Over the Darkened Landscape

by Derryl Murphy

  I’m sitting now, head leaning forward as I fight off exhaustion. So tired that I almost miss the next thing the father says.

  “You’ll have to go get Walker.”

  It sinks in, and my head snaps up. I stare at him, trying to decipher if I heard what I think I did.

  Pete shakes his head. “Uh-uh. I ain’t goin’.”

  “You have to. We’ll need a witness for when the Constable can come up.”

  “Nothin’doin’.”

  His father stands from the floor, looks down at Swede. “It’s eight miles to their cabin. If you won’t go, then I’ll do it.”

  Pete’s eyes are wide with fear now. “Uh-uh. I ain’t stayin’.”

  His father runs his hand through his hair. I can see him fighting to be reasonable with a scared boy, but angry that he can’t do more. “All right, then. We’ll hitch up the dogs and both go. You get out there and get them ready while I try to clean up a touch.”

  Pete dresses himself for the weather and is out the door in a shot. I try to watch the father as he wipes things up and then stokes up the fire, but the heat and the ordeal are making me drowsy. I feel my head tilt forward, and then lose sense of time.

  I hear the door of the cabin slam shut, start awake realizing that they must be leaving. Dogs are barking again, this time with excitement. I’m sure they are going to my cabin, or near it, and so I jump and go to the door, wrestling into my mitts, hoping they can give me a ride back.

  A hand grabs my ankle, and I stop mid-stride. Looking down, I see that Swede has a hold of me.

  “I’m dying,” he whispers, the damage done by the bullet making him barely intelligible; I can see his tongue flapping behind the hole in his cheek. “Sit with me, angel. Keep me company.”

  I don’t know what to say or do for several seconds, but the receding sound of the dogs snaps me out of it. “What did you call me?”

  He moans. “Angel. I saw you just before I pulled the trigger, when you weren’t there before. God sent you,” he inhales, shuddering. “God sent you to stop me. Too late. My fault. Please sit with me while I die.”

  Stunned, I sit on the floor.

  “Talk to me,” he whispers, eyes rolling back so he can see me.

  “About what?” Foolish question, but I feel at a complete loss about what to do right now.

  “Heaven.” He tries to smile.

  I shake my head. “I’m sorry, Swede. I don’t know anything about heaven. I’m not an angel, I’m just a man who got lost in the Arctic. I thought I was going to die.”

  He grunts. “Angel, man. My fault for not seeing you.” He starts to cry now, sobbing like a child feeling true loss for the first time. “I’m sorry, Boris. I should have been there, shot him before he shot you.”

  One last breath, and then he’s still.

  And God help me, I still have to piss. But I’m deathly afraid to leave this cabin, afraid I won’t be able to get back in. Gingerly, I remove Swede’s hand from where it remains laying on my foot, stand up and sway unsteadily for a moment, then spot the piss can over on a stump in a corner.

  This operation takes more energy than I would have imagined, and so when done, I add more wood to the fire and then curl up on the floor.

  The door slams open, letting cold and daylight into the cabin. I roll over and sit up too fast, my head swimming.

  “Jesus, the stove’s still hot,” says the first one in the door, Pete’s father. Pete is right behind him, and then two other men, both slowly peeling off their winter gear as they stare down at Swede’s body.

  “He’s dead for sure, now,” says the taller of the two. He pulls back his hood and unwraps his scarf, and I blink, thinking It can’t be.

  The slighter one behind him does the same, and I gasp, knowing him not only from pictures, but from an older face, one that stood the tests of time for longer than this one. Matt Walker.

  Grandpa.

  He looks to the other man, obviously Mike Walker, his father, my great-grandfather. A man who died years before I was born. “What now?”

  Mike, Great-Grandpa, looks to Pete’s father. “What do you think, Joe? Ground’s frozen, we can’t plant the sorry S.O.B. But you sure as hell don’t want him in here getting higher than week-old caribou.”

  Joe, obviously Joe March, scratches his head. “Guess we gotta leave him outside ’til the snow melts. I got an old tarp we can sling over him.”

  “Cover that with spruce boughs,” says Grandpa. If I recall correctly, he’s only about twenty-one right now. “Keep the smell down so the dogs won’t go after him.”

  “Same’s the wild animals,” says Joe.

  “The dogs will try to eat him?” asks Pete. He looks concerned by this.

  “Sure,” says Mike. “It’s just meat for them. And if it’s high, hell, they like it even better.”

  “This his bedroll?’ asks Grandpa, toeing the blanket Swede’s body is lying on. Joe nods. “Good. Let’s wrap him in this and take him out, get this started.”

  All four bend down to do the work, and I hurry to pull on my hat and mitts, follow them as they walk out into the sunlight. About noon, sun at about twenty degrees over the horizon. It seems unbearably bright, but I can’t find my sunglasses.

  “Where?” asks Grandpa. Joe gestures to a spot near some trees, and we all head to where he points. I walk beside Grandpa.

  “You know,” I say, knowing he can’t hear me but wanting to speak with him one last time, “I couldn’t be there at the hospital when you died. Stuck in a stupid fucking meeting in another city, nobody even told me you were so sick.” I shake my head. “You were good to me. Fair. I learned a lot just hanging around you, more than I thought I ever learned.” I smile. “Hell, you’re no less talkative right now than you usually were, and yet somehow it all got through.”

  They lay the body on the ground, Grandpa and Pete kicking snow over it. Joe runs back to the cabin to get the old tarp, and Mike cuts down some boughs with a knife from his belt. When the body’s properly covered, they all stand in silence for a moment, hoods off and hats in hands. I bare my head as well, wincing at the cold nipping at my frozen ears.

  After about a minute, Joe speaks. “Goddam if I won’t miss him and Boris,” he says.

  The others nod their heads and follow this statement with “Amen” and “Yup.” Then Joe pulls a bottle from his pocket and takes a pull before passing it on. Even Pete has a drink, albeit a small one. Finally, all four gather small stones, Grandpa piling them into a small marker at the head. A cairn. “This’ll keep until we can do something more permanent,” he says.

  They head back down to the cabin then, me still walking beside Grandpa. “Stay a spell?” asks Joe.

  Mike shakes his head. “Don’t think so, thanks. I have to get back out onto the line, and Matt needs to run some pelts down to Reliance.”

  “I’ll take word about Swede to the detachment there,” says Grandpa. “Talk to Constable Marquardt if he’s back from hunting down Skinner.”

  Joe nods. He and Pete shake hands with Grandpa and Great-Grandpa Mike, and I’m almost caught off-guard, they board their dogsleds so quickly. I run over and swing myself onto Grandpa’s sled, settle back and wrap my scarf around my face to fight off the wind.

  The dogs are running fast, knowing they’ll be fed when they get back. I lean back on one arm, watch Grandpa as he steers the sled, yelling at the dogs, pushing off with one leg or leaning his body out to keep the sled upright.

  The weather stays fair, and we are back at Grandpa’s camp by twilight. The two of them ease their sleds up alongside the cabin, and I slowly stand up, unsure now of what I’m seeing. Their cabin is there, but overlapping it is mine, slightly smaller, door in a different position.

  I turn to look, but already Mike, my great-grandfather, is fading from view, bending down to unleash now-invisible dogs. I turn to Grandpa, see that he is flickering from sight as well.

  Tears in my eyes, I go and stand in front of him, look at his face as h
e concentrates on loosing his dogs.

  “I’m sorry, Grandpa,” I say. “I’m sorry I wasn’t there. I loved . . . I love you very much.”

  He stops, stands and whistles at his dogs, then turns and looks me right in the eye.

  “I know,” he says with a grin, then fades from view.

  I stand and look out on the lake for a long while, then enter my cabin to start up a fire and get something to eat.

  Cold Ground

  Three days ago Robert had shot his horse.

  Early in the foothills it had come up lame. He had spent a panicked half-hour or so cutting away strips of horseflesh, hanging the strips from the back of his pack and over his shoulders, hoping the early winter sun would dry them before they rotted. It had worked, mostly. But the horse meat was gone now, eaten during his frantic hike south towards the border.

  Now he sat on the cold hard ground, hiding in the bushes in a small ravine and watching a small snare that sat at the base of a willow, thirty paces away. The snare held a hare, its neck snapped and dried blood crusted around its nose. His stomach growled at the thought of fresh meat, of any food at all. But he couldn’t approach the snare; it was still active, ready to lash out if he got too close.

  He had stumbled across it earlier in the day, and in his near-delirious hunger he had approached the dead animal without a second thought. Somehow though, his talisman had been in his right hand. He didn’t remember having pulled the pouch out from under his shirt, but quite obviously he had. It had warned him in its own fashion, first sending a shooting pain up his other arm, and when that didn’t stop him, briefly paralyzing his right leg. He had fallen to his face on the frozen ground, cheek resting on a light skiff of snow and frozen earth, and watched as the snare had flailed briefly about, having sensed his presence.

  He had lain there for some minutes, drool freezing on his skin, grunting as he fought to get the feeling back in his arm and leg. When he was able he dragged himself back, away from the trap, and when his leg and arm felt better he had cleaned up any sign of his being there. Then he hid himself, and waited.

  The sun had disappeared over the edge of the gully when the trapper arrived. Métis. A tall, dark, angry-looking man with a wiry black beard stained with brown streaks of tobacco. He wore a fur hat and gloves, a flannel jacket, and tall moccasins, and carried an ancient rifle in the crook of his right elbow, with a leather bag thrown over his opposite shoulder.

  He walked to the trap, set down his rifle and his bag, pulled a knife from its sheath on his thigh. Stitched on the side of the bag was the battle flag Robert had come to hate and fear. White on a blue background, upraised hand and wolf’s head accompanied by the words maisons . . . autels . . . Surtout Liberté. The English translation was In the house . . . At the altar . . . Above All Freedom.

  And death. Robert threw his knife just as the Métis seemed to sense his presence. It buried deep in the man’s neck, and he died without a sound, the snare now deactivated and safe to approach.

  He had spent a few years in India with the 13th Hussars, and word had come down that they were preparing to send him to Afghanistan. He enjoyed the Far East; liked the people he served with, enjoyed seeing the far reaches of the Empire. But he was a servant of Her Majesty, did his duty no matter what, no matter where.

  Before he could be officially notified of his transfer, the young Canadian government had come to Her Majesty’s Loyal Government with a request; Riel was back in Canada, and had brought with him a source of power that they were afraid they may not be able to counter. Was there a military sorcerer that they could employ to help put down the rebellion?

  And so Robert Baden-Powell had been shipped to this God-forsaken flat piece of frozen dirt on the far side of the world. He had often complained about the oppressive heat during the early years of his service in India, but there he had at least lived like a gentleman. And his tracking and fighting skills had greatly improved while there, while his studies with the company’s chief sorcerer had proved fruitful.

  So fruitful that he now feared for his life.

  Robert had begun running and then riding and then running again for his life six days before, on the day they had hanged Riel. It had seemed that the magic of the Métis and the Indians had not been enough to hold off the combined armed might of the North West Mounted Police and the Canadian military, and that a man of Robert’s talents might not be necessary.

  Even with the errors made by fools like Crozier and Otter, the NWMP had managed to put down the bulk of the rebellion. They had required only some minor spell-casting by Robert, background work mostly done to counter whatever weak spells the rebels were weaving.

  After the defeat Dumont had fled to the United States and Riel had been captured, his magics seemingly nullified. Robert had barely broken a sweat, and it then looked as if he could go back home very soon. Perhaps even South Africa, if the rumours were correct.

  The hanging had come on November 16, in Regina at the jail. Robert had been there, ostensibly as official sorcerer for Her Majesty’s government in Canada. Unofficially, several officers of the NWMP had sternly told him he was to stay in the background, that they still didn’t need “his kind” there. His tenure in Canada had so far proved both uneventful and woefully unpopular with all involved, including himself. Even those who didn’t believe he was aligned with the devil nonetheless usually mistrusted and feared him.

  Riel had been marched out and led up to the gallows, hands tied behind his back and fingers also tied together to prevent any casting of spells, leg irons keeping him to a waddling pace. It was the government’s intention, Robert knew, to prove that Riel could die, thus breaking the back of this rebellion once and for all.

  It didn’t work.

  After getting out of the jail in the Hell that broke loose, and after escaping from the town with the flood of refugees, Robert had had time to think about what he had seen, and what he had sensed. Blood magic had been used, but the sense and smell of the blood had been foreign, alien to Robert, even while at the same time it had a strange familiarity about it. Something hot, moist, huge and angry.

  It had been the blood that saved Riel from a snapped neck. He had dropped with only the most minor of flinches, and then hung there, smiling and dangling, before his eyes had settled on the jail’s warden. It seemed to Robert then that a giant beast had emerged from Riel’s head, huge, lumbering, ghostly, hard to focus on. It headed straight for the warden, who had given a strangled cry and then collapsed, skull slowly being crushed and blood almost gushing from his eyes and nose and ears and mouth, mingling with the strange blood that Riel was somehow using to keep himself alive. And then Métis and Cree had come storming over the walls, through the suddenly open gates, cutting Riel’s rope to let him down and slaughtering startled guards and constables and soldiers and civilians without discrimination.

  Robert had grabbed at the red silk pouch that contained his Talisman of Mars and held on for his life as he ran straight out the open gates, counting on the power of the inscribed iron medallion to hide him from the invaders, at least momentarily. It had, although he had been forced to duck and then lash out as one Cree had swung at him with a knife, more likely than not responding to something like a fearful blur appearing in thin air rather than swinging at a clearly-perceived enemy.

  The town’s white citizens had started their flight almost immediately, allowed to leave by the new provisional government, Riel no longer their leader but rather their Messiah. Robert had joined in with a group of three families, near enough to them to look as if he belonged. The charade had lasted only a few miles, when a Cree shaman had ridden by and sensed the magics that Robert was carrying.

  He had stopped and dismounted, walking over to their group, which had stopped their travel when he had arrived. His eyes had wandered over each of them, stopping to rest on Robert for one uncomfortable moment too long. He stepped forward, and Robert had leapt on him, knife flashing as it plunged deep into the Indian’s chest. T
he first but not the last time he had been forced to use physical violence since coming to this cold land.

  Then, without a word to or from his obviously horrified travelling companions, he climbed on the shaman’s horse and rode south, hoping to make the border before he was caught.

  There was food in the trapper’s bag. Some biscuits, venison, a canteen of water. And the real surprise; a Hand of Glory and several small tallow candles. He grabbed these and tucked them in his pack, hoping he wouldn’t have to use them but unwilling to leave them behind. The thought of where it had come from repulsed him.

  He untied the snare and tied the dead rabbit to the back of his pack, hoping it didn’t smell too much of the Métis magic. It was a chance he felt he had to take, though. He was weak from hunger, and the supplies in the bag would not last long enough.

  He choked down two biscuits, one piece of venison, washed it all down with water, swallowing until he was forced to take a breath. Then, saying a few quick words and inscribing in the frozen dirt to hopefully keep the dead man’s spirit from latching onto him, he cautiously left the ravine.

  The Métis had come from the west. He hated the thought of more confrontation, but he doubted he could survive without a horse to get him to safety; he was a damn good scout, but his knowledge of cold-weather survival was less than he might have hoped after the time he had spent here. Keeping low to the ground, Robert followed the scent of magic backwards, towards whatever camp he had come from. Four snares had been laid and reset along the way, easy to recognize now that he had the experience. There were no ley lines here like there were back in England, but the signs of power were now subtly obvious, and the traps were on a path that followed those signs.

  The land here was mostly short grass, with the odd copse of trees hugging the flat, distant horizon. Towns, even farms were rare in this region. Normally the wind was fierce on the prairies this time of year, but tonight the breeze was intermittent at best, non-existent at most times.