ICE BURIAL: The Oldest Human Murder Mystery (The Mother People Series Book 3)

by JOAN DAHR LAMBERT

  Gurd had seen Lief’s face in the firelight and knew immediately that he was the man who had once seen him. He also knew that the man was aware that he was being spied on from the trees. He could smell his uneasiness in the same way he smelled it in animals. Nor was he fooled when the man disappeared. He was just hiding where he could keep watching.

  Anger rose in Gurd’s chest. He did not like to be watched any more than he liked being seen. Twice, when Korg had not been there to stop him, he had tried to kill that man, as well as the man who had taken the girl who belonged to the Leader. He had not succeeded. The wind had been strong that day, and his arrows had missed their targets. He would try again soon but first he must find out what had happened to the Leader.

  The people around the fire began to speak, so Gurd concentrated on their words. Only the ones that spoke of Korg and the Leader had meaning for him, but when they came, they made little sense. They had left, one woman said. But where had they gone? Then the old woman said she had killed the Leader, but an old woman could not kill the Leader. Next the woman who had taken the infant said the mead had killed him, but that was wrong, too. Mead made the Leader insensible, but it did not kill him. After that they said Korg had taken the Leader away. That could be true, but why did they say that the water had taken them both?

  Gurd shook his head, disgusted. These people said too many different things about Korg and the Leader. He would have to look for them himself. But where should he look? A picture came into his mind of the village to the west, where the black-haired woman lived. Perhaps Korg and the Leader had gone there, where they would be safe from the flooding water. The ridges between the two villages were too high for water to cross.

  The girl he had found for the Leader was in that village, Gurd remembered. He had seen her by herself one day, and knowing that the Leader was looking for girls, he had hit her over the head to stun her, the same way he stunned animals, put her in his sack and taken her to the Leader, who was pleased, and had done to her what he always did, except he had not killed her this time. Perhaps she had not been a witch, or perhaps the Leader had taken too much mead to think about that.

  Gurd’s eyes glittered. After the Leader was finished, he had done the same to the girl. He remembered that well, too. It had felt good, very good. He would have done it again if Korg had not come and seen him still lying with the girl. Korg had been very angry and had ordered him to take her to the black-haired woman. He had paid no attention until the Leader had agreed. Korg could not tell him what to do; only the Leader could do that. The Leader had always been kind to him, had not even seemed to see his scarred face when his hood fell away. Sometimes he had even let him share the girls before he killed them. He had liked that.

  Gurd’s lips contorted into a smile. Korg had not known about that, nor had Korg known of the extra mead he made for the Leader. They had hidden it in places Korg did not know about. He and the Leader had done these things together, without Korg. The memory brought satisfaction.

  He would look in that village first, Gurd decided. Perhaps the girl was still there and he could take her to the Leader again, and he might let him have her after he had finished, as before. This time he would not let Korg stop him. Korg had no right to do that. But first he must get away without being followed. Rising slowly, he ducked behind a thicker stand of trees and then stood perfectly still, so the man who watched him would be fooled.

  Lief saw the movement and followed cautiously. He could feel anger emanating from the man he was watching, and he did not want to get too close. Like his quarry, he hid behind a tree and waited for another revealing movement.

  Hours seemed to pass. Lief’s head kept sinking onto his chest. It seemed to him that he had not slept in days. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Zena hug Mara and then return wearily to their sleeping place.

  Too tired to watch any longer, Lief was about to join her when he saw another movement, so slight he wondered if he had imagined it. He heard a soft thump then, and realized it had probably been an owl landing on a rabbit or other small animal. He had heard an owl hooting earlier. He watched a little longer and then gave up. In the morning, he would look for footprints.

  Weary now almost beyond endurance, he checked on the water again and then lay down beside Zena. For a long time he lay there restlessly, unable to sleep despite his exhaustion, trying to think who the man in the trees could be.

  Finally he lapsed into a fitful doze. In it he saw pictures of a stranger firing arrows at them from the trees. He sat bolt upright. Of course, that was who their mysterious watcher must be, the man who had shot arrows at them when they left one of the villages, the man who traveled with Korg and the Leader but was never seen. If that was so, did he know that Korg and the Leader were dead? How would he react if he did know?

  Lief’s lips tightened. With even greater anger. He was sure of it.

  Zena half rose from their sleeping place and regarded him anxiously.

  Lief gave her a comforting smile. “It was only a dream,” he said, unwilling to upset her with such vague fears just when she was finally at peace. She would only worry and there was nothing to be done until he found out more about the mysterious watcher. Right now, all he had was questions. Besides, he was probably letting his imagination run away with him, as Zena always accused herself of doing. After all, if the man was real, as he thought, why was he the only person who had seen him, and why had only one group of villagers ever spoken of him?

  Gurd watched him lie down again and felt triumph. He had fooled the man who had once seen him, first by standing still and then by making the owl sound. He too had heard an owl hooting, so he had hooted again and then thrown down a clump of moss, to sound like the owl striking its prey. It had worked well.

  He waited patiently until he was certain the man and all the other people in the clearing were asleep again; then he slid noiselessly between the trees and made his way west, toward the village where the Korg had made him take the girl.

  He frowned. To get to that village he must cross the ravine where the ice had fallen. Was it possible? But he must, he decided. Another thought came, and he was suddenly afraid. Korg and the Leader must have crossed the ravine too. Perhaps these people’s words were true and the water had taken them.

  Gurd shook off the fear. Korg and the Leader would have crossed earlier, before the water was so strong. After such an effort, the Leader would want mead, would go to the secret supply Gurd had hidden for him among some tall trees on the hillside across the ravine. The water had not gone that high; he had seen that the trees were still standing when he had looked down the ravine.

  That was where the Leader must be, Gurd realized, not in the village where he had taken the girl. Probably he had drunk the mead and was lying insensible on the wet ground above the water. Korg might have found him, but he would have been unable to carry the Leader alone, would have left him to make his own way further up the hill when he awoke from his stupor. Gurd hurried on. If that was so, he must find the Leader right away, before the water reached him.

  He must get across the ravine quickly, too, Gurd realized, when he came closer to the water. It was still rising.

  Apprehension made him clumsy and noisy, but he ran on anyway, not caring now if he was seen or heard. The racket made by falling ice and water would drown out all other sounds anyway. Down and down he went into the maelstrom below, uncaring of his safety, intent only on finding a place where he could cross the ravine. The Leader might be lying helpless somewhere on the opposite hill, calling for him, as he so often did when he had drunk too much mead…

  The water almost took him when he made a careless step and slipped. Gurd slowed his pace. The Leader needed him, so he must be more careful. Cautiously he stepped over rocks that gleamed with wetness and ducked under fallen trees, twisting their branches savagely when they were in his way. And all the time he watched for any sign of the Leader on the slope above the water on the other side. Only the Leader mattered now. All e
lse was meaningless.

  He came finally to a place that slowed the flooding a little. A peninsula of land jutted out into the ravine, making a sharp bend in the stream’s route. Debris that had been carried down by the raging torrents and the great hunks of ice had been caught in the bend. He thought briefly of trying to walk across it, but the masses of foaming water that churned over and around the piles of rocks and trees and muddy earth made that impossible.

  Gurd sat down to rest while he thought what to do. He must get across the water somehow. But how?

  Abruptly, he remembered a marshy place not far from here where the ravine ended. All the water and debris from the high peaks would surge into the marshy area and eventually spread out, making it shallow. If he could keep going down on this side of the water, he might be able to go across at that place and then search the hills on the other side. The marsh would be wet, but the water would not be so deep and would not move so fast there.

  Slowly, he made his way down until he reached the marshes, though they did not look like marshes any more. They were so covered with the trees and branches and everything else that had been washed down by the floods that he could not see the grasses that had once flourished there. Torrents of water from above still poured into the area, but it had not yet risen above the debris. Gurd looked at the tangle of trees and branches and stones for a long time. If he was careful, very careful, he might be able to walk across them. He could always jump back if he had to.

  He stepped cautiously onto a big log and from there to a pile of branches that looked solid. A bundle of fur ahead caught his eye as he moved carefully from one foothold to the next. An animal, he thought. It looked like a bear. He had not thought the water could take a bear but that showed him how powerful it was. He went still more carefully, lest it take him. And then he saw it – a white arm sticking up from beneath a tree. A white arm, and then a head that he knew…

  Fear slashed through him and he almost fell. After it he felt a surge of relief so great he stumbled again. Not the Leader. Korg. So the water had taken Korg.

  Gurd did not stop to examine the body but crept cautiously ahead, his scarred face a mask of fear. If Korg was here, the Leader could be too. Except the Leader was stronger, much bigger and stronger, he reassured himself, would have been able to fight his way out of the water - unless he was insensible with mead. What would happen if he could not walk by himself? Even if Korg had been there, he was not strong enough to help the Leader out of the terrible deluge…

  More whiteness ahead. Panic hit Gurd lest it be the Leader. Stumbling now with fear, he tried to run. The Leader; that was him - his head, his shoulder. But that was good; his head was out of the water so he could breathe. That meant he could be alive; surely he was alive, breathing.

  Except the face and head were deathly white… Still, the Leader looked that way sometimes when he was insensible with mead, only now he was too white…

  Sobbing soundlessly with fear, Gurd reached down with both hands for the Leader and struggled to haul him away from the huge limb that had trapped him. The big body felt cold, clammy. But he could not be dead, he could not. The Leader could not die… He would get him out, care for him as he always had and he would be the Leader again. He would pull him out, make him breathe and then he would…

  The Leader’s body resisted; Gurd pulled harder. And then it came. Part of it came, the top half, the head and the upper body and some of one leg… The rest of him was still down there, trapped….No one could stay alive like that, no one…

  Gurd screamed, a ghastly strangled sound that went on and on and on until it died in his scarred throat and he could scream no more. Almost senseless now, he staggered back across the covering of debris until he reached safer land, still holding the grisly burden in his arms. On and on he walked, uncaring of fatigue, wanting only to keep moving. If he stopped walking he would know… He did not want to know, did not want to think…

  Exhaustion finally brought him to a halt. Dropping to his knees, he cradled the Leader’s broken body in his arms. For a long moment he looked down at it tenderly, his head bent low in an unconscious gesture of mourning. Hot tears of grief rolled down his cheeks.

  He wiped them savagely away and stared up at the mountain where the people still slept. The tenderness vanished from his eyes and his face twisted into a grimace of pure hatred. They had done this; they had killed the Leader, his beloved Leader. He would get his revenge, he vowed, shaking his fist with fierce concentration. He would kill them, all of them, even the ones he did not know. One at a time, he would kill them until they were gone.

  The faces of the man who had seen him and the woman who walked with him came into his mind, and the man who had taken the girl that belonged to the Leader. Rage surged into Gurd, rage so strong his throat burned with it. He would kill them first, and after that, the old woman whose face was burned into his memory, and any others around her. He had wanted to kill all of them for a long time, but Korg had always stopped him. Triumph shot through his rage, made it strong and hard. Korg could not stop him now. Nothing could stop him now.

  The triumph grew as another thought came into his mind. He would get others to help him if that was necessary. The people in that village behind the mountain were terrified of him; they had never seen him but still they were terrified. He would make them do his bidding, would do whatever was necessary to force them to help him kill the people who had killed the Leader.

  Gurd stood, his scarred face a mask of determination. For that purpose, he would make the greatest sacrifice of all. He would show his face. He would show it to all the villagers. Even the children would see his face. No one wanted to look as he did, but he would make sure they understood that they would look like him if they did not obey. He would do to their faces, every one of them, what had been done to his if they did not did not help him to do what must be done.

  Gurd’s mouth contorted into a savage grimace that passed for a smile. Soon, very soon, the people who had killed his adored Leader would all be dead.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Durak and Pila smiled at each other as they watched the baby wave his tiny fists in the air, tracking them with his eyes while he made gurgling noises. “I shall call him Noran,” she decided. “That has a clever sound, and he is a very smart baby to watch his hands like that.” She looked down on the baby proudly. “One day he will be a good tracker of animals.”

  “First he must learn to use his legs too,” Durak joked, and she laughed. He loved to hear her laugh. It was a warm burbling sound, like that of a bird chirping lustily in the bushes. He had not heard the laugh at all at first, but once Pila had told him what she could remember of what had happened to her, she had seemed to relax, as if some of the pain at least had gone with the words.

  “I think someone hit me on the head and carried me away,” she had said, and her tone was so matter-of-fact that Durak winced. “I do not remember that. When I woke I saw two men. One was the Leader, though I did not know that then. He smelled strongly of mead. The other had hidden his face, but it was the man with the hood we saw, though I do not know who the two women were. He had raped me and I think the Leader had too, though I cannot be sure of that. I knew only that I was very sore. Korg came then and he was angry with them, extremely angry.

  “I do not remember much after that. I think the man hit me very hard because I could not move or even think. I did not know where I was, who I was, anything at all. When I was a little better I realized that I was in Niva’s village, that Korg must have brought me there. They gave me many potions, too, and perhaps that made it even harder to remember. Later, I heard the women say that the Great Spirit must have come to me, though I did not know what they meant. For a long time I did not realize there was a child growing in my belly either. When I did know, I tried to stop taking the potions lest the child be affected. I spit them out when no one was watching, but some went down my throat anyway.

  “I also knew that it was not a spirit that had m
ade the child. It was a man – one of them,” she added dryly, but only a hint of bitterness crept into her voice.

  “The potion they gave me before they took the child was very strong, so I did not know what had happened until later. They made certain I drank that one,” she added in the same emotionless tone.

  She smiled faintly. “The old woman gave me a potion then too, and that made it worse. But she was only trying to be kind. She was always kind, and I was sorry when I heard she had died. Still, I remember almost nothing of that time.”

  “That is the only way I can think of it,” she added suddenly. “If I tell the story as if I had only watched and did not feel what I felt, I can manage. I have learned to think of it that way, for the baby’s sake.”

  She looked down at the ground and smiled determinedly. “I cannot let them harm me further by letting them affect all my life,” she said. “I have found you now and I am all right, even if I cannot remember all that I should. I must be all right because if I am not, the child will not be all right either.”

  Durak listened and wondered at her courage. Pila sounded exactly like the Teran he had once known. Even if she did not know she had once been called by that name, she was still that person. Once when she was very young and had scraped her leg badly, Larak had to cut into the flesh to get out pieces of dirt, he recalled. Teran had watched impassively, without making a noise, though the pain must have been quite bad. And after her mother and Zena’s had died, Teran had wept profusely in private and then gone on with her tasks stoically, not as cheerfully as usual, but without a fuss. The process had been harder for Zena, he remembered, but Teran’s steady presence had helped her.

  “But if you were that weak, how did you manage to get away – and get all the way to the place where I found you?” he asked, aware for the first time how much that effort must have cost her. No wonder she had been near collapse.