Chapter 12: Rogue
"Andy! Shoot it now!" There was an edge of panic to Cam's voice.
Andy yanked the trigger again. "It's jammed! It won't fire!" And that was all he had time to say. The bear was too close, he had to hurry to get out of the way. "Let it go!" he yelled to the ring of watching braves. "Let it go and we'll hunt it later!"
The braves started to step back, but the bear had other ideas. Fueled by the fever raging through its brain and enraged by the arrows Cam had shot into it, its world had focused, narrowed, to one thing; the girl who had shot it. Cam ran for the trail that would take it out of the village, then ducked sideways and doubled back; at that point, it should have seen the clear trail in front of it and run for the hills.
It was a measure of how sick the animal actually was when instead of making a run for the clear trail ahead, it turned to attack the source of its annoyance. Cam was out of arrows, and her bow was useless without them; Charlie screamed her name in terror as she turned and drew her swords, facing it with courage he wasn't sure he would have if it were him, and with stupidity that he was going to yell at her for later.
The bear lunged; she slid aside with the same grace and speed he'd seen her use when dancing and at the same time slashed at its nose as she went. It was a practiced move, one that he'd seen Shana and Snake Eyes employ many times when sparring with each other on the mat; however, this wasn't sparring and her swords were honed and deadly. The bear's nose was laid open; in the light from the bonfire, Charlie saw white bone gleaming from the bloody ruin.
It bellowed and rushed her again; she evaded again, but this time she brought both swords forward in front of her in a diagonal slashing motion as she went past. The bear roared, but it was a bellow of pure pain this time, and Charlie watched in disbelief as it sank to its injured left paw; she'd just sliced the muscles and tendons of its right front leg. As it struggled to regain its feet, she danced around the back of it and repeated the maneuver to its right rear leg, and this time it didn't rise; it couldn't with two legs hamstrung.
It was roaring now, in pain, and Charlie winced at the sound as he stepped away from the door and ran for the bedroom, grabbing his service revolver. Now that Cam had it immobilized, the small caliber should put it out of its misery fairly quickly.
But even as he came back to the front door the bellowing ceased abruptly; when he stared out the front door, he realized his afterthought wasn't really necessary. Cam was standing a few feet in front of the bear, one of her swords still in her hand; the other was lodged to the hilt in the bear's eye socket, where it had penetrated the brain and killed the animal instantly.
"She…threw it." Charlie's Dad sounded awed. "She got in front of it and grabbed her sword, and then she threw it like a spear. I thought for sure she was going to miss, I expected the bear to move its head at the last minute, but she…well, it's dead."
And the village was cheering as Cam raised her remaining sword high over her head, letting out a warrior's cry of triumph.
"How could you be so stupid?!" Charlie howled at her as she stepped in the front door. "Great Spirit, Cam, we just got married, you that desperate to leave me so soon?" And then he grabbed her and folded her into a tight hug.
Cam stared at him. "Charlie…what…"
"It's okay, he was just worried, Cam. Men get like that, especially Ironknife men." Myra grinned wickedly at the wounded look Jimmy and Charlie both shot her. "You'll get used to it."
Charlie rolled his eyes at his mother, then turned to Cam. "I just…wasn't expecting it. I'm glad you're okay, sweetheart, and that was a brave thing you did taking that bear on, but if I'd known that was what you were going to do I wouldn't have let you—" He broke off at his father's headshake and his mother's sigh. "What? What did I say?"
"'Let"?" Cam put her hands on her hips as Jimmy and Myra took their seats on the living room couch, leaving her to face her new husband alone. "You weren't going to 'let' me do what, Charlie Ironknife? I am a brave of this tribe as well as medicine woman, and as such I have responsibilities. You don't get to tell me what I can or can't do."
He held both hands up in surrender. "All right. I'm sorry for that choice of words. Let me rephrase that. If I'd known what you were going to do I would have advised you against it."
For a moment he thought she was going to find some fault with that wording too, but she suddenly sighed and sat down, and as she did so he noticed her hands were shaking, just a tiny bit. Adrenaline crash, he thought, and wrapped an arm around her shoulder as she leaned into his embrace. "Honestly, Charlie, if I'd known that was what I was going to do when this started I would have advised me against it, too. I just…when Andy's shotgun jammed all I could think of was to get the bear out of the village, and when he turned and started chasing me I just…reacted. You're right to be upset, it was a stupid thing to do, and I promise the next time something like this happens I'm not going to do something idiotic like that again." And now she really was shaking. "Goddess. That was close."
Charlie folded her in his arms and just held her, letting her feel the strength in his arms, the warmth of his body, the steady, even beat of his heart, until gradually her shaking lessened and her adrenaline level evened out. Jimmy and Myra seemed to understand, and Jimmy leaned forward, switched on the TV and muted it to a comfortable level, and found a comedy channel on. Laughing at the jokes finally calmed Cam down the rest of the way; once she seemed comfortable Jimmy Ironknife cleared his throat. "So what happens now?"
Cam leaned back. "Well, normally we use as much of it as possible—meat, fur, bone, and so on. However, because this one was sick—normally at this time of year the bears are holed up in their dens for the winter, and even when they are healthy or have delayed their winter sleep for whatever reason, few openly approach our villages the way this one did. We're not going to use the meat since it'll be tainted with whatever infected it, and the fur looked terrible—that was my second clue that there was something wrong with it. However, the claws and teeth could still be salvaged—they're used to make necklaces and souvenirs for tourists and visitors. So tomorrow morning we'll probably go out and salvage the teeth and claws and then Andy and a few of the others in the village with vehicles will probably get ropes around it and drag it out to the other side of the mountain and burn or bury it—if we just leave the carcass the sickness could spread."
"Sounds like a good plan. Do you get anything for killing the thing singlehandedly?" Jimmy grinned at her. "Because if you don't you should, that was…I've never seen anything like that before. I wouldn't have dared tackle that bear alone, and I can't think of anyone else who would be brave enough—or crazy enough—to do so."
"Normally if a brave kills the bear with traditional weapons the fur goes to the brave. But with this one obviously sick, I'm going to refuse—the fur was pretty badly matted and not worth the trouble anyway."
"Is that where the fur on our guest bed came from?" Myra's eyes were wide. "You've done this before?"
"Um. Yeah." Cam ducked her head, flushing.
"Wow." Myra and Jimmy were clearly impressed.
Cam shook her head. "It was a lucky shot, I shot one arrow straight into its mouth and it penetrated the back of the mouth and into the brain. Then the second one went into its eye. I would never be able to do that again if I tried. And it was a juvenile, probably hadn't met a bear hunter before and had no idea a human could kill it."
"It's still impressive," Jimmy grinned. "Okay, well, it's been a long day, and I'm sure you want to get some sleep—I know I got tired just watching you fight that bear." His grin got wider. "Heck of a way to spend your wedding night."
"Isn't it?" Charlie grinned and got up, hauling Cam upright with him. "Come on, let's go to bed."
He'd been worried about having his parents in the same house on their wedding night, but as he tucked a very sleepy Cam into her side of their bed he had to admit that he didn't feel much like engaging in physical activity, and he knew she wasn't either, so he lay down beside her with a sigh, stretched out fully, and grinned, then closed his eyes and was asleep in minutes.
He wasn't sure how long he'd been asleep when a sudden quiet sound woke him. He lay awake for a moment, fuzzily wondering what had woken him up, when the sound came again and this time he identified it. Cam.
He rolled over and winced. When she was very tired or stressed she would have nightmares, and this time was no exception. She lay stretched out, stiff in bed, her arms up over her head, wrists crossed as though she were bound, and her face was twisted in pain. "Please…" the word was a harsh whisper.
"Cam. Baby, it's okay, you're home. Wake up, sweetheart," he laid a hand gently on her arm.
"Don't…don't hurt me…please!" she whimpered desperately, and out the corner of his eye he saw the door between their room and the guest bedroom open, and his parents stood there. He held up a hand to stop them from entering, then laid a finger on his lips for silence. His father nodded; his mother was staring at Cam writhing in anguish on the bed.
He knew from experience that she was lost in the dream and any touch would get sucked into it, so he opened his nighttable drawer and took out his flute. Cam was whimpering now, her wrists staying crossed on the pillow over her head but the rest of her body tensing and twisting urgently as the nameless, faceless specter in her nightmares hurt her, and when Charlie took a quick glance at his parents he saw his mother's eyes damp with tears and his father's face pale but his lips compressed with anger; not at Cam, but at whoever had done this to her.
Charlie placed the flute to his lips and started to play. A simple lullaby, sweet and clear. He'd learned early on that if he tried to wake her by touching her, the touch would be incorporated in her dreams; but the flute music, with its Native rhythms, was something that she'd never heard during her captivity in the cellar and so her mind would identify it as something coming from outside the dream world, and would start bringing her back to the here-and-now.
And sure enough, by the time he started on the third repetition of the lullaby her eyes flew open. She was gasping for breath as if she'd run a mile, and her eyes were haunted by dark memories, streaming with tears. "Charlie?" she whispered.
He put the flute down and wrapped his arms around her as she struggled to a sitting position, then slipped an arm across the small of her back and lifted her into his lap until she was sitting on his thighs, her face buried in his chest as she cried stormily. Though he usually didn't wear anything to bed when they were alone, this time he'd worn a t-shirt and boxers in deference to his parents' visiting presence, and her tears soaked into the front of his shirt, leaving dark patches.
He held her, rocked her, soothed her until her soft sobs gave way to exhausted sleep. He looked up several times, checking on his parents; the first time he looked up they were both silent and speechless; the next time he looked up, his mother had tears streaming down her cheeks. The next time he looked up, just as he'd decided that Cam was asleep and it was safe to put her down, they had retreated to their room and he could see them sitting on their bed.
He laid Cam down as soon as he knew she was now deeply asleep, past the level where dreams would bother her. She mumbled something unintelligible and curled up as he tucked the blankets around her shoulders, then smiled a little in her sleep as he kissed her cheek. Then he padded out of their bedroom to see his parents.
They weren't in their bedroom; he found them in the kitchen, sitting at the table, and they looked up as he walked in. "She never has these dreams more than once in a night, so you should be able to go to sleep now," he said quietly as he went to the stove, ran some water into the teakettle, and set it on to boil.
"I…I've never seen anything like that. Jesus, Charlie," His father ran a hand through his hair. "Do you do this every night?"
"Only the nights when she's stressed. The stress triggers her nightmares."
"Is it always that bad?" His mother whispered.
"It used to be worse. It's gotten better since she started counseling for her CPTSD." Charlie turned the stove off; he didn't want the sound of the kettle boiling to wake Cam, and the water was warm enough for a decent cup of tea now. "Tea?"
Charlie's father shook his head. "You go ahead, Myra," he told Charlie's mother. "I'm going to head on back to bed." And he left them in the kitchen quietly talking.