Red bone's Arc

Chapter 10 of 12

Red bone slid down into the hollow with his axes drawn. The three chiefs stood near the shrine, warming their hands. Behind them their guards gripped spears and waited. Red bone had surprise, but he did not have footing. The shrine's ground was packed with old ice, slick and strange under his boots. He took one step and nearly went down. The chiefs saw it. One smiled. Numbers meant little here. If he slipped and fell before their warriors, the fear he carried would break, and the chiefs would stand tall again. He stopped moving. He would not charge across ice he did not trust. Instead he planted himself and let the beasts flank the edges. The white bear circled left. The red hound crept low along the right, her crimson coat bright against the snow. Her graceful shape made the guards flinch. Red bone raised his voice so every warrior could hear. "Three chiefs ran from me once already. They hid here behind a chained beast and called it a god." He pointed an axe at the war-moose. "A god does not wear another man's chains." The guards looked at their chiefs. The chiefs looked at the ice between them and Red bone. He saw their trouble now. The frozen ground that stole his footing also pinned them. If they charged, they would slip the same way. If they stood still, they looked like men hiding again. Red bone made them choose. He walked forward slowly, testing each step, his weight low. He did not slip. He crossed the ice the chiefs feared to cross. One chief broke. He shouted at his guards to take Red bone, then stepped back toward the shrine wall. His own men saw it. They saw a chief command others to die while he retreated. The spears dropped first, then the knees. One by one the guards knelt in the ice. The second chief grabbed the first and cursed him. The third turned to run and found the white bear in his path. Red bone reached the three chiefs on the frozen ground he had learned to walk. He did not kill them. He pressed the flat of an axe against the first chief's chest and pushed him down before the kneeling warriors. "You are chiefs of no one now," he said. The warriors watched their old masters sit in the snow, shamed and small. Red bone had broken their spirit in front of the men who once feared them. He bound the three chiefs with their own spear-ropes. Their warriors rose and stood behind him. But the war-moose still strained at its chains by the shrine, antlers hung with iron, eyes rolling white. The beast the chiefs could not command now had no master at all. Red bone looked at it and knew his next fight was not with men.