Blooded Ground (Clan of the Ice Mountains Book 2)

by C. S. Bills

  Kagit turned to his people. “Watch! Raven over all!” He shouted and lunged toward Paven. But he had been drinking the poisoned drink also, and his reflexes were slow.

  Paven moved like a man who’d never been gored by a tuskie. His staff flashed out and caught Kagit across his throat. The crack of the stick breaking in half echoed throughout the cedar house. Kagit’s eyes bulged in pain, and he grabbed at his throat. Paven was on him in a heartbeat, grabbing the leader’s own knife and slicing the side of Kagit’s neck open in one vicious blow. Blood spewed from Kagit’s wound and the man fell dying.

  Attu looked to where Rika had been held by Limoot. Rika lay off to the side. Limoot lay on her back, Tingiyok’s knife protruding from her left eye. Rovek was racing toward his sister and Meavu.

  Father. Attu realized.

  “Rika!” Attu shouted and followed Rovek up onto the platform. Rika’s eyes were open and she scrambled to stand. Attu and Rovek exchanged glances, then Rovek moved to untie Meavu as Attu pulled Rika to her feet, removed the gag from her mouth, and cut her bonds with Limoot’s knife, wresting it from the old Raven’s claw-like hand, where she clenched it even in death. He tossed the knife to Rovek, who was struggling with Meavu’s bonds. Meavu was standing now, but her eyes appeared vacant. She seemed to not realize Rovek was untying her.

  Attu turned as Paven cried out. Three Raven hunters surrounded him. Paven’s eyes widened and Kagit’s knife now dangled uselessly from his hand as the Raven Clan’s knives flashed in and out of his body, so many and so fast, Paven was surely dead on his feet.

  “Father!” Rika yelled.

  “It’s too late,” Attu said. He turned to defend Rika from the oncoming Ravens, but the rest of his people swarmed over the platform, and using weapons they’d taken from the weakened or now unconscious Ravens, they attacked the Raven hunters who hadn’t consumed the poisoned drink.

  “We need to get Meavu out of here,” Rovek said, and Rika rushed to Meavu’s side as Ravens and Clan hunters slashed and stabbed at each other. The Ravens had the advantage of being taller, with longer arms, but Attu’s people were fighting for their lives, and their spirits were as flames in a roaring fire before these Ravens. Raven after Raven fell to their Nuvik attackers.

  Attu reached his sister’s side, as well. He jumped out of the way of a Raven hunter and slashed at the man’s face as one of the Seer hunters pierced the man through the chest with a spear. Meavu stood in the middle of it all as if it were a dream, Rovek at her side, slashing with his free hand at any Ravens who came close to them. He momentarily let go of Meavu, and she began walking toward the edge of the platform, barely escaping another Raven’s knife as it flashed through the air.

  “She’s Between still,” Rika yelled, and grabbed Meavu, throwing her arms around Meavu’s face and neck to protect the dazed woman. “Come now, Meavu, come with me,” Rika crooned into Meavu’s ear as if she were a small child and there was no danger of imminent death surrounding her. Meavu let Rika lead her off the platform as Rovek grabbed a spear from a dying Raven and defended them both.

  Yural was now at their side as well, her face bloody, gripping a long Raven knife. They moved slowly forward through the fighting, guiding Meavu step by step and defending themselves as the Ravens leaped forward to slash at them. Rovek took down one hunter with a piercing blow to the chest. Yural sliced another man’s arm to the bone. He fell, screaming.

  They were almost off the platform when Tuunti leaped up before them, wielding a curved blade in each hand. “You die!” she screamed in garbled Nuvik. “I take power, Gifts. I kill you. I have Kagit’s power, and Limoot’s.” She glanced down for a second at her chest, where Kagit’s and Limoot’s necklaces, thick with totems carved on them, now jangled against her breast. “I am power of Raven now!” I kill you all!”

  “Get Meavu out of here!” Yural cried and blocked Tuunti’s knives with her one long blade. The two women circled each other. Attu moved to step in.

  “No!” his mother shouted. “A woman must fight her, someone strong in the ways of the spirits. Trust me, Attu. I must kill Tuunti in the Here and Now, where I wield the power of the women, the power of our Spirits. I must kill her before the power of the Raven Spirit she is trying to control overcomes the spirits of our people.”

  The others kept going, getting Meavu off the platform as Attu stood back, shocked at the determination on his mother’s face, but more shocked by the power he could feel emanating from her small form. It was as if she were a lightning bolt, ready to strike. She began calling out to the spirits of the Expanse, to her name spirit, to Elder Nuanu, and to many other names Attu had never heard, but guessed were the names of powerful Elder women of the past now long gone Between.

  Kagit’s woman seemed to grow smaller as Yural advanced on her. Apparently surprised by her adversary’s boldness, she backed up, first one step, then another, still slashing the knives in front of her and yelling in the Raven Clan’s tongue. It sounded like she was shouting for the Raven’s spirit to come down and fight with her, in her, but Attu couldn’t be sure.

  Then, at the edge of the platform, Kagit’s woman stopped. Realizing she had nowhere to go but forward, she rushed at Yural, who deftly whirled away from her. Tuunti screamed and turned back, furious at being so easily evaded. She attacked again, but, Attu saw, she was also being reckless. Yural stepped carefully, her face now deadly calm. She silently darted in among the chaotic slashing and screaming of the Raven woman and her knives. Yural knocked one blade out of the woman’s hands, slitting her arm from wrist to elbow. Kagit’s woman looked down, more surprised, it seemed, than in pain, and as she did, Yural slipped her long blade into the woman’s chest and out again in a move so quick Attu barely caught it. A moment later, the necklaces Tuunti had been wearing, apparently cut with that same blow, fell to the floor in a shower of flying totems and beads.

  Kagit’s woman looked down at her bleeding chest, now bare of her prized Raven charms.

  “No one is more powerful than the spirits of MY people,” Yural said. Her voice was like that of many voices, not one. Many powerful women, all speaking through Yural at once.

  Attu’s flesh tingled at the sound.

  A look of surprise crossed Tuunti’s face before her eyes rolled back and she sank to the floor, lifeless.

  Yural stared at the body, the bloody knife now dangling at her side. Suddenly her whole body began to shake.

  Attu turned to take her arm, to get her to come with him, but a nearby Raven hunter pulled back his spear and threw it at Attu’s chest from the other side of the platform. Attu was too close to the wall of the cedar house to leap right or left. He started to drop instead, and as he did, everything around him slowed and he could see the spear hurtling through the air, saw his body dropping to the ground, and he rolled toward his attacker, then to his left to avoid being struck. The spear thudded into the wall behind him.

  The Raven hunter roared, pulled his knife, and came at Attu. Attu threw his hands out to try to deflect the blow. He saw the blur of the man almost upon him, then another blur rising from his left, and Ashukat fell back against him, pierced through the chest with the Raven hunter’s knife.

  Ubantu was beside them both, flashing a long-bladed knife and striking the Raven hunter across the throat. The Raven hunter fell, his last breaths a gurgle as the blood poured from his wound.

  Attu looked down. Ashukat lay dead at his feet.

  “He saved my life,” Attu whispered. “So did you.” Attu looked to his father. He felt dazed, as if everything around him was unreal, a place Between in which he’d become frozen in a single moment. He felt himself drifting away, to a place of ice and snow and...

  “Attu! Atuu!” Ubantu was shaking him. “We’ve got to get out of here. Now.” Attu came back to himself in a rush as Ubantu pushed him toward the door, then grabbed Yural’s arm, leading her out behind him.

  They ran to catch up with the other hunters, who were waiting for them in the shelter of the tre
es, weapons at the ready.

  “The others have run ahead,” one of Attu’s hunters said. “Rovek has Meavu, and the women and children are safe for now.”

  “Rika!” Attu shouted as Rika ran to him. “Why didn’t you leave with Rovek and Meavu?”

  “I couldn’t,” Rika said.

  Attu grabbed her hand and began running back to their camp.

  “Father?” Rika asked.

  Attu shook his head and ran faster.

  Tears Rika had been holding back overflowed, but she kept moving.

  As they rounded a bend in the path, hunters behind them shouted. Attu pushed Rika ahead of him.

  “Run!” he yelled. He turned to face whoever the Ravens had sent to attack them again. But with Kagit and Limoot both dead and most of the hunters having drunk at least some of the poison, the Raven camp was apparently in turmoil and only four or five Raven hunters had come after them. Two fell, killed by their own Clans’ spears, thrown by Nuvik hunters. The rest turned back.

  The Clans continued running even after the Ravens stopped chasing them. The erupting volcano lit the night sky to the north.

  It obviously was not a good omen for the Ravens, Attu thought darkly.

  “Elder Nuanu, we need you now, more than ever before,” he whispered to her spirit as he ran.

  The volcano has always been a good omen for our people, Tingiyok mind spoke, and Attu realized he’d probably reached Tingiyok with his own thoughts, so intense were his emotions right now. It brought the paddle antlers to us in the time of Cold, Tingiyok continued. But I have no remembrance of it ever erupting as violently as it is now, not in any memory I have of the past.

  They reached the last curve in the path.

  “Suka?”

  Suka was running toward them, a torch in his hand. All the skin boats had been brought to the water, packed as the Clans had readied them, but now off their racks, paddles in each, and ready to launch.

  “Suka!” Attu shouted and rushed to his cousin, grasping him in a strong embrace. “The Ravens-”

  “I know. The women who ran ahead told me they were trying to kill all of you.”

  “What are you doing here?” Attu asked as they moved back toward the skin boats.

  “Farnook?” Rika asked.

  “She’s beyond the boats, watching the north shoreline. She has Seen, she needs to tell you-” Suka choked off his words. “But that can wait. Just hurry. We need to get north as fast as possible. I came to show you the way. The fire mountain eruption is bigger than you think. If we don’t leave now, everyone will be trapped here with the Ravens, but if we leave now, we can get past the fiery mountain and when this eruption is over, they won’t be able to follow us. We’ll be on our way north again, and safe!”

  “What do you mean?” Attu asked. The Clans gathered and Suka jumped up on a rock so he could be heard. Attu realized it was the rock Suka had leaped on to see the Raven Clan’s canoes so many moons ago. A lifetime ago.

  “The mountains to the north are bursting with fire flowing down the sides. Farnook was warned in a dream we must come and lead you back with us, but we didn’t know exactly why until we reached the narrows, and I realized the hot fire that becomes rock when it hits the water might soon slide to the water and block your path north.”

  Lips popped in dismay. Several of the hunters began to speak, but Suka held up his hand and they quieted.

  “When you weren’t here, I ran to the Seer Clan’s camp to see if you were there. As I looked from the top of the last ridge to the east, I saw the fire moving south along the edge of the mountains. Look, you can see it now.”

  Everyone turned and looked where Suka was pointing. On the horizon to the north and east, they could see a brightness reflecting off the clouds overhead, an orange glow of fire.

  “It’s traveling south?” Tingiyok asked.

  “It grew closer even as I watched.”

  “It will block the pass.”

  “Yes.”

  “Thank the Great Spirit,” Tingiyok said.

  Attu suddenly realized what Tingiyok was thinking. He would surely warn the Seers in the grasslands as soon as possible, but with the pass blocked there was no way the Ravens, when they recovered, could venture into those lands to kill the rest of his people with Gifts. Even if they came back to the eastern edge of the mountains with the tuskies in the spring, they’d probably be safe.

  At that moment, a sharp breeze blew through the trees near the beach. Attu turned and looked at Rika as everyone shivered.

  “The evil spirits of the Ravens are about on this night of death, and we must escape this place. Now.” Attu heard his own voice, strong with conviction.

  They pulled the skin boats into the water. So little compared to the Ravens’ canoes, but there were twenty-three crafts bobbing in the water as they set out.

  “I’ll set the pace,” Tingiyok said. “I know this bay like my own hands. I’ll guide us up to the first island. Then you can take over, Suka,” and the old Seer struck out. Steadily paddling, he pulled ahead.

  “Match his strokes,” Ubantu called as a few of the more frightened women and a few hunters scrabbled their paddles in the water, trying to move as fast as they could. “Steady. We have a long ways to go.”

  Ubantu’s calm voice and steady paddling with Yural behind him calmed the others. Meavu sat in front of Rovek in his skin boat, and she paddled, but Attu sensed Meavu was only partly in the Here and Now. She had suffered terribly. Attu couldn’t even begin to imagine what the Ravens had done to keep Meavu a prisoner, hidden for so many moons until their great totem had been carved and was ready for its human sacrifice. He shuddered and turned his thoughts toward escape. They must make it through the watery narrows to the north before the fiery mountain blocked their way.

  Attu moved into the rhythm of the paddling. He was already exhausted from the ordeal they’d just survived. It was going to be a long night.

  “Attuanin,” Attu whispered. “We’re above your kingdom now. Protect us.”

  Chapter 24

  “We must rest,” Ubantu said, his voice echoing over the water to Attu and the others. They’d paddled through the night without stopping, and now the sun had risen and the sky to the east, over the forest, had faded from a dawn pink to gray. “Let’s head for that beach,” and he pointed to the north where a wide flat area of pebbled beach would allow them all to land.

  “We’ve got to get through the narrows before they’re blocked with lava,” Tingiyok said. “And do you think we’ve put enough distance between us and the Ravens if they try to come after us right away?”

  “I don’t know, but we must rest. Some of us are used to paddling for most of the day, but the women have only paddled on short journeys. They’re exhausted.”

  The children of the Clans had slept through the night, wrapped in furs in the bottom of the larger skin boats. They raced along the beach, full of energy now. The weary women fed them, then lay down with the hunters to rest.

  Attu fell asleep on the warm sand before he remembered stretching out.

  It seemed only a moment later when Rika shook him gently. “We need to go.”

  Attu rolled onto his side and stood, brushing the sand and pebbles from his bare legs and arms.

  “We are far north of the bay now. Suka, you will take over the guiding,” Attu said.

  Suka nodded in agreement and they headed out again, Suka in the lead and Tingiyok behind him.

  “We’ll make it to the narrows by sunset if we can keep a good pace and only stop once more,” Suka said. “It will be close to high tide then.”

  Attu looked to the north. The volcano was much larger on the horizon now, and the fiery rock and smoke rose up, blotting out much of the sky in that direction.

  They took another short break in the late afternoon.

  “Here,” Rika said, and motioned for one of the women to come sit beside her. Rika showed her how to wrap her hands with soft hides after spreading a soothing paste on
them, covering the blisters on her fingers and palms.

  The woman sighed with relief and took the hides and paste to help the others.

  Yural organized the children to catch a few fish and to collect some edible berries hanging dry on nearby bushes. Then, with the small ones busy, the weary men and women sat, rubbing painful shoulders and arms that they’d ignored while paddling, but which – now that they weren’t being used to pull the boats through the water – hurt terribly.

  “We can do this,” Attu said, encouraging the hunters and their women. “I know we’re all tired, but try to eat as much as you can, drink, and rest for a bit, but prepare for a long night. We’ve got to paddle through the night to get past the narrows and the mountain, Suka says. We’ll make it.”

  Some hunters still looked skeptical, but many lips popped in agreement with him and the women pulled dried food from pouches and handed out liberal amounts to everyone. They ate and rested some more, before continuing up the coast.

  The sun was touching the ocean to the west when they glided around a last curve in the shoreline. They were as far out into the small bay as they could be without hitting the too-large waves of the open ocean. They made the last curve, and the fiery mountain came into full view.

  Men and women popped their lips at the sight. Dread rose in Attu’s spirit. Ash and flaming rock roared out of the top of the mountain. Attu thought he could hear the eruption itself now, as if a giant ice bear were clawing its way up and out into the world from the rocky depths below. They paddled and watched as the fire and flames spurted upward into the darkening sky. The air around them smelled sharp, as smoke reached them from the north, stinging their eyes.

  “And we’re still a distance away,” Rika said from behind him. “What will it be like when we get closer?”

  “Attu,” Suka called, and he paddled his skin boat closer to his cousin’s. “Farnook has something you need to know.”