CHAPTER Twenty:

TREACHERY

 

            Golanka’s large hut was one of many in which the alliance and Tyree’s return to good standing among the Kodiak were celebrated. Not all were convinced of the alliance’s benefit, but the majority of Kodiak embraced it.

            Even Golanka who, over the last several thaws had softened his stance against the alliance, now saw its advantages. Many ambushes by the Logalla had turned his hate toward them, and away from the Tranca. Due to Tyree’s influence, Tranca attacks had become nil. It was Chabo’s mesmerized deceit that led to the setbacks, and while Golanka suspected treachery, Chabo was not his focus. It was Konka and Drinda who bore suspicions about Chabo, for they were close to him as members of his unit.

            Tyree and Shuyah were invited to the celebration in Golanka’s hut, as were Drinda and Konka. Konka and Drinda had married in Tyree’s absence and Drinda had given birth to twins, a girl and a boy, three years old. Konka, too, had softened in his hate of the Tranca, but purely as a favor to Tyree. Konka’s musical relatives entertained and they all feasted on lamb and caribou in frost onion gravy, brown winter rice, and snow cabbage.

            Three days later, Tyree and Shuyah left on their four day trek to the Tranca encampment in the northeast. There, they would confirm the alliance and begin training for the defeat of the Logalla. Alerted by Chabo, the Logalla lie in wait half way between the Kodiak and Tranca camps. It was a desolate stretch with mountains to the north blocking any route of escape in that direction. The Logalla positioned themselves downwind. Tyree could not detect their presence.

            Tyree knew that traveling with the wind at his back held peril, so he was very careful. He repeatedly left Shuyah and the pack ponies behind and scouted ahead. Something in his acute senses put him on edge, made him more cautious than usual, and he was always cautious. He knew that the word of the alliance that he and Shuyah carried could be the most important duty his warrior life had placed upon his shoulders. Tyree suddenly stopped in his tracks in the snow. A flock of brush hens rose from a large clump of tundra bushes a distant view ahead. Tyree circled to come up on the other side of the expanse of brush which was tall enough to conceal men on horseback. This would be the ideal place for a trap. As soon as he placed himself downwind of the cover, he smelled them: many men and horses. His nostrils detected the bear grease that told him they were Logalla. He read the wind and felt their weapons. Such a trap could be happenstance. Somehow, Tyree suspected it was more.

            Tyree circled back to Shuyah and they sought to circumvent the trap. But a Logalla lookout saw them and brought the attacking force to Tyree and Shuyah’s trail. The Logalla followed their tracks in the snow. Tyree maneuvered downwind of the Logalla. Tyree read the wind and felt the pursuit. They put their ponies into a gallop and headed for the mountains. Once in the foothills, they let the pack ponies go to deceive the pursuers, then Tyree told Shuyah to ride up into the mountains and he placed the hoof prints of his snow pony into the exact prints left behind by Shuyah’s horse. But this did not deceive the Logalla for long. They’d seen this Kodiak trickery before. They were so many in number they were able to track down the decoys and still continue on Tyree’s trail with a major force. Tyree sensed this and rode up to Shuyah to take her aboard his pony, letting hers leave another false trail in the snow. On one exhausted snow pony they took in the steepness of the mountain and found an ice cave which they entered. Tyree had spoken on the wind, but knew his words were not carried in the proper direction. They had kept with them all their arrows and decided to make a stand there at the entrance to the cave. Tyree sent his snow pony on to leave another false trail, whispering in its ear of the necessity to run long and far.

            “Run ‘til it breaks your heart,” Tyree told his mount, knowing that was exactly what any snow pony would do.

            But the Logalla were not fooled. They sent a unit on after the pony, but most of their number dismounted and fanned out on the mountainside exploring every sign and possible hiding place. Finally, they found the ice cave.

            “The Logalla will worry that I have spoken on the wind to my Kodiak brothers,” Tyree told Shuyah.

            “But you have been unable to do so, have you?” she said, wanting to face the peril at his side without the benefit of false hope.

            The first two Logalla fell with arrows in their exposed necks. The next two fell as well. The Logalla came in a multitude, and Tyree and Shuyah cut them down one after another, making all but two or three arrows count. Still, they were soon down to their last two arrows. Then, the assault mysteriously stopped, with twenty four dead Logalla lying about before the ice cave’s entrance.

            Then they heard it: the vast rumbling of an avalanche! Tons of snow began to fall before the entrance. The ice cave was sealed in an instant, and pure darkness prevailed. Tyree lit a tallow candle and set it upon a rock. There was no fuel for a fire, no way to call for help upon the wind. They would freeze to death in short order.

            “We are finished,” Shuyah sighed in the darkness, “our life together will end together.”

            Outside the cave, The Scar looked on with pleasure at the avalanche his men had caused.

            “Fitting we use a Kodiak trick once used on us. They will die, and the alliance will die with them,” he smiled, and then he led his men away to celebrate their victory.

            Chabo had returned to the Kodiak encampment long before the events at the ice cave had taken place. He found Golanka waiting at the outskirts.

            “So, my commander greets one of his lowly soldier’s return from a hunt,” Chabo nervously smiled.

            “Your luck was not good,” Golanka smiled back, “for you seem to have taken no game.”

            “None came before my arrows,” Chabo returned.

            Then both men heard the wind. It told of Chabo’s deceit and his visit to the Logalla scouts. It was Konka and Drinda speaking on the wind, telling Golanka of Chabo’s treachery, having followed him after they and Golanka discussed Chabo’s strange behavior.

            Chabo turned and saw his two unit members approaching on horseback half a view to his rear. Chabo hung his head and offered no resistance as Golanka raised his blade and spilled Chabo’s life upon the snow.

            Tyree and Shuyah tried to dig out of the ice cave, but the packed snow of the avalanche was so large they had no chance. Their candle went out. They began to fade from fatigue and from the cold, and at last they surrendered. They took each other into their arms, resting their backs against the icy walls of the cave, and went to sleep.

 

                        *                       *                       *          

 

            “Grandfather! My pony!” five-year-old Tyree called out as the two trudged on foot leading their snow ponies that had become exhausted struggling against the worst blizzard in Tyree’s young life. Grandfather turned to see that Tyree’s pony had collapsed. Grandfather rushed to his grandson and knelt to feel for the pulse in the downed pony’s neck. It was dead.

            “We will soon join him in Shooshinka!” Tyree wept, the boy’s tears freezing to his face in the bitter cold.

            “How well do you trust your grandfather?” old Valaar shouted above the wind.

            “Completely!” Tyree shouted back.

            “Then you will not cry nor find fear in my leaving you behind,” Grandfather said.

            Tyree was suddenly overwhelmed by fear, but Grandfather reminded him that fear was a killer that could be defeated with the mind.

            They had been on a hunt. While Grandfather predicted and welcomed the blizzard that would cover their tracks, he could not calculate the storm’s ferocity.

            “I put my trust in you, Grandfather,” the young Tyree murmured, hanging his head in shame at the fear that had welled in him, which he now suppressed with his mind.

            “I will come back for you,” Grandfather promised, “and your faith in me will help you to survive. That and your dead pony,” he added.

            With that, old Valaar drew his sword and gutted open the dead snow pony. It’s intestines spilled bloody upon the snow, steam rising from their warmth. Grandfather then scooped the boy up into his arms and shoved him feet first into the gaping wound in the pony’s belly. The warmth immediately took away the chill of the storm. It was a horrible, distasteful place for a five-year-old to be, but Tyree’s faith in his grandfather steeled him against the revulsion. Grandfather then patted the boy on the head, shoved him further into the morass, and covered it all with snow. Inside the dead pony, Tyree knew his grandfather was leaving him behind. But the warmth joined with the boy’s exhaustion. In a short while, he fell asleep.

            Young Tyree had no idea how long he slept, and his dreams of the warm days of the thaw gave way to snow and ice. He awoke trembling. The dead pony had lost all its warmth and the boy was freezing to death. He tried to push his way out of the pony’s innards, but the wound was frozen shut. The cold grew more and more intense, then his own warmth began to fade and his blood began to feel stiff and frozen. He was about to pass out when the wound of the dead pony was ripped open wide by the able hands of his old grandfather. Old Valaar pulled the freezing child from inside the pony and carried him through the drifts. The blizzard had stopped, and the boy’s eyes focused on a big fire and two huts that his uncle, Golanka, and a contingent of Kodiak warriors were erecting around it. The boy was taken inside where the warmth of a smaller fire immediately embraced him. Soup and warm goat’s milk were already on the fire. A cup of hot soup, then warm milk, found their way into the trembling boy’s hands. He drank and life returned.

            This experience had done much to instill in the boy the importance of faith in kin and in fellow warrior. It would be a lesson Tyree would remember for the rest of his life. Faith was one thing, but it was his special Kodiak gifts that allowed him to stay alive inside the sealed ice cave where he and Shuyah were now freezing to death. Tyree reduced his body temperature as the hibernators did, his metabolism slowed, as the snow ponies had learned to accomplish with centuries of Kodiak guidance. Still, Tyree had warmth to share, and did so with the wife in his arms.

            Suddenly, light played across the faces of Tyree and Shuyah as a portion of the avalanche blocking the cave entrance was pulled away. Holding a blazing torch, Golanka’s weathered face appeared in the opening and he smiled. Tyree opened his eyes and, though his facial muscles were stiff and awkward from the deathly cold, he smiled back.

 

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