Search: A Novel of Forbidden History (6 page)

“If not Inuit, then who?” Kurtz asked.

Jess didn’t know. “That’s out of my area. In this region, Pre-Dorset culture, for sure. The company’ll need to examine any artifacts with the remains, maybe pull genetic material from the bones.”

“Please,” Charlie said. “You can’t disturb them.”

“Pre-Dorset,” Kurtz repeated. “Any living descendants?”

“Descendants? Sure. All through the aboriginal populations of North America. But there’s nothing of their culture or their religion remaining.”

Charlie’s voice was tight. “You can’t know that for certain.”

“Again, I’m sorry, but, yes, I can.” Jess pointed to the ancient bones below them. “These people aren’t your people. Geology doesn’t lie.”

“It’s subject to interpretation.”

“Like I said, carbon-date the remains, check the artifacts—but I know I’m right.”

“And I know the history of this land as my father told it to me and his father to him, all the way back to when Raven told it to all the people.” Charlie jabbed a finger at Kurtz. “This is my family business. Don’t touch my ancestor, don’t dig, and for your own sake, don’t use any cutting tools until the shaman gets here to make this right.” He walked away, as if not trusting himself to say anything more.

Kurtz watched him stalk off. “Any idea when that shaman will get here?”

Before Jess could say she didn’t know, they both looked up as they heard the distant thrumming of a helicopter.

“Is this my lucky day?” Kurtz asked.

“He couldn’t get here this fast. Especially not from Inuvik.” The helicopter was coming from the east, and Inuvik was the closest airport in that direction. By air, it was three hours away.

Kurtz squinted as the helicopter closed. “It’s not a company helo.” He sounded hopeful.

Jess saw he was right. Haldron helicopters were painted a distinctive green. This one was white with red bands. “Canadian Air Force?”

The helicopter began its descent between the camp and the dig site, close enough for Jess to see it wasn’t a military helicopter but a private company’s. She could make out the word
SIGHTSEEING
on the tail.

Kurtz patted her shoulder with a smile. “C’mon. Let’s see who’s crazy enough to be a tourist out here. Ten to one it’s the shaman—or more elders.”

Jess didn’t take the bet but fell into step beside Kurtz, joined soon by the rest of the dig team. Anything that broke routine in the isolation of the tundra was worthy of attention. Jess saw Charlie standing alone, keeping his distance. Whoever was arriving, it was no one he was expecting.

The helicopter settled slowly, the pilot obviously taking great care that the landing site was solid so the skids wouldn’t be fouled. Surprisingly, he kept the rotor spinning slowly instead of shutting down the engine.

“Guess he’s not expecting to stay,” Kurtz said. He and Jess and the rest of the team stood a safe distance from the aircraft, waiting.

The passenger door opened, and a man stepped out, dressed in an open green parka, jeans, and tall rubber boots. He wore black aviator glasses, no gloves.

He ducked as he walked out from beneath the rotor, looked at the twenty people waiting for him, cupped his hands, and shouted to her, “Jessica MacClary!”

Kurtz looked at Jess. “You know him?”

Only one thought came to her, one explanation. “Something’s happened . . .”

“What?” Kurt asked.

Jess took a breath. “I might have to go.” She started for the man.

“Go? Where?” Kurtz kept pace with her. “I’m going to need a written report.”

“I’ll explain to the company,” Jess said. Her heart was pounding. She had always known that something like this would happen but expected it to be years away. Then her heart stopped.

The man from the helicopter had pulled a short black gun from his open parka and aimed it toward her.

From instinct, from training, Jess slammed into Kurtz.
“Down!”

They hit the peat together as a ripple of soft popping sounds filled the air, mixed with the foreman’s sharp gasp of pain.

She felt him tense, saw red blossoms dot both legs. “Play dead . . . don’t move . . .” She turned her head to see him staring at her, dark eyes blank with shock.

Half the dig team had scattered. A few others held position, startled, uncertain of what they had witnessed. Two now started running toward
her. One after the other they jerked grotesquely as the gun fired again and dropped them.

Still on her stomach, Jess eased away from Kurtz’s rigid body, stripped off her gloves, tore at the neck of her parka with shaking hands, heard the wet sounds of boots approaching. She reached inside her parka, fingers seeking the heavy silver cross she wore. If she died here, she’d take one of
them
with her.

“On your knees,” the man ordered.

He stood out of knife range, his weapon leveled at her. Jess recognized it as a Heckler & Koch MP5K—an easily concealable, short submachine gun. She’d been trained to use them.

She palmed her cross and pushed herself up.

“This won’t stop us,” she said.

The man gave a half-grin. “It’ll stop you.” He took aim. “They told me you’d want to say a prayer.”

Jess’s fingers slid the blade from her cross. She pictured bringing her hands up to pray and throwing it at the same time. He’d kill her, of course. She wasn’t faster than bullets. Still, with luck and his unprotected neck, she’d—

The man’s green parka puffed out on one side, and he registered surprise. Only when his temple erupted in a bloody explosion did Jess recognize the sound of rifle shots.

She instantly dropped beside Kurtz again, looked back.

Charlie Ujarak was striding purposely forward with his Remington—the one the camp kept for polar bears. She saw a flash from the long-barreled rifle’s muzzle and heard a metallic ping. Now he was firing at the helicopter.

Jess wanted to see it start to rev up for takeoff. Instead, as she’d feared, she saw the pilot roll out of the far door, putting the aircraft between him and Charlie. The pilot would have his own H&K. The enemy was always prepared.

Jess shouted back at Charlie to hit the ground, then scrambled forward, slipping on the wet turf, to dive at the dead shooter and get his weapon.

The pilot saw what she was doing and fired a burst that stitched across the shooter’s body.

Charlie fired the Remington again, and one of the helicopter’s forward windows cracked.

The pilot fired back at Charlie. Jess popped up and fired at the pilot, shattering side windows.

The pilot ducked back behind cover, and Jess guessed he was changing magazines. She saw Charlie, prone but unhurt, aiming his rifle like a sniper.
This time, Jess stayed down, clawing through the dead man’s parka for his spare clips.

Then she heard a stutter of hard impacts, braced for bullets to tear into her, and instead felt a blast of heat and a thunderclap of air as the helicopter
exploded.

Flaming wreckage wheeled across the tundra. Jess rose to her feet in amazement. The aircraft’s tail had blown off where the auxiliary fuel tanks had detonated. The pilot’s body was pinned by the blazing cabin, unmoving and in flames. But how?

She looked back at Charlie. He pointed to the sky.

A second helicopter was landing. Unmarked.

Jess dropped the spent magazine from the shooter’s submachine gun, slapped in a new one.

Charlie hurried to her side and pushed down the stubby barrel of the weapon. “No, Jess, they’ve got to be friends of yours. They shot up the first helo.”

Jess watched the second craft set down. Its side panel was open, and a man with a rifle much larger than a hunter’s Remington was sitting in the open hatchway.

Two more men in red parkas without insignia jumped out, running, arms open to show they carried no weapons.

Jess stayed where she was, H&K held ready but pointed down. Charlie stood beside her.

The first man to reach them turned his hand to display to Jess a dark metal disk not much larger than a silver dollar. Twelve segments were inscribed on it, a different symbol in each.

She let the H&K drop to the ground.

Then the two messengers knelt before her and spoke as one. “Defender.”

Jess could feel Charlie stare at her, but, as tradition demanded, she held her left hand out, palm down, and each man, in turn, held it briefly to his lips.

“She’s dead,” Jess said.

The two men nodded.

“How?”

Both messengers glanced at Charlie. “You’re summoned home at once,” one said.

Jess knew better than to press the point. She nodded, and only then did the two men stand.

“Who are you?” Charlie asked her quietly.

Jess also knew better than to answer. “Charlie, thank you for saving my life. I’m sorry, but I’ve got to go with these men now.”

“Why?”

“Family business of my own.” Then, as she had always known she must, Jessica MacClary turned her back on her life in the world, to assume the mantle of her birth, and her gods.

When the sentinels with their distant eyes had first sighted the painted sail of Torhiram’s bridge ship, the signal flags they raised on the watchtowers were old and faded. Still, to see the purple cloth streaming against the gathering storm clouds sent a charge of anticipation through the scholars of the outpost.

It had been twenty years since those flags had last flown. Twenty long years since the people of Kassiterithes had been visited by a ship from home.

Hamilkir, Master of the Star Paths since his mother’s death, waited at the docks with his apprentices, on the largest wooden pier. A crew of oak people used ropes and poles to reposition the trading barge already moored there, making space for the unexpected visitor. The tide was high, the water choppy, and the first gusts of rain from the darkening skies swirled in with the sea spray. Yet Hamilkir and the others like him—whom the people of the oak called shadowmen—felt no discomfort. The oldest among them had memories stretching back two decades and more, and had known weather far worse, while the youngest had heard the stories of home. The raging thunderstorms of this region, one day to be known as Cornwall, were minor distractions to the shadowmen, especially now.

Even as anticipation of hearing news from home kept Hamilkir strengthened against the storm, he realized the visitors were not what he had hoped.

The massive wooden vessel, its triangular mainsail bright yellow and marked with the cobalt blue cross of the Navigators, had anchored two stadii offshore, as if its pilot couldn’t read the floating markers showing safe passage to the docks. Instead, a landing boat was launched, and even at this distance through rain and spray, Hamilkir could see that seven of the boat’s eight rowers were
ahkwila,
small and light-skinned like the people of the oak. Only one rower was
khai
—a true person.

As a crew, though, the rowers were sure and strong, and the helmsman, also
khai
and female, brought the landing boat to the pier with skill. The oak people threw ropes to lash the boat in place by the floating gangway, and, true to tradition, the helmsman was the first to debark, carrying her wayfinder’s chest.

In the brief glimpse he had of it, Hamilkir admired the workmanship of the rounded and polished wooden case, as long as an adult’s arm and twice as thick. He could tell from the intricacies of its silver panels that it was from home, marked with the star paths in the old way, with no text engraved to aid in memorization as his
apprentices preferred. It was the chest of a star path master, perhaps one who had studied in the Navigators’ Hall itself.

Hamilkir and his apprentices stood aside without speaking as the helmsman carried her burden along the dock to solid land and secured it in the storage cairn. Only when the chest was safe from loss at sea, when its distant eye and timekeepers and horizon boards were secure, could she—or any wayfinder—attend to other business. Such was the importance of navigation. Such were their traditions.

In less time than the passage from ship to shore had taken, Hamilkir had dispatched an apprentice to return on the landing boat and serve as pilot to guide the anchored ship through the shoals to the pier. The apprentice took the female’s place as helmsman, while one of the oak people replaced the male
khai
on the oar.

The visitors had misgivings at seeing a single
khai
on a boat with eight
ahkwila.

“Have you tamed them?” the female Master asked. Her name was Rutheme. She stood as tall as Hamilkir, a full head above the tallest of the oak people. Her skin was as black as the spans between the stars and, in the custom of the travelers, her scalp was shaved and oiled. Few of the
khai
at this outpost maintained their appearance in the old way, and Hamilkir found it unexpectedly alluring.

“They don’t need taming,” Hamilkir answered. “They need to be fed.”

The
khai
spoke in their own language, whose clicks and harsh consonants defied the understanding of most of the people of the oak, and the
ahkwila
remaining on the dock made no effort to listen to what the two shadowmen said. They only stared at Rutheme. There were few females of her kind at Kassiterithes. Such was the price of children—a price not paid by the oak people, who bred more easily, with many fewer deaths in childbirth.

“At Ehschay, teaching them farming isn’t enough.”

Hamilkir knew of that outpost, slightly closer to the world’s middle circle than Kassiterithes, but almost twenty thousand stadii across the dark sea before him. “Is that where you’ve sailed from?”

Rutheme clicked her agreement. “Seventy-two days.”

“Before that?”

Rutheme understood the intent of his question. “I was born at Ehschay. I’ve never been home.” She pulled her fur-lined cloak closer as the wind kicked up. Wolf fur, Hamilkir recognized, but of a species not found here. Fifty years ago, his grandparents had told him, trade had not been limited to barges traveling up and down the coast. Bridge ships from other outposts had made regular arrivals at Kassiterithes, bringing goods from all the world’s lands.