Broken Rock Bay (Clan of the Ice Mountains Book 3)

by C. S. Bills

  A few of the women had giggled at Attu’s remark, but when they saw his somber face, they quieted.

  “And it is not our way to control others by our use of intimidation, like the Ravens.”

  No one was laughing now. Many of the hunters looked away from Attu’s gaze.

  Enough. I’m not here to scold these men as if they were pooliks. And Kinak lights the skies now. No more sadness. Attu resolved to end this meeting well, but he wasn’t sure what he should do next. He looked to his father.

  “I, too, have fallen into the trap of this kind of talk in the last few moons, wanting to push my opinion onto others, like a male nuknuk clashing tusks with other males during the mating time,” Ubantu said, grinning at Attu, then at them all.

  Thank you, Father. Attu picked up where his father had left off.

  “And Attuanin knows we men have all accomplished, with his help, all that can be done in that area...” Attu let his words trail off as he turned and winked at Rika, who hid her face in pretend embarrassment.

  Everyone chuckled, and many exchanged glances with their own women and with each other. The hunters were proud of all the expectant women in their Clan, such a great blessing and a strong sign to anyone else they might encounter of their own virility. Faces relaxed once again, and the people leaned in to hear what else Attu had to say.

  Good.

  “The Nuvik have survived because we are patient. We know how to wait, as still as stone, near the breathing hole. We can wait for as long as it takes to catch the game. We are not those who rush the tusked animals over a cliff only to meet them at the bottom with spears and clubs and a cruel death.”

  Around Attu, the hunters nodded. Each had chosen to come north for his own reasons, but many had come because they had been shocked by the way the Seers hunted and felt it violated the Nuvik way of respect for the game. Everyone was also thinking of Kinak now, and Attu knew every hunter was feeling both sadness and relief that he would never have to face the occasional tuskie that did not die when stampeded over a cliff.

  “So, are we in agreement that from now on, we’ll settle each decision the Nuvik way and no longer the Seer way? We’ll keep what is good the Seers have given us and abandon what is contrary to the way of our name spirits and our people?”

  Lips popped, a resounding, “Yes.”

  Each taking his turn then, with some of the women also speaking up, Attu’s Clan discussed what they would do about the knowledge given to Meavu. It was decided only three would travel up the river: Tingiyok, Rusik, and Suka. Rovek was disappointed, but he respected that Suka was the better paddler, having proven himself many times to be swift and agile on the water.

  The three left the next dawn, setting off up the river against the current. The other hunters and women had come to see them off, all except Veshria. Rusik was the last to launch his skin boat. He kept looking back toward the camp. Finally, he gave up and climbed in, paddling hard to catch up with the others, who had already moved quite far upriver.

  “He was hoping Veshria would change her mind and come say goodbye,” Rika said.

  “She must still be angry at Rusik for going on a journey she thinks is too dangerous.” Attu watched the men as they paddled around the curve in the river and out of sight.

  “I think she is, but there’s more to it than that.” Rika turned to head back to camp. “I pressed Tingiyok, and he admitted that Veshria was one of the women in the Seer Clan who was suspicious of Keanu.”

  “I need to talk with her, then,” Attu said.

  “Are you coming back now?” Rika held out her hand for him.

  “No. I’ll stay here a while.”

  Attu watched the bend upriver where the skin boats had disappeared. He stood at the river’s edge, his thoughts tumbling like the water over the rocks at his feet. He thought about the men traveling upriver to meet Keanu and whomever she had with her. He wondered if he should have insisted on going also.

  Then his thoughts turned to Veshria. He wondered what he could say to the woman when she really hadn’t done anything wrong, just showed attitudes Attu felt could be dangerous to the Clan: first her stubbornness, and then her apparent dislike of Keanu. And he knew that some of Veshria’s attitude about Rusik leaving was a reaction to her own fear. She might scoff at Rika’s worry over using the root while with child, but Attu knew that Veshria must also be scared.

  Veshria wouldn’t want her man leaving her for any reason right now, and especially not to go after the woman who had gathered the root that was dangerous for Veshria’s baby, even if Keanu had done so at a time when Veshria was not with child and Keanu was simply doing a favor for her, with the Seer healer’s approval.

  I could wait and see what happens when the two women are together again.

  A noise on the path made him look away from the river. Veshria was walking down the path toward where he stood by the water, an empty water skin in her hand. She glanced upriver, and when she saw no one, she walked closer.

  “The men have left,” Attu said.

  Veshria said nothing as she moved to the water’s edge.

  “May I help you with that?” Attu asked Veshria as she struggled to balance on the rocks and dip her water skin into the river. “The rocks near the edge are slippery today. The wind has blown the spray up onto them.”

  “Thank you,” Veshria said and stepped back, handing Attu her water skin. He filled it, closing the top with the clip, and gave it back. Veshria thanked him and turned to walk up the path to the shelters.

  “Wait,” Attu said.

  Veshria stopped and turned back to him. Her mouth tightened and she clutched the water skin to her chest, but she said nothing.

  I knew this wouldn’t be easy.

  “I’ve just been standing here, thinking about Keanu,” Attu began. “I was wondering if you could help me with some questions I have about her, since you’ve known each other your whole lives. Was she your–”

  “I am no friend of Keanu’s,” Veshria interrupted. She scowled, her brows drawing together in a tight line. “What questions do you have?”

  “I just keep wondering why she is coming to us and who she is bringing with her.”

  Other questions roiled in his mind, questions that Veshria could never answer. When Keanu gets here, will she be able to make my spirit stop straining to fly again? Meavu says Keanu thinks I’m in danger because of her. What happened in that dream?

  “I have no idea why Keanu would come here, except perhaps the Seers have finally gotten tired of her refusal to identify nearby game for them to hunt, or of the other things she does with her strange Gifts.”

  “What are you talking about?” Attu asked.

  “Gifts are Gifts, and growing up a Seer, even though I have no Gifts, I accepted others who did, like Tingiyok. You know he is welcome in my shelter.”

  “Yes, and he is grateful for it.”

  “As is my family. But Keanu’s Gifts are not like any others in our Clan. She is dangerous.”

  “Dangerous?” Attu felt himself growing angry. “All she did was bring you the roots the Seer healer said you could use. Are you blaming her for what Rika warned you about?”

  “No,” Veshria said, but as she spoke, her head nodded as if to say yes. Then Veshria closed her eyes and clutched the water skin to her chest.

  Steady. You need to know what Veshria really thinks. There may be more to this than simple frustration for her own mistake.

  “Why do you think Keanu’s dangerous?” Attu asked, working to calm his voice. “Tell me, Veshria. As Clan leader, I need to know if something or someone might be a threat to us.”

  “Keanu can enter the minds of animals and control them,” Veshria said.

  “Yes. We all know that. What else?”

  “She can also enter the minds of people and control them. She’s done it before.” Veshria looked at Attu, her eyes daring him to disagree with her. “That’s why so many of the Seers avoided her. Any time she wanted to, she could
take over one of our minds. Who knows what she might make a person do?” Veshria shuddered. “She could put any one of us in great peril.”

  “Has she ever done that? Taken over a person’s mind and controlled them?” Tingiyok had said some of his Clan had thought Keanu capable of this...

  “She entered my mind when she was a child still and I was a young woman. She didn’t try to control me, and she left as soon as she realized what she’d done, I think, but I saw it, Attu, in her mind. She realized she could have taken control of me, and a part of her wanted to. I felt it.”

  “But she never tried to do that again, as an adult, with you or anyone else?”

  “Not that I know of. And Keanu always tried to be helpful after what happened. Like gathering the root for me. See what happened with that.” Veshria scowled. “Keanu walks around acting as if she’s innocent and kind and only means the best for her Clan, but I know better. I saw into her mind as she saw into mine, and I’ve never forgotten. It’s just a matter of time before she gives in to her desire to control others.”

  Attu raised a hand to protest, but Veshria’s voice rose as she continued, her face flushed and her eyes flashing. “She’s stubborn. She wouldn’t help the hunters no matter how much the Clan needed meat. She spent most of her time in the forest by herself doing who knows what kinds of things with her strange Gifts and didn’t even try to find a man for her own. She had eyes for my man, but I told Rusik to stay away from her. See what good that did me? He’s gone after her. Maybe even from there, she is controlling his mind.”

  “That’s impossible.”

  “Is it? I don’t trust her. I know what she can do. You shouldn’t trust her, either. If she’s coming here, it’s for no good reason.” Veshria turned and strode back up the path, walking as quickly as she could, the heavy water skin bouncing.

  “Veshria, wait!” Attu called after her. But Veshria ignored him and walked on.

  Attu stared at Veshria’s retreating back. Enter the minds of people? Control them? I never saw or heard of anything like that going on with Keanu when we were with the Seers. Still, Tingiyok was holding back information from us when we discussed Keanu. And when I think about it, Keanu did seem to be by herself most of the time, absent from the cooking fires and evening gatherings. Could there be something to Veshria’s words? She certainly seems agitated that Keanu is coming here. It’s more than just her being upset about the root, as serious as that is... I need to speak with Elder Tingiyok again. And I won’t be able to until he returns with Keanu.

  Attu stared out over the river for a long time, thinking about all he had learned. He finally turned away from the rushing water and back toward the shelters on the beach. As he neared the last bend in the river, just out of sight of where the others were working, the usual smells of cooking and the sounds of children playing and women and men talking and working grew louder as the sound of the river receded. Attu felt the tension of his thoughts subsiding with these familiar noises.

  Someone screamed.

  Attu jolted in alarm and ran toward camp.

  Another cry ripped through the air but was cut off, as if someone had clamped a hand over the screamer’s mouth.

  Attu shot around the bend.

  What’s happening?

  He strained to hear, but the camp had gone silent.

  Rika! He mind shouted to her as he ran faster, sliding around the bend and into full view of the Clan and the ocean.

  Her reply was to show him what he could now see with his own eyes. Huge canoes were rounding the tip of the peninsula and heading straight for their beach.

  Chapter 5

  Women grabbed the smallest children, older ones ran alongside their mothers, and like mist, they slipped into the surrounding forest and out of sight. As Attu ran to where Ubantu and the other men were gathering at the shore, weapons at the ready, he ran past the last few women, including Elder Nuka, who was moving swiftly in spite of her age, a full pack on her back. It probably contains whatever food and other supplies she’d been able to grab, Attu thought.

  “We’ll stay out of sight until you come for us,” Nuka said, and disappeared into the trees.

  “There are only three canoes,” Rovek called from where he was standing on a nearby rock outcropping. He shaded his eyes, straining to see the boats against the surface of the water, now sparkling in the morning light.

  “Ra... Ravens?” Attu gulped out his question between gasps as he pulled up beside the others.

  “I can’t tell for sure, but their boats look different. They’re wider and shorter than the Raven canoes were.”

  “They’re moving slowly,” Ubantu said.

  And as Attu and the others watched, the boats pushed closer to shore.

  “One boat is coming in sideways,” a hunter said.

  It looked to Attu as if the canoes were being carried in on the waves alone, drifting rather than being paddled. As the boats drew closer, it was clear something was very wrong. Attu could make out only two men in each of the first two canoes, paddling, but having difficulty making headway in their large boats. The third craft looked tied onto the back of the second one, and it was lolling in the water, blown sideways by the wind, bobbing and making the second canoe flounder as the two men in that one worked to get both boats to shore.

  “The first canoe will make it around those last rocks midway up the peninsula. But the second and third boats are headed right toward the largest ones.” Attu strained to see more clearly.

  “I think the current is pulling them,” Ubantu said.

  “What should we do?” Rovek and the other hunters looked to Attu. Attu stared out at the canoes, his heart pounding in his chest as he remembered the screams of the Ravens when he and Tingiyok could do nothing but watch them being eaten alive by the killer whale fish.

  Whoever these hunters were, he couldn’t watch another group of men die in the water. Besides, it was clear these men weren’t in any shape to attack anyone. The few men who could still paddle after whatever tragedy had apparently befallen them on the ocean were too few to even get their own boats to shore safely, let alone try to hurt anyone else. They’d simply seen this beach, just as Ubantu had spotted it for Attu’s Clan, and they were desperately attempting to make it to shore alive.

  And today the spirits might be with these strangers once again, Attu thought. For we are here, and we are many and strong.

  “We help them!” Attu shouted as he ran for his skin boat. “Father and Rovek, come with me. The rest of you divide. Half to the first boat, the others with us.”

  “Grab whatever ropes you have handy,” Ubantu shouted. He threw his own sturdy hunting rope and spear into the front of his skin boat and launched himself into the water.

  Their crafts were light and swift, riding on top of the ever-increasing surf. Ubantu neared the second canoe first, as it floated dangerously close to the rocks. The two men Attu could see on board were paddling backward furiously, but they were barely holding their own against the current sucking them toward the rocks. They’d seen Attu’s group approach, but didn’t stop paddling. Attu realized they couldn’t, or they’d be crushed against the rocks in a matter of moments.

  “We need to latch on to their crafts and pull them out of there, but how?” Attu yelled over the sound of the waves.

  “Look at the back of their canoes,” Ubantu shouted.

  Attu saw that the backs of the stranger’s canoes rose up higher than the fronts. Some sort of tool was mounted to the rear, and on it was a hook, almost a full circle, and big. Attu briefly wondered what it was made of, because although it looked sturdy, it also seemed strange, curved in a way bone, rock, or wood never was.

  “Do you think you can spear through it?” Attu knew that no one had better aim than his father, but this wildly moving target looked almost impossible to make.

  “I’ll try.” Ubantu stood to a half-crouch in his own skin boat, holding his spear at the ready, rope attached.

  One of the men i
n the strange canoe cried out as he saw the spear and paddled even harder, trying to get out of the trap of the rocks and away from these strangers who seemed to be trying to kill him. But Ubantu’s spear flew true to its mark through the hook and fell into the water on the other side. He reeled in the rope, and the spear end caught sideways in the hook.

  It held.

  Ubantu and Attu shouted in triumph.

  “Pray my spear and this rope are strong enough,” Ubantu called as he turned away from the stranger’s canoe and paddled as hard as he could, as if it were a huge fish he was dragging in.

  Attu moved alongside Ubantu’s rope and hitched it with a twist around the rope and rear hook he had on his own skin boat, used to haul large game out of the water. Rovek did the same between Attu and Ubantu. The three other hunters who’d come with them moved in front of Ubantu, pausing only long enough to knot their hunting ropes to the front of Ubantu’s skin boat. They all paddled toward shore and away from the rocks: the three hunters first, attached by their ropes, then Ubantu, Attu, and Rovek, strung on Ubantu’s rope attached to the floundering canoes.

  Attu strained at his paddle. He felt his boat bending, pulled sideways by the force of the current on the large canoes behind him. He glanced back. The canoes were still caught in the current toward the rocks, the second one now in front of the first, and because no one was paddling it, the second boat worked with the current, pulling the first boat toward the rocks.

  “Paddle harder!” Rovek shouted.

  They paddled and paddled, their own boats skewing with the surf. The waves grew as the wind picked up out in the bay, and Attu was afraid his skin boat would flip over in the force of the waves if he stopped paddling. He looked back again and saw they’d made no progress. The large canoes were still caught in the current, and all their efforts were merely holding the canoes steady, only a spear’s throw from the rocks.

  Attu was tiring. They couldn’t do more than hold their own against these waves, and when he glanced back again, Ubantu’s spear was bending under the strain. It might snap at any moment.