Artyem
The sky was getting dark; the sun had begun to set, casting a beautiful and warm hue of orange that faded into a faint rose colored ombré at the far east with specks of golden light cutting through the clouds that still had a pearly glow to them.
Artyem, although tired from the entire day of hunting, was reluctant to give up just yet. He pressed forward through the rough terrain for hours with his bolt action rifle, clutching it tightly across his chest. The cold steel muzzle of his rusty old Dragunov was the only sense of familiarity in the infinite stretches of the Siberian wilderness. Artyem was filled with awe but he stood strong and did not falter for he wasn’t a stranger to the impending dangers of the mysterious, yet almost ominous Ural Mountains.
As the sky turned from pink to lilac and then to shades of violet, the temperature had already dropped. The wind started to get cooler and blew with increasing hostility the further he travelled. He made a brisk stop to fasten his boots, his rifle secured at his back, wishing he still had some of the warm raspberry tea left in his flask, he had brought from his home back in Vorkuta. His fingers were freezing as the cold wind brushed against them, but he tried to remain unbothered by the ill-fated weather. Not long ago it was summer he thought to himself, getting a hunt would get progressively difficult with each day passing by. Although he didn’t have a family to feed, not having made enough catches could make a difference indeed.
As he climbed up, breathing heavily his eyes drifted to a muted crimson trail of what appeared to be blood, likely from a medium to large animal, maybe an elk he thought. The residue on the damp grass still looked fresh indicating that the animal hadn’t passed from there too long ago. The idea of catching an elk enthralled him. He wasted no time to pursue what seemed to him an easy hunt. Although his mind couldn’t shake off his uncertainty of what led it to bleed, was there someone else hunting nearby? Was there some wild animal he should have been aware of or was it something even more sinister?
Adrenaline rushed through his veins; his curiosity got the best of him as he continued on the trail closely examining the wet grass for the presence of blood. He heard a rustle from some bushes nearby, shortly after some time he heard a muffled grunt of some animal he failed to recognize. He had been a seasoned hunter at this point, yet he had never heard such a low-pitched grunt almost as if someone or something was mimicking a wild bear. Could it be a bear? He thought to himself, the forest is undoubtedly full of them. But he’d never make any mistake to identify a bear by it’s sound, that he knew in his heart.
He was now focused on figuring out where the unusual grunting sounds were coming from. As he looked around a flock of larks erupted from the western end of the forest and frantically made their way towards the east as it something had disrupted their harmony, he was on his guard.
He cautiously moved towards the bushes, making his way through the corridor of tall confers stretching up to the sky which were starting to fill up with stars shining like gemstones in the purple Siberian sky.
He tried to deduce where he had heard the rustle from, it couldn’t be too far away. Soon another rustle followed, this time it was brisk and clear.
He got close to the source of the sound. Amidst the ferns and overgrowth, he saw a girl. She was tall and slender, with her silver hair loosely tied in a braid. She picked up a dead rabbit with her bare hands. Artyem tried not to startle her, but as inevitable as it was her gaze shifted on him. She was frazzled, perhaps presence of another human being was unwelcome there. She had a frown on her face she didn’t try to shake off.
Artyem too had his own doubts, what was another person doing there? Was she perhaps a fellow huntress? His mind was filled with questions he could not find an answer to. Her being almost disarmed brought him a sense of safety but terrified him at the same time.
He cleared his throat. “Didn’t expect to run into anyone out here.” Artyem hesitated at first as he knew that the idea of a small talk would not likely amuse her, but the silence and the eye contact was unbearable for him. “What were you doing here?” he asked rather politely.
“I was scavenging some food for dinner” she replied rather bluntly, “I just happen to come from a settlement nearby.”
“What about you?” her cold voice, although laced with disinterest in the conversation softly echoed in Artyem’s ears.
“I was just hunting. Didn’t mean to get in your way.” Artyem tried to avoid the awkwardness of this conversation.
“The sun has set. You should go back, it’s not safe to be here anymore.” She delivered a warning. “You should really not try to go any further.”
“Why? What’s wrong?” Artyem was taken aback by the sudden warning. The forest was already brought an ominous atmosphere with it. He wasn’t expecting a warning at this time.
She looked at him, staring into his soul, “It’s for your own good.”
She left without really answering his question.
Artyem had heard old legends—countless stories of mysterious creatures lurking deep in the woods, in places where no one dared to step foot and those who did, never returned. He had always been skeptical, dismissing them as mere old wives’ tales. And yet, a lingering doubt remained. What if there was some truth to them?
He shook off his wandering thoughts and continued his way through the forest, towards the direction where he first heard the rustle from, westwards – where he saw the flock of birds emerge from earlier. He could feel his heart pounding in his chest.
He stumbled slightly on something solid. His feet had hit something firm but it was definitely not a fallen tree branch, he thought. Something in him didn’t feel right. He squinted in the dimming twilight and crouched down to examine it.
A corpse. To his horror it was a corpse!
He couldn’t breathe. The putrid smell was filling the air around him. A wave of nausea rolled over him as he staggered back. It made his stomach turn violently, he felt sick and wanted to throw up. The muffled animal grunts he had heard earlier only grew louder, closing in on him. Still, there was no one in sight. He tightened the grip on his rifle.
A sharp, burning pain shot through his calf, immobilizing him for a moment. He caught his breath as he reached down, feeling the warmth of blood trickling down from the wound. He had been shot.
Gritting his teeth, he looked up. A pale figure perched high on a nearby tree, draped in a Bactrian camel hide, a bow in hand, and a quiver of arrows strapped to his back, perhaps poisoned.
Artyem’s pulse grew faster. He had walked straight into a trap.
Another figure emerged from the shadows, a towering man wearing bear skin garments, gripping an obsidian-tipped spear aimed directly at him.
Instinct took over. He raised his rifle, aiming for the bowman, but his hands were unsteady. The shot rang out—missed. The man moved with unnatural swiftness, gliding from branch to branch, while the air thickened with the weight of an unseen threat.
He was surrounded.
The strange men exchanged glances, could they have had a hierarchy to them? Artyem wondered.
The man with the bow quickly gestured something at the man in bear-hide holding the obsidian spear as he picked up another arrow from his quiver and fixed his aim at Artyem.
The man in bear-hide charged at him with his spear. He was ferocious as he wrestled Artyem. His spear hitting Artyem’s cheek bones causing a deep cut, save for his eyes. Artyem was not fond of close combats with his bolt action rifle as it was harder to get a precise shot at a shorter range. However, as the man tackled him, he managed to graze his shoulder blades with a bullet.
The man groaned with pain, his voice reverberating through the tall woods.
He shrieked and rolled over with pain on the forest floor. Artyem felt a little proud with himself as he managed to injure one of those men but suddenly things were not looking too good for him.
This enraged his comrade in camel-hide. Artyem ran for his life, out of breath already. The man followed, with the quiver of arrows swinging around as he glided through the branches. Artyem tried to run but failed, the man grabbed him by the torso. He fought with all he had but clearly, he was no match for their strength. The man pushed him to the ground almost trying to take a bite out of him. He climbed over his’s chest and clawed on him.
Artyem tried to get the man off him but couldn’t. Nothing made sense to him anymore. He was terrified, as his life flashed before his eyes.
He continued to struggle but all his efforts were useless.
Is this the end? He thought to himself.
Suddenly he felt the movements had come to a halt. The man in the bear hide dropped dead.
There was a dagger piercing his neck. It had probably hit his vitals.
It was a miracle that he was alive, he thought.
He looked around as he pushed off the lifeless body of the man who had just attacked him.
He saw the girl from earlier, her silver hair almost white now appeared to be a touch more disheveled as the last rays of sunlight disappeared from the sky.
She calmly approached Artyem. She pulled out the dagger from the neck of the lifeless man that now lay in the ground next to him.
“I warned you, but you didn’t listen, did you?” She scoffed as she cleaned the blood from the dagger and secured it back in its sheath attached to her belt across her mink skirt reaching below her knees. She also pulled out a linen fabric from the pocket of her worn out overcoat and tied it around Artyem’s wound, while making sure that no one was nearby. Last thing they’d want was to be followed again.
She helped him get up.
“Hurry up, we killed a lyudoyed” it won’t take long enough before the others find out. They hunt at night and they specially don’t like intruders.
Chills ran down his spine. The fables of the man-eating monsters were real. He saw them with his own eyes now.
“We need to make it across the river.” She said with a certain urgency. “The water would mask your scent.”
Artyem believed her.
He tried to run but his legs felt like rock.
“You were poisoned, weren’t you?” She said, taking a look at his legs.
“The arrows… they were poisoned,” Artyem gasped, clenching his fists and striking his unresponsive legs in frustration. Pain shot through them, but they refused to obey.
“Here, take my hand.” She extended her arm. “Lean on me.”
