Her hand reached out to touch the stub of rough splintered wood in his frozen flesh. An arrow; an arrow had pierced his shoulder… Why had she not known? Why had he not told her?
This was not Lief; could not be Lief, not with an arrow in his back. Abruptly, Zena grabbed his tunic, which had fallen to the ground. Shaking it free of snow, she laid it across his frost and blood-covered back, put a fur above that. She must get him warm again; that was it. Once she had warmed him he would be Lief again. She rummaged in her pack, found the tinder. It felt dryer now. Wood to burn - that was next. She looked around and for the first time noticed the depth of the snow. How could she find wood under all that snow? It was still falling, too, spilling in thick torrents from the leaden sky.
Agony hit her, and she fell to her knees beside Lief’s body, so stiff, so utterly devoid of life. “Where have you gone?” she moaned. “Lief, where have you gone? You must come back! How can I live without you?”
Unbidden, the words he had spoken earlier came into her mind. “You must live,” he had said. “You are Zena.”
Was that why he had done what he had done, so she could live? She did not want to live, not now. Why must she live, just because she was Zena?
“Great Mother,” she whispered, “help me now.” Desolate, she lay down beside Lief and took his rigid body into her arms. He had given everything he had, his clothes and furs, the heat of his body, his life itself, to keep her alive. So would she give all she had to him. With desperate strength she tried to push life back into him, as if by the force of her will alone she could repair the damage the arrow and the storm had done, the damage he had done to himself.
“Lief, I want you to live,” she whispered, over and over again. “Lief, you must come back. Lief, please come back.”
How long she lay there she did not know. Time had no meaning now. Even when the cold came so far into her that her bones ached, she did not move. All she could do was cling to him, and hope.
A realization aroused her. She must get help. That was the answer. If she got help, they could bring Lief back to the village and nurse him back to health. His wounds needed to be cleaned, the blood wiped away and the rest of the arrow removed. Surely, that was the right thing to do.
Ignoring the icy wind, Zena pulled herself to her feet. She must make sure Lief had everything he needed before she left. She propped his pack with all its contents beside him, and set his axe, his beautiful axe with the metal blade that was his prize possession, against a rock. Only Lief had an axe like that. They were made in the south, where he had once lived, and he had traded many fine arrows to get it.
His knife, she thought; he must have his knife nearby. Pulling it out of its sheath, she tried to think where she should put it. Lief’s fingers were curled, as if waiting to grasp the familiar object, so she slid the knife carefully into his hand. After a last look to make sure he was still well covered with furs and everything was near him, she began to walk down the mountain.
To her surprise, she kept falling. Her legs seemed not to know where they were, and the snow was so deep she could not see where her feet landed. She hauled herself up each time she fell and plunged again into the thick drifts. The movements brought blood back to her legs, and she winced with the pain, wanting to stop and rub them but unwilling to give in to any distraction from her purpose. She must get back as soon as she could. Her toes were the worst, and her fingers.
The storm had stopped, she realized suddenly. The air was bright and clear, almost windless, and very cold. Without warning, sun burst through the clouds and hit the fallen snow. The effect was dazzling. Light bounced in multiple directions from every tiniest surface and rushed back at her. Zena’s hand shot up to her eyes, to protect them from the blinding glare. It was coming straight into her face.
Narrowing her eyes, she trudged into the brilliant light, moving as fast as she could through the deep drifts. Hours seemed to pass, and after a time she realized it was hard to see at all, as if the sunlight had gone all the way into her eyes and lodged there, so she could see nothing else. Now she was falling more often. She paid no attention, only got up again and stumbled on.
Her skin felt harsh and burned, and her eyes ached. Perhaps she should tie something around them to protect them. But then she would not be able to see at all, and if she could not see she could not walk. Only she was not walking now, but almost rolling down a slope too steep to walk. She thrust her heels into the snow to stop herself, and then took one small step after another, holding her feet sideways and pushing them against the slope so she would not slide. The effort exhausted her but she dared not stop. Something was falling down her face, something wet, and she realized it was tears. She blinked them away, wincing as the light hit them.
After a long time the sun disappeared and she was glad, except that now she was colder. She wondered where she was, made an effort to figure it out. She was going home, going down the mountain to get help for Lief. Surely, though, she had gone far enough? She had been walking for a long time.
The snow had started again, wet heavy snow that made the air as hazy as it had been the day before. Or perhaps the haze was in her eyes, or even in her mind. Perhaps it had crept into her through her eyes and that was why it was so hard to think. It made no difference. She must just keep walking anyway.
A sound snapped her head around and brought her to a stop. It sounded like someone calling. The realization had no meaning for her, and she went wearily on, one step at a time. The sound came again and this time it penetrated the haze inside her. Someone was calling her name, her name and Lief’s.
The call came again. “Zena! Lief!”
Zena opened her mouth to answer but no sound emerged. She tried again, managed a squeak. What was the matter with her voice? Angry now, she rubbed at her throat and forced the sound through. “Here,” she called. “I am here!”
Awareness tugged at her at the sound of her own voice. They had said they might come up to the pass. Hular and Sorlin had said that. Maybe they had come.
“Here!” she called again, straining to look for them.
“Stay where you are! Keep calling but do not move,” the voice answered. “We will come to you.” But Zena was incapable now of staying still. Still calling, she floundered through the snow, holding her hands in front of her as if they could see what had become so indistinct to her eyes. There were lumps ahead, lumps that were not snow, that were moving... Someone was here, someone who could help her, could get Lief...
Arms caught her just before she fell; whose arms she could not tell, only that they were arms and full of warmth. She was aware next of hot liquid going down her throat. She gagged; the liquid went away, but someone was still chafing her hands, her feet, holding her up.
“We must get her back quickly,” another voice said. Arms went under each of her shoulders, lifting her almost clear of the ground, and she felt herself being carried.
“No!” she cried out in alarm. “No, we must get Lief!”
The movement did not stop. “You can tell us where he is and we will go back for him after we have taken you to the village,” the voice reassured her. Sorlin, she thought.
“No! We must get him now. He needs help right away,” Zena protested, weeping again. “Lief needs help. He is so stiff, and he would not answer...
“The arrow; there is an arrow in him…” On and on her voice babbled, or she thought it did but she could not be sure, telling them of Lief and what he had done, how he had been covered with snow and so cold, so stiff...”
“We will get him next,” the voices soothed. “We are almost there, Zena, almost there now. Larak is waiting.”
Larak. Larak was waiting. Zena’s body relaxed and the sounds stopped coming out of her. Larak would understand.
Her eyes closed and she stopped trying to think, let the haze close over her again. When next she became aware, she was lying down and there were warm furs around her. She snuggled into them, then remembered Lief, still so cold on the
mountain.
“Lief!” she cried. “We must get Lief.”
“They have gone to look for him already,” someone told her, and Zena was sure that this time it was Larak. She stared up but the face above her was only a pale blur that would not resolve itself into Larak’s features.
“But do they know where to look?” Zena asked fearfully.
“You have told them he is near the pass,” Larak replied. Her voice was calm, infinitely soothing.
“Near the pass,” Zena repeated. “Yes. He is just below the pass. They can bring him here and then he will be all right. Surely he will be – he said the arrow only hit his hand, just his hand...”
And then she remembered his back, covered with blood, the stub of an arrow in his shoulder…
Her eyes filled with tears. “He said I must live even if he did not,” she whispered finally. “Only the day before he said that. But then I did not think, did not know...
“Why did he not tell me that an arrow had hit him in the back?” she howled in agony. “Why did he not tell me, so I could have made him better, and then he would not be dead…”
The tears spilled down. “He was so weak, so very weak, but I did not know... And then so cold... But we can warm him...” Her voice trailed off helplessly.
Larak took Zena’s hand and stroked it, understanding. To accept the reality of death was hard. It did not come all at once.
“Lief was a very brave man,” she told Zena gently.
“Very brave.” Zena turned away. “He gave me all his clothes,” she whispered, looking up piteously at the lump that was Larak. “Everything he had, but I did not know. He waited until I slept, so I would not know. I was so tired…
“Why did I sleep?” she moaned. “That is why he died, because I slept, because I did not watch over him, keep him alive…
“I want him back!” she burst out. “I want him back! How can I live, knowing that he died because of me?” Sobs shook her body.
Larak did not answer, only held her as she wept. There was no answer. There never was an answer for questions such as these. There was no way of knowing who had shot him and why, either. That might prove hardest of all.
Not until she was certain Zena had cried herself out and fallen into a deep sleep did Larak rise and go to the entrance to the hut to see if the searchers had returned. Had she been right to let them go? That Lief was dead she did not doubt, but to bring him home was still important. The burial, the ceremonies, would help Zena to mourn and then go on, as she must. But was it important enough to expose others to danger? The snow was even harder now, she saw, but finer, as if it meant to keep going, and the winds near the pass must be terrible. Never could she remember snow coming so late in the season, and so fiercely.
Larak shuddered and turned away. In weather like this, the searchers’ task was almost impossible. “Bring them back safely, Great Goddess,” she prayed silently as she stirred the fire. “Bring them back, for I should not have let them go.”
As if in answer to her prayer, flares appeared at the edge of the clearing and a moment later the searchers entered Larak’s hut. They did not speak but shook their heads slowly. Sorlin went to look at Zena, to make certain she was fast asleep; then leaned close to Larak to answer her unspoken questions.
“The snow was too deep for us, and the wind is terrible near the top,” she said quietly. “The fog, too, so we could not see. He would be buried by now anyway. We will try again in the morning when it clears. Surely, the snow will stop by then.”
But the snow did not stop. All day it continued to fall, fine and light in the morning, heavy and wet in the afternoon. The next day came freezing rain, so that the meadows, the hills and the fierce thrust of the mountains were covered in a thick blanket of ice. To walk was difficult, to climb impossible, but even had they been able to, no one could have probed beneath the frozen layers to find a body.
As soon as full summer comes, the people told themselves, we will look again. But even in mid-summer the ice on the mountain did not melt that year, nor did it melt the next year or the next, or for many thousands of years thereafter. Instead, as the snows continued to pour down and freeze and harden and pour down again, the icy layers on the high pass became thicker and thicker, until they were impervious to even the strongest sun. And during all that vast period of time, Lief lay undisturbed in the high ravine where he and Zena had taken shelter.
Then, warmed one year by billions of particles of sand blown from the distant Sahara desert, the great Alpine glaciers finally began to thaw. All through that summer, the sand-heated layers shrank further into the encroaching rock until one day, more than five thousand years after his death, Lief’s body lay exposed. The eyes that first stared at him, wondered at him, had no way of knowing who he was or why he lay there, half-naked, with his pack of tools and herbs beside him, his knife in his hand, his bow and arrows unfinished, his precious axe propped ready for the hand that never grasped it again. Nor could they know the depth of grief that poured from Zena as she mourned him in the months that followed, or how deep was the love that had flourished between them, the love that impelled Lief to give his life to ensure that Zena would survive.
CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR
Gurd did not move for a long time after his fall from the mountain. Then his heavy head came up and his eyes opened. How had he got to this place? He could not remember. He must get out of the storm; that much he did know. But where could he go? He could not remember that either. His mind did not seem to work, and his body felt heavy, useless. He forced his legs to move, then his arms. Pain shot through him, and he felt blood running down his face, saw it on his thigh. He ignored it. He could move his legs and that was all that mattered.
Instinct pulled him into a half-crouch, sent him reeling down the rest of the slope into the thick trees where the wind was not so savage. There was a hut in the woods; that he did know. He had made it a long time ago. He must go there. Forcing himself forward, he took one step, then another, until he was rewarded by the sight of the familiar structure. There was wood inside it, dry wood, and a large barrel. Another memory returned, suddenly, horribly. The barrel held mead. He had made that too, made it for the Leader, only the Leader was dead.
Gurd began to sob, deep choking, disbelieving sobs like those of a lost child. Furious with himself, he forced the grief away. He had no time for that now. If he was to avenge the Leader, he must get warm so he could do what he had sworn to do. Though he seldom drank it, he swallowed some of the mead in great gulps, knowing it would heat his body and give him strength. His frozen fingers struggled with the tinder, the flint, finally created flame for a fire.
He held out his hands as the wood began to smolder and wept again, this time with the pain of the warmth that gradually came into his fingers, but even more with the knowledge that the Leader was dead, torn to pieces like an animal mauled by predators. He wept with helpless rage, too, because so many of the people who had killed the Leader were still alive. They should all be dead by now, but the only ones he had killed were the man who had seen him and the man who had taken the girl who belonged to the Leader. He had been lucky to find that one on his way north. The memory of his arrow piercing the man’s chest, the stillness denoting death that had followed, brought a savage smile to Gurd’s lips.
Those two at least were dead, he thought with satisfaction. Then he frowned. Was the man who had seen him truly dead? He had moved after the arrow hit him, so perhaps he was not. He was badly wounded though, of that Gurd was certain. The fierce smile came again as he remembered the arrow thumping into the man’s back. And if he was not dead now, he soon would be, Gurd reassured himself. No man with an arrow in him could live through a storm like this at the top of a mountain. The woman who had taken the infant would die too. The cold, the wind, the icy wetness would kill her by morning.
Unexpectedly, anger filled him. That was wrong. It was his job to kill enemies of the Leader, and the storm should not take them instead. Springing
to his feet, Gurd threw his steaming cloak across his shoulders and pulled on his still frozen boots. He must go up the mountain again and finish the job he had set out to do. Anger turned to rage as he imagined pushing his knife into the man again and again, the woman too, before the cold could take them. But where was his knife? It had fallen from his hand on the mountain. He would find it there and if he could not, he would take the man’s knife from his fingers and use that.
Determination sent Gurd tramping back into the deep snow, supported him as he began his trek. The thought of revenge pushed grief away, and he was glad. Raising his fist in triumph, he shook it into the snowy air. The icy sleet slicing through his cloak to batter his skin made no impression, nor did the fact that his toes and fingers had lost all feeling. He marched on regardless, aware of nothing but his intent. He would kill them. The storm would not cheat him of that.
He did not notice either that his feet were taking him in the wrong direction. As if led by an instinct too strong for resistance, they plodded not toward the mountain but along the familiar path he had taken so many times before, toward the village where he had last seen the Leader, the village in which he and Korg and the Leader had lived for so many years and where the Leader had died. It had all begun in that village, he thought confusedly when he finally recognized the path, so perhaps to go there was right. Now it would end there as well.
Hours passed, and all thoughts receded from Gurd’s mind except the need to put one foot in front of the next so he would get to the place he wanted to go. What that place was, and why he was going there often eluded him. Then memory would return with a jumble of images of killing the old woman who lived there and those who were with her. That must be right, must be why he was here. He was going to do what he needed to do, to avenge the Leader’s death. He stumbled on, feeling nothing, not the hot throbbing in his leg or the fever building in his body or the wetness of still falling snow. He knew only that he must get to that place.
ICE BURIAL: The Oldest Human Murder Mystery (The Mother People Series Book 3) Page 30
