People of the Earth (13 page)

 
          
 
The warrior shrieked, letting loose Rock
Mouse's hair and spinning around. In that second, Brave Man had
nocked
a second dart, flinging it into the man's chest. The
warrior charged forward and Brave Man met the charge, driving a third dart into
the man's belly by hand. Together they tumbled on the ground, Brave Man
fighting for his life, kicking and screaming, no match for the tall warrior's
adult strength. He stared into the man's frenzied eyes . . . and saw death. The
warrior faltered, blood beginning to leak out the edges of his mouth,
spattering hot on Brave Man's face with each strained exhale.

 
          
 
Brave Man smashed the palm of his hand into
the man's face, wiggling away. He stood, staring in awe as the warrior tried to
crawl toward him. Frothy blood dribbled from the man's mouth, crimson bubbles
spotting the ground.

           
 
He never knew what happened after that. Only
later did Rock Mouse tell him that she'd called out, pointing; another warrior
had come up from behind. Rock Mouse told him that he'd started to turn—and that
the blow meant to cave in the top of his skull had laid his scalp open, dashing
him to the ground.

 
          
 
But I lived. The image dulled and slipped into
the fog of his memory.

 
          
 
As he stood in the snow, watching Wind
Runner's progress, Brave Man fingered the jagged scar hidden by his thick hair.
The voices cackled in his ear, soothing the pain of his headache. The memories
re-formed, sifting out of a foggy haze . . .

 
          
 
Brave Man had regained consciousness in the
dark. Blinding pain burned through his head. His vision was blurred; things
looked fuzzy, while spots of light danced in the darkness. The rattle of the
cottonwood leaves in the night breeze sounded like Dancing bones, clattering
and banging against each other.

 
          
 
He'd stumbled to his feet, taken two steps,
and fallen on the corpse of a warrior killed by a boy's practice darts. In the
Camp of the Dead, he cried out in terror and staggered around the empty lodges.
He made his reeling, weaving way through the corpses that lay everywhere. He
recognized the face of his father, bloated, half eaten away by some scavenger.
His mother's body lay supine, her gut ravaged. In the background, dark shapes
slunk among the dead, avoiding his path as they slipped through the shadows on
silent feet.

 
          
 
Through the agony of his throbbing head, he
could hear voices that urged him to flee. Possessed by a driving horror, he
broke into a run, only to trip on a broken lodge pole. He landed on another
corpse, the woman's body already bloated and hissing noxious gases.

 
          
 
He'd backed away, aware of the stench on his
hands after pushing himself off the corpse. Gibbering in fear, he'd bolted out
of the Camp of the Dead and into the grass beyond. The souls of the angry dead
rustled in the air, reaching for him with corrupted fingers. He felt their
plucking grip. Then the world spun around him, lifting and falling, spinning
and going black. He didn't feel the fall, but lights blasted through his head
when he hit the ground. He'd lain stunned, the rich green odor of grass filling
his nostrils as consciousness fled ahead of the pounding pain inside his skull.

 
          
 
When he'd come to again, the sun rode high in
the sky, piercing, blinding his bleary eyes. He'd stretched out in tall grass
while birds sang and chirped in the trees above. His head ached and pounded,
vision still split and fragmented. The voices inside his head whispered and
called to him, sometimes laughing, sometimes crying hideously.

 
          
 
When he'd tried to sit up, everything
shimmered and went gray. Trees, whole at first glance, split into several
images with the next. He crawled, coming to the camp, seeing unfamiliar-looking
warriors walking among the lodges. Some had stuffed packs with belongings
they'd looted. Images of the death camp spun out of the darkness of his mind.

 
          
 
The voices had cried out, shrieking at him to
flee, to run and hide from this horror. Choking on fear, he'd forced himself
back on hands and knees. Nausea had flooded his body, and he'd been sick to his
stomach while the world lurched and spun about him. For a long time he'd
crawled, driven on by the blasting pain in his head. Flies had buzzed around
the matted blood in his hair.

 
          
 
He had to keep on crawling. If he stopped, the
dead would get him. The menace lurked just behind him, waiting for him to make
a mistake, waiting for his courage to fail, if just for an instant.

 
          
 
The following days had never made sense to him.
His memory might have been a finely crafted obsidian point crushed by a heavy
quartzite hammer stone—shattered into too many slivers to be fitted together
again. He remembered bits and snatches: times of hunger, when he caught and ate
grasshoppers and robbed birds' nests of eggs; hiding in the grass, whimpering
and crying while the voices chided him. The ache in his head alternately
throbbed and subsided. The sun burned his naked back. When storms roiled
through the heavens, he shivered and shuddered in chill rain. His feet burned
with cactus thorns, then cracked and bled, while grasses and brush scratched
red welts into his skin.

           
 
After four days of hunger and no water, a
Power Dream had possessed him. He'd fallen asleep on a rocky ridge top, too
exhausted to go on. He'd heard the chanting, felt the Power. His soul had
floated, drifting and falling, rising like a leaf on the wind. He'd felt the
soft cushion of the gray haze and had cried out at the pleasure of it. He'd
drifted in the mist and at last settled slowly until he could perceive a golden
glow.

 
          
 
"What are you? Who have you become?"
A beautiful voice—so different from the whispers of the dead—haunted the
twining patterns of shimmering gold. The sound of a roaring fire somewhere in
the distance filled the honeyed air.

 
          
 
"I am Brave
Man.
I have escaped from the Camp of the
Dead."

 
          
 
"What will you do with Power? You are not
who you once were. Your soul is changed.” The gold billowed and compressed.

 
          
 
"I will destroy—as my enemies tried to
destroy me."

 
          
 
He is changed, a chorus of voices called
through the mist. Like tool stone that has been heat-treated for too long, he
has become something different. He has mixed Power with pain and suffering. His
soul is bent from our needs—tainted by a green ember of rage.

 
          
 
"Where are you?" Brave Man called
out, seeking the source of the Power—only to be rebuffed, pushed back, shoved
away from the golden haze. He struggled, seeking the wondrous rapture, and
shrieked his misery as the Power repulsed him with violence.

 
          
 
He awoke, gasping, rocks torturing his naked
flesh. He sobbed then, devastated by the sweet beauty of the golden haze that
had been denied him.

 
          
 
“I’ll find you," he promised the
cloud-darkened skies. "I've felt your Power—and I'll have it for my
own." He lifted a knotted fist to the heavens. "I swear it on my
honor! Nothing will stop Brave Man! I WILL DESTROY YOU!"

 
          
 
He'd collapsed then, and cried his lonely
frustration while a wolf howled ominously into the night.

 
          
 
South, the voices of the dead whispered in his
head. The word had stuck in his mind and he'd forced himself to swim the
flood-swollen Fat Beaver River, stumbling ever southward. He'd stayed to the
drainage bottoms, avoiding the rugged terrain of the uplands and eating
whatever came to hand.

 
          
 
But I lived. I proved myself worthy of the
Power. I escaped from the Camp of the Dead and the horror that chased me.

 
          
 
When No Teeth and Bobcat had finally found
him, they'd cried out a friendly greeting. He'd stared at them, knowing them, yet
puzzled by who they were. They wrapped him in a soft hide and told him they'd
thought he was dead, that the Black Point had killed him. Rock Mouse had seen
it happen with her own eyes.

 
          
 
The two friends had cared for him and told him
what had happened after the raid. The People had fled south across the Fat
Beaver, and there had been an angry shouting match in the council. Black Eagle
and Gray Thunder had split off from Whistling Hare's band, each taking those of
the White Clay who would follow. Some went west along the Fat Beaver, some
east. Whistling Hare had taken a third band—the one he had found—and headed
south.

 
          
 
No Teeth and Bobcat brought him, ragged and
starved, to Whistling Hare's camp. There Old Falcon had sung a Healing, and
Brave Man had gotten better. His memory had come back, and the dizzy spells
became less frequent. His feet healed, as did his scratches and cuts. Wind
Runner would come to sit with him and talk. But the world had changed for Brave
Man. The Spirits whispered in his ear, making him promises and warning him of
danger. The memory of the sweet gray mist and the golden rapture it masked
lurked just beyond his grasp.

 
          
 
"I escaped from the Camp of the
Dead," he reminded himself. Power had come to him. He'd been chosen.
Everyone knew that Soul Fliers could purify themselves by Singing and fasting.
When they did, they could free their souls from their bodies and fly to the
Camp of the Dead to recover lost souls; but that took years of preparation—and
a skilled Soul Flier to teach the way.

 
          
 
"But I crossed with my body. No one has
Power like Brave Man." As he said it, the Spirits gibbered to themselves
in agreement.

           
 
On the ridge, Brave Man narrowed his eyes,
staring after Wind Runner. He winced at the slight pain that lanced the side of
his head. Something will happen soon, the voices promised. Soon.

 
          
 
"
Limbercone
?
Would you and the rest leave us?" Larkspur, in the back of the lodge where
she sat next to Black Hand, motioned at her daughter with a birdlike hand.
Limbercone
—always dutiful—nodded, taking Cattail and
Phloxseed
with her.
Phloxseed's
children, both of them boys, had long ago married out to White Sandstone and
Grease-wood clans. Both had made good matches—matches that brought prestige and
the permission to hunt in those clans' territories if hard times came to the
Round Rock clan.

 
          
 
When the door hanging dropped in place,
Larkspur bowed her neck, rubbing at the bridge of her nose. Her eyes had gone
misty recently and she couldn't see so well in the dark these days. She reached
back and dropped more sagebrush on the fire. The flames leaped up to illuminate
the four center posts that supported the roof. She studied the flames for a
moment before leaning back on the thick furs that cloaked the dirt wall of the
lodge. Firelight glowed
redly
on the rafters and
played on the bundles hanging just overhead.