Crooked Tree tilted his massive frame, moving in rhythm with the waving trees and silently covering the distance to the busy man. He had studied this man from a distance for several days, noting his habits. The man routinely broke away from his family at night and found chores to do away from their camp so he wouldn’t wake them with his racking cough.
Crooked Tree wasn’t surprised to find him washing in the middle of the night, but stopped halfway to his prey and sniffed the air. He smelled fear. This man washing his skins in the moonlight shouldn’t be fearful, at least not yet. Considering this development for several seconds, Crooked Tree realized the source of the man’s fear—this man must be a coward, afraid to die of his cough. With that explained, he resumed his stalk and drew to within a few paces.
The skinny man stood up quickly—he must have sensed Crooked Tree’s presence—and spun around, wielding a short flint blade. Crooked Tree was stunned by the man’s defiance. Having judged this man a coward, he fully expected the man to run downstream or dive into the pool. He smiled in the moonlight and rose to his full height while spreading his arms wide.
Thrusting his short blade towards the giant, the skinny man uttered a sharp “Yip,” to the night.
Suddenly the forest exploded with noise. Faces emerged from the shallows of the river, spitting reed breathing-straws as they stood. From the forest floor, men materialized from the soft pine-needle carpet, scraping dirt from their eye sockets. Spinning his massive head, Crooked Tree gauged the team to include at least twenty attackers, carrying spears, knives, and clubs. They sported the colors and markings of several area families and consisted of the strongest and most skilled warriors of their clans. The circle tightened on Crooked Tree, cautiously, but deliberately.
Crooked Tree lowered his torso, crouching, ready to spring on the first to reach him. The circle tightened their ranks until they stood shoulder-to-shoulder, just past Crooked Tree’s massive reach. The first attack whistled through the air and stung the side of his head, just behind his ear. He spun to see a man on a nearby rock, reloading his sling. The next jab hit his calf, and he spun back to see the retreating spear. He decided to waste no more time waiting.
Crouching slightly closer to the ground, Crooked Tree exploded force through his thick legs and launched himself up and back. Another rock whistled by his face as he flew through the air, easily clearing the circle and landing behind a thick-muscled boy who carried a long sharpened bone. The young man spun to face Crooked Tree, leading with his weapon, but by the time he turned to face the giant, Crooked Tree connected with a single, skull-crushing blow. Crooked Tree ran north, along the river, hoping to break up the hunting party so he could kill them one-by-one without needing to cope with flying rocks. Several of the men whooped and gave chase.
The river curved left, and as he followed it to the west, he sensed more men converging on his position. Crooked Tree stopped to asses their numbers. Clearly more men had joined the party; from the sound and smell, several dozen had formed a line and were sweeping through the woods.
He considered the river behind him—it was deep and hard to cross, and he knew the legends as well as anyone: spirits couldn’t traverse running water. He would be swept away and disintegrated by the cleansing power of the river. He had no fear of death, but saw no point in testing the old wisdom. The men in front of him moved with no great skill. They sounded clumsy and haphazard. He knew their methods. They would have two lines, separated by enough distance so that if the first line was breached the second could collapse on the struggle. The men to the south were clearly well-trained and fearless. Crooked Tree decided to take his chances with the line in front. He found an appropriate tree: a tall oak with a full canopy of branches, high up the trunk. He executed another spectacular leap and grabbed the lowest branch, pulling himself up into the heights of the forest.
Releasing a long, slow breath, Crooked Tree stopped breathing and slowed his heart. He waited.
The inexperienced men of the front line crashed through the underbrush and jumped at every shadow. The forest rang with the occasional yip of a false sighting, quickly retracted by an embarrassed man. They passed under his tree without detecting a trace of his presence.
The second line moved with efficient silence. The men paused with each step, listening, looking, and sniffing the air. The two warriors who moved under the branches of Crooked Tree’s roost stopped and studied the ground. His launch had left rustled leaves and indentations in the ground.
Crooked Tree didn’t wait for the men to complete their analysis. With his eyes shut and body nearly deactivated, he sensed their movements and whispered consultation. He pushed away from the trunk and plummeted to the ground, landing on his hands and feet just past their line. On either side of the tree the hunters whipped around. A spear flashed by Crooked Tree’s side. In one quick move, Crooked Tree spun and tore off through the woods, leaving the line of men yelling as they sprinted after him.
Their cries called everyone to action.
He moved away from the river at a pace which no man could match, but the hunters had numbers. Their well-positioned reinforcements swarmed from the south as another contingent cut off his escape to the north. His flight took him into the arms of the cliffs to the west. As Crooked Tree broke from the forest, he beheld the white cliffs, stark in the moonlight. A warm breeze cooled his skin and he sniffed its message. Not dozens, but hundreds of men swept up from the south.
They must have summoned every family from either end of the long valley and all the way to the saltwater, he thought. His systematic killings in the past few months had finally prodded the families into action.
Crooked Tree turned his head slowly and processed the information his ears reported. Aside from the cliffs, every avenue was cut off. He could try to fight his way through the line, but they might collapse on his position too quickly for him to escape. He bounded towards the cliffs and pulled himself up the vertical rock face gracefully and quickly. He had ascended halfway to the top before the first warriors burst from the tree line, into the clearing at the bottom of the rock face.
Not all families shared the same language, so when the hunters spotted him climbing the rocks, they whooped and yipped. Those armed with slings sent missiles hurtling up at Crooked Tree, but his grip was strong and the rocks lacked any velocity by the time they reached him. Just a few arm-lengths from the top, the rocks stopped coming from below. He risked a glance down, expecting to see his pursuers defeated. Crooked Tree was surprised to see that they had all backed away to the edge of the woods—the clearing below was empty.
A single man below cupped his hands around his mouth and uttered a high, lonesome “whoop” into the night. That’s when Crooked Tree heard the rustling above him. He understood at once: this had been their intention all along, to get him exposed on the rock face. He looked down and considered the consequence of attempting a jump. He had survived such a fall once, and that was before he’d been converted to a supernatural spirit, but he suspected that his powers had limits. Pulling himself up, he continued to climb and figured he would take his chances with whomever was meant to fight him at the top.
The hunters had no intention of letting him summit the cliff. The whoop had been their signal to begin the avalanche. As he climbed, dozens of small rocks bounced off his shoulders and then the large boulders began to fall. He managed to pull himself close to the cliff face and avoid the first few tumbling boulders, but then he misjudged and a huge, sharp rock the size of a bear cub thumped his forehead. His hands and feet clung to the wall, but his body slumped away from the face and became an easy target for the falling rocks.