It was eerily familiar, but I couldn’t place just why. Not with more important things on my mind, like whether or not I was going to see the dawn with my internal organs inside me, or beside me.
To my left, up the mountain, a tree groaned and crashed down. I could see the new gap in the pine canopy twenty or so yards ahead of me. The newly revealed stars were so bright tonight, so far from the city lights.
I had two choices. I could stand here, and assume that eventually, the Yeti would get tired of his games and circle back around to me. Or, I could chase after him, which was exactly what he wanted. He wanted to play with me. I knew that about him, because I’d seen him do it before. It was just something he did, like being white and hairy or having really bad Hell-breath. Like that old story about the frog and the scorpion, it was simply his nature.
Handless shifted her weight, inching forward a few steps when I continued to just stand there. “That how it’s gonna be? I either chase him, or you come for me?” She inched again and I leveled my sword at her. “Bad. Sit. Stay.” I could take her. I was pretty sure of that. But I also knew that the second I committed to that fight, the Yeti was going to come back and dissect me.
And let’s face it, pursuing him was my nature. Pretty sure he knew that about me, too. I gave Handless a small salute, and deliberately turned my back on her. Every step I took, I kept expecting to feel her slight weight land on my back, her blunt teeth tear into my neck. But she never moved. The last time I glanced back at her, she was still sitting on the far side of the stream, just watching me.
Running uphill is bad, m’kay? I wasn’t that stupid. I set out at a determined walk, taking my sweet time in skirting around brushy turns or fallen limbs. Running pell-mell through the dark woods was only gonna earn me a broken leg, or worse. The Yeti couldn’t have this little brawl alone, so he could by God wait until I got there.
I found the downed tree easy enough, the soil still damp around its old roots. It looked like it had been ripped out of the ground and tossed a few yards, even. Showing off? Trying to intimidate me? Or just happy to cause as much destruction as possible?
There was a tuft of white fur stuck to a branch, and even as I reached to pluck it off, it dissolved into a puff of black mist. I jerked my hand back and rubbed my fingers on my shirt, just in case I’d gotten any of the blight on me.
The Yeti hadn’t been gone that long, then. He’d waited here, to see if I was coming. I could picture him in my mind, lounging here, dragging his head along the murdered tree trunk. Sure enough, my fingers found gouges in the bark, left by the massive curved horns.
Any other time, I’m sure Pikes Peak is beautiful. But I have to say that, in the dark of night, in the freezing cold, I wasn’t that enamored of it. I passed my katana from hand to hand, flexing my fingers to keep them limber.
The roar came from my right, and I flinched into a defensive stance before I realized it had to be yards and yards away. Even with my less than functional ears, I could tell that much. The sound bounced up the mountain and back down, making it sound like a whole herd of mini-Yetis joining the chorus. I had to wonder what the sleepy denizens down below thought of this strange noise on their mountain.
Something landed in my hair and I reflexively ducked again, swiping with my free hand to discover only pine needles. Glancing up, I found Handless above me, balanced on a thin branch like a half-shattered gargoyle. “How did you even get up there?” Her mouth opened like she might speak, but only air came out, a warning hiss. “Yeah, yeah, I’m moving.” Play the Yeti’s game, I got the message. I set out again, pretty sure that having a chat with a zombie said some bad things about my sanity.
Three more times, we zigzagged our way up Pikes Peak. Each time, he lured me on with a downed tree, a roar, or even just the flash of white fur in the darkness. And each time, Handless was there, my zombie shadow reminding me what would happen if I hesitated.
As we climbed upward, and my lungs started burning with every breath, I realized exactly what he was up to. Lowlander that I was, the very altitude was going to work against me. The higher we went, the colder it got, and the thinner the air became. I stopped for longer and longer between each leg, concentrating on my breathing. I couldn’t afford to get winded, or lightheaded. I also couldn’t afford to stop too long, lest Handless get antsy.
Luckily for me, the Yeti suffered from extreme predictability. Each jaunt was almost the same distance, crisscrossing back and forth up the mountain at almost the exact same angle every time. It wasn’t hard to guess where I’d find him next, and I used the last two legs to prove myself right.
The tree line was going to end soon, leaving me on the bare mountain face. The next time the Yeti laid his little bread crumbs out, I got my bearings and chose a path straight up the mountain, fixing my mind on that point. That’s where I’d meet him coming.
The Yeti’s pet dropped from a tree only a few yards from me as if she too knew that she was going to run out of branches soon. “You gonna narc on me?” Her head swiveled almost a full one eighty as she tilted it, almost like she was pondering my words. “ Shh. Don’t tell.” Her head swiveled the other way. Those glowing dark eyes watched me, but I got no sense of the Yeti behind them like I had before. He wasn’t watching me, at least not through her.
After a moment, her face stretched, the tendons drawing her lips back from her teeth in a gruesome snarl. It took me a moment to realize that it wasn’t a snarl at all. She was smiling. Smiling at me. Oh that was just… ew.
“Good girl. Stay.” I had to hope she wasn’t following me as I broke into a run, rushing through the trees to lay an ambush for my worst nightmare.
The wind was wicked, once I got out of the trees, whipping my hair around my face hard enough to sting, and the terrain was treacherously rocky. There had obviously been a rockslide along this face sometime in the near past, and jagged chunks of pink granite stuck out of the ground like some giant kid’s discarded building blocks.
I found a relatively flat place, and was just planting my feet when the great horned head broke through the brush at the edge of the trees. There was a brief moment of surprise, when his ears perked up and he got that comical tilt of the head like puzzled dogs do. It was almost cute. Then the large muzzle rippled into a low growl, and he prowled onto the bare rocks, nimbly clambering from one heap to another. His claws clicked on the hard granite. “Tricky, tricky… Ready to die, then?”
“I’m always ready to die.” The way of bushido is death. I had no problem with that, so long as I could take this ugly mother with me. I was done with him hurting people I cared about. Hell, I was done with him hurting people I’d never heard of before.
“Wish granted.” He sunk his claws into the boulder he was perched on and launched himself off it like a furry freight train.
It was different from the first time. I was more experienced, in better shape, more practiced. He was bigger, stronger. I had a slight speed advantage over him, and that was all that kept me one hair ahead of his swipes, dodging and parrying as best I could. Something that big should not be that fast. It simply isn’t fair. I fully intended to file a grievance with the union, if we ever started one.
I briefly wondered where Handless was, but she was wiped from my mind in the face of the onslaught that was the Yeti. I couldn’t even get a chance to go on the offensive with him. Every shred of my energy was poured into keeping those wicked claws away, into keeping those horns from connecting with my unprotected skull. The Yeti sprang from rock to rock, and I was forced to keep turning to face him, not giving any ground, true, but not gaining either. There was no way I could try to clamber after him and fight at the same time. He could dance around me all night, and all I was going to do was get tired.