Immortal (22 page)

In the notch of the ravine, with the great waterfall thundering off to his left, Agios set the body down and tied the leather rope securely around Krampus's torso, leaving several feet free. He weighted the big body with stones laced inside Krampus's clothing. Then Agios doubled his legs and tied the trailing rope around his own ankles so tightly that they bit his skin. Agios leaned over Krampus and said hoarsely, “My son, I will bury you in water, as you asked. I won't say farewell. I take this final journey with you.”

He braced his back against the rocky wall of the ravine, put his feet against Krampus's back, and shoved as hard as he could. Krampus tumbled out into the air, and not a heartbeat later the rope jerked Agios out of the notch, too. He felt himself plunging, saw a blur of water and stone. He did not cry out.

Like a man, he did not cry out. Like Philos.

Agios of the frankincense, father to Philos, friend of Krampus, protector, carver, wanderer, follower of Jesus, fell. But his last thought was not of any of these things. It was of the Sychar well.

Living water
.

S
now assaulted Agios in the high pass, not the soft drifting flakes of the river valleys, but shattered windblown fragments of ice edged like knives. His eight dogs hunched their shoulders as they leaned into the blast and heaved the sledge over the rise of the ridge. Agios felt the balance shift, then they slanted downhill and toward the dark line of upland pines.

For a moment he glimpsed a break in the clouds off to the west, but other than that faint streak of light, the sky stretched heavy and gray. Above the tree line the mountain slopes lay locked in cold, the snow beneath the runners crusted into a steep sheet of ice. Instead of laboring to pull the sledge, the dogs ran with a grim determination to outspeed it, not to be overtaken and crushed. Within his layers of furs Agios hardly felt the savage mountain air, except for his exposed eyes, nose, and cheeks.

He had expected it. Agios had known how grueling the route would be, but his quarry roamed in small herds, alert to any human's approach, and this approach from above and downwind was the only way. The sledge picked up speed. Falling snow had coated its sturdy structure of prime cedar overlaid with pelts lashed down by cords of sinew. Agios knew just how much the sledge could take without tipping or breaking a runner. He had built it himself.

He had become ever more skilled with his hands in the decades that had passed since the waterfall, since throwing himself toward the death that eluded him. He had much time to practice—by his uncertain count 200 years and more, perhaps 250.

Agios never knew how long he spent under the waterfall tied to Krampus's body, but a time came when light dispersed the churning darkness. He had survived the night. Underwater, he had survived. His carving knife was still in his belt and he used it to saw through the leather cord that bound his legs. And then Agios was floating up, drawn heavenward though he felt marked for hell. What strange power was this?

It is a miracle. I wanted to beg one for Krampus—but it came to me instead
.

To Agios, who did not want to accept the gift of life.

And his mission? God had rejected him. He would reject God and all mankind.

The mule had waited for him. He plodded away with it, aimless again, heading ever northward, for weeks, months, and then years. He did not want this life, and over the decades, whenever grief overcame him he sought death in other ways—by freezing cold and burning fire—but though he felt great pain, and always lost consciousness, he always awakened as if the miracle had happened all over again.

But for all his will to die, Agios learned that men's souls were bred for survival. He still, impossibly, found moments of wonder. Awe took him the first time he saw lights shimmering in the northern sky like flowers spilled from the heavens. The feeling of his own body straining to run, to fly, his muscles burning as he pushed himself to do
more
, could astonish him. Agios didn't know why he still drew breath, but sometimes the why of it didn't matter. He lived and could do nothing about that— except live as best he could.

Somehow vigor had returned to him, and he no longer felt the weight of age. Another part of the miracle, he supposed. He did feel the cold, though. The sledge hissed along. Wind-lashed snow stung his cheeks and nose. He could do nothing about that, so he ignored it.

He entered a sheltering region of pine and stunted hemlock, and the snow cover beneath the runners became looser, like sand instead of frozen water. Agios knew he would find his quarry farther downslope, beneath the mountain oaks. Still, he let the team slow, something the dogs had earned after the painful haul up to the pass and their hurried run down.

They breathed hard, pale white streamers puffing from their snouts and panting mouths. Agios shifted the reins and then slipped one hand from its heavy glove and reached to knead his nose until he had driven out the first signs of frostbite. Sensation stabbed back with a rush of pain that made his eyes water. Before donning the glove again, Agios ran his fingers over the scar that led from the bridge of his nose down across his left cheek.

It always made him think of Golgotha and what had ended there.

At last the sledge edged out onto a relatively flat expanse—not the base of the mountain, but the broad crest of another ridge tilting gently westward and downward along its southern flank—and below Agios saw the skeletal fingers of bare branches clutched dark against the white.

There he would find his prey.

He halted the sledge in the sheltering lee of a boulder. The dogs dropped to their bellies, chests heaving as they panted. Agios reached into a leather pouch and produced strips of dried smoked meat, venison from a stag brought down weeks before. He distributed it among the dogs, and they devoured it quickly. He did not speak to them. They knew their jobs and had no need for words. For their part, the well-trained dogs did not growl or bark. Each dog received a fair share of the meat, and each ate it in silence. Agios made sure they had all finished and then took off their harness. They would not scatter or wander. They owed Agios loyalty and obedience and were all the best at what they did.

As Agios unharnessed the last dog, something stirred in the swaths of lashed pelts, and a puppy emerged from the coverings. She was the only survivor of a litter of six, and she stared up at Agios with wide, brown eyes. Agios smiled and gave her a piece of dried venison. To say that Agios loved his dogs would have been a stretch. Still, this puppy's indomitable spirit captivated him. He had fed her with a rag soaked in goat's milk after her mother died, and she still slept curled up beside him at night. She would be a fine sled dog. The best.

Then Agios busied himself unlashing a pack, a leather bundle as tall as a man and nearly as bulky. The day had begun to fail. The weather would soon change. Very far to the west the break in the clouds grew and spread. Now he could see a thin rim of pale blue sky, and in one spot the sinking sun brightened it to silver. Other than that, the slate-gray snow clouds hung nearly low enough to brush the mountain peaks. They hid everything else overhead. The widening break in the clouds hinted the snowfall would cease that night, and that the stars might appear.

Agios sat on an exposed boulder to strap on his snowshoes, cedar frames he himself had carved and bent and strung with sinews. He heaved up the pack, taking its burden on his shoulders, and then reached for the deadly spear. His work lay downslope.

Agios sniffed the air. He had reached the winter feeding grounds of the wild swine. Boars and sows had broken the trails, and judging from unfrozen dung, some had passed not long before. He followed a boar track to the edge of a clearing, a place frequented by the wild herd. Their comings and goings had trampled the snow. He expected some of them to appear before long, since a day earlier he had spotted a group of three sows and fifteen piglets. They slept through much of the day and woke to forage in the afternoon and into the night. Boars usually roamed apart from the rest, but this herd included a two-year-old male of a good size and weight. For some reason it stayed close to its mother.

The boar was old enough to respond to a challenge, inexperienced enough to fall victim to a hunter's trick. Agios rapidly emptied the pack. It contained flexible, tough strips of willow that he had painstakingly carved and contoured. He strapped them together to make a frame, and then adjusted a boar's pelt over it. This, his invention, had allowed him to take many animals that other hunters would never have attempted, not if they hunted alone, and not if they valued their lives.

He slipped beneath the structure, drew his bronze knife, and made sure his spear was within reach. By manipulating rods attached to the joints he could make the boar seem to root in the leaves, look around, raise or lower a foreleg.

From his hiding place, Agios craned his neck to stare downslope. The sun was close to setting, which meant that the wild pigs must have started their nightly search for food. Though the trees gave protection from the worst of the weather, a breeze still blew in his face, and he could smell the animals. Before long he could also hear them grunting and scuffling. As twilight came on, they wandered into the clearing, where sows and piglets began to nose under the snow, into the leaf mold, searching for acorns, dormant grubs, and roots.

The boar came with them. He already stayed a little apart from the others. In the spring he would mate and then leave for the solitary life of a mature boar.

If he lived.

Agios grunted and made a snort. The boar turned sharply, ears up, muscles tense.

Boars had poor eyesight, but in the forest gloom this one was close enough to glimpse what looked like a rival. Agios made his decoy shake its head, made it paw the earth. He imitated the squeal of an angry boar.

His prey bristled, raised its shoulders, and returned the challenge. Then it leaped forward, breasting the snow, spraying it right and left as the barrel chest broke the surface. At the last moment, Agios rolled to his left, planted the butt of the boar spear against a root he had already found with his foot, and raised the steel point to meet the charge.

The boar saw something was wrong, tried at the last second to leap clear, but the steel blade impaled him as he jumped, plunged through flesh and sinew, broke bone, and sank deep. The boar toppled sideways, kicking and squealing. The other wild swine stampeded down the track, vanishing in the murk of the trees.

Agios used his knife to slash the boar's throat. The animal twitched, gurgled, and died, its hot blood jetting and steaming in the icy air.

He dragged the dead weight of the carcass to a spot beneath a sturdy limb, threw a stout rope up and over the branch, hauled the boar up, dangling by its front legs, and with his bronze knife quickly and deftly opened the carcass. The guts spilled out, stinking, splattering the snow. With the efficiency of an expert butcher Agios dismembered the boar: meat enough for a month. He hung the cuts of pork out of the reach of predators. A boar this size would weigh twice what a man did. Agios planned to bring the sledge down to load the meat and pelt, though that might take some time.

Done with his butchering, he wiped spear and knife, took the decoy apart, repacked everything, and hefted the sack. He started back up the slope. He realized then how little time the whole act of slaughter and butchery had taken. The sun still rested on the very rim of the world, just below the far edge of the snow clouds, and a strip of red sky made everything the color of bronze.

Before Agios cleared the last oaks, he heard sounds that made his heart thud and yanked him from his reverie: yelps and frenzied snarls, barks of defiance and shrieks of wounded dogs. He had seen no sign of—
wolves!

Agios dropped the pack, slashed the lashings of his snowshoes, and broke into an adrenaline-fueled run, making straight for the sledge, both spear and knife gripped in his bare hands. His heart pounded harder when, in the softer snow, he spotted a confusion of fresh tracks.