A fictional account of Ötzi, the Iceman- Part I
3250 B.C.
The dagger wound was deep. Hand tendons glistened white in the pooling red but he couldn't stop. Not now. Impossible to pull the bow string for defense, he must move deep into the faraway woods. At last, hidden in forest shadows, he leaned against a tree trunk, cradling his bleeding right hand with his left and removed a wad of medicine moss from his leather pouch. He stuffed the moss around the wound to prevent infection, then bound the hand with leather strings.
Tired, so tired. On the move for days, too slow to recognize a threat, he hadn't seen the attack coming. His eye sight had faded, along with his reflexes. The last thing he'd expected was hand-to hand combat with that coward Ur who always used others to do the dangerous missions.
A warrior and leader of the tribe more than half his life, his people looked to him for skill in reading the weather and predicting trade patterns or interpreting signs of imminent war. By instinct he knew when and where to move the herds. Should game become scarce, he was the one to seek out their recent and most valuable trade product—metal found in the earth. His coveted axe revealed what this metal could do. It was the future.
His prized vision had failed to read Ur and now he was the prey of a much younger predator. There was no logical reason for Ur to kill him. Old, afflicted by stiff joints, constant pain and intermittent illness, he was no threat to a man less than half his age.
A sudden turn and the trail climbed sharply, making him light headed and short of breath. His injured hand began to pulse. The tattoos and their dark elixir no longer quelled the incessant and distracting hurts that grew like vines and wound over and into his body.
For the first time in his life he was scared. Wounded animals, cut off from their herd did not survive long. Ur would bring him down out here in the wilderness where no one would know what had happened. The tribe didn’t realize he was on his way home from the trading duties when Ur sprang from behind a boulder. No time to grab his dagger from its sheath, he’d swung the axe, hitting Ur a glancing blow to the side of the head.
Blood on his axe blade, Ur’s ear hanging from a ribbon of flesh but not enough to end the pursuit, only temporarily delay it. The man had fallen behind, licking his wounds and gathering strength for the next assault, giving him a little time.
He should have taken Ur with him on this trip. Shown the man how to extract metal from the earth, melt and then work it into shapes. Maybe that would have been enough to reveal his value to the tribe and prove how they all needed him.
Before the sun disappeared from the sky, he made a bed between two downed trees,
ate a few berries from his pack and fell into an exhausted sleep. At dawn he awakened, cold and stiff, his throbbing hand still bled, blood had soaked through the moss. To put pressure on the gash and stem the flow, he griped the dagger tightly and compressed the laceration. Once satisfied, he red-dressed his hand.
Emerging from the forest cover, the white glare of a distant snow-capped peak blinded him as he squinted to see across the rocky, exposed plain. On the opposite side of this gully, was a shallow cave he used when hunting and which would provide a hiding place until his strength returned. Once he crossed into the tribe’s hunting grounds, there existed a route home known only to him.
Near the cave’s mouth, something slammed into his shoulder. He fell, face forward onto a stone slab. Pain paralyzed him. From the shoulder down, his left arm felt nothing, and refused to move. Hindered by its crude bindings, his right hand explored the left his upper back and discovered an arrow shaft protruding from it.
Ur had shot him from far away, afraid to come closer, “Weakling,” he cried. No response. His strength was draining away. The sound of running feet—then shoes appeared in his line of sight. "Take my axe,” he rasped, “I know you want it.”
“Not as much as I want to be tribe leader.”
“Argh.” Unbearable pain. Ur was kneeling on his back, trying to wrench the arrow from his shoulder. To keep from crying out, he ground his teeth and blinked back tears. “Get the medicine man to help.”
“Always telling people what to do. This time, I do the telling. When I’m done, you can sleep on your back and stare at the sky until you fade from this life.”
Arrowhead ground against bone. “No!” He screamed, no longer able to able to bear the pain. His cries echoed off the cliffs.
Silence, then everything went black.
Unconscious for hours, long shadows now stretched across the gulley. He remained face down on the cold stone slab, too weak to move. The axe? Still in his sight—a relief, but what of the arrow’s shaft? Groaning in pain, he blindly, used the dagger’s blade to scrape across his shoulder. Gone was the shaft along with the evidence that he had been shot in the back by a coward.
To Be Continued