The Oath of Bjorn

CHAPTER 4: HUNTING

The Oath of Bjorn

Sister is the first to grow restless.  There is a trail that has been cleared of vegetation leading inland from the water.  It is likely that the beavers have been using it for many weeks.  We trudge along it following  Sister and soon realize that the beavers have etched out a canal in places.  While these waterways make it easier for the beavers, it is tough tracking through mud for the rest of us.

 

My feet are soaked right through when Anja motions for us to stop.  She is the first to notice the beavers’ reddish-brown heads.  There are two of them half-submerged in the shallow waters directly in front of us with their wet fur slicked back on their rounded heads and their beady eyes glancing from side to side.  I take a breath and focus on listening to the stream gurgling over the rocks, on smelling the fresh, outdoor air that is vibrantly alive with the smell of springtime growth.

 

Anja and my sister quickly exit the water and split apart with the intention of coming at the beavers from either side of the bank and forcing them towards me where l wait with my weapon raised.  I want this kill.  This is the moment to show my women what I can do, to show them what a hunter of my status can achieve.  I see the beavers slowly coming from upstream, drifting easily, their noses poking out of the shallows.  Suddenly, I lunge, but I miss both of them.  An instant later, I take aim again.  I am so focused that I go completely still before I forcefully drive my spear into the water, aiming to hit the beaver bringing up the rear.  The creature twists and splashes water with its tail, but I hold firm.  I feel the solidness of the beaver’s form underneath my vibrating spear.  Then, I dig the weapon in with a jab and feel my spear enter the solid mass of writhing fur.  From somewhere distant, there are shouts and screams and splashing water and the sounds of birds.  Then the beaver stops moving.  It is dead.

 

I stand there gawking until there is a a flash of pain, hot and sharp.  Instantaneously, I whirl around.  When I look down and see a stream of blood spewing forth from my shin, I curse again and my head jerks up to search the water.  Just ahead, there is a  large hairy creature with a flat tail circling me in the knee-deep water.  The beaver is too close.  My body tenses as I torque my neck and lift my feet from the stream’s muddy bed.  In an instant, I lose sight of the beaver as it flings up more water with its tale.  At that moment, the pain registers, and it dawns on me that the damn thing bit me in the  leg in retaliation for killing its brother! I’m lucky that it didn’t chew right through to bone.

 

“Be off!” I yell.  I am careful to give the beaver a wide birth as I guard its dead mate, my hunting trophy.  The shaft of my harpoon sticks out of the water and marks the spot where the carcass is sitting in a pool of fetid water and murky mud.  In the distance, Sister is making her way downstream, inching her way towards the kill.

 

“Stay away!” I shout.  There is a triumphant grin on her muddy face.  I see Anja on the opposite bank gingerly picking her way across a pile of slippery rocks.  Suddenly she freezes and gapes at me.

 

“Bjorn, you are bleeding!” she yells.  I look down.  The gash looks bad. The beaver’s incisors have left a nasty laceration on the back of my calf.  The blood is gushing out and mingling with the water streaming down my leg so that the water-blood trickles down in rivulets. "Anja, don't come here!" I mutter as I grit my teeth and endure another bolt of red hot, searing pain.

 

Somehow I manage to exit the shallows while simultaneously dragging my speared beaver behind me, but the carcass weighs me down.  Sister follows close behind.  I hear the squish and slurp of her feet as she tries to navigate her way through the gooey mud.

 

Once I have reached the treeline, the anger - an anguish turned inwards - slips inside like mites nipping.  I shouldn’t have missed on my first shot!.  The blasted thing bit into me with its sharpened teeth.  Teeth through skin.  Teeth on bone.  The wound is now pulsating.  When I look down, I see a mess of flesh and blood and mud and dirt.

 

“Let me see your injury,” Anja says tersely as she picks her way down the bank.  Gruffly, I hold out my hand to push her back.  I do not need her pity.

 

“Pick that carcass up and bring it here!” I order my sister in a caustic tone.  She is struggling to make it into shore in the slippery mud, but she turns around and heeds my call.  It is a struggle for her to dislodge the harpoon from the beaver’s fur.  As soon as I see that she has managed, I lower myself to a patch of grass, slick with mud.

 

The gash in my skin is deep and nasty. As I push the torn skin back into place, I wince, and the bile rises in my gorge.

 

"Let me help," Anja frets as she  takes charge.  She tears off strips of cloth from her shift to use as a tourniquet.  I watch her tie the fabric around my calf to stop the blood, but my world is spinning and the pain is bad.  Her face looks grey as she uses her teeth to pull the bandage tight.  I am barely conscious, barely able to concentrate.  I have always known Anja to be a strong woman, and today she is everything I want and more.  There is blood pooling on the ground.  My blood.  My sticky blood,  warm and reddish black.  My head swims.  I see stars exploding.  A flash of white tailing across my eyes.

 

When I come to, I am lying in a clearing in the middle of the bush.  I hear Sister’s frightened voice even before I see her fuzzy face.

 

“Surely, you're not going to sew him up right here in the open air?” she whispers to Anja in a panicked voice.

 

“I can't move him.  He is too heavy, and he can't walk.” Anja’s words are garbled.  From my position on the ground, I see the porcupine quill needle in her teeth, and a curse escapes my lips in a clipped, harsh tone, in a voice that is not my own.

 

A crow calls somewhere overhead.  The air is still, but there is a pungent scent of new growth that permeates the area where I am lying in the blood-soaked grass.  I inhale deeply.  Anja sees that I am awake, and she leans over and asks me to steady myself so that she can sew me up.  I watch her raise the needle.  Then I pass out again.

 

I'm not sure where I am when I hear the crows.  Their screeches scratch my ears.  Their black forms drop in thousands from the sky, and they block the sun.  All I smell is blood and fear and death and stink.  The beasts can have me in this state.  I am in too much agony to fight them off.   By Odin’s beard, if this is what it is like to die, let death claim me!  I will happily give up entering Valhalla’s gates.

 

Memories of Anja - my raven woman – surface.  Let me have the memories.  I'll take them into the next life where I imagine that the hunting is plentiful and where there are no beavers lurking hungrily in the shadows waiting to use their teeth.