The trail moved up at a slight slope, and it was a good feeling to hear Deer Run behind him.
Up ahead.
He held his hand out and slowed down.
Deer Run came up next to him, breathing hard but still able to speak. “What is it, brother?”
He pointed his knife to the right. A branch had been recently broken. Two flowers on the ground had been crushed and were only now slowly regaining their height.
“She’s gone this way, off the trail.”
Deer Run nodded. “That woman is a sly one.”
“Not sly enough. We can still catch her.”
Deer Run was concerned. “The mist, brother. It is nearby.”
“I don’t care. We can still do it. Now, follow me.”
Into the dark woods he went.
• • •
Now the tears were coming as she pounded her way up the steep rise of the mountain. Why? What had happened? Reenactors? Really? They were killers, that’s what they were. Killers! She wasn’t sure if they were crazed locals pretending to be Indians, or real damn Indians that had managed to keep hidden all these years, but what the hell difference did it make.
At some point she would be where she could call the police, and . . .
Damn.
Her cell phone and everything else was in her pack, dumped back in the field.
So what? She’d keep on running, get back to the main trail, and either run into some hikers who had a cell phone or make her way to a road.
Any way you look at it, those assholes back there wouldn’t get away with it.
Up ahead, the mist was there, the odd mist that had risen after they had passed that damn waterfall.
Her chest thudded. There was a rocky trail that led to the right. If she got up there, she’d be in the mist in just a minute or two, and that’d help hide her from those maniacs chasing her.
A yell, a holler.
She turned. The two maniacs were just below her, close enough so she could throw a stone at them.
• • •
Long Neck stopped. Deer Run was beside him.
“Too close,” Deer Run said.
Long Neck stared and stared at the outsider above them. She was watching them, looking down, fear and defiance in her face. The mist was just above her.
He hated to admit it.
His brother was right.
Deer Run said, “We have to go back.”
He sighed and lowered his hand, the one with the knife.
“We do. We do.”
Deer Run slapped him on the shoulder. “But the game will go on, it will, won’t it, brother?”
Long Neck turned and started back down the mountain.
“It will go on forever,” he said.
The mocking voice of the outsider woman followed them both for quite a while.
• • •
Heather couldn’t believe it. They were turning! They were walking away! They weren’t chasing her!
She couldn’t help herself. She yelled at them, “That’s right! Turn around, assholes! Go back to that damn field and get ready to get your asses arrested! I’m gonna get the cops over here damn quick, and your sorry butts are going down!”
Heather burst into tears, wiped at her face and eyes, and, as the two Indians disappeared into the woods, called out one last time: “For Cal! For Steve! For Tony! You’re not going to get away with it, you miserable bastards!”
A hand on her shoulder.
She shrieked.
Turned.
The old Indian was there, staring right at her with hate and contempt and evil, and she automatically took a step back, and fell.
And fell.
And fell.
The pain was so great.
• • •
She woke up, moved, shrieked again. The back of her head throbbed and throbbed, and blood was trickling down her face. Her right leg was screaming at her and she lifted her head oh so slightly, saw it twisted in a strange way. She was on an outcropping of rocks and stone. Her left wrist dangled.
Oh God.
She closed her eyes and opened them again.
The old man was before her. He looked down at her, and what she saw scared her even more.
He was no longer looking at her with hate or anger. No. He was looking at her with a smile, with satisfaction on his wrinkled and scarred face.
Heather said, “What . . . what is it with you people?”
The old man raised his arms, started talking . . . but it sounded like something else.
Chanting? Praying?
“Please,” she said, the pain running through her like flames. “It hurts so much . . .”
He kept his arms up, and Heather couldn’t believe it, but he was wavering.
For a moment or two, she was sure she could see rocks and trees through the old man, like he was transparent, fading . . . but maybe it was the pain or the blood in her face. But he wasn’t staying still . . . he was flickering.
Oh God.
The pain.
The old man lowered his arms, looked down at her, started talking.
Oh my.
She found it hard to believe, but she was beginning to understand him!
Not all of it, but enough to make sense.
“. . . your ancestors came here so very long ago . . .”
“. . . besides fire and treachery they brought diseases . . .”
“. . . so many died, so many villages emptied . . .”
“. . . curse upon your race and upon each generation later . . .”
“. . . the spirits of our finest players and warriors live forever . . .”
“. . . to play and prey upon you . . .”
“. . . we of the Abenaki will live here forever . . .”
“. . . and forever we will have our revenge upon you . . .”
She was so scared, she hurt so very very much.
Heather said, “Please . . . so long ago . . . it’s not fair . . . it’s not fair . . .”
The old man wavered so much more. He now had a knife in his hand. He bent down over her, flickered some more.
Was he going away?
Was he going to disappear?
Was he even there?
A whispery voice from the old man: “. . . not fair, yes, but it is right . . .”
And the last thing Heather learned was that yes, he was there, and in spite of the talk of spirits and generations, his knife was real enough.
• • •
Grant Spencer, head selectman of New Salem, New Hampshire, went over again to the pile of bones, sparing a quick glance up at the rise. All clear. No mist. He returned his view to the alleged crime scene. A skull grinned up at him. He saw a rib cage, a spine, a smattering of other bones.
“Hollis,” he asked his police chief. “How many this time?”
“At least three,” he said.
Ezra stood next to the chief, quiet. Hollis looked down at the open cut in the soil. Grant peered in once again. “Any idea?”
Hollis sighed. “Three years ago. Four hikers from Connecticut. Went into the White Mountain National Forest and never came out.”
“Oh.”
The three of them stood silent. Ezra spoke up. “I bet those families back in Connecticut would find comfort knowing where the remains were.”
“Yeah,” the chief said.
Grant looked at the bones. “Hollis, you’ve got experience. Those hikers have been gone about three years. But how old do these bones look like to you?”
Hollis knelt down at the edge of the dirt. “To me? Boss, pretty damn old. Skin and tendons gone. Just a few scraps of clothing. Bones really show their age.”
Grant said to Ezra, “You want to try explaining to those Connecticut families
how their missing kids from three years ago now exist as old bones, maybe hundreds of years old?”
Ezra shook his head. “No, sir.”
Hollis stood up, brushed his knees. “What now, Grant?”
He shrugged, remembering that dark night years ago when his father had told him the secret of their small town, and how his father’s father had told him the same story, all the way back to the first settlers here, centuries ago. “What do you think? What happens on this field stays in this field, so long as they get . . . their players. And if they don’t get their players, you don’t want to tempt them . . . like what happened in 1810.”
The other two men nodded at that. Buried deep in the safe at the town hall—among other important original New Salem documents—was a handwritten manuscript more than two hundred years old from the head selectman at the time, Hartley Speare. He wrote of the previous summer, where a young, arrogant clergyman, the Reverend Noah Powell, had persuaded his congregation to build a stone wall on the trail leading to the valley, to prevent any more unsuspecting players to go forth into what he had called “the Devil’s playing field.” The wall had lasted a mere season, until a mist had come down the mountains one night, and when it disappeared the next morning, four strong lads from families in New Salem had been found bloodied and killed in the town common.
“They . . . they need to stay where they belong,” he added. “In the valley.”
The sworn law enforcement officers of New Salem, New Hampshire, looked at Grant and nodded in agreement.
Grant said, “Rebury them. We’ve been reburying them for hundreds of years. We can’t stop now.”
• • •
A while later, Grant was hiking up the narrow, unnamed trail, his knees aching something awful. Behind him were Hollis and Ezra, keeping pace with his slow climb, none of them saying anything as they passed the broken stones from Reverend Powell’s stone wall. He paused to catch his breath, and then there were loud and laughing voices from above. Grant looked back at the two police officers, and they stepped off the trail, giving space for the descending visitors.
Three men came into view, laughing and talking. All carried knapsacks, all had walking sticks in their hands. The one in front had a beard, and he stopped and said, “Hey, whoa, are we trespassing or something?”
Grant knew what they meant. Two uniformed cops were standing behind him.
“Nope, not trespassing. We’re just out here on official business. Nothing to worry about. You guys out for some fun?”
“You know it. Is there a good place at the end of the trail to camp out? It’s not marked on any of the maps or guides, but it looks cool.”
He looked to Hollis and Ezra. Their faces were blank.
Grant turned back to the three men. “Sure. A nice open field down there, big enough to play around in. You can camp out, have lots of fun. How does that sound?”
“Awesome,” he said.
“Glad to hear it,” Grant said.
THE GOD’S GAMES
DANA CAMERON
Dana Cameron can’t help mixing a little history into her fiction, and “The God’s Games,” featuring a werewolf who must prevent murder at the ancient Olympic Games, is no exception. Drawing from her expertise in archaeology, Dana’s work (including several Fangborn stories) has won multiple Agatha, Anthony, and Macavity awards and earned an Edgar® Award nomination. 47North published the first of three Fangborn novels, Seven Kinds of Hell (2013), and “The Serpent’s Tale” (Fall 2013).
When your oracle sends you on a quest, you don’t drag your feet. I’d made the dangerous sea voyage from Halicarnassus on a crowded cargo ship, then risked bandits overland, to get to Olympia in a little over a week. Even traveling as fast as a mortal can go, arriving on the third day of the Games, I will admit I was reluctant walking the last miles from the boat landing. We who are born to the Fang work in secret, in the shadows. The idea of being among the thousands attending the sacred Games and holy rites at Olympia made me very uneasy.
Secrecy and peril is a fact of life for my kind. We may be gifted with extraordinary powers of longevity, strength, fast healing, and even metamorphosis, but we need those powers to fight evil and do the gods’ will. So wherever an oracle sends you, there’ll be adventure, danger, and glory. Which is why I’d done my duty and made love to Thyia, a girl of my village, so that if I should die, another born to the Fang would follow me. Although our women are like Amazons and fight alongside us, they must also take care to preserve our race.
Secrecy and peril; adventure, danger, and glory. Our life is never simple.
The Korax I was directed to was posing as a lowly fortune-teller at the Games. I found him easily enough in a nasty tent of dirty leather and gave him the letter from my oracle at home. After reading it, he scratched himself and threw another stick on the fire. “Okay, that jibes with what I’ve been seeing, my boy. Your Korax foretold a defiling of the Games on the fourth day. I saw—” He nodded at his tripod and a pile of herbs so rank they made my eyes water. “I saw a merchant named Keos plotting to kill his own brother to enrich himself.”
I made a warding sign against the horrible notion; he did the same.
“Clearly, the gods have put us both on the same path: You’re to prevent the murder and therefore the potential defiling of Zeus’s holy Games with fratricide. Better if you can also expose the would-be murderer.”
I cracked my knuckles and shifted uncomfortably on my stool, missing my hammer and my chisel. Stone working was an art, but it was straightforward. Not like human intrigue, not like the gods.
Not like oracles.
“Here,” he said, handing me a small knife and a bit of wood. I hadn’t seen them before they appeared in his hands. “Stop fidgeting like that.”
I took them gratefully. You don’t just pull out a knife in front of an oracle. And if he hadn’t given me permission, it would have been disrespectful of me to carve while he spoke, as if he deserved only a fraction of my attention. “Thank you, cousin.”
He grunted and poked at the fire. Without thinking, I began to carve and soon revealed the eagle trapped inside the wood. A symbol of Zeus. See? I am a straightforward man.
I said, “But if my oracle saw danger at the Games, less than a month ago, why didn’t the vision go to—?”
Fatigue and hunger made me foolish enough to even frame such a question.
The Korax was in a forgiving mood, however, or was less strict than the oracle back home. “To someone nearer?” He shrugged. “I don’t know, Lycos. Just give thanks someone foretold trouble, and that you’re here to stop it.”
Lycos isn’t my name, of course, any more than Korax was the oracle’s. It simply means that when I transform, I take the shape of a wolf. My kin who change into snakes, and are healers, are called Ophis. Korax is “raven.” Ravens and crows see far ahead and lead wolves to prey.
My people, those born to the Fang, and those born to the Sight, serve the gods on Earth. As we fulfill our roles in protecting humans and eradicating evil, some of our people say we take on the aspects of the gods themselves. Some of us, like the Korax, have the Sight, or luck, to direct those who of us who fight, who track and tear at sinners. That service comes with a sacrifice, and while we must act in secret and keep apart from ordinary mortals, it is a blessed life.
“Thanks for this.” He nodded to the bundle beside him, which contained the letter as well as a gift of cakes, a tradition among our people. “Go, get yourself some dinner, make your offerings, then come back.”
I looked up; I was tired and hungry. Also eager to see Olympia, fabled for its temples, statues, and—
He shook his head, as if reading my mind. “We’ve a long day tomorrow—the fourth day of the Games. I’ve seen that’s when the murder can be prevented. And to do it, you need to participate in—and win—the pankration. I’ve already had a word with the judges;
you’re entered.”
My jaw dropped. “Me? Fight in front of all those people? I won’t be able to turn into a wolf, or even a wolf-man! How can I possibly—?”
The oracle only gazed at me across the fire. This time I had stepped across the line of respect.
We who are born to the Fang never question an oracle. Never. I bowed, intimidated by the fury in his eyes. “My apologies, seer, I am fatigued. I will do as you say. And I do excel over all my kin in the pankration.”
Which was ironic. Pankration means “all powers.” I could fight my opponent by any bare-handed means: boxing, wrestling, kicking. No weapons, and any fighting strategy was permitted, save biting or eye-gouging. Or turning into a wolf-man.
How could I serve the gods properly without using my one unique power?
He nodded and, with a gesture, dismissed me. He turned to his tripod and flung a handful of those awful herbs onto the pan. “Hey, Lycos!”
I turned. His back had gone rigid, and he seemed to be staring at the hide walls of his messy little tent. A true vision was upon him.
“Stay away from women.”
Crazy old man. Of course I wouldn’t go catting about; I was on a mission from the gods. But I’d already offended him once, so I bowed to his back and thanked him.
“I’m serious. Boys, too. But I’ve just seen—while you’re here, you need to lay off the pussy.”
I bowed again and backed out.
I straightened myself, dusted twigs and herbs and spiderwebs from my shirt. There was nothing on earth holier—or crazier—than one of our oracles.
• • •
Dismissed for the moment, I was left to explore the Olympic village. When I say village, I don’t want to mislead you—it’s far more than a few houses with a well, an altar, and a market twice a week. This place was almost incomprehensible to me, and I’ve seen many cities. I could be accused of telling travelers’ tales, but it’s well known what the village is like during the Games.
The noise, the sights, from all over the world. There are fine pavilions for the merchants and better sorts, who are here to have their fortunes told, make sacrifices, make deals, and show off, too. Then there’s where the rest of us live, if you can call it that: crowded, dirty (in spite of the baths), smelly (in spite of or because of the latrines), and loud, with drunken brawling and celebrating well into the night. Try to get some sleep there, in your blanket under the stars. You’d think the athletes would be focused on preparation, but most of them, as much as they crave victory, also want to drink hard and try to persuade the whores to sleep with them for free.