Red bone's Arc

Chapter 9 of 12

The three chiefs' warriors knelt in the snow of the Battlefield Ruins, but Red bone's mind was north. Three beaten chiefs had fled that way with their guards. He did not know where. If they found new allies before he found them, they would come back ready, and he would not be. He stood among broken spears and thought of the empty tundra stretching past the ridge. He needed eyes out there. He needed a hunter. He found Artemis Wilde at the edge of camp, skinning an elk she had dropped alone. She answered to no chief, not even him, yet she had fed his three clans through the lean weeks. She did not look up from her knife. "You won," she said. "So why do you look like a man who lost something?" "Three chiefs ran north," Red bone said. "I need to know where they sleep before they wake with an army." Artemis wiped her blade on her thigh. "North is a hard country. Men don't vanish out there without a trail." She slung her bow. "I know the valleys they'd run to. Give me two days." She took no warriors. Red bone watched her cut across the frozen flat, small and quick, until the white glare swallowed her. He drilled his men. He walked the fires at night. He waited. On the third morning she came back, cheeks burned raw by wind. "Found them," she said. "A half day north, in a hollow under the ridge. No new allies. Just their guards and one thing more." "What thing?" "They've taken shelter at an old shrine. The clans keep a beast there." She met his eyes. "A great war-moose. Antlers hung with iron charms, red paint down its flanks. The chiefs are calling it their war god. They mean to march it into your camp and say the god fights for them." Red bone had tamed a white bear by standing still before its claws. He knew what a beast could do to men's courage. If the three chiefs returned leading a creature the clans feared, his new warriors might doubt him. He could not let the chiefs choose that ground. "Then we don't wait for them," he said. He called the white bear and the crimson hound. He took two dozen of his best and rode north through the drifts, Artemis guiding from the front. They came over the ridge at dusk. The hollow lay below, small fires burning, the great antlered beast chained at the shrine. The three chiefs stood warming their hands, certain no one knew where they hid. They had no army yet. Red bone had come before the allies could. He drew his axes. The chiefs looked up and saw the white bear black against the sky, and their faces went slack with fear. The ambush they had planned was now his. Three chiefs, cornered in a hollow, with a war god they had not yet learned to command.