I was chieftain, lover of Felina and a target of jealous hatred of my peers. Tingor and I had spoken only once since the hunt in the eastern vale. It had been after word of mine and Felina’s union.
“Is she part of your victory too?”
“Tingor, please…” I could think of nothing to say. I gazed momentarily at the purple pendant around his neck. “You’ve been made Huntsman now—”
“You think I want to wear this stupid totem given to me second hand? What kind of reward is a rock on a string? No, it seems you got the only prize worth having.”
I could not win. Even after my relinquishing of the Hunstman’s totem, I’d betrayed him with a woman and a power I dare not wield.
The weeks stretched into months and brought with them all the glories and confinements of winter. Twenty and thirty foot snowdrifts buried the camp. We were forced to reside mainly in Ship Hall congregating our warmth. When food stores ran low, it was time to dig out the cellar.
I gave the order: all boys old enough to carry a spear were assigned a shovel. We began late in the morning and by noon had the door excavated. I managed to squeeze in through the narrow opening to our frozen stores. The memory of the howlwoman seemed distant now, somehow lost in the barrens of the season, buried in the snow.
I began to pull forward enough food for several days rationing when I heard the door creak.
Has she come again?
It was not the howlwoman standing at the cellar door this time, but Tingor and two other huntsmen.
“Can you give me a hand?” I asked, pulling a sizable chunk forward. They walked closer, slowly and when within reach, Tingor grabbed my arms and held them firm behind my back.
“Go get him,” he mumbled and the skinnier of the two boys ran out of the cellar. In a moment two pairs of brown boots appeared atop the slope outside the cellar door. They slipped down the crest, sliding to the bottom, nearly on top of one another. Behind the skinny boy, stood another not so thin: Binny.
Tingor snickered in my ear and I could smell his sour breath. I struggled, but he tightened his lock on me.
“Not just yet,” he said. “Binny has something he wants to tell you.”
Binny strode up, the other boy nudging him, then shrinking back. Binny’s face conveyed nothing. Not sadness. Not joy. Nothing.
“Binny,” I said, a laugh verging on panic.
He leaned forward stiffly in his coat and winter gear. Pain shocked me, blossoming from my stomach out into my extremities like a kind of dull electricity.
“Atta boy,” said Tingor. “There’s hope for you yet, fat boy.”
Tingor loosed his hold and I fell like a rag doll. “See you later King Cole.”
They left silently as I lay on the frozen floor, gasping for breath. They had made their statement. Tingor was their leader.
I did not tell Felina. I loved my beautiful wife, but resented her all the same. I wished that Felina had not chosen me.
Storms and cold continued. Firewood diminished, forcing us to move permanently into the Ship Hall berthing.
“Why do they ignore you?” asked Felina one evening as she lay next to me.
“Who?”
“Who do you think?”
“I don’t know,” I snapped back.
“Cole, if you are going to be Chieftain you need to—”
“I’m not Chieftain. I never was. So just forget it.” I sat up.
“Where are you going?”
I began to cry. I felt trapped in all ways. “I don’t want to be Chieftain,” I bawled. “I don’t care about any of it.”
I felt Felina withdraw from me in spirit. I knew I was letting her down. I was letting everyone down.
***
Winter came to its highest pitch at the end of the second month. We braced daily for the screechcats we knew would come. The snows and cold whipped through the forest with frosty duress.
On one such night the watch guard yelped out a single word above the roaring wind and snow: “Screechcats!”
The command echoed through the passageways into the berthing. At once the huntsmen roused and reached for coats and spears. Groggily, clad in wraps, long coats and boots we climbed the ladder up the bulkhead to the hatch leading to the top, outer hull. From there we could spy down on the entire camp. The guard was huddled in a mass of skins and furs, a small fire flickered in the snow, guttering from the blizzard gusts.
“Over there,” he said. “You can see them if you squint.” He pointed to a haze on the perimeter.
I felt the weight of my spear in my hand as my heart lurched. Tingor stood beside me and in that instant it seemed there was no animosity between us. Now was the hunt and nothing more. Friends and hunters again.
We watched for further sign of predators. Ice and wind obscured everything.
“The traps’ll snare ‘em if they come any closer, right?” said Binny.
“If they aren’t frozen solid,” said the guard. “When was the last time they were checked?”
Everyone shrugged.
“Can’t see anything out there,” said Tingor. “We need to go down there.” He looked at me as if to request permission.
I nodded. “Sure.” It seemed a weak sentiment, but in truth I had no idea of the right course of action. “Wait,” I turned to the guard. “Where did you see them?”
He pointed again to a horizon of white and dark. No detail could be extracted from that blurred scene. I wondered how he had even seen them in the first place. “You sure?”
“Sure as gravity.”
I turned to Tingor. “Let’s go down.”
***
Tingor carried the only rifle we had. It housed one last round of ammunition. He’d always been the best shot with the weapon. We’d used it every winter since I could remember and slowly, the stored munitions had been wearing down until at the end of last year, when only one round remained. So far, we’d managed without it this year.
“I hope we don’t have to use it,” I said, pointing to the gun.
“I’ll see.” Tingor tightened his grip on the barrel and walked past me and the others.
The group of huntsmen trailed out of Ship Hall in near single file and met under a deluge of wind-driven snow. The cold was biting even through my woopa-skin coat and the sub-zero air stole the breath from my throat.
“Cole and I will lead,” said Tingor and turned to the wastes.
I felt a part of the tribe again in that single command. In those moments he and I shared a unity of thought: he was the true leader of the tribe. And I didn’t care. Just to be a part of things again, to be a member gave warmth to my cold skin.
We trudged out into the deep, deep snow beyond. The howl of wind and sweep of ice blotted out everything. Soon, the camp structures became faded outlines and I knew we neared its edge.
Tingor stopped.
A sudden silence fell over us, as if we were shrouded in cotton batting. It seemed in those moments that the world had frozen solid with he and I the only animate entities.
“I don’t see anything,” I said meekly. My nerves were catching up with me and I wanted—needed to get back to Ship Hall.
Tingor cocked the rifle, the only sound in the hollow silence.
“Do you even see one?” I asked, casting about and retreating in the same motion. My eyes searched frantically for any would be haven, any place at all to hide should the silhouette of one of those creatures fade into view. I found nothing, only the naked landscape and the silhouette of the hunter.
And then it dawned on me, a trapped thought now freed.
I whirled about and confirmed in a blur of landscape what my mind knew but couldn’t admit. The watch had reported falsely. The others, the hunting party, all had ditched leaving me alone with the only predator out that night: Tingor.
“Wait,” I said, breathlessly against the relentless wind. “Hey!” I shouted out to a trail of footsteps, that even now, snow was erasing. Tingor t
urned to me, rifle slung from one hand to the other, a death-grimace on his lips. I glimpsed then how easily I could be erased. The falling white would blot out all the sins committed here.
Running would solve nothing. My legs couldn’t carry me faster than a bullet. The others, if they remained near at all, had given consent to my removal and would be of no help. The battle, as it had since my spear had taken down that woopa in the forest, waged between Tingor and I.
Tonight the score would be settled in full, one the victor, one the victim.
“Tingor,” I shouted. “You can’t do this. We can work this out.” I knew it for the lie that it was, but said it to buy time.
His scowl grew into a grin. He stepped forward. “You’d like that wouldn’t you, to haggle over our differences, until what? One of us agreed to step down, is that it?”
I did not respond, trying to draw this out and concoct some scheme of deliverance.
“But who would concede, Cole? You, with Felina and your ill won office, or me with my skill and loyal huntsmen? They would die for me, Cole. Fucking die for me. Don’t you see, there can’t be two of us here. Not anymore.”
“Tingor, please, you have to—”
“No!” he shouted, an ice-melting rage. “I’m fucking sick of you taking everything you don’t deserve! I don’t take orders from howlman humpers!” His voice carried strong on the wind.
A sore opened up in my soul, a festering mental lesion. How did he know? Who would he tell? It seemed like a lifetime ago, a world away and yet…and yet here it was, my misdeed brought out again as if it had always been there, just under the surface waiting to suck me down. It was the one thing I had vowed to take with me to my death. And maybe beyond.
“Th-that’s not true.”
“Oh, yes it is!” he laughed hideously. “Oh, it is! I know what you did with her, it, that fucking inhuman thing! In the cellar when you thought no one was looking in on you. And I’m going to tell Felina too, unless…unless you leave. Right now!”
The request was absurd and terrifying. Leaving equated to death of body, but the airing of my deed would mean another kind of demise.
My breath came heavy and I felt for the first time in months the power of anger. All of a sudden I wanted him dead. He’d already undermined me beyond repair. One word of my secret and I would have no place in the colony at all, an outcast at last, even from Felina. I lunged at him, daring him to use his weapon. I heard a gale of laughter and I knew he’d wanted me to fight him all along. An attack, perhaps, one that he might have cause to defend himself against, cause to use a precious bullet.
Our bodies fell together in the heavy snow, arms and legs a fit of tangles. He was laughing and I hated him for it. I raged at him, threw punches and wild kicks and still he managed to find his knees and crack the rifle’s butt end over my head. Bright flashes orbited my vision and I struggled to hold my grip on consciousness.
“Fucking howlman humper!”
He socked me across the face before an attempt at hoisting the gun to his shoulder. The barrel lifted, glinting unwholesome in the light of the triple moons. I sprung headlong from my prone position into his solar plexus and knocked him down, the gun making an outline in the freshly fallen snow. I scrambled to straddle his waist, from where I could gain mobility and access to his face. But Tingor was too strong and instead rolled on top of me, gaining the upper hand.
“You were a friend Cole,” he was saying. “I thought I could trust you…but one of us has to go and it’s not going to be me…Felina will warm my bed too!”
A paw the size of a row boat paddle settled down with a crunch of cartilage on Tingor’s neck. I scarcely knew what happened, tensing as I was for the anticipated blows of Tingor’s fists. His body swept back, a fish on a hook, a blood-filled gurgle bursting from his lips.
I acted instinctively, flailing my limbs about to propel my body back. Other screams tore through the wind as the hidden huntsmen became little more than rabbit meat themselves, unable to obscure their scent from the prowling pride. My vision, attuned with fear and adrenaline, saw the slinking shapes I had only ever seen close-up in dreams.
Ragged fur and gleaming nocturnal eyes driven mad with hunger. Their scent was musk mingled with decay. Their bellies stretched taught between wasted flanks, each rib a separate ridge.
And claws, razor sharp.
I screamed as the leader spotted me, a living morsel. I felt the others near, slowly encroaching. Saliva dripped in glistening strands.
It pounced. A streak of sinew and furry. Something struck and I flew back, landed yards off, in the snow. My chest heaved as I gasped for air. Another beast lunged and I flew again, a swatted mouse, landing harder this time. I wheezed. Snow blinded me.
Jaws opened.
The cat wailed a bleating yowl as a wielded tree limb crushed its skull. The moment bore an unscrupulous finality. Only a lump of twitching fur remained. The others skittered quickly, human quarry in tow, as the club sought out further retribution, squashing another of the pack’s numbers beneath its unforgiving thump.
Blood beat in my eardrums as my mind forced itself to understand the events that unfolded too quickly. Consciousness ebbed as a shape lumbered somewhere in the falling snow, blood dripping from a club that seemed too big to be lifted. It stood over me with its wind strewn hair and animal pelts that flapped like flags, and reached for me.
I lost my grip and fell into the comforting dark of coma. My body recorded the sensation of motion.
***
I dreamt of Felina, of Tingor, of the huntsmen.
I was choking, a stiff, rubbery knob was pressed between my lips. Warm liquid spilt down my chin, from the crooks of my mouth, down my neck, my chest. I coughed, then swallowed, then drank. Salty, gamey, sweet. I gulped it in until I could drink no more and pushed it away. Gasped for air.
Small ones stared down at me. Round eyes all gathered round to see.
Her babies.
Firelight danced against stone walls, against drawings of stoop-backed stick-men with spears hunting beasts with charcoal tusks and I smelled musk and sweat and clay.
Then I returned to dreams, to solace, and to healing.
***
When I woke the shadow of dream clouded my sluggish mind. Light and frost clung to windows. Gone was the firelight and the drawings of wild men, and the eyes of those more curious than me. There were no windows in mine and Felina’s berthing. So where was I? There were no windows in any location of our ad hoc camp save for one: the infirmary.
I tried to sit up.
“Shhss, lay back down. You’re in no shape to do anything like that.”
It was Felina. Her voice matronly and luxuriant. Pain rippled through my nerves and commanded obedience. “You were gone for three days,” I heard her say, before falling again into sleep.
For a long while I drifted somewhere on the rim of things, my body too weak to wake, my mind too curious to forget. At last, I woke to a rumbling stomach and piercing morning light. Felina lay curled on a bed of furs next to mine, her belly showing just a bit.
I turned to the only window that had survived the ancient crash. Delicate rosettes of ice and frost decorated the edges, leaving the center fully transparent to the world out there.
I knew that Tingor was gone and the others too.
Was I the only hunstman now?
The snows had stopped and from my window to the horizon lay a frozen, wind-driven sea of white.
But more: a shape trudged somewhere in the distance, pacing on the perimeter, not beyond my naked vision. As I watched, the figure’s head drew back. A latent yawp drifted across the terrain.
“She saved you.” Felina sat up now, blanket gathered around her shoulders. “And has stood guard ever since she brought you back.”
I swallowed. “She?”
“She brought you back with this.” Felina parted the folds of her wrap to reveal the tops of her white breasts and the purple pen
dant that hung between them.
“Tingor’s pendant, but…”
Felina’s smile was soft. She stood up from her blanket, a resplendent form of feminine nudity. On hands and knees she crept onto my bed and wrapped her body around mine.
“Your pendant, silly.”
We both gazed at the vigilant silhouette in the offing.
“She loves you.”
I let an uneasy moment pass.
“Felina, I need to tell you something.”
Her finger found my lips. “Hush,” she said. “I already know…everything. And the thing is, I don’t care.”
I opened my mouth to say something, a defense perhaps, some litany of excuses, but I found nothing to articulate.
“What’s important is you obeyed the highest law,” she said. “You survived. And you are the huntsman who returned.”
Thanks for reading!
Andrew Michael Schwarz is a speculative fiction writer working in the genres of fantasy and horror. He describes his work as Narnia for Grown Ups and uses themes of horror and fantasy to examine deeper philosophical underpinnings about the nature of the universe and the human experience.
He writes as Andrew Michael Schwarz for more sf and fantasy based themes and A. Michael Schwarz for deep horror.
See other titles and news for both A. Michael Schwarz and Andrew Michael Schwarz at https://popculturesoup.wordpress.com/
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