Stands-with-demons felt the polished flint tip of the arrow tear through his flank muscle and then slice back out through his buckskin vest as the shaft was deflected by the bony flange that girdled his lower guts. The searing pain banished the woman in him, that portion of him that felt pity and guilt over the distant man he had just feathered—a man that now groaned in the morning snow, curled up like a baby, but praying like a man.
Ahead came on the great man, lumbering like a bear and growling like something worse.
To his left, marked by the flight of the arrow that now lay red-tinged in the white snow at his feet, the hunter of the three, the stalker who had feathered him on the run from a distance with an inferior bow, straightened up, sure now that he would feather his man fatally. In this moment that portion of him that sneered smugly at the world, that ugly killing thing in him—planted, he wondered, by that demon's touch so many winters ago—expanded and became great, looming over the dreaming remnants of his soul-searching self, banishing the pitiful mystic who would ponder such things as did not matter, for they did not kill—did not do this!
The bending of the bow had been as if nothing.
The drawing of the straining sinew to ear had been as natural as taking a breath.
As the distant bow of the enemy snapped and twanged, sending it's arrow aloft, Stands-with-demons advanced behind his own on-rushing arrow, questing for a soul to steal on this morning of his manhood. He was confident that the enemy had properly plotted the trajectory of his shot and that the missile would pierce the ground where he had just stood, rather than plunging into his neck. He followed the arrow for three steps as it covered the ground of three spear casts and before his foot had completed the third step, the matchless archer—matchless until this moment—who had already drawn and knocked a second arrow from his shoulder quiver, was transfixed, his brain within his popping skull skewed like a chestnut over a fire, his eyes wide in disbelief, forever wondering at his end. The arrow blew out the back of the skull as it continued for some paces behind the frozen form of the suddenly dead warrior, spraying the back snow with a red spatter.
Father's voice could be heard proudly singing to the egg-shell sky across which scudded cotton balls like the women of Summer weave into garments that cling to them and show their every desirous curve.
Father was singing to his grandfathers, singing to their long-departed ancestors, seeking to wake them from the sunset place where their stars now slept and encouraging him, "Son, demon-taming son of mine! Take up the demon knife! Direct the long knife with your unerring hand and take the life of this rumbling Mud bear—make this the day The People rise in the songs of nations!"
His father was mad with exultation, dancing crookedly on his maimed leg, like some insane adder of an elder, and the rumbling, lumbering Mud Water was almost within a spear cast, having covered an impossible distance during the course of two lethal arrow flights and one near. Up from his guts, summoned by the light in the giant warrior's eyes, crawled the demons of doubt once again, filling the place that had so recently grown so large and arrogant within, crowding out the man-hunter who sneered at the world.
You cannot possibly pit this needle of a knife—which you have never trained or fought with—against that tree-branch of a club, in the hands of that bear of a man!
I must, for Father's honor, for his very spirit.
I can. I am Stands-with-demons. I can do it.
The Mud warrior then howled as if victorious already as his big, naked feet slapped upon the flat rock that Father had worked his crafts on when the sun shone. The sound-and the presence of the man, who now loomed so overpowering and menacing in this near quarter of the world, stole his confidence, seized it like a crow making off with a just hatched sparrow and the traitorous body of Stands-with-demons released a stream of urine that soaked his legging and stained the snow at his feet—and his soul forever.
The cold morning groaned—no, that had been his father, collapsing in a twisted heap.
The Mud warrior howled and leaped high, brandishing his war club in triumph—his wide, painted face broad and black in the white morning.
I am undone—I die like an otter on a lonely stone bank caught in the jaws of a bear risen from winter.
