The Death of Otzi the Coppersmith.
The young man crouched in the river shallows under a fallen birch like a cornered lynx. Breath came in gasps as he struggled to hear his pursuers, but there was nothing, only the tumbling water on the rocks. After a while, he raised his head, looking and listening; nursing the wound on his arm. It had torn open again when he fell, sliding headlong from the snowy bank and into the river. Only the wind sighed in the trees, then a woodpecker rattled in the hardwood forest further down the valley.
He crept up and scanned the ridge where he had taken to the stream to try to lose them, and then, small on the horizon, he saw one of Hornus' men gesture upstream, away from his hiding place, and wave an arm to bring the others on. His mood lifted, maybe the Schnals man had mistaken the movement of the fleeing chamois in the scrubby trees for that of a desperate outlander carrying a treasure of copper axes.
The rest of them arrived. He could hear their voices. There was argument but when they turned the wrong way, heading uphill following the stream, he knew he had a chance. It wouldn't take them long to discover that it was not a man that they were following, but in the gathering dark, he might yet escape.
He set off down hill, crouching, and stumbling over the slippery, riverbed rocks, avoiding the patches of snow that would hold the print of moccasins, or a splash of blood. On the glaring snow of the mountain, those signs had marked him out for death, but in the water, he left no trail. Soon the banks reared up into a narrow gorge, and he had no choice but to slide elated into the river's icy embrace, and trust himself to the water, born up by the air trapped in leather garments and a calf-skin sack as he floated feet first towards the valley bottom.
The moon was up when he left the river, half frozen, battered and bruised by rocks and branches. He staggered along the bank to the village; on familiar ground now, so that his feet seemed to know the whereabouts of rocks and holes even though his eyes saw little of them. He had lived in the valley nearly thirty summers and his kin were here, but even though he was glad he still had life, the news he carried weighed heavy on him. His sister's man Otzi, was dead on the high mountain and there would be sorrow and maybe recrimination at his coming home alone.
The dogs were barking as he approached the fence of sharpened poles and woven willow strips. He bellowed at them to open the gate, or he'd bleed to death while they cowered inside, but they would not until they were sure of him, so he called out his own name three times before they'd unleash the fastenings. Then he was in, clutching his wounded arm as several pairs of hands secured the gate behind him and others took the bag that Otzi, Rila's man, had died for, and then she was there, his sister, pushing through the throng of their clan, her face filled with apprehension seeing him wounded, and alone.
'Where is he?' she said, her face twisting with apprehension.
He shook his head.
'They killed him on the mountain above the lake. They hunted us all day, and we couldn't shake them off.'
Pain racked her features. She was old for a woman. She'd been in the world twenty-eight summers, but she was not as old as Otzi, the coppersmith. He had great standing among the people because of his skill of finding the shining, silvered rocks and crafting the red metal that he coaxed out of them with fire. His trade had made the village fat and wealthy. He had brought them cattle and goats through his crafting of axes and metal ingots, and his art had banished hunger these many winters since he came there from the south and took the dark haired girl to wife.
Someone held up a fire brand and they saw the clotted blood that covered his garment. It was not just his own. There was Schnals men's blood, and Otzi's blood too. He was frozen, half starved and exhausted. They helped him to his sister's hut where women of his kin removed his cloak and washed his wounds, rubbing them dry with pads of moss to stop them turning bad.
Rila sat by the hearth her face smeared with ashes. Her sons and the daughter were solemn; intent upon him. As their only male kin living still, it would fall to him to protect them until they could fend for themselves. They might well look upon him with respect. His attachment to them or the lack of it would keep them in the world, or cast them out of it. A crone fed him broth made of pig fat and roots seasoned with herbs and seeds. He dipped a piece of rancid dough into it and chewed to regain his strength, recovering his wits from hunger and exhaustion.
Rila had waited long enough.
'How did it happen?' she said.
He wiped the wooden bowl, and pushed the scrap of greasy dough into his mouth.
'We took the axes over the high mountain to trade them with the Schnals people as we had done many times. It was late in the day when we came to the village where Hornus is head man. They gave us food and we showed them an axe. Hornus wanted to see all that we had, but we said we had no more and asked him if he would trade for it. They were watching closely. They knew there was more, but we kept up our pretence because they were thin and mean looking. We knew they hadn't enough of anything to spare, to be able to trade for more than one. Hornus offered us five goats. It wasn't enough. The smith refused, and put it away again. They said they could spare no more of their animals; that the winter had been hard and they needed them for breeding.
The light was fading. We'd taken far too long to get to their village and would rather have been away in the woods by night, but they brought skins and mattresses stuffed with grass and pressed us to stay with them. It wouldn't have gone well, to refuse the offer of their hospitality, so we agreed to talk more when the sun came up again; that we would sleep, and maybe agree to something later.
After they had left us. We waited long until the village was silent and then we tried to leave, but they had men outside watching and we had to fight our way out.
That's how I got this wound,' he said, moving his arm.
'Otzi was slashed in the hand and struck with a club on the back, but we killed two of them and escaped back to the high ground above the lake. It was snowing, and as morning came, they tracked us easily, so we could not lose them. They followed like wolves, casting over the mountain, back and forth where our trail was covered by the fall, and then they'd find it again, as we watched them from higher up behind the rocks.
The old man was tiring fast, and he gave me his bag to carry when his wounds and the years sapped his strength.
Then, near the pass, in the thick of a storm, one of the Schnals men got ahead of the others, and crept close enough to strike Otzi with the bow. He came upon us like a cat, and we didn't see him until the arrow struck. Then he rose up, covered in frost and roared at me as he aimed to loose another shot. We traded arrows, each of us missing the other, until at last I put one in his throat and he fell, spraying blood, and lay thrashing on the ground as the bright stain spread.
We turned away, and ran on. If one of them was near, there would be others, but Otzi had death upon him. The arrow in his back - here, beneath the shoulder, drained his life, but we still pressed on. It ended with me dragging him until he could no longer move. He lay down beside a rock and life left him.
I rolled him over to draw out the arrow, but only the shaft came away. Snow fell thick and began to cover him as I arranged his bow and quiver on either side, and placed the axe at his head against the rock. It was all the funeral I could give him and he had what he would need in the nether world. I backed over our tracks and smoothed the snow, and then made for the ridge to lead them away from the grave.'
They sat together solemn in the hut that night. There was an air of foreboding about how they would live without Otzi the copper-smith providing for them. He slept fitfully under a skin rug on a pile of bracken.
When the sun rose again, he rose awkwardly in pain from the bed, casting off the bear skin. He pulled on his gory cape and motioned to the oldest nephew, the one who had carried wood for charcoal and helped drag baskets of the copper bearing stones down from the outcrops where he and Otzi had dug them from the earth.
'Come with me boy,' he said. 'We will carry on your father's trade. We both have much to learn before we will be as skilled as he was.'
The lad grinned and sprang to join him in the doorway. They would not starve if work was all it took to prosper.
The sun crested the hill, warming them and raising the scent of thyme as they trod the path to the charcoal pit. They passed the pasture where the goats were already browsing, tended by children and two wolf-like dogs with lolling tongues. Like most of the clan he looked to enjoy the present if he could, for the future was an unknown land and most likely before long, a grave under rocks on the edge of the woods.
For today, like all the other creatures in the valley, he was content to be among the living, to have his belly full of food and to see the panorama of the hills around him.
