(COLD/Posting #6)

Ewald is remembering bad grades in school, and bracing himself for a future wolf attack. Enjoy reading on (or jump to getting full story FREE on Kindle: <https://www.amazon.com/dp/B076VBJB62>).

Re-construction of a woman who’s remains were found in Siberia. She lived 2500 years ago (note the tattoo).

As Captain Ewald Loeffler continues on his cold journey home he finds himself reviewing the importance of putting many miles distance between him and his SHAMAN mate. For her––and his future child––any connection with a German soldier could get them both killed. He then remembers what she shared about wolves and how fast they can run.

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(COLD/Posting #6)

Every step I took toward Germany was a step away from Nanra and the baby. I was saving my child with the walk. I was saving my wife too, by traveling into the barren landscape. Or was I? Doubts crept in. With the distance already covered – 20 or 25 kilometers – no one could ever connect Nanra with me, her with a German. Or could they? Was there something that I carried, some clue that could be traced back to her? Could another person from the village identify her knife that I now carried in my scabbard? Or, could an astute village woman, perhaps, identify the particular Nanra-formed hand stitches throughout my goods – my special pockets, quiver, food pouches, other survival-inventions. Was there a tribal woman who was jealous of Nanra and could peer, microscopic-level, at the fineness of the stitches, measuring each gap, examining the detail of thickness of thread-strands, and make the pronouncement that what held my garments together were ‘Nanra-stitches?’ That thought gave me a sudden flush of heat around my fur-capped brow. I was walking through a snowy and billowy plain as the wind jostled me, shoved me along from the backside, freeing my mind to question things even more ferociously. Now I was indulging my full paranoia.

Maybe a fellow witch, the older and craggy kind, jealous of Nanra’s beauty, would shout out the horrible truth with authority: Nanra and this man, this GERMAN, laid together! And I see an infinitesimal bump in her belly – a child! KILL THEM ALL!

This run of horrid thoughts jammed my footwork into a higher gear, propelled me along with a new intensity. I must make tracks even further away from here, I thought.

I must move even faster and with a stronger intent!

She has done so much for me...and now I must keep my side of the bargain. I must disappear myself, be successful at traveling many hundreds of kilometers from her and our child. Up ahead I saw nothing but a treadmill of whiteness, but still I applied myself as never before. With the simple repeat of placing one leg in front of the other, I sped ahead, faster and faster. Then I heard Nanra’s words of caution. Pace yourself. So I slowed down and took back control. Even so, I covered a lot of ground, slowly eating a defrosted pelmeni as I trudged along.

Just before nightfall, I spotted a thin, vertical object jutting up from the snow. As I approached, it turned out to be a tree almost completely devoid of any branches, like a flagpole without a flag. My spirits rose as I realized I had found a good setting for my next campsite. At the tree (or pole...more like a pole) I touched it with my gloved hand just to make sure I wasn't hallucinating. Yes, the thing was real. Real and solid. And it was about an inch and a half in diameter. I moved it back and forth for a second and saw it had some good spring in it. The very tip of the tree was maybe thirteen or fourteen feet off the snow, and tapered into a thin point with a knot just off the top. That meant I could take one of my four rope-lengths (yes, Nanra had even supplied ropes – for making traps...) and use all of its twenty-foot length to secure the top and bend it down. The night was closing in, distant plains going dark all around, so I tried to hurry now.

First I lassoed the treetop. Then, with my brace and bit I prepared a hole in the icy ground, tied my walking stick to the rope about halfway up, bent the wood down and, with a few pounds with the blunt end of my hatchet, was able to secure the bent tree in place. With my large parka thrown over the arch, a corner extended to a triangle-connection on the ground, I had good protection for the night. I set a fire going, pulled out my pistol for protection – I knew wolves were somewhere about...how could they not be? – and again felt the strange sweat of being in an environment less than 20-degrees-below-zero. I guess I then collapsed from the exertion, after the final pounding-in of tent pegs.

I had a fitful sleep, finally bolting awake sometime in the night. I had wolves on the brain. In my exhausted and chilly state it seemed like I heard them in the wind, felt them creeping around just outside my parka-sheet. I imagined the older wolves just biding their time, stalking me, but waiting patiently until I had no energy left to fight off their attack. I knew they were superior to me in surviving the Siberian plains. I knew that full- grown adult wolves were masters of sniffing out prey. Even young wolves had to wrestle food off the flat snowy landscape every day to survive. That was a lot in their favor, and against mine.

Since I was, to all appearances, the only living creature for kilometers around, how could I not be their number-one target? I was the main entrée on their menu. As they swept the plains, running maybe 100 kilometers every few days, scouring the landscape, it was only a matter of time before I had a life-and-death struggle with a pack of them.

I again examined any items in my possession that might double as weapons. That included my four-foot-long tent-pole walking stick, along with the shorter twenty-inch one. Maybe the fire-stuffing in my coat could somehow count, along with flint and wide parka-sheet. That could be thrown up as some kind of protection or camouflage/diversion. I had a small canteen with Nanra-water, and took only tiny sips when the snow wasn't fresh. Wouldn’t have wanted to waste any, but I guessed that 'water in the face' could be conceived as some kind of wolf- deterrent. So I counted on those items along with my hatchet, pistol, and hunting knife. That was about it. Between thoughts such as this I finally fell asleep again. Some time later I awoke to the distant howl of a wolf. Hearing it again in my now very-awake state spooked me mightily. I peered out from underneath the tarp, but saw no four- legged shadows. But I was on high alert.

While jittery and fitfully awake I formed a strategy for use of the bent tree. I pressed my ungloved hands lightly against the walking stick that held down the parka-hut. While it seemed sturdy, well stuck in the snow pack (the pegs held things down around the perimeter), I felt I could suddenly dislodge it with a hard kick from my booted feet. That would have sent the rope whipping up to the treetop. If a wolf had been caught, say, in a snare I created outside the tent, it would have jerked up in the air as well. And if I had tent pegs secured on just one side of the tent, then I’d still have my parka after the tree righted itself. So I slid out of the tent and got to work.

Before setting up the snare outside I took another careful look around. No wolves. I grabbed two other ropes, also about twenty feet long, and tied them to my walking-stick-tent-pole (I cut a groove in the stick so these ropes couldn't slip up or down). On the ends that rested outside the shelter I made lassos with slipknots at the ends. Those two traps might reduce the odds in my favor if wolves caught their legs in them. I'd see. The only problem was, I’d have to kill the hanging wolves, shoot them, to retrieve my walking stick after the battle.

Before going back inside I banked the snow higher up on all edges of the parka-tent, then added a piece of log to the fire and tried to sleep. In spite of the threat to my life I fell into slumber.

***

With first light of day five I jerked awake. The fire was out and the cold had seeped back into my enclosure. Maybe it was the chill that had brought me back that morning. I don't know. But without any snarling wolf sounds I had a moment of relief. No wolves yet. At least, not at that particular moment. Outside, the day was as sharp as a razor with no overhead fog or clouds, almost like a first day of Spring. Could the seasons be that far along? Could the winter be abating? That was probably too much to hope for. I began to defrost another dumpling – only twelve left – and reminded myself that I must focus on trying to obtain new food sources, get other forms of nourishment before the dumplings were gone. It would become an emotional issue as well as a hunger issue when I had none left. Starving and cold would be a recipe for disaster in that difficult environment.

After cutting a fifth notch into my walking stick (235 days to go before becoming a father...) I packed up the tarp, tent pegs and extra logs, wound up my ropes, camouflaged the fire location by covering charcoal bits and residue with snow, and began my daily trek. With the clear weather I felt a great uplift to my energies. The brightness of the sun really helped my mood. I enjoyed watching my shadow skirting along the ground, moving subtly and sometimes dynamically, up and down the changes in the snow's surface. I was grateful to have my slit-glasses, because the vast snowy plains were becoming brighter and brighter.

On that particularly clear day I knew I would be able to see my killer-wolves running hard from quite a ways off. With that thought, I did a 360-degree spin to make sure I wasn't being lulled into a false sense of security. Peering out in all directions I saw nothing moving. I did miss having my skinny tree, but hoped that I could find another good lean-to in-the-waiting somewhere up ahead. Tree as companion. Tree as best friend. Tree as house...and weapon. The truth of the tree.

It didn't take long to get up to my daily walking speed, and I felt that maybe I had finally become attuned to the travail. Yes, I was getting stronger. And...practice makes perfect. There it was, another childhood motto that had, for some reason, invaded my adult thoughts. Suddenly another one jumped in – a stitch in time saves nine. As a child I had wondered for the longest time how someone could stitch time. I knew my grandmother did a lot of stitching – quilts, blankets, even hand towels. But did she really have the power to stick her needle into time and stitch it somehow. My confusion about the meaning of these words probably explained my problems in school.

Enough musing.

I shifted back to counting steps between two points. I needed to keep my mental game on high alert. One too many daydreams would get me ambushed and eaten. By noon the sun became so hot overhead that I felt sweat building up on the top of my head. And that was dangerous. I didn't dare remove my fur-lined hood because any wetness would have immediately frozen solid. So I tried to remain disciplined. I worked hard, mentally, to control my sweat, talking to myself with each step I took. No, no, no, I said to my scalp. No sweat. And perhaps I did some good, because after a little while I couldn’t detect any discomfort. Yes, I was pacing myself better. I had to. Suddenly I felt the need for another pelmeni, but resisted. My body was becoming more demanding on that sunny day. I had to rein in such expansive thoughts.

The temperature was still somewhere in the dangerous minus-zone, maybe –20. Just because the sun was bright, the day's energy high and positive, didn’t mean that I should relax. I had to keep myself in check, maintain an even mood, and that took extra energy too. That was probably the reason I had the urge for an extra dumpling before the next scheduled meal. This was the deciding point. If I gave into urges, either the eating urge or the walking-too-fast desire, it could cost me everything. I could die just exerting too much on any given day. That's what Nanra- wife had warned me about. She had said that I must occasionally adjust my goals to account for either fatigue, or, as was the case this day, exuberance. In all cases, I had to keep focused. Focus more and toughen up. The trip was dependent on my mental toughness.

As I remembered Nanra's cautions, I was again brought back to thinking of my youth. My father had accused me of having a lack of concentration when it came to school and he had been right, of course. But when he bullied me about it, made me feel like more of a failure, a reaction welled up deep inside of me. I felt like doing worse to prove him right. How strange. It was a ‘bad spell’ time in my life. I was a failure, to my older brothers’ successes. It was clear that I was loved less because of my lack of accomplishments. So, no unconditional love for me, only for my adored brothers. With my problems of reading and memorization I was caught in a demeaning process. I couldn't shine, had to sit there in class and take the blows of poor grades. Then I would be knocked twice, first by the teachers, then by my parents.

I remembered watching my father sign his name next to my poor grades. D-, D, D-, C-. Every bad grade was a stab in my heart. Then came military school. I didn't know until then that I had artistic abilities, was able to draw a chair to scale, or lay out a map with good straight lines. And the credit I got for those skills started to balance out the one-sided academic failures. But grades didn't arrive monthly anymore, so my parents were unaware of my artistic progress. I had been in military school from the age of ten, seeing my mother only at the vacation breaks of Christmas and Easter. She had done a good job of removing me from the house after my father’s death. I had a new military family then, mostly all dead now from the war. I had seen many of them, my dear classmates, machine-gunned right before my eyes as we'd launched ourselves out of the trenches. All gone. Good young friends. Killed off.

A sudden shiver developed. I realized I still had no real plan if I suddenly spotted a bunch of wolves running toward me. I shifted my thoughts to start working on that problem immediately. Wolves, maybe as many as ten, could attack. If they’d picked up my scent, came rushing toward me, what would I do? Quick! What? What if I spotted a wolf pack about a half-kilometer away? How long would it take to get to where I was standing? A kilometer was 3373 feet, so what was a half-kilometer? 1500 plus half of 373 equaled 186, so 1686 feet, with a half-kilometer more to be exact. As my military training had taught me, I first needed to accurately define my circumstance and location, then identify the enemy in all his poses.

What was a wolf?

Well, it was a four legged carnivore, with large jaw full of meat-eating/tearing teeth.

And how fast did they run?

Nanra had cautioned that their speed was between ten and twenty kilometers per hour, and that a running, howling pack appeared slower than that, but not to be fooled. So how long would it take for a wolf pack to reach me? If a wolf ran twenty kilometers per hour that meant he'd run 5 kilometers in fifteen minutes, 2.5 kilometers in 7.5 minutes, 1.25 in 3.75 minutes, .6 kilometers in approximately 1.9 minutes. So, I had a little less than two minutes to build some kind of defense or get ready to stand there totally exposed, either shooting at them (all my bullets would quickly be spent...) or trying to club them with my big walking stick. Neither of those fighting options seemed to make much sense.

I reviewed my packed items again. I had a walking stick that I used as a tent pole. And I had a shorter 'ventilation' stick of about 18 inches – a good short weapon as well. I also had a large tarp, tent pegs, rope and thick padding in my coat, which was fire-starter lichen. What if I drilled a hole in the ice, stuck in my tent pole, threw the tarp over the top and secured all edges with the tent pegs. Luckily Nanra had supplied a tarp with grommet holes. If I jumped inside, then sealed myself inside with flap-rivets laced securely, the wolves might be outfoxed. Outfoxed. Ha! Outfoxing the wolves. All they'd see would be a funny looking little tent-mound, right where they thought they’d seen and smelled their next meal. If I threw some snow around the bottom tent edges, both outside and inside after pounding in tent pegs, I might be able to seal in any human smells that could alert the wolves to my presence. I certainly wouldn't want to have a pack of wolves camping out around me for a few days, but if necessary I would have to wait them out.

As I took more steps in the snow, I wondered if I could actually set up my tent in just two minutes. I would try it that evening, timing myself by counting back from 100 as I went through the necessary steps.

But what do you really know about wolves?

God. My dead father's voice had come out of nowhere. Just like him, not believing I knew anything unless I had an advanced degree in the precise subject. If I had attended a class in ‘Wild Carnivores of the Arctic Circle,’ with a specialty in ‘wolves,’ then I might qualify as someone knowledgeable on the subject.

What do you know about wolves?

There it was again, just like my father, repeating his question a second time to; (1) put me on the defensive and (2) establish his superiority. He seemed to relish exercising his authority over me, his third and youngest ‘runt-son’ of the family. If my brothers happened to be in the room, then they would have quickly become silent, to avoid becoming additional casualties. Within seconds they’d depart – I’d hear their giggles down the hall. It’s hard to be the youngest child of a German family. You can't get very far along in that hierarchy, with the egos of older siblings set on self-preservation, and preordained to rule.

My father had been raised like his father, and both had been an oldest son. Both were well prepared to rule...not necessarily a kingdom, but definitely a household. They both had found a subservient wife. Good Germans. Beyond reproach. And any family member who didn't immediately, from birth, add to the glory of the family unit, was relegated to a background position, almost hidden from sight. So I had been an embarrassment. I was the weak link. But alive in the Siberian wilderness, none of it mattered. I would survive, stand before the door of my house, knock loudly, present myself as someone, a family member who had achieved something important.

Look at me now, brothers!
Look at me now, mother!.
I'm important! I’d loudly proclaim. I'm alive!

A cold, bitter wind suddenly extinguished my thought-path. I was thrown back to the snow- plain, my exposed skin whipped with the lash of an unforgiving weather god. The day was progressing faster than I'd noticed At least all the family memories and arguing with myself – playing all the parts – had got me across a few more kilometers of snowy rubble, without effort it seemed. I’d thought my way along, hardly feeling my physical form and the work of walking legs But no tree! Where was my tree number two?

My tree.

Now I wondered if I should have severed it from its roots, cut it down and dragged it along as a shelter, a weapon or...? But to fight off eight or ten vicious animals with a big sweeping tree-stick would have been stupid. I'd be knocking one wolf down as two more jumped me from the side. So it was smart after all, to let the tree stand and thrive in its present rooting. Walking forward with no regrets was important. Shedding any old regrets was my salvation. Every old regret, moody memories that I aired and dispensed with, would help me reach my goal, allowing me to steadily proceed toward my destination. No obstacle was too great. I had the tools, and thanks to Nanra’s training I had the ability to reach my childhood home.

In the darkening sky, I set up my wolf-protection tent once again. As I worked I counted to one hundred seconds. I drilled the main tent-hole, stuck in the walking stick, threw the tarp over it and hammered in tent pegs all around after aiming the exit-flap toward where the wind was blowing so I could expel fire smoke. Then, with my gloved hands, I shoveled and pushed snow up around all the edges, packing it down hard to seal things. As soon as I crawled in with my backpack I laced up the front, but not so tight that I couldn't use my exhaust stick to keep a vent for smoke. In a depression near my door-flap I built a small fire on top of my thin-tin (what Nanra had supplied so I didn’t melt my tent flooring). Just seeing some flames flutter made my whole body feel the warmth. Surprisingly, I did everything in just the count of 90. Now, it may have been that I was counting too slowly or sloppily. Maybe I just didn't have the precision of counting seconds correctly anymore, with the extreme cold invading my brain. But I did experience some confidence in getting the job done in that fairly expedient way. Yes, I might be able to outfox wolves after all.

Just before the fire petered out, before I laced myself in more tightly for the night, I took from my pocket a small handkerchief that Nanra had given me. Her scent, perfume from her skin and herbs, was still strong. Holding it up to my nose I inhaled more deeply. Instantly I was transported to another place, away from the snowy wastes beneath me. I was with my love, holding her, in a soft bed. And...

In an instant I jerked awake. It was sometime in the middle of the night. I heard the close howling of wolves. I sat up, shifted myself closer to the center pole and listened carefully. I knew it would be hard to pick up sounds competing with the wind, but I tried. For a long time I heard nothing. I was hoping that if I gave off any human smells they would be quickly dissipated by the fast moving air. So that gave something positive to hold onto. But a close-by yelp suddenly broke the silence.

Then, either I hallucinated or really saw a dent form in the thick tarp material to the right of the doorway. It could have been a gust of wind. Or a paw! I grabbed my pistol and sat nervously. For at least an hour afterwards my eyes were transfixed on the inner surface of the tent, searching for another impression as the wind howled outside. I finally curled myself around the big pole and tried to return to sleep. Not knowing what time it was – couldn't see the moon or stars – I figured I needed as much sleep as I could get, to refresh myself before any future challenges.

6.

When day six glowed in through the laces of my door I felt joy, seeing the light without further threats from wolves. I wanted to get going. I’ll admit I felt a little impatient. Carefully I loosened the laces of the tent’s doorway, knowing that my only view would be out from that side of the tent. I saw nothing. No wolves in that direction. I undid the top laces and took the risk of sticking my head outside long enough to spy in all directions. No wolves anywhere. Good.

(To be continued…)

(COLD/Posting #7 next)

The COLD book is FREE on Kindle: <https://www.amazon.com/dp/B076VBJB62>).