The Consequence of Love

Otzi climbed. Not knowing where he was going or how far he’d have to go he climbed. Snow and ice crunched under foot. The image of Rai came unbidden to his mind, her blonde hair and blue eyes, always engulfed in the aroma of chestnuts. Pain shattered the memory. He held his hand against his chest, wrapped in his woven grass cloak now soaked with blood. The gash was to the bone at the base of his thumb, it could kill him but he knew, somehow, it wouldn’t. Otzi climbed. The mountains tore across the clouded sky, peaked with snow, the valleys frozen solid. There was snow in those clouds and with snow his chance at escape. The bruise around his eye stung, his knuckles flecked with cuts. The path narrowed with sloped embankments either side. A cairn up ahead signalled the right path. Otzi climbed.

A whistle shattered the peaceful early spring air. Otzi stopped and looked to the sky, expecting a bird. Something hit his left shoulder. He stumbled forward and landed in the snow, his arm stiff and sore, blood sluiced down his back. Scrambling to his feet he glanced behind him. An arrow protruded from his shoulder blade. A hundred yards behind men from the village clambered through the snow. He coughed a wad of blood into his palm and set off down the embankment. He couldn’t string his bow in time, nor pull it with the cut to his thumb and arrow in his shoulder. He ran and tucked behind the cairn.

‘Come out, Otzi! Die with what little honour you have left,’ the chief’s eldest son, Yorn, yelled.

‘Runik wouldn’t come himself? Sends his pup instead,’ Otzi shouted. He pulled the copper axe from his belt, working his fingers on the yew handle.

‘Truly you’re without honour. Father was right to toss you out. I hear it wasn’t the first time you’ve been exiled. Abandoned by your people and now abandoned by another. Truly cursed,’ Yorn said. The chief’s son ordered his men onward.

Otzi peered between the rocks that formed the cairn, pressing his chin to the frost he counted six. One archer. Stay behind this that leaves five. Yorn won’t fight, that leaves four. Four… Otzi’s heart quickened. Sweat lined his palms as two men, one with a red beard, the other one eyed, approached to the left of the cairn, another two to the right, the first pale faced. He tied the strip of wool tight around his wounded hand and unsheathed his knife, light catching in the knapp marks. He sucked in a cold breath and held.

Pale Face appeared on his left. Otzi howled and swung his axe burying it in the man’s neck. A gush of blood told him he was dead. He freed his axe with a wet pull and turned behind to find Red Beard, knife high. Red Beard pounced. Otzi thrust with his own knife and found wool, then leather, then flesh. Otzi’s leg shivered, a dribble of warm blood working down his leg. Red Beard landed a second cut to the back of his thigh. Otzi dropped his axe and grabbed Red Beard, pulling him onto his knife and drove the chert blade through his gut. Red Beard screamed and spat blood as he crashed into the snow, knife twisted in his bowels.

‘Marik!’ One Eye roared, his friend dying in the snow. ‘All over a woman, Otzi. A woman who wasn’t yours.’

‘Rai was no ones, not yet,’ Otzi spat back.

‘Stop talking and kill him,’ Yorn yelled.

The fourth man appeared behind Otzi, his long hair damp with icy air. ‘Come on. No need for more bloodshed, die with honour.’

Hand throbbing, leg quivering, shoulder burning, and coughing blood Otzi reached for an arrow in his quiver. ‘Six on one in the snow, there’s no honour to be found here,’ he launched himself at Damp Hair. The man rose his axe, catching Otzi in the arm. The wrong arm. He plunged the arrowhead into the man’s eye. Damp Hair’s scream made Otzi’s ears ring.

‘Bastard,’ One Eye growled. He grabbed Otzi’s cloak and hauled him back. The arrow slipped from Damp Hair’s eye socket, covered in gore. Otzi spun, feeling fresh blood sluice down his leg, and hammered the arrow into One Eye’s torso. The man gritted his teeth and cracked Otzi across the chin with the back of his axe. He felt the harsh edge of a chert knife cut into his arm, then his chest. Otzi twisted the arrow and head-butted One Eye, his nose exploding in gore. The man fell back into the snow and wheezed his last few breaths.

Otzi stumbled backwards, broken arrow in one hand, and fell against the cairn. Yorn came next, along with the archer. He tried to stand but a boot on his shoulder held him down. Pain laced every inch of his body, blood mingled with sweat. ‘There is no honour in you, Otzi,’ Yorn said. The archer punched him across the jaw once, twice, then heaved him up and threw him on his front.

If I could reach my axe, Otzi thought. His vision blurred with blood. He coughed. More blood. He clawed at the snow. Yorn’s foot pressed onto his hand. The gash on his hand seared from the ice pressed into the bone. The archer knelt on Otzi’s back and twisted and levered his arrow until the shaft broke, leaving the head beneath the skin. ‘Goodbye, Otzi.’

The snow crunched underfoot, fading away to nothing. Otzi lay, the cold of the frosted snow worming deeper and deeper to his heart. He lay on his front, his right cheek pressed to the old snow while the new kissed his left, warm as Rai’s lips. He caught the scent of chestnuts in the air.

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This story was inspired by the real life Otzi, better known as The Iceman.

More fiction is for the best, check out last weeks tale of interstellar terror: