Comrades in WinterBy Dib07

Comrades in Winter

By Dib07

It was a cold wintry afternoon and the frost made most creatures snuggle down deeper into the glens, furrows and burrows to escape the bitter claw of winter. The nearest town was Stock Hide some forty miles east, and would take them a gruelling ride of three days if the winter gave them an easier time. However, blizzards were settling, as Dr. King Schultz had pointed out. Familiar with weather, climate predicaments and other changes that went completely over Django Freeman's head, the German bounty hunter seemed easily able to determine what weather lay before them even before the winds themselves knew. Django often wondered how difficult and very alien life would have been to him here if not for Dr. King. As they sat round numerous campfires, sharing their daily kills over a roaring fire, Django would sit and listen to his older friend's anecdotes of Nibelungenlied, hunting, and bounty hunting – naturally. And Django was intimidated by King Shultz. Not intimidated by a sense of fear – but by awe. Shultz seemed to be a living encyclopaedia of useful trivialities, life experiences and of surviving. Most common basic tricks of surviving were often neglected or thrown by the wayside by many men, Dr. King Shultz would say, and keeping the upper hand was often the only way to get out of any situation alive. Django listened intently through the cold nights by the fire. But he was not just awed by the German's knowledgeable categories and tricks of the trade. It was his humanity that Django was most attracted to. If not for Shultz, he would have drowned in hatred and anger, and would have been spat out on the other side by pure human vehemence. Django thought he'd hate all white men, and hate their snobbery, their pride, and their contempt. Now he had been pulled into a different kind of fate, and he felt warmth for the German, and deep respect that would never fade. He loved Dr. King Shultz for that.

Despite their candid trials and tribulations on these foothills on the mountains and their growing friendship, Django found something else too. Before, he knew next to nothing about King Shultz except his sudden attribute to being violent when it came to dispatching wanted men. As the days grew short, and the nights long (and sometimes endless) Freeman began to know more about Shultz. Despite how brave and contended the German seemed to be, Django sensed a bottomless sadness in him that was mixed with a cold scoop of impenetrable loneliness. Shultz was old for a bounty hunter, and knew much of the world yet seemed to know little of companionship. He loved to chatter about this, that and the other, but he never liked to talk directly about himself, his background, where he came from and who he had loved and lost. His history was like a blank void refusing to be filled, and Django wanted to fill it: appease the German's loneliness, yet he was too quenched by his loss of Broomhilda to really do much about it. But as they stayed in the mountains of the Deep South, and hunted game, he realized why Shultz had delayed the finding and rescuing of Broomhilda. It wasn't about the money. Shultz had wanted a friend, just for a little while, and wanted to keep Django by his side one last time. Because once Django Freeman had his girl, he would be going his own way, and Shultz his.

Django wasn't angry at Shultz's selfish agenda. Only patient. The German had promised to reunite him with his soul mate, and as the days were cut away one at a time, Django learnt to hunt, shoot to kill, and survive.

Shultz's selfishness had done him a favour.

Whether Shultz knew it himself was a different matter.

This afternoon is was colder than normal, and Django knitted the furs and shirt at his chest closer together. He had been riding for five hours and King rode abreast of him on beautiful and glossy Fritz. Tony was flagging now, tired, thirsty and hungry. Sometimes the bounty here in the True Wild of southern Texas was good. At other times it was just dirt they found, and cold harbouring rocks.

Shultz saw Django straying and reined Fritz to a halt. The black horse pawed restlessly at the iron earth with his hooves.

"There's nothing here to hunt." Django said, sensing Shultz's questioning pause.

"There is a way to get to richer grounds." And Shultz pointed to the east where they were headed. He pointed to rocky pastures, cliff faces and great scooped shadows of lime and thorny shrub growing on stony hills like stubbly ill growing beards. "There may be better possibilities of elk there, and pronghorns one would hope. However there is a slight problem with our dear steeds. They cannot traverse such steep hills, so we'd need to hitch them at a tree and go on foot the rest of the way, if it suits you that is, Django."

"You really think we'll grab a meal up there?" He loved how Shultz always seemed to turn the most troublesome of situations into salvation. He was a witch of Texas and a shaman of the wild. But now, more than ever he needed Dr. King Shultz knowledge and survival skills. They hadn't eaten for two days, going on three, this being their third day. At first such measures were down to ill fortune alone. The weather had at first been treacherously sunny, buoyant and hopeful. They had seen hundreds of pronghorn heading deeper south, and they journeyed with them, their burlap packs full of deer meat, coyote skin and fresh lake water. Two days ago the weather turned and great exhalations of snow blinded them for the duration, and they lost sight and sound of the herd of pronghorn. Now Shultz had pointed out that a stronger blizzard would hit them soon, and riding to Stock Hide was tricky. Going back would starve them still further, and their horses were already tired and ravaged by cold. Then they'd get caught in the snowstorm, and be in trouble. They really needed food.

Dr. King nodded. "I do." His smile was as charming as ever. His casualness and his phlegmatic views always filled Django with unperturbed confidence. "Don't you worry, my dear Django. I have methods to my madness, no matter how indignant our situation seems at present. Soon we'll have a fire going before nightfall and we'll be dining on fresh meat for the duration of our stay here! However..." And his smile, though not dropping, did falter. "...We will need to separate to increase our chances. You can take the Repeating rifle and I'll keep the Henry."

"How will we know when to meet up?" The afternoon was a bleak one with little sunshine and thick, snow clouds above them. Django expected them to drop off their load of snow at any moment, and still Shultz insisted.

"When the first stars are blazing to the north, we'll head back to the location I will designate as our sojourner, my dear Django."

"And if I see no damn stars?"

"Then when it is too dark to scout for prey. Come, we must hurry."

Squeezing their horses on, it took them another twenty minutes to reach the formidable escarpment of rock and stone edifices. Grass in weakly yellows littered the cracks like some kind of strange disease. Shultz eased his horse Fritz to a stop once more. Django slid off first in a smooth fashion. Lately he had been getting the hang of horse riding. Dr. King had called him a natural horse rider, and it was only now that he believed him. He grabbed Tony's reins and tied them to the low hanging branch of a cottonwood tree. Already the branch was bristly with ice. He double-knotted the reins. Tony looked at him appealingly for a moment, ears drawn forwards as if in puzzlement, then he dipped his nose to the thin, tawdry grass to nibble at what edible food there was, cold though it maybe.

Shultz was about to dismount too, and leaned forwards in his saddle to commence the rising of his right leg, but there he remained, as if frozen by a spell. Django looked at him and a flash of worry sieged him. "Shultz?"

"Oh, it's nothing. Nothing at all, just thinking, as I commonly do." He rose his leg and swung out of the saddle with his usual swiftness, but to Django the movement seemed a little stiff and awkward than normal. But when Shultz turned to him, though his face was pale, his eyes were smiling. "We must hurry. The snow will be upon us at twilight I will presume if my tidings are correct in this matter. Is your mount secure, Django?"

"Yes."

Shultz smiled again. "Good. Shall we?"

They proceeded on like determined hermits, and left their horses tied to the large, yet bare cottonwood. The horses looked on for a moment, their hazy exhalations of breath steaming up into the air like dragon smoke. Then they returned to feeding.

King Shultz picked his way through the scrub and scree like an expert, leading Django onwards and upwards. Some disconsolate stone and flint came loose and fell away at the kiss of their boots. Still, they climbed, heading into the bitter ice and winds. Django pulled his leather cowhide hat further towards his eyes, but it did little to bring solace. Shultz kept going, and they walked down a ravine of granite and coal. Soon though the ground opened out again and they were on an elevated valley full of rocky hills, scrubland and dry, wicked trees that looked ghostly in the gloom. Much to their relief they both heard the distant mating whine of a mature elk. Django unconsciously clenched the stock of his rifle.

"Here." Shultz proposed suddenly, and tapped the toe of his boot on the ground. "Is where we'll meet. Oh, and please don't get lost! You'd be a sore weight on my back, and this time of year brings volleys of wolf packs. Be careful." Shultz often sounded playful, even naïve sometimes, but this time Django heard an underlining of seriousness in his usually tender voice. Life was brutal, especially in winter. When people did not bring trouble, animals did.

"I will." He returned as boldly as he could, but Dr. King had already turned to go left, leaving Django standing in the hazy gloom. The air was heavy with snow. As he watched the old man leave, he felt a dark yawn of premonition.

He did not like to dwell on such things, so he turned to go his way: right. So the two bounty hunters went their separate ways, both of them slowly starving. Both of them sharing feeling that were some parts hopeful, some parts pessimistic.

Hours did pass.

And the clouds were too thick and cloying to give way to the grandeur of the stars. It was dark however, and though the untidy scenario of the rocks and crags stood out like golem heads, Shultz started his way back. Surprisingly his hunting was unsuccessful. And he brooded on this. Maybe his decision to endure the winter by entering the wilds wasn't such a bright idea. They had gathered sufficient coin and were on their way back to the borders of civilization when the first blizzard hit. Django had fallen from Tony two days ago and had concussed himself. While he was swimming in the dark stupors of sleep, wolves had come and stolen their meat from the burlap sacks. If it had not been for that, they both would have been fine. Now the clock was ticking, their horses were weary and hunger was setting its teeth in steadily deeper still.

Often when he was alone he muttered to himself, as was his behaviour when he travelled purely as a loner. And his speech was always in his home tongue. His dry remarks were a comfort. He always loved to hear his own laconic German narratives. Now he had no energy even for that. Walking was a bother, and his Henry felt colossally heavy and ultimately useless in his gloved hand. He had come close to elk, he thought he had, but the gloom had failed his predatory stalking and the deer had caught wind of him. Usually in such conflicting conditions he could find something edible, but the virulent winter and his age made him clumsy and stupid in the cold. He just hoped that young Django was having better luck.

He did not see the trap. His eyes, languid with fatigue, saw the brackish, gelid iron too late, and saw its rusty shadow at the last moment. By then there was nothing he could do. His boot had landed on the thin, metal trigger and the grinning, wide jaws capable of immobilising a bear had snapped closed round his thin ankle. His body welled with numb surprise and he could only look down and remark upon it with his eyes, his lips muttering mutely on the wind. Then extraordinary pain funnelled up from his ankle and very soon his leg, thigh and chest was roiling in pain and fire.

He threw alarm and bewilderment aside and knelt down on his knee and wrangled his hands to the jaws. As the pain built, his wild ferocity widened. His hands sought to release his leg as his fingers cupped between its merciless teeth – and he pulled. The teeth started to part slowly – like a clam opening its lips to breathe in the underwater currents. Shultz's hands began to shake, and the inside of his boot filled with the warmth of his own blood.

A muscle twanged low in his back from all the day's exertions, and he lost his strength. He knew before the teeth had realigned themselves in his flesh that he was on the losing end.

The quick-snap of jaws buried deep at his bone and though he had felt great pain before, he could barely stifle the gasp that rose from his throat. Floods of red liquid that soiled his fingers and sullied his boot jetted out of the holes as the iron remade its marriage. He sat back for a moment, breathing thinly between clenched teeth and trying to somehow overcome the meddlesome panic that was close to erupting in his mind. He looked about him, trying to focus himself away from the ever increasing blood flow and terrible hurt. A fog was descending over the rocky valley and the teasing calls of the elk sounded closer to him now than they had been all afternoon. But then another call came from a very bothersome animal. The coyote. The fog and wind chill had probably done very little to hide the stink of opulent blood.

Shultz tried to will the pain away. An impossible feat, but he tried regardless. Age, wisdom and experience had taught him some things, not all of them helpful. If he caved into panic now, and reduced to a gibbering man with the pain, he'd die.

With trained eyes, Shultz ignored the grinning trap of teeth and saw that it was attached to a rather long and metal length chain half buried in mud gone hard from winter's tireless grip. He tried to move forwards on his good knee, and could only manage a grimacing shuffle of five inches before deep pain lashed through his nerves. Blood was now seeping out from beneath the sole of his boot and darkening the weedy grass that lay there.

He followed the links of chain with one hand, and the chain ran taut into mud. He tried to wrestle the rest of the chain free, but it held firm. It was useless anyhow, he figured after a bout of German cursing. The chain would follow up into an iron peg that was tethered deep into the ground by a pickaxe. It was probably set by luckless hunters in the autumn before the first snowflakes fell. Even if he found his way to the peg he could never be able to lift it free, and even if he did, how could he walk…or drag this trap back to the meeting point?

He tried to clear his mind as darkness beat at his ears and thoughts. He had walked miles to stalk elk. He feared he may well be at least an hour from the clearing they had agreed to meet at. Even if Django were there now, waiting from him, there was no way to reach him.

Shultz looked down at the cause of his imprisonment. This was not a good way to go.

Old hope stirred in his heart. Django would wait for him, and then realize that Dr. King was late, too late, and that something must have happened. He would come looking for him, perhaps. But darkness was leering through the air quicker than ever, and there would be no moonlight to guide Django through the inky fog.

Shultz mused at how unlucky he was. He could sit, and wait. The pain would be terrible, and so would the blood loss, but if he kept still and did not struggle like a tormented fox, he could last a while longer. But it was bitterly cold, and if he did not move about to keep his body temperature up, he would die from hypothermia, and not blood loss at all. He knew that it had happened before to Long Hunters in the north who tracked a prized bear or white wolf. They would travel the animal for a duration, then proceed to get lost, go round in circles and succumb to the cold of the ruthless American winters. How the Comanche managed such winters without layers of traditional clothes, Shultz couldn't help but laugh at until he cringed in pain.

"I'm sorry, Django. You may have to fetch your wife without me." He closed his eyes for a moment, willing for that shore of final strength to shrug the teeth from his leg and set himself free. But he felt only a wave of weakness. Trying to free himself, and failing a second time would bring too much pain to bear. "Django… verzeih mir…"

Dib07: I watched Django Unchained and fell in love with it. And suddenly I had a craving to do this story, whether it be a simple one-shot or not. Now that craving has been fulfilled and I have utterly enjoyed writing this. Thank you for reading, and if you are feeling kind, please drop me a review, and if you want this continued, let me know. ^_^