The Rite to Kill, part 1. An Orphans and the Egg story.
In the mountains, early morning travel was done while the snow still had a hard crust. If it was clear and the moon was out, the group would begin in a starlit twilight that became a sunrise casting long shadows.
These ideal conditions would wane as their world warmed. After mid-morning they would keep to more northerly slopes, where the world warmed slower, or where the drifts had sintered. By these choices they could go for hours longer.
Occasionally, the treks ended by late morning when the snow would become wet and heavy. When what could be walked upon would devolve into waist deep clumps that clung, or, worse, a saturating slush by the early afternoon.
The additional threat of avalanches kept them on guard. Even a small slide could be a threat in certain terrain like narrow gullies or steep traverses above chasms.
Being stuck below heavy and stiffening snow in a small ravine or at the base of a great mount had the same end result. Death.
Large jumbled plates of ice along the small mountain rivers would gradually shatter in long thin shards of candle ice. The soothing tinkles and susurrations like hymns in celebration of the bright sun.
During these times is when Asrid began to feel a lightness that came ftom the sunlight itself. As if it was gently tugging her upwards. This began to happen to a lesser extent in the moonlight as well. A literal weightlessness. With her light step she would skip across the mushy terrain only sinking to her ankles, at most. Or she would flitter up and down steep clines live a downy feather.
She contemplated leaping from cliffs with the falcons as they traversed soaring ridges.
The resulting humidity of the thawing world became a mild concern at dusk when the cold came quick.
Wet footwear and clothing was wrung out and tucked into armpits and groins to dry in the night as they all, except !Nka, cuddled against the copious warmth of Asrid.
They all noticed the changes to her, the light steps, the gradual steady increase in warmth, the sparks in her eyes.
Her heat was like a worrisome fever. No sweat or delirium. She was comfortable, never hot never cold. Only wearing clothes for effect and modesty.
The godlings were all beginning to change.
Surma’s strength and stamina was undiminished even after the most grueling days. Indeed, he seemed to thrive on it. His appetite grew proportionally.
Baebae and Kren were mostly in their own world as the surly and gluttonous wolverine was unwelcome. But they moved and acted as one. Baebae dropped ptarmigans and snowshoe hares with her sling while the angeline fed the carrion of winter’s victims encased in snow and ice or of the offal from Baebae’s hunts. Kren had become double the size of a normal wolverine, nearly the size of !Nka and likely many multiples his strength. Surma was quite intolerant of the beast. No one wanted to see the two clash.
When they dropped below tree line, Holver kept a near ongoing conversation of sorts with grosbeaks, magpies, and chickadees. He would relay warnings of weather, of game and predators alike. This lessened the potential for their greatest fear, encountering cave bears irritable and ravenous after a winter’s torpor or smilodons and their crafty ambushes.
This time of year brought great transitions as warm sunny spells alternated with sharp rebounds of winter heralded by squalls of snow and rapid dips in temperature. Despite the sky’s commination, the spring weather and longer days united with the gang’s confidence, youth and freedom. This sprouted into a giddy halcyon.
Laughter and singing rang through clear still air.
Broad smiles and looks of wonder were the norm.
About five days along in the journey the southerly exposed stone reliefs were clearing of snow.
When not too steep, they afforded some dry rapid movement.
Rills and tiny linns went spattering across the talus of frost fractured granite, sharp and glittering with feldspar. Even clear crystals were found. There were scores of them. They each decided to take but one of the five sided gems. This one kept changing as bigger or better were found.
It was upon one of these slopes that Gion brought them along a high route at the base of a soaring cliff and above a steep slope of spring snow pack. Dark shale sloughed into the deep crevasse. An icy blue darkness dwelt there at the top of the snow pack. It had hugged the crumbling mountainside all winter and had now pulled away an arm’s length from the sun warmed rock face. Drifts of the talus were slowly spilling down into this cleft that descended and curved beyond sight. The clatter of dislodged stones indicated a jostling decline bordered by jagged stone on one side and smooth hard ice the on the other.
Asrid simply walked ahead along the crest of the icy mass slipping a tad on occasion but feather stepping back on with ease.
Holver had strung everyone together with their rawhide tethers. And they moved along like an inch worm with Gion in the lead backed by Surma. The remainder followed in this order: Sikisi (who was, with greater frequency, positioning herself alongside Surma), Thoun, Klekly, Holver, !Nka, lastly Baebae followed by an untethered Kren.
When Kren fell into the crevasse with terrifying growls, the lot of them stood with mouths agape.
Just like that, Kren was gone.
Baebae’s scream of anguish and the defiance of reality itself echoed down into the chthonic cleft bathed in it’s darkening blue light.
Baebae looked as if she was about to leap after Kren.
!Nka had a small obsidian blade out quick into his right hand, ready to slice the cord. The left clung tightly to a rocky hold.
Instead she slowly began to climb down, trembling like an aspen leaf. A fear any wise person would have entering such a precarious place. Her thick strong fingers gingerly testing each hold on the rotten rock.
“It is not wise, sister.” Surma said in a deep calm voice.
She stopped. !Nka let out a held breath.
Asrid sent her owl up in the air as she, herself, looked down the sloping snow field below her.
She began laughing. All but Baebae, down in the hole, looked at Asrid as if she was mad and cruel. Then Holver began to laugh and point.
Soon everyone hooted and laughed as Kren had burst through the hard pack in a spray of snow. She began scampering up the slope. Despite its steepness causing frequent backslides, she hustled towards them in a shower of encouragement and rejoice.
Despite best attempts to avoid them, they had moments of nearly swimming in deeper snow. This was when the physical difference in strength and height between the six orphans who were all at age eleven. The three non-orphans were fifteen plus.
When it was sunny, the reflected sunlight was intense enough to painfully blind.
They all realized, they had come to a level where they could move about this vast untamed world despite and with its challenges. They had become more or less independent… adults.
As per usual at this naive stage of development they had become quite confident.
They boasted of the successes they would have. Surma and Gion were especially boastful. The exception was !Nka who remained subdued.
The nine young initiates took this time of slush and blinding light during mid-day to mend gear, knap points and maybe (if there was anything to burn and since it was a world of wet snow, the worst time of year to be On the Land in most peoples’ opinion) they would have a drying fire. It was a time to eat leftover meat and Nun-ja; the goose fat cakes crumbly with dried lingon berries, powdered lichen and guides’ herbs. The food they needed for keeping warm and maintaining stamina in these cold trackless foothills.
For two of the days they travelled in a broad low valley full of willow behind a large herd of muskoxen shedding their qiviut. They gathered the valued wool that the just returning migrants, various nesting birds, had spared.
Holver worked on taking the fluffs and working the drop spindle, building a collection of skeins. At camp he wove some budding willow fronds into vase like fish traps using cordage made from the bark. It was placed and replaced throughout the evening providing grayling to their sup.
The route of plenty ended abruptly as the muskoxen huddled around the young atop a knoll. This was the sign they felt threatened and the initiates knew significant predators were about.
Gion routed them along a precariously corniced ridge that ran up onto a half mesa then away and above the valley. Sure enough, they saw a pride of smilodons, four adults and three adolescents, with nappy manes on thick necks, powerful shoulders and forearms. Stout leapers built to grab large prey, sink its saber like teeth in, lock on and rake with its rear claws, preferably on the under belly. They were maybe three times the weight of a person but were built for taking the blows and slams from tackling steppe bison, woolly rhinos and mammoths. Prey like muskoxen, wild horses and caribou used group tactics against the smilodons’ equally crafty group tactics.
Below, on crouching bellies, the seven circled the two dozen or so muskoxen adults circled around another nine young.
It was felt like the gang and how their spirit ancestors guarded them.
Luckily, like most of the top predators, attacks on people were rare. Often it was an old or injured beast that would make such assaults.
At evening the shadows lengthened and the temperature dropped. The snow would stiffen again, affording a few hours of travel. Their trek would resume with an eye out for a grouse and a good campsite.
They had travelled thus for several long days. with only one nearly lethal mishap.
By the end of the fourth day of trudging through snowy buck brush with its surprise wells dipping into a tangle under heavy snow, they were exhausted.
The last steep bit had taken longer than expected. Without much debate they stopped after finding the first relatively flat spot on the hillside. A transition at the base of a greater mountain with a boulder strewn depression.
They put about with the usual duties; setting up their hides for shelter using their spears as poles.
Holver found a significant pile of relatively dry mammoth dung under the snow. Asrid dried it further with her supernatural warmth. They would have a fire tonight. Cooking would be much easier than with their stone oil lamps plus their gear could be dried. No more forcing on frozen anoraks and sleeping with their icy high boots to dry by their body heat.
Taking first watch, Surma went upslope to sit on a boulder in the mountain shadow turning ubiquitous as the sun set. Crackling and thumps cackled in the still air as the snow refroze and settled.
He pulled out his bundle of dried mushrooms that had been carefully prepared by Sthethna the wise woman. Surma had received them from Deadroot, the old berserker who had begun to show him the martial and spiritual ways of a Jev.
Deadroot had not been seen for months and thus the lessons young Surma craved had not begun.
The smokey sun mushrooms were used. Harvested just after their veils had separated the white dots were carefully lifted off. The tool cleaned after each dot. Then they were slowly dried on a hearth. Next, they were rehydrated in mother’s milk, then dried again.
As the thick saliva began to mix with dried fungus an elixir filled his mouth and he felt a yawn that was ever manifesting.
The stars arching overhead stuttered with streaks of shooting stars. The adults said these were gradually increasing each year. That when they were young such tears in the sky were rare and thought of as omens.
Whatever they are they are beautiful, he thought. Looking over it all in the starlight he was filled with a sense of communion with the land. The love for his comrades gathered about a low orange glow below warmed him as much as the fire warmed them.
The rising, just past full, moon charged the landscape with a grey glow. The smouldering dung smoke rose unprotested a spectral ribbon climbing into the sky.
Calm.
Hours passed. Below the orange glow faded as the party retired.
The Jev believed that the mushrooms bonded them with the Ouatch a mysterious and elusive animal people said to be tall bipeds covered with dense shaggy hair. Considered shy and usually non-violent, sightings were typically rare and brief. The giant beast men could mysteriously elude contact with even the most skilled hunters. The few stories of conflict told of savagery and strength. It was believed that people and Ouatch were once the same beings but when the gods shared the secrets of fire and blade with them, the Ouatch did not accept. Thus, they kept the deep magics that mankind gave in exchange for convenience and comfort.
More common were stories about rescue of solo travellers in blizzards, avalanches, swift water and even saving the unfortunate from predators. This is why a hunter would leave a beast’s pancreas behind as an offering to the long lost cousins.
They shared human’s revulsion of metal, buried their dead and sang complex melodies in their shrill nasally voices.
They would pull off aggressors’ limbs and even heads. Rumour was that the fur would stop and entangle blades or points in its felted mats.
To kill one not in self-defence was taboo. To eat them was on par with cannibalism.
It was believed that long ago they were allies and friends of humans but that bond was shattered during The Great Sorrow.
It was believed that a Jev could channel the Ouatch spirit and that a great Jev could be sensed by the Ouatch as if he was one of their own. They may even befriend and aid a great Jev.
Surma desired such a relationship more than almost anything.
The mushrooms were said to put a Jev in the same spiritual world as the Ouatch.
He pondered such as crinkling sounds and retorts that should have alarmed him. Instead, under the mushroom’s effects, the sounds were like the bursts of insight and revelation that elusively ebbed and flowed in him now.
His thoughts soared pleasantly, albeit ambiguously, along with the stones whizzing past. Deep rumbling from higher up the mountain vibrated along with his spirit.
Sometimes not distinguishing the thin border between visceral and spiritual realities is deadly.
This was the case now.
In a snap he became imminently aware that an avalanche was rapidly growing and headed for the swale cradling their camp.
Action, immediate and without caution, subsumed the neophytic Jev.
With flying strides and controlled slides down the hard packed snow he into the camp with a spray of sparkling snow.
The behemoth wall of sound accompanied him.
Panic broke out as the initiates awoke and attempted to flee the oncoming annihilation.
‘How could we have been so careless’ they each thought as they went from sleep to terror.
The land and its dangers did not suffer fools.
Sikisi immediately rolled her ankle with a sickening click.
It was a hundred strides to safety.
Little Gion's not quite tame bison bolted away and ahead bellowing in desperation. Gion vaulted onto the beast as it passed. He tumbled across and off it. Immediately on his feet he raced behind his steed taking full advantage of the furrow it left in the snow.
Nimble Holver was close behind then ahead of Gion. Using boulders as leaping platforms as they presented themselves.
Snarky Thoun was moving well enough behind the others. His typically proud scowl erased in an emotionless focus on survival.
As the camp deflated by the exodus. Two remaining adolescents, Baebae and Asrid were still confounded by the situation.
Sikisi had pulled herself up and was floundering in a hobbled fashion towards safety at a pace that would never find it. She collapsed in the snow with a whimper of pain and hopelessness.
Suddenly she was lifted. Her breath was squeezed from her labouring lungs as she was hefted onto and packed over Surma's shoulder.
The jostling movement continued as her rescuer ran on. She could not breath for it all. Despite the desperation, excruciating pain and alarm she found herself cherishing being held tight by the heavily muscled man/boy, her secret desire.
Quickly realizing she could not outrun this, Asrid conjured aid from the flame in her heart. Unconsciously she had imagined a fleet beast. With a loud grunt, a caribou manifested adjacent. She imitated Gion and clumsily mounted the bolting beast.
Baebae, nearby, joined her without pause, clutching to Asrid and the caribou’s antlers.
Neither had control nor a secure position.
Summoned creatures are under the summoners control but did not confer skills to the summoner. Asrid had never ridden before. The moments it took her to sort out what to do were precious and induced anxiety. The beast cavorted about. Despite effort, the girls had not moved from danger.
The bison, Gion and Holver had reached the rise that may be a safe zone. Then a blast of powdered ice crystals reduced visibility completely.
Finally, with caribou riding sorted, the riders charged into the deep gray haze hoping to get out.
When the wind increased, the visibility improved slightly garnishing more hope as they neared the safer side.
Suddenly the caribou was on its left side and thrashing as a surge of heavy snow engulfed it. The riders were ripped away and carried on and in the tumultuous mass.
The unburied recovered Baebae and Asrid. They were battered and shaken but intact and breathing. Then they found !Nka blue and stiff and unbreathing. A pall descended upon them.
He shuddered in spasms as colour swelled back into him. The rime on his skin began to melt. His eyes opened in an expression of deep regret and relief then a confusion betwixt the two.
Klekly was never found by them. A month later a cave bear did have a nice meal.
What little of their gear they could find in the dark was gathered before they moved to a safer locale, where Surma had sat in meditation. One that lacked wind protection or level ground.
They spent the last hours of the night huddled together under their hides, sad for the loss of Klekly but grateful for life and for Asrid’s supernatural warmth.