These men moved like warriors, protecting their blind spots and moving as a unit, but Crooked Tree could smell ripe fear baking from their skin. He raised his right hand in the shadow, cocking back the rock. One of the men whispered. Crooked Tree couldn’t make out the words, but recognized the communication as a signal to attack. Before they could attack, Crooked Tree unleashed the rock, sending it splintering through the wall, just to the right of the doorframe.
The wall exploded outward with the force of Crooked Tree’s throw. Still moving at a murderous speed as it exited the other side of the wall, the rock knocked two men flat. The third, on the other side of the door, flinched back and away from the flying debris. His flashlight came on as he spun. It described a long arc across the kitchen ceiling.
Crooked Tree sprinted to the door as the men fell away. He heard another contingent of men bursting through the front door as he stepped on one cowering man lying on the porch. With three big strides, Crooked Tree had nearly traversed the long back yard. His destination was a high stockade fence. Dogs barked and snarled behind him, straining to be unleashed. He judged that he could clear the fence easily.
He didn’t bother to weave or crouch as he ran—none of the men carried slings or even spears to hurl at him as he fled. His confidence plummeted as he heard the explosions behind him. Before the bullets closed the distance, Crooked Tree had guessed the source of the sounds.
Hot metal tore through his calf as he cursed himself for not predicting that these small soft men would have superior weapons. Another bullet lodged in his thigh as he reached the fence. He dove towards the top of the fence and barely cleared it, tucking into a roll as his horizontal body reached the other side. With one tight tumble across the neighbor’s yard he rose, barely slowing his pace.
By compensating for his injuries, Crooked Tree managed to even his stride, sprinting through the adjoining yards. He bounded over fences until he found the next side street. When he hit the asphalt he achieved even more speed. An approaching car only saw a flash as Crooked Tree jumped its length and wound left through another set of yards. Reaching out with his senses, he tried to gauge his lead on the hunters. Their pursuit had begun slowly, but now they had picked up speed.
Crooked Tree scanned the horizon, looking for the densest forest. He knew these men spent most of their effort on making open spaces and wide roads, so he guessed he could outpace them in the woods.
North showed the most promise. He turned and lengthened his stride, pushing himself harder. Confidence returned as the bullet once lodged in his thigh slipped out of his muscle and the wound closed behind it. He smiled as his full strength returned. One row of houses still lay between him and the wooded hillside. Roving lights approached from his right, and Crooked Tree realized that the hunters were trying to cut him off before he could reach the forest.
He shortened his stride and bounded across the yard of a one-story house, preparing for a jump. Vaulting from one leg, he lifted his other and landed on the roof and climbed up and over the peak just as his angry pursuers arrived at the front yard. Crooked Tree sprinted down the back slope of the roof and dropped to the ground. Men approached, coming around either side of the house, but he could see the woods calling to him from the back of the dark yard and he decided to take his chances.
This time he did weave—fearing the sting of their explosive weapons—but still made it to the tree-line before the men had time to fire. He sprinted up the wooded hillside, taking no time to look behind himself until he reached the ridgeline. Through the leaves behind him he saw the twinkling settlement, with lights from the houses shining in the dusk. The men below him had entered the woods, but moved at a fraction of his pace.
Crooked Tree remembered the summer gatherings of his youth, when families would come together. Boys would leave their mothers to join the bachelor groups and girls would be wooed by young men. The largest of those gatherings Crooked Tree had attended hadn’t equaled the magnitude of the village beneath him. He wondered what his father would think of these sights.
He shook his head to break his reverie and ran down the other side of the hill in a wide arc so he could turn back east to his eventual goal. Once he had crossed a few more hills, still running at full-speed, he paused at the top of another ridge to assess the progress of the pursuit. A stand of tall pines gave him a perch from which to survey. Echoing in the distance, howling dogs drove wildlife through the forest, away from the village. The sound of baying and crashing was soon muffled by a thumping, chugging sound coming from a flying thing, hovering over the woods to the west. Crooked Tree saw the lights of the effort on the ground and in the air and realized they had underestimated his speed, but wouldn’t make that mistake for long. They were poor trackers, and slow at the chase, but they learned quickly and possessed unfamiliar advantages.
Before climbing down from the pine tree, Crooked Tree spun around its trunk, looking each direction to plot his strategy. With their ability to move through the sky, he needed to stay well ahead of his pursuers and that would mean moving in an unexpected direction. Back west, and to the north, he spotted a set of bald mountains, which would mean rough terrain, but exposure from above. To the right of those mountains the glow on the horizon meant another large village, perhaps even bigger than the one he had just left. To his south he saw a black hole in the landscape signaling a large body of water. He made his decision—he would move south until he found that lake, and then head east if he could.
When he had climbed halfway down the tall tree, Crooked Tree jumped to the next tree and made his way halfway down the hill without leaving the branches. His descent made a crashing racket, but he wanted to shake them off his scent. With that in mind, Crooked Tree took a route that led him up and down smaller hills where he could spring from the forest floor up to a rock ledge, or down from a ridge to a tree below. He suffered scrapes and bruises, bouncing off the terrain, but they healed almost instantly.
Once he descended to the foothills, Crooked Tree was unprepared for the thick, scrubby swamp he found. To stay clear of the hard-packed road to his left, he had to circle to the right, bringing him closer to the hunt. He could hear them, still several hills away, but closing the distance. To his dismay, he could also sense a mounting pursuit gearing up to the west. They focused on where they believed he would emerge from the woods.
Just west of the swamp he found an open forest of tall, protective trees. Crooked Tree ran at full tilt, as fast as he could towards the smell of the lake to his south. He ran alongside a small creek that joined forces with another, tributaries of the water ahead. He jumped across the waterway, clearing an amazing distance downstream.
As he neared the lake, Crooked Tree discovered a row of houses lining the edge of the body of water. The wind changed and he smelled their campfires and roasting meat. He kept his distance and skirted the swamp. Soon he found himself back in the proximity of the paved road, and men streaking north to try to cut off his escape. He crouched in the brush and waited for an opportunity to cross.
One more set of men passed, packed into their conveyance, and Crooked Tree crept out from the brush to cross. Red lights flashed from his left and he felt that someone had perceived his presence. He melted back into the tall grass and waited. The men continued their movement north, but Crooked Tree knew he had just been very lucky. A very intuitive tracker had passed by and almost detected him. As he sprinted across the road, he resolved to increase his prudence even further and not underestimate these hunters again.