by KM Fortune
Raven came back to the present and stared at the doe standing at the edge of the snow covered clearing. It was less than twenty feet away. It stood looking back at her, poised and graceful. Could I swing the walking stick hard enough to bring down this creature if it let me get close enough? Raven wondered, flexing her hand on the staff. She imagined not, but perhaps enough to stun it if the blow was well placed. She took a slow step forward. The doe took a slow step backward. Raven stopped, the doe turned a little and she knew the animal was a moment from bounding away.
No, Raven thought, staring into the deep brown of the doe’s eyes. You have not been sent to feed me today. She still found it was reassuring to know at least some large game roamed the mountains with her. “Go on,” Raven said, causing the doe to startle a bit. “Be safe.” Raven turned and went back to her searching. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the doe take a step or two and then leap away into the brush. She was beautiful to look at, but in Raven’s heart, she knew she would have to find some way to kill the doe for food.
KIT FINALLY LEFT THE mountains and deep snow behind. Before leaving, she had explored a few other places in the rocky heights in hope of finding something useful, but not much was there to take. Only a pocket full of fresh pine needles for more tea. On her way, she made a last stop back by the hermit’s clearing. The stranger was still poking around in the snow when Kit gave up on the chance the hermit would find anything useful and she headed down the mountain toward home.
The air was a hint warmer now that she was back on the plains, but the wind was biting cold. Kit moved quickly, both to stay warm and in excitement because she was on her way back to her clan. She wondered how her people had fared while she was gone. She thought of Mouse, her much younger sister, and hoped she was well. It would take another four days to get back if she ran most of the way. Even with a quick stop at one or two of her caches to pick up the mutants’ stolen weapons, she knew she would be home before too long.
Kit jogged east, mindful of her surroundings, even in her haste. She could not afford to ever stop being cautious. Slipping from tree to boulder to bush, keeping in the shadows, always staying away from the open and thereby unprotected places. As she came out of the last small cluster of brush and trees at the base of the mountains and entered the true high desert terrain of sandy soil and scrub which made up the plains, she noticed some small shapes on the distant horizon. Instinctively, Kit ducked down and hid, becoming invisible, just another mound of dark shadow and brown sand. The shapes were still far away, but she knew the Patrols sometimes used special glasses to see long distances. It was wisest to stay low and wait to see who was coming.
As the shapes grew bigger, Kit could distinctly see it was two men dressed in the black and gray uniform of the Patrols. They were walking west along one of the old roads used in the time Before and it was obvious by their pace they had not seen her. Kit slowly crawled forward and slipped up on a boulder to get a better view. The old road, once paved and painted with yellow and white lines, was now cracked and faded, ran from the mountains and went far across the plains. She had explored along it many times, looking in the relics of old cars abandoned beside the highway for anything salvageable. There were some buildings at points along the road as well, but they were bare and crumbling, long ago stripped of everything. Kit even followed the road to the farthest outskirts of The Old City once, just to see what it looked like, but she had not wanted to venture into the ruined place. There were many tales of the gangs of mutants who lived there and she knew the Patrols visited regularly to capture and kill any nomad who tried to take up home in the many abandoned dwellings.
Kit watched from behind a rock, waiting to see if a Patrol truck or jeep would come into view. The Patrols usually traveled in packs and rarely on foot so she was surprised to see just two walking alone. It made her a little uneasy. It doesn’t make sense two of them are walking alone along the old road, she thought, but Kit knew an opportunity when she saw one. If the two men stuck to the road, they were certain to come close to where she was hiding. If they seemed off guard, Kit would consider letting her throwing stars fly. The plan was risky, but it wasn’t often she came across Patrols in such small numbers and in such wide-open terrain. Bringing down Patrols was a high prize. Not only did they have good clothes, quality rations, and working weapons to take, they were also the nomads’ worst enemy. Returning to the cave with a Patrol’s possession would be a great achievement. Kit was willing to wait and see.
The two men walked along the road and came closer.
CHAPTER 12
RIFLE FIRE? Raven, out in the open in the clearing which surrounded her cabin, froze in place and listened. A second burst echoed through the hills. Birds fluttered up from their perches in the trees nearby. Then there was silence. Raven waited. Nothing else sounded in the distance. What direction did that come from? she wondered, turning in a slow circle. It seemed close by, but she could not be certain. The way the hills rose up around her cabin could box in a sound or carry it from far away. Raven only knew one thing for sure and it was rifle fire meant people were relatively nearby. People with guns and those were not people she was ready to meet. Raven turned and ran back to the tunnel, which led into her cabin.
THE BULLETS LANDED close, but it was obvious the men could not see her. Or I would be dead, Kit reasoned, lying flat on the ground. Her first throwing star had flown true, hitting the larger of the two soldiers high on the cheekbone. Kit hoped to blind him with the throw and it appeared to work. The man dropped to the ground, holding his face, and screaming. Unfortunately, the second man was smarter and quicker than Kit expected and she had not been able to get a second star into him in time. Instead of just standing in the road in bewildered amazement, as Kit expected he would, the soldier flung himself off the road into a ditch and opened fire. The bullets ricochet around the trees and a couple even glanced off the boulder Kit was hiding behind, but it was not focused fire. The man was just spraying in the general direction the attack came from and it was effective. Kit could not move from her place on the ground behind the boulder. After a few moments, the shooting stopped.
THE MAN, WARY, CRAWLED slowly over to his moaning partner. While still keeping an eye on the trees, he pulled his buddy’s hand away from his face and surveyed the damage. A metal throwing star was lodged in his left cheek, just below the eye socket. There was a lot of blood and he could not tell if the eye was damaged. With a curse, he reached up and yanked the metal projectile out of this partner’s face. The other man yelled out and clamped his hand back over the bleeding wound. The soldier looked at the deadly object in his hand. It was a simple device, shaped from a piece of sheet metal into a five point, razor sharp star. It obviously was made with some care and practice. He looked up at the trees again hoping to catch a glimpse of their attacker, but nothing moved. Angrily, he let off a second burst of gunfire at the trees, but knew it was a waste of rounds. Grunting, he tossed the thing aside, gathered up his partner, and got ready to stand up. They would have to make quick time back to Eden now. The ugly wound on his buddy’s face needed immediate attention before it got infected. At best, following the road, they could be back to the colony before morning.
KIT TOOK IN THE MEN’S actions in glimpses. Her star had evidently hurt the first man badly, but not enough to completely disable him. With his partner’s help, he was able to stand up and stumble along the road. Both men now carried their weapons at ready, watchful in the case of a second attack. Kit moved slowly around the boulder, her belly to the ground, and watched them march down the road. She had been lucky and she knew it. One of those random bullets could have hit me, she thought. The soldier had been especially wary and alert and she could not figure out why. Normally, they were lazy and predictable, used to fighting with all the advantage, killing without mercy and taking captives with their overpowering numbers. Not these two. They had been walking with rifles ready, looking around as if something might actually attack them for a change. Kit
never saw them with their guard up like today. She had even considered letting the two men pass by, but the opportunity of a patrol of only two men on foot was too good to give up. If they had acted like they do normally, she thought. They had not. The second man reacted like someone afraid, immediately dropping to the ground, and shooting at anything and nothing.
Has something gotten to the Patrols? she wondered. Kit found it hard to believe. No one hunted the Patrols. Aside from the accidental encounter, as hers had been, almost no one sought out to attack the Patrols. So what is the change? Could the mutants be getting bolder or be on the rampage? It did not sound right. Mutants were cowards at heart, bullying when they had the upper hand, whimpering when they were under attack. Kit puzzled with it while she hid and waited for the two men to move further away. Her mind wandered back to the strange hermit on the mountain. The tall, pale man with almost no hair. Could that be why the Patrols were uneasy? Kit nearly laughed. Why would armed soldiers be afraid of someone alone and who didn’t have any weapons?
RAVEN WAITED IN THE woods and wondered if whoever fired the shots would come for her. After hearing the noise, she had ducked into the cabin and gathered her few possessions. The fire in the stewpot concerned her and although she hated to do it, she threw handfuls of snow on it until it went out. “That will make for a cold evening,” she muttered as the last flames sputtered and died. Bundled up and carrying her gear in a makeshift sling, Raven went up into the trees near her cabin and settled in to keep a lookout.
She watched for most of the afternoon and there were only a few hours of daylight left. Raven planned to keep hiding out until dark and then return to check her cabin. If it looks untouched, I will sleep there again tonight. Raven could not imagine anyone attempting to navigate the mountains in the dark. She hoped she would be safe in her lair until daylight again.
As Raven sat, her back resting against a tree, the young doe from before walked into a clear patch near her. Raven watched her, again captivated by her beauty as well as excited by the prospect of using the animal for food. The doe did not seem frightened, barely giving Raven a glance before lowering her head and using her nose to brush aside the snow near the base of a tree and picking at the sparse shrubbery. Watching the unconcerned animal, Raven began to consider the possibility she had overreacted to the sound of the gunfire. Those shots could have come from anywhere and echoed for miles. In all her searching, she saw no sign that anyone had been around the cabins for decades. Perhaps I have gotten myself all worked up over nothing, Raven thought, watching the doe move on from the meager patch of shrubs and disappear into the woods again.
THE TWO MEN FROM THE Patrols walked up the hillside. The one in the lead wore a bulky bandage across half his face. His left eye was covered and blood seeped through the white gauze wrapped around his head. The second man followed close, carrying his rifle ready, not wanting to be caught off guard again. He pushed the pace, using a less traveled side trail and hoped to make the colony’s south entrance before sunrise. Not that they were eager to get back and make their report. The week they spent on the plains turned up nothing. There was no sign of the escaped female and when they had crossed paths with another two-man team, they were told even worse news. The female everyone was scattered out looking for was really a witch. She was an incarnation of the devil and used black magic to disappear into thin air. Plus she had left a curse behind to cover her tracks. Many of the men had encountered horrible luck on their quests to find the woman. One was killed while walking down the mountain when a regularly used path suddenly gave way causing the man to fall to his death. Even their own team had been a victim of the curse when a piece of flying metal came out of nowhere and nearly killed one of them.
The wounded soldier pulled up and looked back at his partner. “Hey,” he mumbled around the gauze. “I need to stop and piss.” His partner nodded, stopping and scanning the forest worried of another attack. There was nothing to see, but trees and rocks and snow. Nothing human could survive on this mountain without proper weapons, gear, and survival training. Only a witch could, he thought. He shivered as a chill of fear ran up his spine. What if she is just behind those trees, watching me, waiting to cast another spell? The man swallowed hard and scanned the shadows. There was a flicker of light and the man froze, raising his rifle. He looked again, but did not see anything. Was it a trick? He took a step forward and then saw a blink of light a second time. There was definitely something there, back in the trees. The man gripped his rifle tight and prepared to go in and see what it was.
CHAPTER 13
THE MAN NEARLY WET himself when the gun went off a few feet from him. He whirled around toward his partner, finger on the trigger of his rifle, ready for combat. His partner stood at a nearby snowbank, weapon in hand, the fly of his Patrol uniform still unbuttoned and the words “Praise Him” written in yellow in front of him. “I got it,” he hollered, his words mumbled by the thick wad of bandage taped to his face. “One good eye and I still nailed it!” He slung the gun over his shoulder and, buttoned his fly while his partner, still shaking, stepped up next to him
“What?” he asked, scanning the woods, looking for a downed attacker. The wounded man pointed over the snow bank. Spots of blood dotted the white.
“Right up there, at the edge of the clearing. I was standing here pissing and then suddenly, there it was. Might have been a doe. It didn’t have much for antlers.”
His partner shook his head and climbed up the bank. The bandaged man followed, having trouble keeping his balance on the ice-covered rocks. The two of them stood looking down at the spot where something certainly had been wounded. Deer tracks lead away, but the animal was not in sight. “Shit,” mumbled the shooter. “I was hoping to at least get the tail for a souvenir.”
RAVEN PRESSED HERSELF against the back of the tree and did not move. The men were less than twenty feet away and she was afraid any movement would make a sound and alert them. She heard the gunshots and saw the deer bolt back past her. Blood had splashed the ground as the doe passed and Raven knew the animal was hit. Now the sound of the men’s voices carried up to her.
“Well, I’m not going to track it,” said one of the men. Raven peeked around the tree and saw a man with a heavy bandage on his face nod in agreement.
“Yeah, okay. We’ll be back in the colony by morning anyway so I guess we don’t need the meat. Still, it would have tasted nice.”
“Come on. We’ve wasted enough time,” said the second man.
Raven watched as the two turned and tramped down off the snow bank and back out of sight. She listened as their footsteps faded away and then forced herself to wait. Finally, convinced they were gone, she hurried to investigate the deer’s trail of blood. The red drops were easy to see against the snow even in the dimming light. Raven followed easily. A lot of blood was flowing out of the doe, but apparently the wound was not immediately fatal. She walked for a long time and it was growing darker when Raven came to a place where the blood spots fell closer together. They were significantly darker and clearly marked the end of the trail. The tracks stopped altogether and Raven knew the creature had gone to ground.
Raven paused and thought back to those hunting trips with her father over a century ago. Wounding a deer was always upsetting and made for a hard day. Tracking them, hoping to find them so the animal could be put out of its misery quickly rather than suffering, was a challenging task. A wounded deer would know when it was too weak to go on and hide under the brush, usually curled up in a ball. The dark coat against the brown pine needles and dirt was excellent camouflage. Raven’s only advantage was the lack of dense undergrowth in this part of the woods. The ground was rocky. The trees were tall and blocked out daylight so little could grow on the forest floor. It was very dark here though, with the sun now setting, and it was cold. Raven wanted to find the doe in a hurry.
She dropped to all fours and crawled slowly among the trees, pushing through the short brush. “I am a brave, but wounded an
imal,” Raven said softly. “Something has hurt me that I don’t understand and now I feel that I am dying.” She crawled more, trying to put herself in the mind of the deer. She could feel it was close by. “Here I will hide and not be afraid,” she whispered and then Raven saw her. The doe’s eyes glowed at her through the underbrush. Her head was still up and Raven watched her struggle to stand and flee, but the strength was no longer there. Raven stood up slowly and approached, her heart sad to see the innocent creature hurting. The doe’s eyes never left Raven’s.
“I’m sorry it’s so painful,” Raven said to the frightened deer. “You did not deserve this and I am sorry.” Raven lifted her heavy walking stick with the mallet-like end carved into the shape of a bird’s head and paused. “Your death will not be in vain, sweet creature. Thank you for giving me life.” Raven brought the heavy stick down with all her strength, striking the suffering doe on the top of the head and cracking her skull. Without even a whimper, the doe slid over onto her side and her suffering was over.
