Hundreds of times had Christos driven up and around The Mountain: in trucks, on ATVs, on his bike. Many atime also were his runs up, around and back. Never had he run over the mountain, just run right up over the thing and down the other side. Property was not lain out that way. There was junk, the roads lined with thick underbrush. Here, in this world, in this dream that felt more like life with every beat of his heart, the trees were huge, the mountain not rutted from machinery, undergrowth sparse…
Padded his feet slightly, those behind him so silent he had to swivel his head to make certain they were not phantoms. One Ear, with ax and some other guy’s knife, followed by Chest Cleaved with two knives, tailed by Big Boy with a big ass bow and three iron arrows with heads like sabot rounds, brought up his rear.
‘These guys are running easy.’
Back in the Waking World few men could keep pace with him cross country. Even these two wounded did it with ease.
‘No need to put on these men. Let’s run smart.’
Up The Mountain like so many cats and down the other side like water feeling its way, it was done, no driving nine miles to make one, but running like a bird flies. In five minutes run, Christos found himself at the foot of The Mountain where the creek ran to the river. Shaking his head to clear it of an attempt to chart where the road had been, and the town, he shrugged his shoulders, and nodded downstream, waving One Ear forward, “Canoes?”
One Ear nodded once and took the lead. They three followed. In the Waking World there would have been need for instructions—you do this, I’ll do that. Not here. They knew what needed done, all of them. He looked at Chest Cleaved, whose wound was caked with the old man’s ointment and seeped into a giant budding clot a foot wide. The question was in his eyes, he knew.
Chest Cleave made a fist and grinned, then nodded to the path behind One Ear. Big Boy waited, glancing behind, then to left, then to right, then behind.
‘This team is squared away,’ and the thought made a grin as he turned to catch up with One Ear.
Ten minutes brought them to the Potomac, boggling his mind at all of the wasted winding and rolling he had done in the Waking World where no line could be traced from Point Here to Point There.
One ear was crouched behind an oak tree that was ten feet wide, Nodding around it, pointing down, and holding up three fingers, and making a chopping motion over those three fingers with his ax. It was clear, three men were down there, enemies, but not THE ENEMY.
‘Holy shit, I’m the only man here who has not killed a man in combat!’
‘This can’t stand! I’m a winner. They have to know I can kick their asses! That’s how I lead.’
‘Brick head, you have never fought with axes!’
That cool calm that came before him before a fight engaged, ripping the throat out of that whimpering doubt. He could feel his heart rate decrease, and he smiled, ‘This ends now.’
The three were looking to him. He signed Big Boy to shoot two, by pointing to the bow and holding up two fingers. He gave him a hand to pause, and whispered to One Ear, “Big one is mine.”
He then winked to Chest Cleave, stood, and walked around the tree down towards the creek mouth, glancing at the mighty Potomac, some easy white water showing and the walls of towering trees reflected in the dawning sun.
“Hey,” he warned wanting to draw attention to himself so that Big Boy could get his marks. Padding down over the stair made of those great tree roots to the creek he saw the three men, examining the six canoes left there, reminding him of how many of Norman’s friends were lost in fight. “Shit, you’re all big!” he noted with a gruff laugh. He went right into smart-ass mode and repeated the same exact thing he said to those three NJP guys that came to vet him on the pier in Baltimore when they were looking for a BJJ instructor.
They were all naked except for buckskin front flaps, asses bare, no paint on their faces, black hair done up in top knots, small knives at their waists and bows and arrows leaned up against a tree. These were locals hunting, he just knew. If he knew the language and they weren’t in such a hurry, this might have been handled otherwise.
Pointing at the biggest one, a scowling man with thick forehead, “I’m going to take you down. Then I’m going to enjoy taking these two apart.”
The other two were clearly fearful. The small one turned to run and had an arrow transfix him. He could hear the lung wheeze as the guy pitched face first into the creek. The second one ran down the creek under cover of the near bank, to the river. He heard One Ear tracing him off above. The coward would get jumped on the river bank no doubt.
The big Injun glanced at their bows, knew he couldn’t get to them, grabbed his knife and growled for Christos to come on.
Above and behind, Big Boy let his bowstring twang to indicate he was sitting it out. The big Injun was standing in knee deep water between the two rows of canoes, five steps from his primary weapon. The water was knee deep and slow where the lung shot kid was gurgling.
‘Might as well make some friends,’ Christos mused.
Drawing his big steel knife, he threw it up to Chest Cleave, and tossed the hammer and ax to him as well. He dragged the lung shot kid into a canoe, sat him up, drew the kid’s knife, and trimmed the arrow on both sides of the left chest where he had been feathered. The knife was not steel, not even metal, but flint, a surgical instrument about six inches long with antler slabs on the lower end to make a hilt, same as that in the big man’s hand.
He recalled seeing his friend, after being stabbed, working the door in South Baltimore, walk off and die of a stab wound from a small folding knife.
They approached each other in the water, which was not quite knee deep for this big foe. There was no fencing here. This was going to be about the grapple. ‘You have this guy,’ and Christos swayed forward easily, with short watery steps, his left hand high and extended against the ice picked knife in the big man’s right hand. His own knife was low and true in a saber grip, pointed at that long tan abdomen.
The big man came forward behind a high grabbing left hand aimed at the top of his head, switch stepping forward to stab down with the wicked flint blade descending from the bottom of his fist.
Christos stepped right under a rising roof cut, slashing open that left forearm—felt the damned knife break when he cut into bone, his fist punching the elbow.
The big bastard was still stepping around, so Christos slid under his left arm, jumped on his hips and thought better of a choke with that knife dropping for his right knee. He went all high school wrestler fantasy and jammed the downward knife stab by shooting his arms up into a full nelson.
‘This man is strong as fuck!’ mused Christos as he rode him into the water, grapevined him, and put both arms to work into a hammer lock. Even when he separated the shoulder, the knife did not come loose. He kept the lock with his right hand and pushed that face into and under the water. The knife came loose as the Injun did a one-arm push-up on the Creek bottom to get a breath, bringing Christos up like he was on a rodeo bull.
“Good man,” he growled in his ear, as he sunk his hooks in deep, applied the rear naked, and commenced seven seconds of what he hoped looked like magic to these ax fighters.
‘Am I right for this world,” he wondered, when he found it was not in him to just kill this dude once he was out. ‘Make it look like diplomacy—you’re a Christian.’
Christos dragged the big man up, perhaps 6’ 4” 190, sat him in the canoe with the wounded kid, and directed Big Boy to take all their arrows and place their bows in that canoe.
One Eye returned up stream, carrying an unconscious coward over his back. The mohawked viking with one ear snarled at him, “Faint fright. Wild-goose men, River carry name. Not much war. Good hunt.”
The Big Man came to, looking up at them.
Christos spoke to him, trusting One Ear to translate, “We are hunting other enemies. You take the canoe you are in. Tomorrow, take the canoes that remain for your people to compensate for the arrows and the wounds. I am Christos. We should be friends.”
The big man looked at Christos, and at his own disjointed shoulder, as if to say, “After this?”
Christos nodded, opened his hands, and stepped to him, “Lean forward…”
The man complied as Christos applied some of the worst bullshit chiropractic healing he could think of. He did get the ball of the shoulder back in place before it swelled too much, and patted it, “Be careful of overhead motions.”
The man audible ground his teeth and glared at them all, “Heron no friend White Wolf… no enemy.”
“Good enough. One Ear, we take two canoes—on me. First, push these three out to the river, just one paddle. Make this coward do all the work.”
His three frightening men nodded grimly and did as he ordered. He collected his three as yet untried weapons, ‘How will I do with these—armored assholes with swords call for more than grappling?’
Strangely, he lacked no confidence. The wolf pelt seemed to caress him like some bloodthirsty mother of a harder ancestor.
‘What if this is no dream?’ he wondered as his men pushed the three wounded out into the awesome river he somehow felt calling his soul. He did know one thing as he stood above what looked like the best canoe, that the rivers, all of them, were his true friends.
