Leopard Adventure

by Anthony McGowan

  ‘Now we go,’ said Dersu. And they left, creeping away like assassins.

  ‘We must get as far away as possible before we make our camp,’ said Dersu when they had put enough distance between themselves and the bear to be out of earshot. Makhu looked genuinely distressed, which seemed a little odd to Amazon, given the way he had faced down the tiger the night before.

  ‘I second that,’ said Frazer. ‘That was the biggest bear I’ve ever seen.’

  ‘My people fear the bear more than Amba,’ said Dersu. ‘The tiger here is not like the tiger in India. They are very seldom man-eaters. They attack when they are hunted or injured – never do they choose to kill people for food. But the bear is different. He is clever and he eats whatever he wants. And sometimes what he wants is man.’

  Makha soon found the forest trail. They picked up Boris the Dog, who was fast asleep in the exact spot they had left him, and after half an hour of forced marching they reached a flat area near the river that satisfied the old tracker’s strict requirements for a campsite.

  Makha and Dersu slung down their packs and then disappeared, Dersu carrying a hatchet. While they were gone Frazer and Amazon prepared the fire. Frazer let Amazon have a go at lighting it with his firesteel. It was actually pretty easy, Amazon found, as long as you had good dry tinder.

  Soon Dersu and Makha returned carrying great armfuls of spruce branches and some long trimmed poles. In ten minutes they had constructed a lean-to, open on one side, with a roof of fir, and with more fir piled on the floor to form a thick, springy mattress.

  Amazon looked at Frazer. ‘I hadn’t really thought about where we’re going to sleep. Should we make one of those things too?’

  ‘Well, that would be kind of fun, I guess. Except for the bugs.’

  Dusk was the prime hunting time for bloodsuckers, and big clouds of mosquitoes and gnats had found them. Despite the insect repellent, Amazon could already feel the bites beginning to itch.

  ‘And of course,’ Frazer continued, a half-smile on his face, ‘if that old bear happens by, and sees you lying there, he might just decide on a snack …’

  ‘THAT’S NOT FUNNY, FRAZER! I can’t believe you let me come out here without a tent …’

  ‘Well, that would have been dumb of me, wouldn’t it?’

  And then Frazer reached into his pack and pulled out a thin disc of material. With a quick flip, it pinged open, and where two seconds before there had been nothing but bare earth, now there was a neat little tent.

  ‘Very clever,’ said Amazon. ‘And where’s mine?’

  ‘Hate to tell you, Zonnie, but that’s a two-guy tent.’

  ‘No way!’

  ‘Way. Unless you want to spend the night out with the bugs and the bears …?’

  Amazon groaned, but didn’t argue.

  Half an hour later the four of them were gathered around the campfire, eating a stew of beans and rice which, to Amazon’s relief, didn’t taste of anything much.

  Makha had been staring into the fire while the young people chatted. Now he began to speak, and it seemed to Amazon that he spoke not to them, but to the fire. Dersu translated but, mysteriously, the voices blended together, so that it felt to Amazon and to Frazer that there was only one speaker, and that was the old man.

  ‘Sixty years ago when I was a boy, there were still Korean villages in the valleys. You could tell that they were Korean because they were clean and neat and the houses were all painted white.

  ‘In one of these villages I had a friend, called Dorea. We used to play together while my father sold wild ginseng to the Koreans. This is why I knew of the people and the village, and the terrible events that occurred. Dorea was my special friend, although her people did not want for her to play with a “savage” like me.

  ‘Anyway, it was at the end of the winter. A family in the Korean village was sitting down to dinner, when they thought there was a knocking at the door. The man, whose name was Shin, sent his wife to see who was there. He heard a scream, and saw the woman being carried away by a bear.

  ‘He ran to get his gun and chased the bear into the forest. He followed the tracks and the blood in the snow for two hours. He found the bear and fired, but his gun was old and exploded and knocked him out. When he woke up he saw that there were bear tracks all around where he lay. He did not understand why the bear had not killed him.

  ‘When he got back to his home he found that the bear had returned before him and killed his two children. He knew then that the bear was evil and had left him alive so he could see his children had been killed.

  ‘The village spent the next week in mourning for the dead. On the last night of mourning the bear returned to the village. It broke down the door of a house. Inside the house there were two women. The women fought the bear with pots and pans and knives and everything they could find, but the bear mortally hurt one woman, who told the story of what happened before she died, and took away the other woman into the forest.

  ‘Now the headman of the village went to the town to ask for help. The chief of police told him he would send men soon. On his way back to the village the headman was killed and eaten by the bear. At least that is what was said. Nothing was ever found of him and he may just have run away because of shame or fear.

  ‘The police finally came, but not for a week, and by then the bear had killed a boy who was playing in front of his house. His mother had told him not to go out, but the boy became bored, as boys will.

  ‘Five policemen went to track the bear. Many of the villagers went with them, some armed with guns, others carrying pitchforks and scythes. One even had a sword from the days of his ancestors. When they were out in the forest, the bear returned for the last time to the village and killed a blind man, and also the girl, Dorea, who was my friend.

  ‘The policemen came back from the forest and saw what had happened and then they ran away, saying that the bear was indeed a demon, and could not be killed.

  ‘It was then that my father and I returned to the village. We had been deep in the forest gathering ginseng, and knew nothing of the bear. I wept when I heard that my friend Dorea had been killed. I remember that my father scolded me for acting like a child. Then he spoke to the man, Shin, and together we three went into the forest. My father tracked the bear back to a cave. At the mouth of the cave there were many bones, the bones of deer and moose and even the bones of a tiger, as well as the bones of some of the people the bear had killed.

  ‘My father set alight the brush at the mouth of the cave. He gave his good rifle to the man Shin, and when the smoke forced the bear from the cave, Shin shot the bear.

  ‘But the bear was not killed, although the bullet entered his chest. The bear was enraged and killed the man Shin with a blow of its paw. My father said that this was a good thing, because the man Shin would not want to be alive with the thoughts of his family and what the bear had done.

  ‘The bear then stood on its back legs in front of my father, expecting him to quake before it, for the bear likes above all else to instil fear in its enemies. But my father did not quake.

  ‘Instead he said to the bear, “Bear, you have done evil here, beyond what is in even your nature to do. Go now with the man Shin’s bullet inside you, so you may remember the evil that you did, and leave this land and live in some other place and eat only nuts and fruit and carrion. Do this and I shall spare your life, and beyond that you shall live for longer than any other bear, and you will only die when my son Makha dies. Otherwise I shall kill you and your soul will be cursed and shall know torment to the end of time.”

  ‘And the bear understood this, and left that place, and did not kill again.

  ‘My father brought back the body of the man Shin and the bones of the others so that they could be buried.

  ‘These things are true, for I saw them all with my own eyes, or heard about them from others who were there when they happened.’

  When Dersu had translated these last words, the camp fell silent, and even
the river seemed hushed. Frazer wanted to say something, but he didn’t know what, and deep inside he knew that there are times when nothing is exactly the right thing to say.

  The great bear had eaten most of the deer by the time Amba found him. Amba had killed and eaten many bears before – usually black bears that made the mistake of being on the ground and not safely up in a tree, but also the occasional brown bear, caught snoozing in its lair or ambushed on a forest trail.

  This bear was huge and there was something ancient and fearsome about it beyond anything Amba had encountered before. But Amba was no coward, and he still wanted to inflict damage on all enemies of the tiger kind.

  His method with bears was a modified version of the way he killed big deer – with the added caution of dealing with another predator armed with teeth and claws, rather than just a grass-eater. He would attack from beneath, seizing the throat, and slowly choking the life out of his fearsome prey.

  And so, with infinite stealth, Amba stalked the great bear.

  The bear was not happy. For so many years now he had been hungry. Somehow the berries and nuts and half-rotten meat he had eaten had not satisfied the emptiness in his stomach, which was perhaps also the emptiness of his soul.

  He had a vague memory of other, happier times. Times when he had feasted well, and felt the joy of meat still fresh and blood still warm. But now each day seemed grey and purposeless. And he was often cold. How could that be when it was still summer in the forest? How would he feel when the snows came? Of course he would sleep the long sleep, but then what if he awoke early, with the ground still frozen?

  That is what had happened all those years before. He had awoken early and had felt the great hunger, and … but no, his old brain was foggy. Had it not been foggy he surely would have heard Amba approach, or smelled the tigerish smell of him.

  Amba’s ears were flat against his head, his tail low, flicking snake-like from side to side.

  Ten metres.

  Six metres.

  Amba paused – every muscle taut and tense and hard as steel.

  He leapt. But as his back paws bit into the ground a twig snapped.

  The great bear turned towards the sound, and so when Amba tried to close his jaws round the throat his teeth sank into the bear’s massive shoulder muscles. The bear reared and cuffed and bit at Amba, hurling its huge bulk around the clearing.

  Amba was now in as much danger as the bear. If the bear got a grip with its own crushing jaws, then the tiger would surely perish.

  But Amba had other weapons besides his teeth. He now raked the bear’s belly with his vicious back claws, sharp as sushi knives. The claws tore through the skin, tearing great gashes in the bear’s most vulnerable spot.

  The bear was hurt, so badly hurt, and Amba felt that the battle was his. It was time for the killing bite. He released the grip he had on the bear’s shoulder and got ready to sink his teeth into the throat.

  It was a mistake.

  Had he just kept his grip and continued to rip away with his claws, the bear would soon have tired and died from loss of blood and shock.

  But now, as Amba released his grip, the bear had just enough strength for one last swipe with its paw. All its ancient bulk and strength went into the blow, and the force of it hurled Amba back across the clearing. And, summoning all of its remaining strength, the bear roared and charged after the tiger.

  Amba, winded and bruised, decided that this was a fight he did not want, and fled before the brown bellowing monster.

  The bear did not follow for long. It had taken a mortal wound. It dragged its weary, bleeding body back to its lair – a cave scraped from the dry earth between the roots of an oak tree even older than the bear. It lay down and licked at the cuts and deep gashes.

  As it licked its chest, a bullet dropped out – the tiger had bitten right where the bullet had been lodged. It was a bullet from an old Russian army rifle of a kind not used for many, many years.

  And when the bullet dropped from the old bear’s body, so an ancient pain passed from him, and for the last time the Ussuri giant closed his dark eyes, and slept, forever now untroubled by the old dreams.

  But what of Amba? Tiger flesh is tough, and so, once again, as with the bullet, his pride was hurt more than his body.

  Humiliation whipped his fury, and now he made his way through the forest with death in his heart. And then he stopped.

  There was a scent.

  Faint, but definitely there. The smell of humans. One he recognized straight away: the smell of a human girl child.

  He turned and followed the scent.

  Back at the campsite all was quiet. Amazon and Frazer were in their sleeping bags in the small tent. The ground was uneven, and Amazon was tossing and turning, trying to get comfortable. Frazer, more used to the whole camping experience, was already in the pleasant dozy stage just before sleep, when good thoughts – if you are lucky – drift in and out of your mind like white clouds in a summer sky.

  Then Amazon heard a very strange noise – a sort of droning song accompanied by a rattling sound. She elbowed Frazer awake, and together they poked their heads out of the tent.

  The old tracker was sitting by the fire. He had a stick in one hand that had shells attached to it, threaded on a string. It was the stick that was making the rattling sound. With his other hand he was holding what looked like a tambourine to his mouth. He was singing into the drum of the tambourine, and that was what was making the strange, unsettling, droning noise.

  As he sang, he scattered more of the ledum leaves on the fire, filling the air with their heady fragrance.

  Amazon noticed that between Makha and the fire there was that same gruesome little blue-eyed wooden figure, Kasalyanku.

  Then Makha took out his hunting knife – a long-bladed weapon with a plain wooden handle, without ornament or any unnecessary embellishment – and carefully used it to pick out some glowing embers from the fire. Soon there were four small dots of orange light balanced on the blade. Then the old tracker stood up, still carrying the embers on his knife. He went in turn to four points equally spaced around their little campsite and placed an ember on the ground, each time calling out a word in his own language.

  Amazon looked questioningly over at Dersu, who was squatting at the opening of his shelter.

  ‘It is for protection. My grandfather fears that the bear or Amba will come in the night. But now that he has performed this rite we will be safe.’

  Strangely, this news didn’t reassure Amazon very much.

  ‘Frazer?’ she said.

  ‘Yep?’

  ‘You got your X-Ark ready?’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘Good.’

  Amba knew that he was close. The human scent was strong. But there was that other smell again. The one he did not like. The one that made his mind – usually so sharp, so focused – unclear.

  He crept closer to the camp. Tigers use scent to mark their territory and can follow a scent trail, but their primary hunting sense is vision. And now, even though it was pitch-black, Amba was close enough to see the tent with Frazer and Amazon in it, and the lean-to shelter.

  It was time, he knew, to leap. He extended his claws, stretching them out to their full length. It was normally something that gave the old assassin great pleasure. But not now.

  That smell.

  The old man who could see into his soul.

  It was no good.

  Yet again he was thwarted, and once more he was forced to slink away into the forest, his appetite both for meat and for revenge unsatisfied.

  ‘Hey, guys, you’re not going to believe this, but …’

  The next morning, after a breakfast of energy bars washed down with sweet tea made from boiled river water, Frazer had decided to try the radio tracking receiver one more time.

  Almost immediately there was a blip, and three of the LEDs had lit up on the control panel.

  Dersu explained the situation to Makha, who shrugged, and did not l
ook happy. However he did not object to following the electronic trail.

  The going was now incredibly tough. Up to this point, apart from the hectic chase after the martens, they had been following forest paths. Some of these had been made by the animals themselves: wild boar, deer, tigers. Some were made long before by the people who had lived here: Russians, Koreans, Chinese, Udege. And even before the Udege had come, a thousand years ago and more, there had been the first inhabitants of this land, the Nivkh.

  But now the winding trails were behind them, and they were heading in straight lines – or as near as they could manage it – towards their target.

  That meant scrambling over huge fallen trees, some rotten and crumbly, some slick with moss and lichen. It meant leaping over fast-flowing streams. It meant constantly going up and down, through the different layers of the forest.

  It was exhausting, with the added irritant of the constant attacks of horseflies, big as a thumbnail, and evil-looking deer flies, striped black and white, with delta wings like jet fighters. Both would leave an ugly welt when they bit, much more painful than the itchy lumps left by the midges, mosquitoes and blackflies.

  When they were walking along the forest trails, Makha had been tireless. But now the old man began to show his age. It was hard for him to scramble over the logs and leap the many brooks, and his grandson often had to stop to help him, while Amazon and Frazer waited.

  There was another factor that occurred to Amazon. Perhaps now that he was no longer leading them, Makha felt that he had lost his purpose.

  Frazer, however, was far too absorbed in following the signal to pay much attention to anyone else. He kept the aerial high above his head, and watched the control panel so intently that more than once he stumbled and fell. At times the signal strength dropped to one or two out of the five red lights, and once it disappeared altogether. But each time he found a strong signal again.