Over the Darkened Landscape - By Derryl Murphy Page 0,83
beneath his feet, feeds some of his life to the life that surrounds them, an offering in return for the upcoming life that he and his tribe plan to take.
It is all he can do. All five spears stand high above the heads of the hunters, sharpened edges crusted over with their blood, power shining from each and every one of them. After a short nod to his young assistant, he shouts the finality of the ritual to the tribe and to the sun and the earth, and they go. The hunters casually wave aside all the calls of goodbye and the imprecations and pleadings, stern and strong and anxious to prove that they can still provide for the tribe, and yet cautious not to show any break in their masks, for fear that they might be seen as weak or afraid.
Normally the shaman would not go with them, but he needs to keep these five in sight and in earshot, make sure that they are not conspiring against him. Certainly these are lean times, but he has kept them all alive through worse than this, and he is not yet ready to hand it all over to his apprentice. He knows that his apprentice does not feel he is ready, either, and so feels safe leaving him behind with the weaker members of the tribe.
The walk to where the long noses are supposed to be is almost a half a day, leading them away from the running water and over fields and small hills, places mostly still green and alive but increasingly covered in white as snow falls and refuses to melt under the gaze of the weakened sun. As they approach the bottom of the hill that leads to the overlook where their prey should be, the shaman feels relief wash through him, powerful enough to weaken his knees for a moment, when he hears the sounds of the creatures in the distance.
He has the hunters lean their spears inward one last time, all of the points touching, and chants and prays some more, adding strength and luck at this final stage. Then he separates from them, goes to find a safe place from where he can watch the hunt.
The long noses have been tracked by the tribe as they walked their path over this plateau, finding their way through the green and away from the ice. But almost everywhere they’ve been it has been impossible for the hunters to get close enough to make a kill. So the hunters scouted ahead, and the shaman consulted his secrets, and together they came to an agreement that, on this day at this time, the long noses would be here, in a place where they could be more readily and more safely hunted.
He makes it to the top of the hill and settles in behind some rocks, watches as the hunters flow down the hill, almost invisible even to him. He sees even before they single it out that their target will be a young one, off grazing far from its mother and in the right direction as well.
The hunters jump as one then, screaming and slashing the air with their spears, the magic in the points amplifying everything, noise as well as numbers, and the long noses go wild with fear and scatter in all directions, the young one ever further separated from its mother and the rest of its family. It runs up the hill opposite the shaman—a mistake—as it stumbles on the loose rocks there, and it realizes this mistake and turns to come back down but instead sees what it thinks might be an opening and is running across the side of the hill, somehow managing the increased steepness.
All of the hunters still chase it, and two, including the strongest, raise their arms and hurl their spears. The shaman speaks words to the air to aid the flight of the spears. The words connect, and one spear flies true, stabbing into the side of the young long nose; it stumbles and bleats in agony. He is so sure of the kill to come that he doesn’t pay attention, doesn’t see the adult long nose rush up the hill until it is already in the midst of the hunters, throwing them angrily through the air with its tusks and crushing them with its huge stamping feet. He is then so intent on watching the future of his tribe die before him that he doesn’t see the young