I need a bow. And to learn to use it. Along with a hundred other things.
Shell pulled the knife from the scabbard at his waist. Longer than his hand, with a slight curve to the tip of the blade, it felt awkward and unbalanced. The knife had been cheap to buy, and those were some of the reasons why the cost had been but a single rabbit pelt. The blade held pits from rust where his father hadn’t kept it properly greased. The bone handle twisted to one side, making it feel odd in his right hand, but it fit better in his left hand, the awkward one he couldn’t use.
The knife was not given to him as a weapon, but a tool, if a poor one. The soft iron of the blade wouldn’t hold an edge no matter how many times he stroked it on a stone. He’d worn and used it since he first took over the flocks more than a dozen years ago, a gift from his father. A gift for a ten-year-old boy.
He replaced the knife in the scabbard and walked on. By evening the Raging Mountains rose directly ahead, clearer and closer than he’d ever seen them. Instead of a faint purplish ripple on the horizon, they stood sharply defined against the orange sky, and a few had white peaks gleaming brightly.
His thoughts turned to more immediate problems. People can see a campfire on the prairie as if it is the only star in the evening sky. Anyone, friend or enemy could follow that firelight leading directly to him. He ate his meal of dried food cold; his blanket wrapped around his shoulders as he huddled beside a ledge of rock to break the wind, without a fire.
The morning of the second day arrived to find him already on his feet and walking to warm up. The blanket had not kept the chill off during the night, and he had slept restlessly, waking with a start whenever cold crept beneath the blanket and the night whisperer of a dragon called to him.
The hills he traveled became higher, the valleys lower, and the vegetation greener. A few willows and cottonwoods lined a creek bed. He still did his exercises with his staff as he walked, but his mind betrayed him, and his thinking returned to the home he’d left and the people he might never see again. Yesterday had been exhilarating to leave, but this day the feelings turned to sadness and regret.
He walked steadily, but he continued to think about all he should have said at the council meeting, what he should have done, and what he might have done if he had remained home. In some ways, he felt a failure for wanting to leave his family and village. In others, he doubted himself and the decision he’d made.
Off to become a hero. Instead of cursing himself silently he talked out loud, sometimes argued with himself, or shouted at others who were not present. Shell thought hard about returning home as he increased his pace. His mind portrayed how they would receive him, some welcoming him back with open arms. Others with snarls or sad smiles, a few with glee at his failure.
But returning home wouldn’t happen. He had now allowed himself the luxury of being sad about leaving, but his thoughts welcomed what would come with the venture ahead and his blood stirred. Later, he broke out in song, his mood shifting like a bee flitting from one spring flower to another. The second night was as cold as the first, again without a fire. During the early morning of the third day, a rare rainstorm blew in. Drenched, he sat with the blanket over his head and waited it out. Rainstorms usually passed quickly.
The rains seldom came to the grasslands in summer, and when they did, shallow depressions became lakes, gullies filled with raging streams. As the ground soaked up the water, the topsoil turned into thick, sticky mud. They said a man grew taller as he walked in it, and each foot collected clay until it grew so heavy he couldn’t lift it.
The sound of a roaring river brought him to attention just after daylight as the rain still fell. A river? Here? He hadn’t heard it before. He stood and gathered his belongings. A few hundred steps west brought him up short. A river far too wild and wide prevented him from continuing. He felt sure it wasn’t there when he stopped for the night.
Even in the dim light, he saw tree trunks bouncing and surging with the murky currents, along with sticks, branches, leaves, all moving in a mud-colored morass churned with frothy, dirty, brown water. As he stood and watched, a section of ground ten steps ahead of him cracked and fell away as it washed downriver. Cracks in the ground just in front of his toes told him more of the bank would soon go.
He moved back up the side of the hill again, near where he’d stopped at sundown. He sat in the muck, under a rain and mud covered blanket. Lightning cracked, and thunder rolled as more torrential rain fell.
Shell shivered with cold and tried to remain optimistic. As the Old Man Alba had said, he couldn’t plan for this. Somewhere near mid-day, the rain slowed, then stopped. He stood, looked over the hillside to the wide river and sat again. Even if there had been wood for a fire, it would be too wet. He could walk the riverbank and wait, but there would be no crossing the river until the following day.
The temperature increased, and while the sun didn’t come out, a warm wind started to dry the landscape. He fell asleep and woke near dusk. The first thing he noticed was a clear sky and the lack of the roar of the river. He looked over the hill again and found the river half the size it had been that morning, though still flowing too swift and deep to cross.
He wrung some of the water out of the blanket and tossed it over a shrub to dry in the wind. It wouldn’t totally dry before he used it to sleep under, but it would be drier than last night. He went to the bank of the river and watched whole trees stranded along the shore, against a bank that had steadily eroded all day.
There were floating deer, desert sheep, and smaller animals, all dead, all looking as if someone had beat them for hours. Their fur was wet, torn, and matted. Sticks, branches, and even whole bushes piled against logjams. Directly across the river, a black bear wandered from carcass to carcass, sniffing and choosing the best meal. Its tiny eyes found Shell.
The bear didn’t worry him excessively. Tomorrow it would probably sleep all day after a feast tonight. He checked the river again and found the level had dropped while he watched. By morning he could cross without a problem.
He turned to go back to his camp and pulled to a stop. Two men stood between him and the camp. One stood with his legs apart and hands on hips, a snarl on his lips. He was heavyset, his hair dark and limp. The other stood taller and thin, also wearing a sneer, but a pale imitation of the first. Both were dressed in filthy cheap canvas pants and simple shirts with holes cut so they’d fit over their heads. They pulled knives and held them at their sides while exchanging satisfied grins.
Shell looked past them to his staff propped against the bush that held his blanket to dry. He said in what he hoped was a friendly tone, “Hello, my name’s Shell. Can I help you?”
“Yes, you can help us,” the tall one said, imitating Shell’s tone, however, with an evil sounding twist as his smile increased. “You can give us all your food, clothes, money, and weapons. And anything else we want.”
“You want everything?” Shell asked.
The tone of the robber shifted to one harder, more intense. “You heard me. Now, move.”
Shell slowly circled them, giving the two a wide berth as he crabbed sideways to his camp, but always keeping his eyes on them, always ready to spin and sprint away. Two against one. They controlled the situation. They let him move to his camp, obviously believing they were the superior fighters and held weapons, and Shell was meekly doing as told. Seeing the first man, the leader, was about to speak again, and Shell was almost half way to his staff. He spoke first, to misdirect them and give himself time to reach his camp. “I don’t want to give you my things, but I can see I have no choice. My backpack is right over here, and I’ll give it to you. There’s not much in it. But then you’re going to let me go free, right?”