CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX:

revenge

 

            The Kodiak warrior encampment was dismantled and they left for the north. There, they would be reunited with their families. Konka and Drinda would be with the children they hadn’t seen in months. The army was mounted by noon and left on their odyssey into the dark and frozen north to wait out the thaw. Tyree went alone in the opposite direction, south, to Verdanta, a pack pony in tow. It would take considerably longer for Shuyah and the Tranca armies to leave for Verdanta. They were a large force with many wounded to tend. Once they did get moving, it would be a slow march.

            Tyree was cutting across the snowfields a day short of Verdanta when the wind came up crisp and strong. It was bringing new storms down from the north. The wind blew at Tyree’s back. It made him uneasy. Kodiak were uncomfortable when the wind carried only what they already knew.

            Two long range Logalla scouts hid in a patch of stunted pine. They’d been posted to warn Boozagloo should the Tranca armies appear. The branches of the pines fluttered in the wind and disguised the Logalla from even Tyree’s eyes. The Logalla watched the Kodiak pass. They dared not move nor even whisper, for they knew well the Kodiak senses. Once Tyree and his tired ponies ambled slowly out of view, the Logalla mounted horses hidden behind a drift and rode at full speed parallel to, but well off, Tyree’s trail. All three were headed for Verdanta.

            Boozagloo and the five thousand Logalla that escaped the trap on the plains were encamped a short distance from Verdanta. They’d come upon stragglers from the Forest Regiment, a force of ten thousand reduced to these few gaunt men and horses staggering across the snow. The stragglers reported that a Tranca army appeared and defeated them. Then one of the stragglers said, “Yes, a Tranca army, but one led by a Kodiak!”

            “Tyree!” Boozagloo growled, clenching a fist.

            From his seduction of the mesmerized Chabo, Boozagloo had learned the name and history of his nemesis. Tyree, the Kodiak who struck the bargain that united the Tranca and Kodiak against the Logalla. The mere thought of him made Boozagloo lust to kill. After he had squeezed all the information he could out of the stragglers, they were executed for cowardice.

            Boozagloo decided that an army of Tranca warriors must have been hidden in Verdanta—hidden among the peasants and farmers. If so, the force left behind had to be inadequate. He prepared to lead his legions into what he had correctly concluded was an under defended Verdanta. But the long range scouts arrived telling of a lone Kodiak approaching from the north.

            “It’s him!” Boozagloo sneered. “Only he would be traveling alone between armies.”

            “There may have been more following him,” one nervous scout said breathless. “We did not wait to see.”

            “Yes, perhaps he scouts for a larger force,” the other scout offered with worry.

            Boozagloo contemplated. He scratched his scraggly beard. “No. He leaves his tired Tranca army behind. He travels with the wind at his back. He invites danger.”

            “He’s emboldened!” one of Boozagloo’s commanders noted. “Protected by the curse of the witch woman!”

            The superstitious Logalla warriors all murmured agreement.

            “Fabrications! Stories invented by our women who gossip around their camp fires. No, there is something in Verdanta he desperately wants, or more likely fears for. With the wind at his back he cannot know we are between him and Verdanta. I killed his parents many migrations ago. Now, I will kill the son!”

            Tyree’s pony trudged across the vast windswept snowfields where no trees or plants of any kind grew, where no game could survive, where no living thing could be sustained. Tyree thought of the welcome warmth of Verdanta as the wind at his back chilled his tired body to its core.

            Suddenly, Tyree smelled them. Logalla. He pulled off his sealskin glove and held his hand into the wind. They were to the west behind him, northwest and southwest, as well. Being upwind he could not read what was before him, but he knew it would be more Logalla. He was encircled. The force of over a thousand closed in. Arrows hissed in from all directions killing both his pack horse and his favorite snow pony. Tyree drew bow and quiver from his dead pony and killed more than a dozen before his arrows ran out. He then took up his shield and drew his sword. The encircling Logalla closed in tighter and tighter. In crisp military fashion, they choked off Tyree’s ability to maneuver.

            Boozagloo appeared.

            “At last, we meet,” Boozagloo called out grinning at Tyree from horseback a good distance away. He was ecstatic at the thought of eliminating his most hated foe.

            In one fluid motion Tyree drew his snow star from under his breastplate and flung it at The Scar’s throat. The Scar whipped his shield up just in time and the snow star buried itself there. He lowered the shield and smiled over it. “I was expecting that,” Boozagloo said, then he shouted, “Take him!”

            Two dozen Logalla fell upon Tyree. Their purpose was to capture him, so he was able to kill at least ten before they could subdue and disarm him. The Logalla removed his armor and staked him down, both hands and feet tied with tight leather straps attached to large iron spikes driven into the ice.

            “Tell us the disposition of the forces at Verdanta,” Boozagloo petitioned.

            Tyree said nothing, so they threw a cask of water on him and let the freezing wind loosen his tongue. Still, Tyree would not speak.

            The Scar then took from his pouch a small vial. When Tyree saw the vial, he knew it must be the Logalla elixir that made men slaves to the Logalla.

            “Hold him,” The Scar ordered, and his men did.

            The Scar removed the little wooden stopper and forced the vile liquid down the Kodiak’s throat. Slowly, Tyree’s mind came under the elixir’s spell. His tongue loosened; his will evaporated. They waited awhile. Then The Scar approached.

            “Who is your master?” the Logalla leader smiled.

            “You are,” Tyree muttered, cowed by the elixir’s spell.

            “What is the disposition of the forces in Verdanta?”

            Through lips out of his control, the drugged Kodiak replied, “A small force of under five hundred.”

            Tyree had opened his son and the Tranca children and elders to the heartless designs of the Logalla!

            Boozagloo knelt to get close to Tyree’s face.

            “I’ve decided not to bury you beneath the ice, Tyree, for that is a sacred custom of the Kodiak. We will instead leave your lifeless corpse upon the snow for the wolves and bears to consume and to carry to the far reaches of the wilderness, there to excrete you in fitting small portions.”

            Tyree had no cognizance of what Boozagloo was saying. He was consumed by one desire: to serve. Boozagloo was irritated by it. The elixir had gotten the information, but it robbed Boozagloo of his opportunity to gloat. “They say the witch woman of the Tranca has charmed your life. Cursed anyone who slays you,” the overlord of the Logalla said at a whisper. “I do not believe in such nonsense, but—why take the chance?”

            Boozagloo stood and looked down over Tyree.

He told his twenty man personal legion to kill Tyree then rode off to rejoin his army outside Verdanta.

            The captain of the twenty left behind approached. He looked first left, then right, nervous, as if the witch woman was watching. He was tall and angular, with the stub of a bone spur protruding from a broken forearm that hadn’t healed properly. He feared the witch woman’s curse, but to disobey the overlord was certain death. The wind whispered eerily as he ventured a seemingly confident smile down upon the defenseless Kodiak.

            “It is fitting, Kodiak, that a Logalla warrior is the last thing you will ever see!”

            The captain raised his sword. Drugged Tyree’s only thought was of how dazzling the sunlight was reflecting off the blade about to kill him. The Logalla captain slashed down with his sword. It struck something invisible a foot from Tyree’s head. The Logalla captain paused perplexed. Then a wound appeared in his throat. He gurgled once then fell over dead. Several other Logalla were suddenly impaled through the heart or throat by invisible swords or by arrows suddenly appearing in their chests and bearing the white feathers of the snow dove. Some terrified Logalla tried to run, but they were cut from their horses by invisible warriors who materialized when the killing was done. Jasika upon his white horse melted out of the air. A dozen Ghost Warriors, men and women, appeared around the fallen Logalla. Jasika walked his horse to Tyree’s side.

            “We have made a habit of rescuing you,” Jasika said, sad consequence evident in his pink albino eyes. “This time the price was too high.”

            Over the next hour, the Ghost Warriors built a fire, boiled their own elixir and easily convinced the bleary-eyed, compliant Tyree to drink fully. In time, the power of the Logalla brew faded and Tyree felt his own will return. The Ghost Warriors gave him hot soup as they had once before when Tyree was wounded and lost in the snowfields.

            “I must go to Verdanta!” were the first words Tyree rasped through ravaged throat. “Will you lend me a horse?”

            “There are many Logalla horses without riders,” Jasika shrugged, “but one warrior, even a Kodiak, against the horde of five thousand will be of little value.”

            “There are five thousand, then,” Tyree said, filing the number away as always. “Will you help me?”

            “We already have,” Jasika said gesturing to the dead Logalla being buried by the Ghost Warriors. “We struck dead these souls against the will of our council. They voted, all of them, to stay uninvolved. To let the Logalla, Kodiak and Tranca kill each other in their war.”

            “And yet you went against your council to help me,” Tyree smiled, happy to know that Jasika had a rebellious streak like the one Tyree often found in himself.

            “We are all free to listen to the wind,” Jasika replied. “The wind told us we had to kill all these Logalla lest a survivor warn The Scar that you, Tyree of the Kodiak, still live. The wind tells us you have a destiny. The wind finds favor in you and in your fight.”

            “So, you can read the wind as do the Kodiak.”

            “We do not know from whence we came. From what clan, what family. I suspect my ancestors purposely expunged our history to make this sparse, yet peaceful, life our own.”

            “The wind told you to save me. To keep The Scar from knowing I’m still alive. Does the wind not tell you to join me in this fight?”

            “The wind blows the opposite way. It tells us that in Verdanta, our ability to hide in the whiteness would be negated. The breaking of our oath of neutrality would be laid bare before all. You must keep the help we’ve already given you a secret,” Jasika added, “lest the legend of the Ghost Warriors become tainted.”

            “You are right, my friend. We all must listen to the wind,” Tyree said as he pulled the black bear skin cloak off the last Logalla being buried. “The wind tells me I must go to Verdanta. There my son is in danger. The wind has told me that the boy’s destiny is more important than my own.”

            Tyree grabbed the reins of an available Logalla battle steed and swung himself up into its familiar saddle with the Logalla cloak across his lap. He turned the horse to face the Ghost Warriors, and found that they, too, had all mounted. They’d somehow put their fire out without a trace, stowed their gear, and removed all evidence of their passing. All this they’d accomplished in the moments Tyree was turned away gathering the Logalla horse.

            Jasika held up one hand, his pale palm held toward Tyree, and then he turned his white horse and rode away. The other Ghost Warriors fell in behind him, and they rode slowly back into the snowfields. Tyree had precious little time, yet he could not help but watch them go. Tyree locked his keen eyesight upon them as if searching for the secret to their magic. Within but a few lazy strides of their horses, the Ghost Warriors vanished into nothingness.

 

LOOK FOR CHAPTER 27: “SANCTUARY”

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