On his right hand, between the thumb and forefinger, there is a deep cut. The cut was unhealed and was made about two days before his death. Forensic experts suggest that the subject was in a fight, one that, on that occasion, he came out the victor.
There was a crack in the bow, a tiny fissure in the yew. Ewald has been keeping an eye on it, wondering at what point it would splinter.
Now there is no time to think about it when he catches sight of the deer, its antlers trembling amidst the leaf, and he raises the bow.
Ewald has some art with the weapon. He is skilled in fashioning the yew and stringing the bow. What is more, he is a good shot, and he knows he will more often than not make his mark. But as soon as he lets loose the arrow, he hears the crack of the splinter and curses his luck.
The deer fled through the thicket.
“Well done, old man,” says his companion, approaching from the side. “Now we have nothing to eat.”
“Is it any wonder,” says Ewald, “with you crashing through the trees like a clumsy ox?”
“Bow-stringer, did you want to take me out as well as the beast?”
The criticism stirs up old resentments, jealousies. The quarrel was once again on the point of an arrowhead.
“I can still shoot as well as string a bow. But not if you startle the beast.”
“Your aim is no longer true, old man. Ava has no interest in a mere bow-stringer.”
“Ava cares not for an ugly, clumsy ox!”
It was no secret. Ewald had wanted Ava to make himself strong again. Adalwolf had not wanted to give her up. Now he had made up his mind, he would risk all.
“I will fight you!”
“And lose!”
Ewald tells Adalwolf he cannot fight to save himself from a bear trap.
Adalwolf curses Ewald and says he would fight him to death. Then he would take his knife and bury it in another place, so he would not be able to fight the demons who would be stalking his spirit.
Ewald curls his lip in contempt.
“When you are dead,” he says, “I shall have Ava to sleep in my bed and keep my cock warm.”
Adalwolf came at Ewald with a knife. Adalwolf lunged and swiped at Ewald. He caught his hand and cut him, but Ewald put him on the ground and plunged in his own knife.
Ewald pulled out the blade and wiped the flint tip on the ground.
Adalwolf is dead.
Ewald picks up Adalwolf’s bow along with his belongings and left the corpse along with the cracked bow.
The forest was thick with the trunks of ash and oak and the knotty roots of the undergrowth. But if Ewald is fleet of foot, he is spurred on by the thought of his pursuers who know the trails as well as he. He would be safe only once he reaches the mountain pass.
Ewald puts his hand in the water of the stream and washes it clean until he believes there is no poison from the bad spirits. Then he wraps his hand again in the band.
To sate his hunger, he takes some seeds from his pouch and eats them, savouring the taste.
The yellow pollen from the hornbeam blossom must have fallen around him and in the water of the stream.
Ewald smiles to himself and cups the water in his hands. “Ava shall be mine,” he thinks, as she always should have been.
When he reached the mountain pass now known as Tisenjoch, Ewald paused to rest. He had completed the vertical climb -some 6,500 feet (2,000 metres) – from the valley below, and to the north faced a desolate, glacier-riven landscape.
Ewald had on his good shoes – the one with the bearskin soles, but that would be small consolation if the weather turns as it threatens beyond the mountain.
The rocky hollow where he found himself offered some shelter from the wind.
Ewald took another layer from his pack and put it on – wincing once again as he passed his hand through the sleeve.
He took out his fire lighting kit, and unwrapped the birch bark container, picking some of the choicer embers wrapped in maple leaves.
He was cold and shivery, but now with the fire and some of the goat’s meat he had in reserve he would soon be warm.
Delirium from the infection in his hand must have taken hold.
Adalwolf, his enemy was dead, but Ava was in his mind still. He mutters and talks to himself, as if there would be hope in his wishful dreams of Ava’s warm, strong body.
Did he shiver and laugh to himself as I do now in the shelter of my imagination? Did he gaze at his hand? Did he hold it as he did his love wound – close to his chest – in the dying of the fire?
Did he cry out to Ava? Did he despair for the madness that had overcome him in the valley?
Analysis of angles and projections suggests the attacker must have positioned himself behind and below his victim.
The attacker fires a single arrow that strikes the Iceman’s left shoulder blade—precisely the area at which prehistoric hunters aimed to bring down game with one shot. The arrow goes clean through the bone and pierces the artery. Blood begins to gush out, filling the space between the shoulder blade and the ribs.
There in the dying of the light Edwald must recognise the cloaked figure who walks into his camp.
Ewald curses his luck.
Adalwolf’s bow.
As well he might.
The arrows in his deerskin quiver are only half-finished; the new yew is yet to be notched and strung.
Gerulf leans over Ewald and says:
“Ava is mine now.”
He pulls out the arrow.
Ewald grimaces.
As well he might, for the arrow tip remains in the shoulder.
Finally, Gerulf picks up the bow that belonged to his brother and leaves Ewald to die.
In his few remaining minutes of life, the Iceman becomes a textbook case of what is now known as haemorrhagic shock. His heart starts to race. Sweat drenches his garments, even at an altitude two miles (three kilometres) above sea level. He must feel increasingly faint because not enough oxygen is reaching his brain.
In a matter of a few minutes, the Iceman collapses, loses consciousness, and bleeds out. There he will lie, under snow and ice, until the descendants of his enemy and tribe find him again, under the arc of time’s arrow, three thousand years later.
What was he now to Adalwolf? What was Adalwolf to him?