The Hunter's Mark Pt. 01

"Hold on!" cried Jens. He was looking at his little brother but talking to himself too.

The raft tossed on the whitewater, rope sinews groaning and ready to tear. Fyelltarer, the river god, had raised the river to a wrathful torrent, and now he was desperate to dash Jens and Eric against a rock, to grind their bones into river pebbles and churn their blood into the foam.

Jens could not run faster than this river. He was not stronger, and it did not fear his twin tomahawks. Fyelltarer laughed at all his talents. But his sister had carved out this raft and tied the knots that held it together, and she was an unmatched crafter of rope and timber.

But she was not here. Jens would never see her again, or his mother or father or any of them except Eric. In the back of his mind, he knew his and Eric's lives were over. But panic left no room for tears. Now, he was aware only of two things: His fingers latched around the ropes, fibers biting into the skin and flesh; and Eric, holding on next to him, skinny child-arms trembling. Jens watched him for signs that his grip was weakening, ready to reach out and snatch him if it broke. Jens himself could probably not hold on one-handed, but he was determined that Fyelltarer would not swallow up Eric without overcoming the both of them.

A rock waited for them ahead, a tall, black thing shaped like a great, brutal hunting knife, and Jens willed their raft to miss it one way or the other. They careened straight at it, but Jens almost got his wish, because a jet of surf shoved against the bottom of the raft, knocking them back and up, and Jens' chin cracked into one of the boards of the raft. Pain blinded him for a moment, and in that moment, the stone knife sundered that board and split the raft between his hands.

The raft reared up and seemed to hang that way. Jens got his vision back and saw little dots of water floating through the air, unbelievably slow. The river, too, seemed to have slowed, as had the raft and even gravity itself-- everything except him.

In this odd, peaceful moment, it occurred to him that, if they hadn't been slowed by the buffeting surf, that knife-stone would have split his jaw, not just his raft.

That brought his thoughts back to the raft. It was quickly turning into two rafts, with Eric on the left one. Jens turned his left hand sideways to better hold the halves together. He satisfied himself that Eric still had a good grip, looked ahead and steeled himself for the next fall.

The peaceful moment ended, and the water crashed into them once again. Jens felt a twinge in the front of his chest as he strained to keep the raft from separating. One half jerked up, the other dipped, and Jens let go of his half, latched himself to Eric's and felt his side dunk into the water. It tingled on his skin. A moment later, he wriggled back on top, put an arm around Eric and settled on the rough wood.

Another stretch of rapids shook him, but Jens felt no further strain in his muscles. He smiled the mad, disbelieving smile of the saved. Fyelltarer's wrath was burning itself out.

As the river began to flow deeper, slower, a chilly sensation pricked his fingertips. Then his toes, his ears and all the other tips of his body felt a prickling ache, and soon cold was sinking its teeth deep into him. Eric said nothing, but he did not have to. Jens could feel him shivering. Fyelltarer may have given up on killing them, but now the cold was stepping up to try it. Jens breathed fast. The cold was death's best friend. Some of the strongest men in the world had died to it, and Jens and Eric would join them if they did not get a fire soon.

They were lucky. Father Winter had retired months ago, and the snow had melted off the pine needles and shrank into the mud. It hid in piles in the shade and huddled in lines of ice on the riverbanks. If this had been midwinter, they would have been frozen hard by now.

Once they struggled ashore, Jens began gathering twigs and sticks. Eric started a little fire, and Jens threw on wood until it grew into a blaze.

They sat by it, still as the dead, and waited as the life came back to their white fingers one hair-breadth at a time.

"Jens?" said Eric. "What about Uncle Stalhi?"

"No, no, no, Eric, don't think about that."

"But what if he sees this? He might see the smoke."

"That river gave us a good head start."

Eric did not look satisfied.

"He'll freeze if he tries what we did." Jens was still not sure that they, themselves, would not freeze. The fire warred against the soggy chill on their skin, and as the sun sank low, he was not sure which would win.

But hours passed, and they did not die. Eventually, Jens was forced to admit that he was less cold than he had been. With work, they could keep the fire alive and last the night.

Then something moved, deep in the forest beyond the riverside. He squinted and saw a black, furry shape. He hoped it was a goblin wearing a skin. The little green savages had only just, in the last ten years, learned how to survive in the cold far south, and they were inept, hated by the spirits and ignorant of the land and the threats that waited there. Frequently, they became food for bears.

That made Jens realize it might be a bear. He had seen a dead bear, once, and it was the exact color of that thing in the forest. But wasn't that thing a little too small?

Whatever it was, it was getting closer. Jens stood up, feeling a little draft on his legs as they were deprived of the cover of his cloak. He reached for his tomahawks, and his right hand grasped only air. He looked down and saw his empty belt loop staring dumbly up at him. Must have been lost on the river. In hindsight, he was lucky he hadn't lost both.

So it was just the one. Jens didn't know much about bears, but he knew that to kill one, a spear was what you really wanted. Hopefully his tomahawk would do.

He crept up to a boulder that was marbled with frost and blue with lichen. A slight breeze brushed past him, making him shiver. He edged toward one side and nearly tripped over a frosty sapling that hadn't been there before. On second look, the sapling was Eric, swathed in his own battered cloak. He was not a commanding sight, gangly and still wet, clutching the shoddy knife he had made. He looked like the kind of fish you'd throw back into the lake because it wasn't worth cooking. Jens knew that he himself didn't look much better in his river-mauled clothes, still stuck with a few errant shards of ice, his skin covered in scrapes he barely felt. He did not tell Eric to go back to the fire. Instead, they shared a single, understanding nod, and Eric waited there while Jens peeked around the boulder.

The bear was small indeed, and it had a face. Pale, beardless, deep-lined and white-haired, it was not a bear at all. It was a woman. She was bent but smiling, underdressed for the cold but her skin still flush, and even though she looked older than his mother, she wore no marriage pendant. Strange though she was, Jens relaxed. He liked women. They never seemed to get angry with him. The woman shuffled toward the fire as if it was hers, and Jens presented himself.

The woman did not blink. She faced him as if she knew him, as if they had agreed to meet here and he was ever so slightly late.

"Stranger," he said, "I am of Nyintso's Hearth." which was not quite honest, because he was never welcome back in his village again. "What is your hearth?"

"My home is Nomeska's Hut."

"Pardon my ignorance, grandmother, but I have never heard of that place."

She smiled a little at Jens' correct use of the honorific. Then her smile lingered uncomfortably. "Not many have. I am Nomeska." She looked at the fire. "May I sit? I have venison, and there's plenty to share."

Venison! Jens felt his hunger, sharp and sudden, and immediately he said, "Eric, come out from there. She's a guest."

They ate by the fire, and by eating together, they became as kin by ancient law. The same day they had been shorn from their family, Jens and Eric were starting a new one.

"You want to go north," said Nomeska, without preamble. "You won't like the heat, but no one who knows you will ever find you there."

"We never told you we were running from anything," said Eric.

Jens squinted with thought. That was a good point. Then something else occurred to him. "How do you know what it's like up north?"

"I have been there," she said patiently.

That explanation seemed wrong somehow, but Jens could not name the reason why.

"You will find a fresh start up there," she went on, "but also dangers aplenty, perhaps even more than here. You will have to watch out for your fool of a brother."

"He is no fool," said Jens coldly.

She smiled jaggedly at him. "I wasn't talking to you. But here is something for you, big one..." She shook her head. "So young and yet so big. I see you, later. I see you perched like a bird on slats of wood on a cold, cold night, under the moon and the stars, and I see you staring into the face of your worst enemy."

Jens chewed his moustache. "Do I beat him?"

Her grin deepened. "No."

Jens decided he didn't like her. But she had shared a meal with them, and taken them both as ancient-law sons, and that deserved gratitude. So he did not complain as they built camp together as best they could, then slept.

When they awoke, Jens started packing their things, but stopped when he noticed Eric giving him a strange look. "What is it?" he asked.

"Where is Nomeska?"

Jens blinked. She was nowhere. Her cot was missing-- all her things were missing-- and the bare ground was too tough to have footprints that might show where she may have gone.

"Are we going north?" asked Eric. "Like she said?"

"A spirit," Jens thought out loud. "She was a spirit, come to help us along."

"What if she wanted to trick us?"

"Think of the day we had yesterday. For how much it hurt, the spirits came through for us. We got as lucky as we needed to. We survived."

"If they want us to live, why do I hurt so much?"

Jens frowned. "I don't know. But we're going north."