Chapter 42

Our Winter Festival came in with a howl! The howl of a child being born! Gabby went into labour just before dawn. She’d been uncomfortable the night before, and had been restless in our bed all night, keeping us wake for much of it. Then her water broke. Naturally that set off the community. I was ordered out, which I refused to do, and from there, things progressed naturally. Within two hours of it starting, Ezra Ryerson entered the world, squalling like a champion. He was a big lad, with dark hair like his mother, weighing in at nine pounds and thirteen ounces.

Miraculously, he didn’t come into the world alone. Marta gave birth almost at the very same time; and, like Gabby, she delivered a son. She named that child Torus, which meant ‘bull’ in her native language. The boy was almost as big as my son.

The twin births threw the day off a bit, but only a bit. With the number of people involved and with Ramie overseeing everything, the festival went on just as it had been planned, with one small alteration. I ended up presenting the two newborns to the tribe.

The big event of the day, besides the birth of the two newest babies, was the hunt. We didn’t need the meat as there was plenty of it in our larder and in our smokehouses. However, the hunt had become a bit of a tradition in our tribe. We would go out and bring back a fresh kill to celebrate the last day of the old year, and the first night of the new year. This year we ended up having four hunting parties. Rugar led one, Tonko led another, and Sygor led a third. The last hunting party consisted of women and it was led by Ruba. I had been supposed to lead the party, but with the arrival of Ezra, I passed the mantle of hunt leader to Ruba. She thanked me with a kiss. I sent Burton along with her and the other women in the party; just in case they needed a little muscle to haul a kill home.

To our good fortune, the hunters all returned safe and happy for the day. More importantly, from their perspective, each had a kill. The men each brought back a deer per hunting party; a doe and two stags, while Ruba’s party brought back a female bison. It was a kill shared between Ruba and Ohba, who’d downed the animal using the hunting rifles taken from Rolf Anderson and Carlos Delgado. It made for a very pleased camp, although a busy one, since all that meat had to be butchered down before any feasting could begin, and all the skins needed to be dealt with as well. Even so, not a single person complained!

The hunt and the feast made up a major part of our Winter Solstice Festival, but that wasn’t all there was to it. I had introduced customs during my first winter here, and those customs were still a major part of the celebration. I still whittled when I could, and all my whittled objects went into a storage sack that I kept in my woodworking shed, to be brought out at the festival, to hand out to the young children of our community. With all our new members, my supply of carved animals and straw dolls was sorely drawn upon, but luckily I found enough toys to hand out gifts to every one of the children, both old and new. It put smiles on several faces, including Mika - the boy who nearly died back at the compound, and whom I had sent Gort and Wutar to befriend. I had promised him that he would be a hunter, and as his gift I gave him a working bow, scaled to his size and strength, and a quiver of arrows. It definitely made his day.

We also held what my people had come to consider a ‘naming’ ceremony. This was a tradition that I’d initiated during our first winter in the cave in our current valley. It was the winter in which we shared the cave with Gogra and the craftsmen and their families who’d been sent by Agar to learn about bow and saddle making. At that time my tribe had expanded to include Balto and his family and several other people who’d left the Horse People to join our community. To acknowledge those people as part of our tribe and to include them in our customs and traditions so that they felt like they were actual members of our tribe, I’d come up with the ceremony. In essence, it included a ceremonial bathing, which symbolized the washing away of the old tribal connections and purifying the new member of the tribe prior to acknowledging them before the gathered mass that made up our community.

Once the bathing and purification was accomplished, under the supervision of the leading women of the tribe, the new members would be brought before me and the tribe. I would then mark their brow with a dab of sacred red ochre. I would then place a bear claw pendant about the new member’s neck. When this was done I would turn the new member to face the gathered population of our community. At that point I would name the individual and introduce them to the gathered mass, by name followed by the honorific, ‘of the Bear Tribe’. At that point, the gathered mass repeated the person’s name, saying ‘of the Bear Tribe, ‘ and they would welcome the person as a full member. It had been such a success with my people, that when Gogra and his people had arrived near the end of summer, I’d held a similar ‘naming ceremony’ at the autumn festival. Today I did the same for those who’d joined us more recently.

I welcomed Wodon first, honouring him publicly by informing the gathering that he was not only Wodon of the Bear Tribe, but that he was also Wodon, child of the Earth Mother and friend of the Spirits. It seemed to please everyone to hear that. Once I had named him, I moved on to the former women and children of the Forest People, then to the people who’d come with Wodon from the Horse People, and finally all the ex-River People. When I had named each of them, and the tribe had welcomed them, I started on the uptimers. I began with Rolf Anderson and his people, and then worked my way onward until I’d reached Gus.

Truthfully I had no problem welcoming Rolf and his team into our tribe, or Kim and those who’d come with her. I did however have a few doubts about our five newest members, with my strongest reservations directed at Gus. So far Gus had been a good boy and he’d cooperated when asked to help, but I couldn’t forget that he’d raped and murdered while serving Winslow and Quantum, and I had my doubts about him. However, I was willing to allow Carmen into our tribe, although she had admitted to killing a couple of locals in what she described as self-defence, so to be fair I had to include Gus. In any case, if I hadn’t, then whatever bridges that had been forged with the younger man between him and me and the community would have been severed right then and there, and most likely I would have had to banish him, or more likely kill him. He would have taken the exclusion as an insult and my people would have taken the exclusion as a sign that I didn’t trust the man.

I did alter the ceremony slightly at the very end, changing it in two ways.

The first was to bring forth the two newborns to present them to the rest of the tribe. Traditionally I’d taken a couple of days following any birth to consult with the women as to what they wanted to name the child, and with the father of the child, or members of their old tribe to see how they felt about the new name. I ensured that cultural traditions were adhered to as best as could be done within our tribe, and the newer traditions that I had put in place back when I’d publicly named Zeya’s son Kobo; essentially acknowledging him as my child with the protection of my hearth. Today, I didn’t need to delay it. Gabby and I had discussed names with Clara ever since we knew for certain that she was pregnant, and as for Marta’s son, we had done the same, shortly after her arrival. In many ways the Forest women still considered themselves my slaves, although I had protested that fact repeatedly. Marta had asked me one night after sharing my furs what name I would give her child once it was born. It had led to the discussion of my tribe’s customs and how I as chief named all the children. I’d let her pick the name and then I’d discuss it with the other women from the Forest People, as well as with Clara and Gabby. Having done that eliminated the need to do it again, thus the fact I was able to welcome Ezra and Torus both to the tribe that day and to declare them both sons of my hearth. It pleased everyone, but it pleased Marta most of all.

The second alteration to the ceremony was a small speech that I had made at the beginning of the ceremony. Basically I explained that by accepting the new members of the tribe into the tribe formally, I was creating a formal bond between them and us that was sacred, to the spirits, the Earth Mother, and to the whole tribe. Once that bond was made, any betrayal would be viewed grievously not only by me and the tribe, but also by the spirit world; and that to betray the tribe, would leave the betrayer bereft of the next world. It was a powerful declaration to make, particularly because I was making it in the capacity of the tribe’s shaman. I could tell that it impacted heavily on everyone who came forward to be named, who were from another tribe. I just hoped the uptimers got the message. I had in fact included the speech specifically for them.

The feast went well, that night. We’d built several fires in the big cave and over each there had been cooked something different. We had bison ribs, a venison stew, aurochs steaks, and from Clara with the help of Catta and Beverly, French meat pie made from ground wild boar that had come out of our smoke house. We also had plenty of roots and vegetables, some from our garden plots and some gathered by the women of the tribe last fall. We washed it all down with applejack, wine, and herbal tea. Then after the feasting, I put on the traditional shadow puppet show. It was well received by both young and old, and by the locals and uptimers.

After the feasting came bed. God, we were all tired, particularly Gabby. Little Ezra however proved to be a hungry lad. It was quite a while before we all got to sleep, and any thought of sex had gone out the window the moment he’d started to cry. Ah, the joys of parenthood. I’d survive.

Life got interesting in the valley come January. The first week saw us trapped indoors once again when another major snowstorm blew through the area, dumping another foot of snow onto us. It didn’t matter much as we spent the time drilling our fighting force on weapons in the big cave, and we sat and debated our tactical plans. We had a lot to talk about.

The snow actually proved to be a benefit to us. We didn’t know it at the time it fell, but we learned shortly afterwards.

Even with the snow we maintained a close watch on our valley. Sentries were posted around the clock and an aerial watch was maintained just in case Winslow sent his last helicopter looking for us. We also continued to mount patrols. These were sent out towards the mouth of the valley to see what was happening down below us, just in case Winslow and his thugs had moved up from their base in an attempt to find us. Since the danger to us was grave, I always tried to lead at least one of the patrols. Then came the day we found out just how lucky we were that it had snowed, I was the one leading the patrol.

I’d gone out with the women that day. By all reports, provided by Kim, Burton, and Dunbar, the women were coming along as well as, if not better than, the men. It made sense. The women didn’t have years of bad habits to unlearn. Still they were green and inexperienced. Regular, repetitive training was called for before they would start performing at an instinctual level.

We were moving through the forests on the western side of the valley on foot, and using snowshoes to get about. There were two reasons for doing that. The first was I wanted to limit the traffic moving up and down the valley floor. We’d already done our best to hide the Chinook, covering it with canvas and turning it into a snow-covered hillock, so why provide Winslow and his men a fresh set of tracks to lead him to our front gate. The other reason was that the valley floor was still deep in snow. It had snowed a bit before the winter festival; and it had just now snowed, blanketing the area once again. Travelling through the forest would simply make our life that much easier. The canopy of thick pine boughs kept much of the snow off the forest floor, making it the easiest route to take to the valley mouth. We still needed to cross some open territory before we reached the lip where the valley dropped away and the long slope stood, but the distance was only about five hundred yards.

For this patrol I’d sent Geeta and Ohba out ahead of us. Geeta was still our best tracker and I had great faith in her abilities. Ohba however, had proven herself a quick student. She’d picked up a lot from her young friend, as well as from Bogdi and Gort. Because of that I had them both up front, hoping that Geeta’s experience would help the other young woman to become just as good at spotting trouble before it came upon her.

I trailed them by about a hundred yards, keeping watch on the others in our force, and chatting with Ruba and Kim, who were walking on either side of me. Behind us walked Olla, who was carrying the man-pack radio on her back. The rest of our patrol flanked me, spread out on either side of me, and to the rear, guarding against any unexpected surprises.

The unexpected came in the form of a drone. Geeta and Ohba spotted it first and they radioed back to us on their throat mics that they had seen it. I immediately called back to the settlement and raised the alarm. Once my warning had been acknowledged, I moved forward to have a look.

Geeta had paused well inside the tree-line just before the open stretch that led out towards the edge of the valley before it dropped off into the forest-covered slope. Before moving any further she’d pulled out a pair of binoculars and she’d scanned the wide mouth of our valley, the edge, and the open sky beyond it. It was while scanning the open sky that she spotted the flying object off in the distance. Having seen the one that had buzzed us three years before when she’d come to join my fledgling tribe, she’d remembered it and she’d called me in to have a look. By the time I reached Geeta’s position the drone was out of sight.

“I want Squad One to the left of me,” I said turning to Ruba as she came to a halt beside where I was standing in the tree-line, “and I want Squad Two to my right. I want all eyes on the ground and for everyone to leave the sky watching to me and Kim. If there are people out there, I want to know about it before they know we’re here.”

“Yes, Jake,” Ruba acknowledged in a snappy manner. “I’ll make certain everyone understands.”

With that Ruba turned and then started giving orders to the women with us, sending one squad off to the left and the other to the right. While she did this, I grabbed my own binoculars and I started scanning the sky for any flying objects. As I did, Kim grabbed the handset of the radio from Olla and she reported back to the settlement what we had found so far. Her conversation didn’t last long.

“Dunbar and Burton have the settlement locked up tight and ready for any problems that might be coming our way,” Kim informed me as she stepped up beside me, raising her own binoculars to her eyes to help me scan the air before us. “Do you really think that Geeta spotted a drone?”

“It’s possible,” I told her, not taking my eyes of the sky as I did. “All five of our newest members told us that Winslow had several medium to long range drones at his disposal. It’s possible that he decided to send a drone to look for the lost helicopter instead of risking sending his Huey and a crew.”

“Yeah, but it’s been nearly five weeks since you shot down the Puma,” Kim pointed out sharply, “and almost six since you captured the Chinook. Shouldn’t we have seen a drone before now?”

“I don’t know,” I ended up admitting, shrugging my shoulders as I said it. “Maybe Winslow couldn’t get the drones off the ground before now, or maybe he’s been using them for some other job and they’ve just become available.”

At that point I shut up and focused on looking. A moment later, I spotted the drone off in the distance. From the look of it, the drone was flying up the length of the valley, coming from the west.

“There it is,” I shouted out loud. “It’s coming from the west, heading up the length of the lower valley. Do you see it?”

“I’ve got it,” Kim replied promptly. “It’s about mid-valley now and from the look of it, it’s travelling at a good clip. What do you think it’s up to?”

“I think it’s flying a grid pattern,” I mused aloud, watching as the drone disappeared out of sight. “That might be why it’s taken so long for the drone to get here. Winslow is taking his time looking for the missing helicopter. My bet is that the drone flew up to the compound and found not only the wreck of the Puma, but the abandoned compound, and Winslow has been trying to figure out what happened there, and where the other helicopter went off to.”

“But that thing could have followed our tracks here, without a problem,” Kim pointed out, lowering her binoculars and look towards me in a questioning manner. “Why the hell have the drone fly a grid pattern.”

“Because of the snow,” I pointed out, lowering my binoculars as well. As I did, I pointed out at the open stretch of snow that lay beyond the tree-line and where we were standing. It was pristine and untouched. “It’s snowed a few times since we captured the Chinook and dealt with the Puma. That snow has probably covered up most of our tracks and what was left may have been filled in by blowing snow or by animals following or crossing our trail. Personally, I think Winslow is just being careful.”

“Well he might be trying to be careful,” Kim scoffed in a tone that implied that she didn’t think the man could be careful about anything, “but what are we going to do about this drone. Eventually, it’ll reach this valley.”

I understood Kim’s question. We really had nothing to knock the drone out of the air, unless we really got lucky. If it flew at us right now, and it came up over the forest before climbing to operational altitude, we might be able to down it with concentrated small arms air defence, however if it didn’t come in low over the trees, we would be screwed. It would take a miracle shot with my sniper rifle to knock it down, and an equally lucky shot using the medium machine gun that we’d taken off of the Puma. I had to give it some thought.

“I don’t know,” I told her sighing as I did, “but we’ll have to do something that’ll knock the drone down without attracting any further notice from Winslow and company. What’s the chance of another freak snowstorm hitting the area?”

“None that I know of,” Kim sighed in reply, bringing her binoculars to her eyes as the drone suddenly reappeared in the sky over the distant valley, flying westward this time, “and I doubt very much that we can get a flock of birds to fly up and clog up it’s engine, can we?”

I didn’t answer Kim. Instead I grabbed the radio and I called back to the settlement to brief Clara and the others on what was happening, and hopefully pick their brains of any ideas. If we didn’t get one soon, we could really be in trouble. My bet was that the drone was a medium range survey drone much like the one we had hidden away back in our old valley, but I couldn’t be certain of it. While the five new people had all sworn up and down that Winslow didn’t have anything like a ‘Predator’ type drone, I couldn’t risk being wrong. I really needed to knock that drone out of the sky long before it got to us.

My people couldn’t come up with anything on the spot that could bring down a drone at operational altitude. Clara put Penny on the radio with me and I questioned her on what we had in stock from the compound that we could make use of. I figured that if they had a spare uniform and ballistic vest in my size, when I needed it, maybe they had something like a ‘Stinger’ missile I could use. Penny had nothing. She had a few flares and that was about it, besides what weapons we’d captured from the helicopter.

“Five minutes,” Kim said aloud, while I was chatting with Penny, drawing my attention back to what was happening out over the distant valley.

What’s five minutes?” I asked telling Penny to ‘wait-one’.

“The drone’s passage up and down the valley,” Kim pointed out, lowering her binoculars as she replied. “I’ve been timing it while you were talking to Penny. The drone takes five minutes to go from where we can see it, to wherever and back again. By my estimate, that’s a transit up and down the lower valley every ten minutes. If it is travelling at an approximate speed of fifty miles per hour, then the drone is covering stretches of terrain roughly eight and a third miles long. So far I’ve seen it make four passes, so my bet is that it’s almost done sweeping the lower valley. If it is, we’re going to be in trouble in the next ten to twenty minutes.”