Chapter 15 - The Search Party part 5

As it turned out, there is really no way to get a dead Fat Hand out of a tree in a dignified manner, not impaled as he was upon its branches. The only thing we could do was grab ahold of the dead man's arms and pull. As Herung and my father watched from a distance, we tugged on Fodar's arms until the branches slid from his flesh. He dropped with a thud to the ground below and an opossum, which had chewed its way into his anus, went scurrying from its gruesome burrow. We all groaned in disgust. Poor Old Herung howled in outrage. Frag tried to spear the rapidly retreating opossum, but he missed and the blood-streaked marsupial dived into a hollow beneath a tree, escaping the big man's wrath.

I examined Fodar's body more closely once it was on the ground but came no closer to enlightenment. Aside from his thoroughly chewed anus, which I had not previously seen, his body was remarkably intact.

Finally, frustrated, I admitted defeat.

Our search party split into two groups then. The first group was tasked with transporting Fodar to his final resting place. It was decided that he would be removed to a high place overlooking the valley. Neanderthals normally buried their dead in their cave, placing their bodies in the earth in a fetal position, as if returning them to the womb, but Old Herung wanted his son to have a sky burial, which was normally reserved for chieftains and powerful shamans. No one objected to the young man receiving such an honor, and a travois was constructed to haul the dead Fat Hand to a nearby mountaintop. The second group continued to search for the other missing youth. The most logical way to do this, we all agreed, was to track the beast that had killed Fodar.

I chose to help track the beast. The lot of us were trackers, every man, but I was exceptionally skilled at following a trail. Yet despite my keen instincts, the evidence was confusing.

On the earth where the blood had pooled (though clearly not enough blood to account for such a violent death), were several human footprints as well as a few fluffs of animal hair. There was also a confusion of small animal prints... scavengers, most likely. I milled around, studying the prints as my father and Frag looked on intently.

"Raccoon," I said, pointing. "Opossum. And some dogs. All of these tracks are from small beasts. No speartooth has passed this way. But this..." I pointed at the ground. "This is a man's tracks."

"One of ours, perhaps?" Frag asked.

"No, these tracks are too old. They were left several days ago. See how the sides are firm and smooth? And there is dried blood smeared within the depression. These tracks were made when the blood was still wet. Our tracks are here... and here... They are shallower. The ground is drier today."

"Evv?" Gan suggested.

I shrugged. "It is too small a print for an adult Fat Hand. A Fat Hand child might make a print this size. Or one of us, a Fast Foot male."

Frag frowned. It was not unknown for Fat Hands to fight and kill one another. They were powerfully strong and had fiery tempers when aroused, but when fights broke out and someone was killed, it was normally from being clubbed or stabbed or beaten with fists. No Fat Hand or Fast Foot would sharpen the limbs of a tree, lift a man up and skewer him on the spikes.

Frag thought about it for several minutes. Finally, he spoke. "Evv would not do a thing like that to his brother. They were never combative toward one another. I also doubt any of our people would have the strength to do such a thing to the body. Hang it in a tree, I mean. A group of men perhaps. But not a man acting alone." He lifted his arms, fingers outstretched, to judge the height the body had been hung from. "How could he be lifted so high?"

I shook my head. "I do not know."

"Perhaps it was the Flesh Eaters," Gan suggested.

"The Foul Ones?" I asked. "But they live so far away. They rarely venture this far south anymore."

They had raided our village several times when I was a boy, the people we called Foul Ones. I could certainly imagine the Foul Ones doing a thing like this. They were smaller and frailer than us, but terribly vicious and cruel. They sharpened their teeth into points to appear more ferocious and, judging by the smell of them, must live amidst their own waste. Vile creatures, the Foul Ones! Our two peoples, Fat Hand and Fast Feet alike, killed the fiends on sight. We did not even consider them yemme. To us, the Foul Ones were more like Fat Hand demons than man or beast. Once or twice, during their raids, they had made off with a few of our women and children, and had almost made off with me once, but only at great loss of life to their own warriors. I suppose the cost did not justify the reward, for their raids had come more and more infrequently, and we had not seen them at all in many years.

"It could be the tracks of a Foul One," I said, "but it looks like there was only one man, not a group of them, and I doubt a single Flesh Eater could kill a warrior as large as Fodar. Or that one of them could do such a thing to his body."

"They would certainly do a thing like that if they could," father said. "Impale a man on sharpened stakes."

"But they would have eaten his flesh," I pointed out. "They wouldn't have just left him hanging there."

As we proceeded, debating how many Foul Ones it would take to impale a Fat Hand in a tree, it became apparent that there were actually two distinct sets of footprints, not just the one. They trailed side by side as we neared the edge of the fen. I was terribly embarrassed, but no one upbraided me for my error.

"Easy enough to make the mistake," my father said. "The prints are very nearly the same size."

"Yes, but the shape of the toes are different," I said. "I should have noticed."

"That, at least, has solved one mystery," Frag said. "A single man might not have been able to hang Fodar in a tree, but two strong men could certainly do it."

"I still think it would have taken at least three," father said.

We moved stealthily on, following the footprints. The trail, we found, led directly toward the settlement of the Gray Stone People. This caused Frag a great deal of consternation. He finally confessed to my father that several of their people had vanished in the last moon cycle. I had told Brulde and my father what Poi-lot confided to me last night, but we had kept it to ourselves, waiting to see if any of the other Fat Hands would mention it. Poi-lot was a good man, but prone to exaggeration.

"How many have been taken?" my father asked, his bushy gray eyebrows knotted together, and Frag held up two hands with only one of the fingers curled down.

"Evv, if he cannot be found, will make the full two hands," Frag said. "Fodar is the only one whose body has been recovered."

This upset my father, who felt that Frag and his men had deceived us, but Frag insisted they truly believed the two men had run afoul of a speartooth.

"Perhaps," Frag conjectured, "it is a man who can transform into a speartooth. It is said that some witch-men can change themselves into beasts."

My father snorted. Frag looked hurt by his contempt.

We continued on, ascending from the marshes into a thickly wooded ridge. The trees here were vast, ancient hardwoods, the leaves just beginning to turn brown and orange and yellow. Before we had travelled too much further, one set of footprints vanished. We puzzled over that for a while.

"It is like he took flight," Frag said, scanning the heavens nervously again.

"Perhaps he climbed into the trees," my father suggested.

I shimmied into the nearest tree, a great alder. Moving carefully among the leaves, I examined the branches for any sign that our quarry had ascended into the canopy of the forest. I did spot a few scratches in the bark of a couple limbs.

"There are a couple broken branches," I called down to the group. "The bark is scraped away from the limbs in a few places as well, but that is all I can see. I don't think I can track someone through the treetops, though." I grabbed the bough I stood upon, swung my body down and dropped to the earth. "We should track this other one on the ground. It will be easier."

A short distance further, however, the other set of footprints vanished from sight.

We checked the low branches of a pedunculate oak that stood near the last set of prints, but found no trace of our quarry's passage. We milled around for a while after that, scanning the ground, but could not pick the trail back up. Finally, disheartened, we decided to join the others. Night was fast approaching. The sun, winking at us between the boles of the trees, had gone the color of burning coals.

"Demon," Frag grumbled under his breath as we trod through the deepening shadows.

I was the only one close enough to hear his soft pronouncement. The word sent a chill down my spine. It made me remember my dream snake, the trickster god of the Fat Hand people, and the way that it had devoured my children.

"I am the hungry maw of death…"

There are no such things as demons, I told myself sternly.