of barren rock and ordered the boy to continue on with the ponies. Tyree went two views, but could not permit his grandfather to face the Logalla alone. He left all the ponies but the one he rode in a stand of pines and circled back down the mountain to Grandfather’s location. Young Tyree dismounted and gained a ridge on foot. He looked down upon the ambush that his grandfather had set.

            One Logalla was already dead, lying on his back with one of Grandfather’s armor-piercing brave iron-tipped arrows stuck in his neck. Six mounted Logalla closed in. The first two were felled by an arrow each and tumbled from their horses dead. Tyree could see his grandfather on foot, moving among the boulders that seemed to jut up from the snow expressly to guard the old Kodiak from the flurry of arrows sent at him by the Logalla. Grandfather returned arrow for arrow, but the Logalla dismounted. On foot, they made poor targets among the rocks. Tyree was counting Grandfather’s arrows. Young Tyree knew the old man’s quiver held fifteen, and he was out.

            The four remaining Logalla split into twos and circled Grandfather from two sides. One rose to shoot an arrow at the Kodiak elder who unleashed his snow star at the same instant. The arrow missed, the snow star didn’t. The last three attacked with Logalla war cries. Grandfather parried the sword of the first and cleanly sliced off his head. With ringing sword play, the other two drove Grandfather back until he was trapped against a cliff face. They were about to dispatch him when young Tyree’s arrow severed one Logalla’s spine. The other was so stunned, he hesitated, looked to his fallen comrade, and found Grandfather’s blade imbedded in his heart.

            Young Tyree rushed down from the ridge from which he’d fired his arrow and hugged his panting old grandfather with more appreciation than ever before.

            “You disobeyed me, boy,” Grandfather said taking gasps of air into ancient lungs. “But you are forgiven, for you have killed your first enemy warrior,” he added with great pride.

            Grandfather then rode double on Tyree’s snow pony until they recovered their other ponies in the stand of pines.

            “The Logalla war party will be missed,” Grandfather said. “Others will follow. We cannot lead them back to our clan, so we must hide until it snows.”

            Grandfather led Tyree around the mountain laterally to an area of barren rocky ground swept clean of snow by the wind. Here, the ponies left no tracks for the Logalla to follow. Still they went a circuitous route which ultimately led them to a stream. They took their ponies into the stream to further disguise their way and followed it up into the lofty mountains where the eagles lived. The stream led them to the waterfall that fell between the hidden snow covered cliffs. Icicles as big as trees hung beside the falls. The old Kodiak and his grandson camped secure there beside the crystalline lake the waterfall made, the same lake that fed the stream that hid their path up into the mountains.

            It was on the third day, while looking for firewood among the wind bent little pine trees on the mountain, that Tyree found the wounded snow eagle. He took it back to their camp and he and Grandfather removed the Logalla arrow that had lodged crosswise through its breast. Grandfather showed Tyree how to cut a notch in the arrow shaft before snapping it in half, then pulling the rest of the shaft through. It hadn’t damaged anything vital, but the bird was weak having been unable to hunt. They fed it the raw meat of the brush hens and rabbits they found on the mountain. These were plentiful and another reason why the eagles made these mountains their domain. Two days later a blizzard came, and Grandfather concluded that they could return to their clan. Snowfall covering their tracks as they went, they took with them the injured snow eagle. It became Tyree’s hunting partner, which he named Wingswift.

            Tyree kept this story from Shuyah until after they’d arrived in the bountiful little valley hidden between the mountains. He enjoyed her surprise and delighted laugh when Wingswift flew down to land upon Tyree’s shoulder. Tyree and Shuyah put up their hut there beside the crystalline lake. Grandfather had assured Tyree that the eagle mountains were never consumed by the thaw, that the eagles and plentiful game living there never left when the thaw came. Instead, they enjoyed the thaw’s warmth. There Shuyah and Tyree made their life together. It was in the sunny days of the next thaw that their baby was born—a boy they named Valaar, after Tyree’s honored grandfather.

            Wingswift had fathered a nest of three eaglets in the spring about the same time Shuyah gave birth to Tyree’s child. The eagle had heard Shuyah’s cries of childbirth, but something told the bird it was a natural occurrence for the humans he had grown to respect.

            Valaar grew to be a strapping toddler. Winter came again and it was time to wean little Valaar from his mother’s milk. Shuyah went to Tyree with a need.

            “The child will want goat’s milk,” she said. “How can we accomplish this?”

            “Leave it to me,” Tyree smiled, pleased to be of any service to his beautiful wife and child.

            The next dawn, Tyree took his most trusted pony from the small herd, which now included two new foals. He ventured down the mountain riding two days to the twisted forest. There he stalked the Logalla, awaiting his opportunity to acquire a goat that would provide the milk they needed. The herds of the Logalla grazed under limited security just outside the twisted forest where bushes and plants grew up through the snow. The clan itself was protected by the bulk of their army deep within the forest. In the night, Tyree slithered across the snow and into the Logalla’s goat herd. He looped a short leader over the neck of a fat female with a healthy kid and led her back to his hidden little camp in the forest. As he knew it would, her kid followed.

            It was during that same night, when Tyree was camped far away in the twisted forest, that the wolves came to the eagle mountains. Attracted by the small pony herd, they came in the night. The ponies shuffled, snorted and brayed loudly as the wolves drew near. Shuyah awoke. She knew that to lose the ponies would cause great hardship. Besides, she had grown to appreciate the snow ponies’ bravery and loyalty as much as any Kodiak did. She left Valaar asleep and ventured forth from their hut with her bow and a quiver of arrows in hand. To her quiver she added several fire arrows she and Tyree had made for just such an occasion.

            Outside the hut, Shuyah hurriedly placed many logs on the fire and lit one of the fire arrows. She crunched through the snow down to the clearing amid the stunted pines where the ponies had backed themselves into a circle, each facing outward to defend the foals at their center against the shadowy circling wolf pack. Shuyah was astounded to see her big temperamental stallion joined in the snow ponies’ defense.

            There was no moon, but starlight allowed Shuyah to glimpse the fleeting forms of the wolves against the snow. Seeing the flaming arrow Shuyah carried, the wolves stopped in their tracks staring at her. Shuyah lit a second fire arrow from the first then fired the first at the wolves. They scattered, spooked by the fire that was suddenly hurled among them. The flaming arrow was snuffed out when it hit the snow, so the wolves melted away only briefly. Soon they were back, stalking ever closer to the nervous, defiant snow ponies. One wolf even hesitantly sniffed at the extinguished fire arrow in the snow. Shuyah fired another. Not only was the result the same, but the wolves became bolder, returning sooner. Shuyah put her next fire arrow dead center in an old leafless tree which stood alone at one edge of the clearing. The gnarled old tree began to burn. Shuyah’s next arrow set an old stump afire on the opposite side of the clearing. Her strategy was to encircle the ponies with flaming pyres that might keep the wolves at bay. Unlike most horses, snow ponies had no fear of fire. Still, they snorted and whinnied each time they glimpsed a wolf, for these wolves were huge primal predators of a different time.

            Valaar was awakened by the racket. He had barely learned to walk, but was able to toddle from the hut desperately looking for his mother. Nothing is more alone than a baby without a parent close by. Valaar paused to watch the crackling campfire before the hut, then he crawled through the snow crying quietly—but not quietly enough. The baby was heard by the wolf pack’s leader.

            The big grey monster moved in and found the child neck deep in the drifts and easy prey. The big wolf leaped twice over the snow, landing before the startled boy. The wolf snarled. The baby boy, unfamiliar with animals of this sort, just blinked at it in wonder. The wolf lowered its head for the attack and drew back on its haunches to launch itself in for the kill.

            Then came a high-pitched screech and something fluttered before the wolf’s eyes in the dark! A screaming banshee beat upon the wolf’s head. Razor sharp claws ripped at its eyes! The wolf recoiled, howled in pain, and yipped in fear as it raced away. The deadly attacker vanished again into the night. With mournful howls, the wolf pack leader went down the mountain, away from this haunting realm. The rest of the pack followed, looking back in fear lest they be next.

            Shuyah was worried. The ruckus had come from near her camp. She ran toward it as fast as the drifts would allow and came upon wolf tracks. Flecks of blood glistened on the disrupted snow. She heard her baby coo. A few steps further on Valaar sat giggling happily at the sight of his mother. Shuyah scooped the child up in her arms. There was something in the boy’s hand. It was an eagle feather.

            Two days later, Tyree returned from the twisted forest. Valaar had his milk, and the goat kid became his pet. They had to keep close watch on the baby goat for though its mother was of a size too large to be eagle prey, the baby goat was small enough. Shuyah couldn’t be certain, but she credited Wingswift with saving her child. Tyree said it was true, and whistled to call down his hunting bird. There was a long moment of looking upward at the mountains, then from high on the cliffs Wingswift took flight. Tyree could see instantly the empty space where the tail feather had been. Wingswift circled lazily awhile, then beat its wings and swooped down to land on Tyree’s forearm. Though Tyree’s forearm was armored, Wingswift turned its deadly talons tenderly so as not to harm its savior.

            Winter turned to thaw a second time in Valaar’s life and his pet goat made it to adolescence without becoming a meal for the eagles. As the goatling grew, so did Tyree’s son, and he was soon of an age to learn to ride.

            One of the foals, now a two-year-old as well, became Valaar’s mount. The boy took to the saddle as his father had, and was taught the ways of the snow rider as Tyree had been taught by his grandfather.

            Then came practice with bow and sword and snow star. Sometimes it was from the standing position of the hunt, sometimes from ponyback as during battle. Shuyah did not object to her son learning the way of war, for war was the way of life upon the snow.

            Winter came and went again. Tyree and Shuyah took the boy to the sea to watch the beginnings of the thaw. It was a danger one could not adequately explain with words. The boy was awed and frightened by the crackling crevasses and plummeting tonnage of ice as the thaw consumed the land. When they returned to the eagle mountains, little Valaar even had nightmares about the thaw for several months, but that was all right. All who lived upon the snow held this dread of the terrible thaw. It was healthy to hold the thaw in the highest regard.

            Tyree and Shuyah took Valaar on his first hunt in the winter of his third year. Tyree had taught the boy how to stalk downwind and how to walk silently on the snow. Valaar would never be as adept as was Tyree, but Tyree did not push him nor cause him consternation. The boy was half Tranca and many of the Kodiak’s abilities were not ingrained in him. Still, the boy learned to hear a twig snap from far away, to smell what lie ahead, to see nearly one view with clarity. Being half Kodiak would make Valaar a better warrior than most upon the snow. Most important of all, the boy was learning well how to read the wind.

            After a few failed attempts, Valaar’s arrow found a big snowshoe rabbit. Tyree showed his son how to gut and skin the rabbit. Shuyah showed him how to cook it over the fire, seasoning it with ground up pine nuts and wild peppercorn plentiful on the eagle mountains.

            That night the boy swelled with pride as his mother and father complimented him on the taste and tenderness of his first kill. Tyree was proud of his son. It was a feeling he never anticipated, but one that filled him with joy. Tyree was proud of Shuyah, too. She didn’t long for her former catered life as a princess, but took up with relish the hard work of wife and mother. She was a good hunter and had proved herself to be not only a great warrior, but a shrewd military strategist. Shuyah of the Tranca was once a leader of her people, but those days were spent, or so she thought.

            That same year, as the Tranca began their thaw migration, Rolak’s point legion found itself facing a huge Logalla army that sought to block the Tranca’s way north. It had been a bad four years for the Tranca. Grumbling beset the warriors who found it hard to follow and obey the temperamental Rolak. The Logalla had become bolder. Several defeats at the hands of the Logalla were charged to Rolak’s ineptitude. Without Tyree’s and his sister’s guidance he was outmaneuvered by the Logalla and, in a series of battles, lost most of the forest territory long held by the Tranca. But of all these, the thing that weighed most heavily upon Rolak was his loss of the rukani to Tyree. It had been bad enough to lose, but to be spared by the Kodiak put Rolak into such a state of mental anguish, he could not sleep, did not eat well, and partook constantly of the Tranca drink called gruda. Rolak even lost interest in the following of women he’d acquired. Koleefus saw this degradation overwhelm the Tranca leader. There was little she could do. She knew it was time for transition.

            Rolak and his commanders looked at the Logalla horde blocking their path.

            “They really seek to stop us this time,” Rolak’s left flank commander worried.

            “In a few days they will have us trapped against the thaw!” the right flank commander shouted above the wind.

            The commanders asked Rolak what they should do. Rolak had no answer but the one he had considered privately for some time. The confrontation with the Logalla gave Rolak the opportunity to act upon it.

            “Stay here,” Rolak ordered, and then he charged the Logalla horde—alone.

            In Rolak’s mind this act would restore his reputation for bravery, but it only embellished his reputation for bitterness and foolhardiness. Five died under Rolak’s blade before the Logalla cut him down. Rolak met the death that he believed he should have found many thaws ago in his rukani defeat at the hands of Tyree.

            Koleefus foresaw this event and had already made her way on horseback to the eagle mountains where her mystical senses had somehow located Tyree and Shuyah. There, Koleefus found the lovers and their young son. She told them of Rolak’s death and firmly stated it was time for Shuyah to return to the Tranca and to lead as her father had.

            “They will not accept me back,” Shuyah predicted through her grief at her brother’s death, “for Tyree and I are one, and a Kodiak as their queen’s consort will not allow their allegiance.”

            “This is another reason I have come,” Koleefus explained, “to set forth our ceremony of marriage between you and Tyree. This will make him Tranca.”

            “Will they believe?” Shuyah asked.

            “Yes,” the old woman said, “for I will tell them so.”

            Wingswift looked down from his perch high on the cliff befuddled as much as an eagle could be by the goings on among the humans below. The sleek hunting bird watched the strangely dressed witch woman perform the Tranca marriage ceremony down in the tiny valley between the mountains.

            With a sharpened bone spur hidden in her glove the witch woman made a small puncture in the thumbs of both Shuyah and Tyree. She made them hold these tiny wounds together so their blood intermingled. She then chanted before them all the rights and rituals of Tranca marriage. These incantations spoke of love and honor and loyalty and respect, virtues already held in the greatest possible measure by the newlyweds.

 

LOOK FOR CHAPTER 19: “LEADERS”

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