JOURNEY TO THE MIDNIGHT SUN
James Sheldon
LOVE CONQUERS ALL
(Book 1 of 3)
With the eye of an eagle, you may have spotted John Summerfield on the vast Dakota plain, a solitary man walking in sailing veils of snow. With the vision of an eagle you may have seen him, bound as he was, head to toe in the fur of the wolverine. In any case, you couldn’t miss his companion close behind, his trusty draft horse, Ellie. She bore her packsaddle with one eye bright as a sapphire in the sun, the other dark as a moonlit pool. A few steps behind John, she followed of her own accord, towed by some unseen bond formed from mutual reliance in the wild, unfretted by the snow devils that rose and fell.
Under the snow-filled whip of the wind, one could not know the storm had passed until, looking across the horizon, clouds began to break first over here, then over there. Subsequently, dim patches of light appeared as though from lighthouses along fog-shrouded shores. The wind relented, the snow it bore diminished, and the indistinguishable grayish-white of earth and sky divided to reveal the shelter John sought. The great hardwood forest of the north stood a mere mile ahead. Still only a shadow to the naked eye, it appeared a continuous wall, dark and mysterious, grown up gradually through earth’s ever-changing climate. Stretching east to west along what had once been the border of the USA and Canada, it divided the bygone states and provinces of Montana, Alberta, North Dakota, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba. A two-hundred-mile-deep sash of oak, ash, and maple, itself the facade of a much larger boreal forest, it marked the end of the known world if one could be generous enough to call it that. Civilization in John Summerfield’s day existed in precious few pockets along the east and west coasts of the continent previously known as North America. Few souls strayed into the sparsely populated interior, a vastly unknown realm save for tales of no return. Dark forests prowled by ravenous beasts. Haunted mountains. Windswept plains roamed by savage horse clans. A faraway inner wilderness. Magnet to curious misfits drawn to fatal attractions. Or so told the story tellers.
It was the dawn of the 31th Century and, although primitive in comparison to 21st Century technology, the handcraft with which John had been outfitted had no superior in any century. His boots, tent, and cookware, his knife, bow, and spear, the best wood and steel, leather and fur, wool and linen all painstakingly crafted to his own person. The same went for his four-legged companion. Ellie’s packsaddle had been made especially for her. The enigmatic insignia branded on her left shoulder marked her as the cream of a lineage which, having outlasted the age of mechanization, reigned once again as the most advanced system of transportation available to man. The special brand she bore belonged to John’s Order and could be found on most everything he possessed. Add to this a lifetime of intense training and John Summerfield represented an investment amounting to no small fortune in any millennium. And being only twenty-one years of age, one might assume him the son of a powerful chieftain or king but that was not the case.
To understand how and why John came to be where he came to be, we need only a brief overview. Before John’s time, in The Realm of the Golden Coast (once known as California), impassioned men had lived and died to find a treasure trove of lost scientific knowledge known only through oral storytelling that had been put down to writing. A story so fantastic as to be unbelievable and yet as undeniable as the ruins that stood along the ocean; a story for a time with no past, its stories of old lost like ships that sink to watery depths, all but beyond reach, casualties of a catastrophic storm. And so it was, the story of the ‘Data Block’ was the legend of lost legends. The greatest of all legends. And great legends can lead powerful kingdoms and their men to tremendously expensive undertakings (as history shows us in the Fountain of Youth and Golden City of El Dorado). In the search for the Data Block, the leaders of the expeditions had not been called Knights or Conquistadors but Seekers. Seekers believed the Data Block contained lost knowledge with which men had once risen like gods to fly above the clouds and even walk on the moon! Utterly unbelievable stuff if not for the stumps of fallen skyscrapers and bridges standing amid the rubble of ghost cities strewn here and there across the continent. And yet, despite so much jumbled proof of former glory, the expeditions had ended in a string of failures culminating in bankruptcies and not so glorious revolts. Seekers were put on trial and executed, their great quest banned on penalty of death. Fortunately the ban would not last more than a few generations thanks to the resilience of the renaissance that had fostered the search in the first place.
Thus the great quest began anew, albeit with ramifications. Reorganized after a revolt, those in charge did not outright abandon the search but largely sought economy and longevity by replacing risky expeditions with celebration and ritual to maintain status quo. So things weren’t quite like the old days. Still, the great ruins of the Golden Coast stood as a source of awe and inspiration to the people. In the cool of their shadows, believers preached the fulfillment of the ancient promise. The Data Block would be found. Men would once again rise to be as gods. And who would not want to fly? None more so than our hero! In the meantime, however, daily life had gone on up and down the Golden Coast. And although the legend of the Data Block placed it very far away, there were artifacts to be found in the local ruins. That is, if one were fortunate enough to secure a license from those that held power in the name of the promise.
It was no easy job mining the ruins of Los Angeles, San Diego, and San Francisco with nothing but picks, shovels, mules, and carts. Cave-ins and casualties were commonplace. And still it was a fast-growing industry. The clues salvaged from the mines brought men power in the form of knowledge. And human nature being unchanged, the new power-brokers were perfectly willing to go along with a legend if it helped keep their subjects manageable. In fact, to bolster the promise of a beautiful future, they established a special order somewhat like a knight's order of old and charged it with finding the Data Block. Perhaps not so much to find it but to perpetuate its legend through pomp and ritual. On the other side of this coin, however, the men of the special order were true believers. Life in the order began at age six when a boy was selected and placed in the care of dedicated instructors that would rigorously train him to adulthood. A badge of honor for the boy’s family even though they would scarcely ever see him again.
At age eighteen, John Summerfield graduated at the top of his class. A fledged member of the ‘Order of the Data Block,’ he could henceforth wear their enigmatic insignia. Three years later and our radicalized hero grabbed the brass ring, so to speak, when the Order awarded him the appointment of ‘Seeker.’ The post of Seeker, being specifically for young men, lasted five years, a time frame in which the appointee was to sacrifice every aspect of his life to finding the Data Block. Hidden far away for safekeeping in a mythical realm known only to the ancients, the Data Block waited in a place of such beauty and purity that no man could make it his home. Or so the legend told. By law, only the Seeker could go in search of the legend because, he was the one put forth by the Order, itself an arm of those that held power in the name of the promise. This guaranteed legal custody to the right people if by chance the Data Block actually existed and was found. Also of great importance, John’s role as Seeker was to serve as an example for the people to follow. He, was the new renaissance man. He was young, strong, courageous, intelligent, and if only for the sale of a myth, extraordinarily handsome.
This was our hero, both instrument of misdirection and prelude to hope. A would-be astronaut of the 31st Century, the believers had cheered him like a rockstar. Coming together upon his naming, they had paraded him through the ruins of old LA. Pressed together, dressed in costumes depicting the old expeditions and the hope they stirred in the hearts of men, they carried the Seeker for all to see, a symbolic sacrifice to be witnessed only once every five years. A picture of piety and madness, it ended with a glorious sendoff that saw the Seeker riding off into the desert alone. And that was the last of most Seekers, save that their names were glorified in memorials that lined the dusty parade route. Not all died, however. Facing deadly desert heat, high-country blizzards, wolf packs, grizzly bears, and worst of all, savage clans of various origins, some Seekers survived thanks in part to support from a handful of tiny outposts established by the Order.
Traveling what we call the Old Spanish and Santa Fe Trails, few Seekers made it as far as the Missouri River where a remote outpost had been established in the stone skeleton of what had once been Leavenworth Penitentiary. From there, any surviving Seeker was to continue by way of the old Lewis and Clark Trail until he reached the confluence of two great rivers, the Missouri and the Yellowstone. There he was to turn north where as legend told, the great hardwood forest would appear like a wall in the distance. A realm completely unknown to civilization, same as vast areas of land had been for most of recorded history. Presumably, the Seeker would continue north through the hardwoods and directly into a second forest, an ancient boreal forest said to be without end. And yet as legend told, somewhere beyond the endless forest lie the Land of the Midnight Sun. There in plain view stood a monolith of black onyx, the Data Block. That was the legend. In reality, if the Data Block actually did exist somewhere under the northern lights in a million square miles of tundra, it may as well have been a needle in a haystack. Also worthy of note, ocean crossing journeys had yet to be made in John’s time but the ability to sail along the west coast of the continent gave knowledge of the inland mountains, being that they continued unbroken into the far north like an impenetrable wall. And so it was, the hope and belief that a glorious promise waited at the top of the world lived via the overland route. And in the year 3010, our Seeker, young John Summerfield, had earned his shot at it.
And now we are almost up to speed. John had made the confluence of the great rivers and turned north. He had walked north for three days when the forest came into view only to vanish in whiteout caused by a freak polar vortex. And as we already know, John had fought his way through the storm to stand before the forest. Now one final important detail to cover, being that winter had come early to the Dakotas. Even before summer was officially over, three weeks back at the ruin of Bismarck, the weather had turned. There John had received the last help he would see from the Order. A tiny fortified dwelling at the end of the known world. The last in a series of remote outposts with great distance between. Manned by a handful of believers as ardent as warrior monks. They had given John a hero’s welcome, fed him well and fostered his convictions with powerful evidence. For although the city of Bismarck had sunk into the earth, there still stood the remains of a great monolith. Heavy made from white limestone and green granite, the old State Capitol building stood alone on the windswept plain. An art deco monument to glory and untold mystery. Thus fueled in body and spirit and resupplied as best as could be afforded, our hero had departed to meet his destiny in the north.
We now join John and Ellie at the end of the known world. A mere mile ahead, a new world with new possibilities, beheld by only a handful of Seekers, none of which had ever returned. And looking upon it, the Seeker spoke but a handful of words, “We’ve made it, Ellie.” And while his four-legged companion may not have understood her master’s words, she most certainly knew his conviction. Side by side, they paused to take it in. Bedecked in the first snow of the season, the forest glistened in a coat of white. The wind had calmed to a brisk breeze and the sun, now dominant in the western sky, made all the difference.
Pushing back his hood, Summerfield removed goggles of lead-glass and leather. He looked forward to a reprieve from the wind. There would be wood for fire. There would be water for drinking and cooking. And as so often the case in sun-touched openings along forest streams, he expected to find patches of grass for his horse to eat. He expected it because, although it had been unseasonably cold, a slightly warmer climate worldwide had brought more rainfall, making the region unrecognizable to our 21st century eyes. Behind John, the grasses of the Great Plains still reigned. Further back still in his home along the Golden Coast, the ocean had risen several feet over the past millennia. Not a huge amount of difference there. Along the old US/Canada border, however, the changing climate had tipped the scales to make a significant difference. The trees had taken over, blocking the sun and wind, allowing the soil to hold moisture that would otherwise evaporate. Slowly but steadily, the increased moisture and longer growing seasons compounded by centuries of undisturbed growth and natural soil enrichment had given rise to deciduous giants. Ash, maple, walnut, and white oaks near four-hundred years old towered to heights above two-hundred feet! Only prairie fires, both natural and manmade, had checked the forest’s southward advance, the result being that prairie and forest met with no transition zone, making for a tree-wall at once abrupt, impressive, and starkly beautiful in young Summerfield’s eyes. Indeed he marveled, for the hardwoods overhung the snow covered prairie in a continuous eve that extended to both horizons, east and west.
With all its beauty, the forest nevertheless appeared a mighty shadow realm risen up to tower over man and beast. John therefore, feeling a healthy dose of instinct, reached for the rifle on his packsaddle. A technological wonder of its day, the rifle had been designed and developed based on the rusty remains of a 20th century BB-gun mined from the ruins of San Diego. A child’s toy reimagined as a deadly weapon with craftsmanship inseparable from art, the rifle’s forward pistol grip operated in dual function. It could be pumped like a shotgun to load marble sized slugs, and it could be ratcheted down and away from the stock by which means a force-multiplier made of levers and cams pumped air into a steel high-pressure storage tube. As awesome as his weapon was, it should be noted that John still relied on traditional weapons, both spear and bow. As for his super-weapon, it was one of only three in existence. The other two remained under lock and key in the Order’s armory. Countless man hours of metal smithing had gone into each, as the renaissance of the Golden Coast had only begun its advance into the sciences and was very far from mass production. Nonetheless, by putting bits and pieces of ancient knowledge together on a clean slate, craftsmen had made three remarkable weapons. A man of average strength could quickly pump one up to 2,500 psi, good for approximately 10 rounds of 50 caliber ammunition, each round capable of killing man or beast. Presently, John ratcheted the pump once to get a feel for the pressure in the storage tube, and the pressure was good. Thus he hung the rifle over his shoulder and took his mare’s lead rope in hand.
Due to weeks of unseasonable cold and wind, the trees stood bare. Only the oaks retained their leaves, brown and dried out in the breeze, they rattled like talismans high in the eaves. Below them, John could see deep into the wood, an impenetrable wall at distance now up close revealed its own kind of spaciousness. Mighty tree trunks stood as columns in an ancient temple. The floor lie mostly free of undergrowth and with several inches of snow reflecting the daylight, the forest appeared void of the darkness associated with long-standing woods.
Proceeding in, John followed a subtle downward incline several miles to the edge of a ravine. Rugged and bushy in places, the steep slope appeared manageable. At the bottom, a tiny stream wound like a ribbon, its vertical cut banks of black earth woven with tangled tree roots. Opposite the cutbanks, inside the stream’s many bends, miniature beaches of sand and pebbles lie beneath several inches of snow. Here and there along the stream, flats built from centuries of silt lie covered in grass and kissed by sunlight thanks to the opening the waterway made in the canopy above. But of course there was no direct sunlight in the ravine at that late hour, and John understood that cold air accumulated in low spots. Still, he needed fuel for his horse and water for them both. And so it was, he picked his way down into the ravine, leading his mare carefully that she not slip and trample him on the snowy incline. Then, making camp on a flat a few feet above the stream, he wasted no time in the precious daylight.
As always, the horseman’s horse came first. Both warhorse and packhorse, John began by removing the packs from Ellie’s packsaddle, then her packsaddle, and finally her buffalo cloak. He brushed her thick fur coat out quickly but thoroughly so that it could best insulate her. Ellie, being naturally suited to cold climates, hadn’t needed her cloak due to cold but as a shield against unrelenting wind. A Clydesdale of the famous black and white variety, her particular bloodline could be traced to a large ranch for Clydesdales horses that once existed in the Flint Hills of Kansas. It was there, at the abrupt end of the industrial age, that a small herd of Ellie’s forerunners found themselves free on the very plains where horses had first evolved. And by the laws of nature, being that the well-suited not only survive but thrive, the Clydesdales roamed the vast plains where having already been set on a genetic growth path by man, they grew larger still from one generation to the next. The result being that, whereas a 21st century Clydesdale could weigh as much as 2,800 pounds and stand 7 feet tall, Ellie weighed 3,100 pounds and stood 8 feet tall. Of course there were other breeds of smaller horses and they were the ones that dominated the plains. And there were humans on the plains, advanced stone age tribes that had become expert riders. Humanity had come a long way from the late 21st Century when the very survival of the species lie in question. But coming back to Ellie’s bloodline, the giants had remained largely separate from the smaller breeds for the same reasons that wolves and coyotes remain separate: the bigger kill the smaller when given the opportunity. They were not the ‘gentle giants’ of the 21st century. They were wild, and could be as mean as nature demanded. They were the black and white giants of the plains, given special spiritual status by the savages on account of their majestic nature. And most recently, they had been discovered by a graduate from John’s Order. And so it was that a number of the Clydes had been captured and taken back to the Golden Coast where they were selectively bred. And Ellie, being the cream of that crop, had been selected for the quinquennial sacrifice. Her massive body, although actually very dark brown, appeared black. Her mane and tail also appeared black. Her belly showed a patchwork of black and white that continued to her knees. From her knees down, she was snow white with long feathery hair that shrouded bell shaped hooves the size of dinner plates. Large black splotches like paint thrown on Ellie’s otherwise white face encompassed both her eyes and made for a natural work of art in which random chaos gives rise to stunning symmetry. Horse eyes, the largest eyes of any land animal. One lit like a sapphire, the other a moonlit pool. A magnetic gaze in a big white face, looking down from an animal three times the size of a bull moose. A loyal warhorse in possession of a battle switch that, if flipped, sent the beast into fight mode with shocking speed and agility. Ellie was wonderful as a friend, and dreadful as an enemy.
“Give me that paw!” John ordered with a fake growl, tugging the long hair around Ellie’s massive hoof. Only with the giant’s help did he inspect the underside of her hoof which the snow had cleaned to perfection.
After rewarding Ellie with a few handfuls of grain, John fenced off a grassy area by running a cord from tree to tree along with a few fence poles cut with a hatchet and driven into the gravelly stream bottom. He had often let her graze free on the plains providing there were no wild horses to draw her off. He penned her up in the forest because it was not her natural environment. Too hungry to care, she grazed the grass that lay under the snow, pausing now and then to sample the tips of shrubs that grew along the creek.
Moving with minimum waste, John cleared off a sleeping spot, then dug up several accumulations of mostly dry leaves to serve as padding and insulation under his ground tarp. Atop this he pitched a small tent in which he laid a bed of wool and animal furs. Finally, John built a cookfire and celebrated his success by cooking something out of the ordinary: Chicken, a gift from his fellow believers in Bismarck. He had kept it for weeks in a tiny cage on the packsaddle, fed it grain from Ellie’s stores, let it stretch its legs on a tether and peck bugs until travel time. It had managed the cold surprisingly well but with the combined stress of cold and travel, it hadn’t laid a single egg. John apologized, explaining how he had given it all the time he could. He then killed and cleaned it beside the stream, after which he cooked it in a cast iron skillet with oil and potatoes.
In the waning light, Summerfield ate with a mixture of gratification and encouragement. He had gained the protection of the forest with twelve weeks remaining before the winter solstice. Chewing his last bite, he wiped out his skillet and put food related items in a rodent proof box. He urinated along the borders of his camp as fair warning to any hungry animal that might follow its nose there and end up victim of a 50 caliber slug.
Finally, John crawled into his tent under a beautifully bleak forest canopy backset with stars. Ellie meanwhile, being too tuckered to sleep standing, slowly lowered her front knees to the ground and rolled onto her side with a mighty exhale. Then stretching out over the snow like a beached whale, she went straight to sleep. Likewise, John had no more than laid down his head than he fell fast asleep.
Traveling north, John and Ellie made excellent progress due to the forest floor presenting no serious impediment, being largely flat and void of dense undergrowth. In good order they covered two-hundred miles and entered the transition zone where deciduous forest gave way to ancient boreal forest. Adding to John’s good fortune, the weather had moderated. Easy to understand then how John might wonder if the stories about a forest of no return were overblown. Then again, he could not know how the day would unfold to change his life forever. Dawn had just broken. It was day sixteen in the wood where once again he had camped beside a small stream in a ravine.
Having bundled his bedding up tight, the horseman performed a series of tasks for which he needed little or no light. He then exited his tent where Ellie, quietly grazing in the dim, lifted her head and let out a nicker to greet him. Her great size, the angle of her stance there in the darkness of the wood with clouds of steam flowing from her nostrils, might on first glance be mistaken for a dragon.
“How’s my little girl?”
With a coincidental nod of her head, Ellie returned to grazing.
High above them, the dawn filtered down through the forest canopy. From the shadows below, the sound of water came trickling around root and stone. Countless branches, bare of leaves, made for an intricate lattice that appeared an all-encompassing web. And in this dim textile of black and white, the form of a man went busily about as easily as a spider might get about its web. For thousands of miles, mile after mile, day after day, the wild had drawn John further and further from spectator and closer and closer to participant.
John took down Ellie’s portable pen that she may have fresh grass for breakfast. He then fueled up on a bowl of hot farina, nuts, honey, and an apple from his dwindling stores. Later, he would eat chunks of venison while walking over the course of the day. He needed lots of fuel to make the kind of progress he had. And for the same reason, at any stop, no matter how brief, Ellie was allowed to eat whatever grass or foliage lay at her feet. And because it took considerable work and time to break and setup camp, Ellie had plenty eating time in the mornings and evenings. Presently while John packed their gear, she munched one mouthful after another, a four-legged colossus with a baby soft nose.
Using his powerful six-foot-three build, John lifted the awkward frame of Ellie’s pack saddle above his head and eased it as gently as possible onto her back. She would not need her buffalo cloak that morning. The pack saddle, a hinged contraption of wood, iron, and leather, constituted a custom made frame into which six custom made packs fit three on either side. The six packs, each of wood and leather, were the size of small chests and could be taken from the saddle and carried by a man as a backpack. John moved the saddle’s frame a smidgen this way and that to settle it just right on Ellie’s back. He knew her comfort and wellbeing went hand-in-hand with his own survival. On a side note, the way he baby-talked her like she was his wee little daughter, may have got him thrown out of a rough and tough 19th century cowboy camp. Then again, it was his only soft side.
“That’s my girl! Oh—that is just right!”
And tightening her cinch strap, he went on talking as if to a child about the goodness of it all, “That’ll keep ya comfy!”
Ellie, having heard it all before, seemed to ignore him.
Having placed the first few packs into the saddle frame but not yet strapping them in, John pulled on Ellie’s halter to bring her head up out of the grass. She wanted to eat. It was her nature. She was an eating machine but for the sake of proper adjustment, John needed her upright.
“Up girl,” John ordered, “up.”
Giving way, Ellie rose to her full 8ft height and John installed another pack. Then pausing for no apparent reason, he placed his left hand on the bridge of her nose to steady and lower her head, whereby using the outside edge of his right palm, he gently wiped a gooey from the corner of her eye.
“You’re too pretty for gooeys.”
No more had John turned to fetch another pack then Ellie went back to grazing. She had only begun to chew when quick as a bear trap she snapped to attention, her ears perked stiff as pikes. Her eyes grown large, she blew out a mighty snort, then stood on point, wound up like spring steel.
In one smooth motion, John set down the pack and brought his air rifle from his back to his front. Following Ellie’s line of sight, he scanned for something more than just another squirrel or raccoon, something more than a deer or other harmless creature of which there had been hundreds (to which his horse had grown accustomed).
Ellie bobbed her head and blew out another snort, sending a pair of steam clouds into the crisp morning air.
“Easy girl,” training his eyes and ears.
The forest seemed unnaturally quiet. Nothing stirred, not even a bird. Only the sound of the stream as it ran through the splotchy shadows of leafless trees.
Stepping back, Ellie tried to turn and run but John jumped in her face, “No you don’t!” aggressively.
Restrained by her master, the giant set to bobbing and fussing. A small dance made big by 3,000 pounds of wound up flesh and blood.
“Ellie!” through grit teeth, pulling her lead rope, “Calm down!”
Wide eyed with fright, Ellie breathed heavily while John turned his attention to the wood, his brain in high gear. Ellie was no spooky horse. Something was there, something significant. Grizzlies were known to sneak up before charging in, contrary to popular belief. Wolves would charge in a coordinated bluff to panic their prey so they could bring it down from behind after exhausting it in a chase. A mountain lion would sneak up and remain unseen until its moment to pounce. But easier prey filled the wood and, John suspected a more sinister creature.
Unknowable though it be, that thing called the ‘sixth sense’ reached out to tap on John’s shoulder. Invisible fingers from the ether, cold as death, raised the hair on the back of his neck. Calm and quick, John looped Ellie’s lead rope over her neck and secured it to a halter ring under her chin (to serve as a makeshift pair of reins). He undid the cinch straps that held her packsaddle and, as the saddle fell to earth, he stepped on it like a stool and leapt upon her back.
“Yah!” shouted the horseman, digging his heels into the giant’s flanks. “Yah!”
Ellie launched into the creek and, with a single bound more, landed on the opposite bank. As if possessed by a demon, the war horse plowed through the undergrowth that grew along the opposite shore. Her rider encouraged her on and while he could not be sure in the chaos, he thought he heard an arrow or two fly past.
“Yah, yah!” up the slope John went, his giant warhorse kicking and thrusting with branches busting.
Reaching the top of the ravine, John spun Ellie around hard so that he might take aim from the high ground and dispatch those that had attempted the ambush him. But there was nothing there - nothing visible anyway.
John moved Ellie this way and that to get different angles of sight through the trees. Meanwhile, shafts of morning sunlight flowed through the wood to lay down a quilt of brightly illuminated patches in sharp contrast with dark impenetrable shadows. It was beautiful and, when taken together with a cloudless sky and a south breeze, held the promise of a good day.
“I don’t know, girl,” stroking Ellie’s neck, “maybe we just freaked one another out.”
Be it truth or wishful thinking, man and beast remained in battle mode. Instinctually, Ellie remained particularly on edge. A spirited herd-boss, her agility and speed in the hands of an experienced horseman came as an abrupt surprise to all that misjudged her on size alone. Like John, she had cleared a high bar to be there.
Reining his horse to the left, John rode along the ridge looking for tracks.
With every step, Ellie bobbed on the verge of explosion. She hadn’t gone fifty yards when John suddenly stopped her. Directly before them in fallen leaves lie the tracks of four or five men.
The thought of flying arrows nearly sent John jumping to the ground. He did not jump, as doing so would cripple his sight advantage. Instead, he wheeled Ellie around and trotted her, weaving between trees, keeping to the high ground above his camp, scanning the terrain below. And sure enough, his sharp eye caught the silhouette of a human shifting in the shadows.
“SHOW YOURSELF!” Summerfield shouted.
Down in the ravine, a tall lanky man stepped out of a shadow and, with a few steps more, stood boldly at the center of John’s camp. Then another man, and another came out of the shadows to join him. Four men in all, and a boy of about 13. The boy, being the silhouette John had first seen, crouched on the far side just a stone’s toss beyond the others. They were clansmen. Blond-headed forest dwellers of the north. Blue-eyed warriors with bush bows and spears, out on a hunt.
“GAU-AH-WAY,” shouted the first clansman, gesturing with arm and hand for John to move on.
“GAU-AH-WAY,” he repeated loudly, making animated gestures for John to leave while his companions held their bows and spears at the ready.
The clansmen had meant to capture John but the giant had worried them greatly. None had ever seen a horse giant but had heard stories about the extra powers such creatures gave to men. As a result, they had approached John’s camp with extreme caution.
Knowing he was out of their range, John swung his leg over Ellie’s neck and slid down her side in one smooth motion. Then, kneeling in the leaves, he leveled his air rifle, aimed, steadied, and fired. The shouting savage fell straight back and hit the snowy ground with a soft thud.
Initially shocked, the others were momentarily at a loss, unable to understand how John had killed their leader.
Quick as shooting skeet, John pumped the pistol grip to load another round into the chamber, aimed, and dropped a second man like a sack of potatoes.
The surviving men jumped for cover along the creek bank. The boy crouched further down and vanished in the shadows.
John leapt on Ellie and charged. He didn’t need to ponder to know he could not allow the savages to vanish into his surroundings from which they could then ambush him as they had nearly done only minutes before. Nor would he be taken alive, to be hauled away and tortured while the clan whooped and howled like theater-goers at a wildly entertaining comedy.
As John came down the slope, the bowman rose, his arrow drawn to fire. John reined Ellie to the right and vanished in the thicket above the stream. Ellie plowed like a locomotive. John hunkered down, gripping her mane as branches whipped and raked his body. In the next instant, the giant exploded from the thicket and flew airborne over the stream in a cloud of sticks, twigs, dirt and leaves before landing on a pebbly beach opposite the cut bank.
Reining Ellie left, John charged the two men.
The bowman, unable to get a shot at the rider hunkered behind the giant’s neck, lowered his aim and shot the beast in the chest. Ellie flinched and stumbled but bore down hard and trampled the bowman, crushing his ribs into his lungs. Simultaneously, the spearman came on with a wild shout to launch his weapon into the rider’s left side but missed as John twisted and jumped like a cat. Then, as the horse ran out from between the two men, they remained facing one another on the beach, not six feet apart.
John stood with weapon aimed point blank.
The spearman had taken his hatchet from his belt. His arm cocked, he hesitated in the knowledge of John’s magic terror weapon.
John also hesitated. He had the man beat and they both knew it.
The two were roughly the same age, the one dark-eyed, the other blue-eyed. Outside of that, they could have been brothers. Their exchange lasted but a second. It was all over in a second. John fired and the man fell into the stream with a bullet between his eyes. He and his companions were not the first savages John had dispatched on the trail but this particular event would alter the Seeker’s life in ways he could not possibly foresee.
Scanning the woods with heart pounding, crouching, breathing hard, pointing his weapon this way and that, John stepped over to the man Ellie had trampled and, seeing he was mortally injured, put him out of his misery with a bullet to the heart.
John next turned to where he had last seen the boy but no more had he focused in that direction than a warning came via his peripheral vision and, yanking his head back, an arrow flew past his face so close it nearly grazed his nose. He spun and aimed. He had the boy dead in his sights. He hesitated on the trigger and the boy took off like a rabbit.
Dropping his aim, John watched as the boy disappeared over the crest of the ravine.
Glancing about for his horse, John spotted Ellie about thirty yards off with an arrow protruding from her chest. Ellie was the last of the animals John had had when he departed old Los Angeles two years earlier. The horseman had begun his journey with two horses: Ellie, his heavy battle and pack horse, and a lighter riding horse aptly named Bolt, as in a bolt fired from a crossbow. John also had a dog. Unfortunately, Rex had been mortally wounded in a run-in with wolves on the high plains of New Mexico and John had to put him down. Bolt then went lame and John had to leave him behind. The Seeker got another riding horse at the ruins of Fort Leavenworth but it caught and broke its leg between submerged roots on a muddy bank and John had to put it down.
Presently, John approached Ellie slowly, his air rifle in hand, “How ya doing, girl?”
Ellie stepped away before John could get hold of her lead rope. Her large eyes told of her dread. Meanwhile, crimson droplets steadily fell from the end of the arrow’s shaft.
“It’s okay, girl,” John reassured, taking her rope in hand. “You did good,” holding eye contact, gently stroking her neck, “you did real good.”
Ellie relaxed a bit, munching her lips like horses do when recovering from trauma.
With a light touch, John ran his hand down to the wound and, as he felt the blood soaked area, he exhaled with audible relief, “This is your lucky day, Ellie.”
Although the arrow looked awful when viewed from Ellie’s left side, in reality it had traveled just under the hide of Ellie’s right shoulder. John could feel the shaft and, at its end, the arrowhead felt like a hard knot under her skin. She bled not from arterial or organ damage but simply from elevated blood pressure due to the pounding of her huge heart.
John moved Ellie only a few steps in order to cross-tie her, then got to work with a first aid kit. Ellie flinched and fussed but mostly she just watched John intensely with an animated eye that seemed almost human.
Having made a small incision, John removed the arrowhead and then withdrew the shaft. He sewed Ellie up tight in the knowledge that they couldn’t remain there. Ellie would have to work but hopefully only enough to secure a hideout for a few days while her shoulder muscle healed. That was the plan. John knew it unwise to remain in the area while hostiles knew of his presence but he had no choice.
Finishing up, John quickly examined several cuts Ellie received in the thicket. As he did so, a black capped chickadee landed nearby and lent its voice to the quiet of the wood. Well known for its habit of freezing in the presence of danger, the songbird had come out to sing its equally famous ‘all-clear’ song so that all may know the danger had passed, “See-Saw. See-Saw.”
With packsaddle loaded, John and Ellie set out northward.
All that afternoon and evening, wails and cries echoed through the woods as the women buried their fallen men. The clanswomen had lost all their men. They wailed violently because the ‘law of the jungle’ allotted them little time to grieve and, in a culture that would be entirely alien to us, they had no choice but to put their grief behind them and move on as their situation demanded. Not that their hearts were any less broken, not to deny them their pain, not to deny them their humanity but rather for the sake of understanding; it is perhaps helpful to look at scientific observations from the 21st century in which wolves in the wild mourn their dead for a week whereas wolves that were cared for in sanctuaries away from natures hard side mourned their dead for six months or more. The women were of a capacity far superior to wolves and still nature did not care any more about their feelings than those of wolves. Winter loomed just around the corner. Time was of the essence. It took many years to master a vast palette of survival skills and they had lost half in one fell swoop. Without the lost half, they would lose what the whole had supported: Their home, their way of life, their freedom, prosperity, and happiness.
Having come down from their summer home in the north, they had only recently settled into their winter home. Nestled in the bosom of the forest, primitive and yet suitable for a postcard, their dwelling sat beside a small cliff inside the bend of a small river.
The following day, with but a trace of twilight remaining, the dogs of the clan suddenly sprung to their feet barking and snarling. The creature that had slain half the family stood just there where the firelight flickered and danced on the cusp of the wood.
Scarcely more than a shadow, he appeared to stand on two legs but with hulking shoulders like that of a bison from which extended multiple limbs. Some of the limbs ended in hands, others ended in hooves. Gazing upon this form with horror, a little girl named Sophie let out a bone chilling scream.
Summerfield heaved a white tail deer from his shoulders. It landed on the ground before him with a thud. It had been gutted and bled and lacked only its heart and one back-strap. Then, taking several steps back, he vanished into the forest.
