Read People of the Longhouse Online
Authors: W. Michael Gear
Tags: #Fiction, #Historical, #Native American & Aboriginal
People of the Longhouse (4 page)
G
onda pulled his elkhide cape more tightly around his muscular shoulders. Sunlight penetrated the forest in bars and streaks of fallow gold, but there was no warmth to it. He was a slender man with a round face and heavy brow. He had seen twenty-six summers pass, but this morning he felt older than the forests. As he knelt to examine a washed-out track in the trail, his short black hair fell forward.
onda pulled his elkhide cape more tightly around his muscular shoulders. Sunlight penetrated the forest in bars and streaks of fallow gold, but there was no warmth to it. He was a slender man with a round face and heavy brow. He had seen twenty-six summers pass, but this morning he felt older than the forests. As he knelt to examine a washed-out track in the trail, his short black hair fell forward.
“What are you?” he whispered. “Nothing?”
The scuff mark was frost-rimmed and skimmed with ice. It could have been made by anything—a deer, a man, even a raccoon. He vented a frustrated breath and rose to his feet.
Buttonbush thickets crowded the spaces between the towering sycamores and shorter sassafras trees. Birds perched among the branches, plucking at the few shriveled fruits that clung to the leafless red stalks. A riot of sparrow and wren songs filled the air.
He expelled a breath and propped his fists on his hips.
At dawn, he’d found dim marks at the edges of the flooded trail, as though a man had been dragging a heavy pack through the water and, occasionally, the pack had scooped up mud. But the marks had vanished over one hand of time ago. In desperation, both of them had kept pushing onward up the same trail, hoping to spot more sign, but so far they’d seen nothing certain.
After two days, this was the most promising trail they’d found—if it was a trail—and every instant they delayed, every moment they spent discussing what they should do next, their enemy was getting farther and farther away.
Gonda glanced at his former wife, Koracoo. She stood five paces behind him, examining something on the forest floor. He kept praying she would look up and meet his gaze, perhaps smile at him, anything to keep him going. She did not.
They had been married for twelve summers—until two days ago when she’d set his belongings outside the charred husk of their longhouse and told him to go home to his own clan.
He stepped off the trail and continued his search through the trees.
Blessed gods, couldn’t she see that his own guilt was strangling him? Even if they found their children alive and well, he would never forgive himself. The images of burning longhouses and dead friends would remain open wounds on his souls for as long as he lived.
Gonda stopped, seeing a curious shape just beneath the overhanging branches of a bush. He bent over, frowned at it, and called, “Koracoo? You’d better come look at this.”
She lifted her head. At twenty-seven summers, Koracoo was unusually tall for a woman, twelve hands. She’d chopped her black hair short in mourning. It created a jagged frame for her beautiful face. Since the destruction of their village, her large dark eyes maintained an almost perpetually somber expression. Over her knee-length war shirt, she wore a red cape. In the middle of the cape, the blue painting of a buffalo defiantly stared out. “Are you sure?”
“I’ve been a warrior for thirteen summers, Koracoo. Don’t you think I know how to recognize a man’s track?”
As Koracoo walked toward him, sunlight gilded the copper inlay in her war club, giving it an edge of flame. It had a name, that club:
CorpseEye
. His own nameless club was made of fire-hardened oak. Hers was a wood no one had ever seen before, dark, dense, and old. Legend said that CorpseEye had once belonged to Sky Woman herself. Strange images were carved on the shaft: antlered wolves, winged tortoises, and prancing buffalo. A red quartzite cobble was tied to the top of the club, making it a very deadly weapon—one Koracoo wielded with great expertise. She constantly polished CorpseEye with walnut oil, as her father had done, and his father before him, and his before him, back into the obscure mists of time.
CorpseEye
. His own nameless club was made of fire-hardened oak. Hers was a wood no one had ever seen before, dark, dense, and old. Legend said that CorpseEye had once belonged to Sky Woman herself. Strange images were carved on the shaft: antlered wolves, winged tortoises, and prancing buffalo. A red quartzite cobble was tied to the top of the club, making it a very deadly weapon—one Koracoo wielded with great expertise. She constantly polished CorpseEye with walnut oil, as her father had done, and his father before him, and his before him, back into the obscure mists of time.
Koracoo stopped beside him. “Show me.”
Gonda held the brush aside for her.
As she knelt to scrutinize the frost-rimmed track, the lines around her eyes deepened.
He watched her. More than anything, he longed to touch her, to lie in her arms and talk about his mistakes until he could bear them. He was the father of her children. Between them was the unbreakable bond of two people who had seen their children stolen away to a fate neither of them dared imagine. Only in her arms would he ever find comfort.
But as the days passed, it seemed less and less likely. On the rare occasions when she looked at him now, it was with the eyes of a cold, impatient stranger.
Koracoo said, “He wore finely woven cornhusk sandals. A wealthy man. A man of status.”
“Yes. Let’s go. We’re wasting precious time.”
“I need to study this a little longer.” She kept her eyes on the sandal print.
Gonda grumbled under his breath. Every tendon in his body was stretched taut, telling him to leave, to keep searching. But she was war chief, and he was deputy. She made the decisions.
He scowled at the track. The herringbone pattern of the sandal weave was distinctive, woven by the Hills People. There were five kinds of People south of Skanodario Lake: Flint People, the People of the Landing, People of the Mountain, People of the Hills, and their own tribe of Standing Stone People. The People of the Hills had the most warriors and the largest villages. They were—despite what the Standing Stone People wished to believe—the greatest power in the land.
Koracoo said, “He was a Hills warrior.”
“Yes. Probably a big, heavy man, because his feet sank deeply into the mud.”
Her eyes narrowed in thought before she replied, “Or he was carrying a heavy load.”
“Maybe.”
Koracoo stood, and her gaze moved to the shell midden partially visible through the tangle of tree trunks. The mound glittered with frost. Canassatego Village, a Hills People village, had used the same trash site for ten summers; it was huge, covered with freshwater mussel shells, broken pottery, ashes from their fires, and other refuse.
“His toes pointed toward the midden,” Koracoo observed.
“Yes. So?”
“Let’s see if he came here alone, or met someone. You go left of the trail. I’ll go right.” When she turned to look at him to make sure he understood, his heartbeat stilled. Her eyes were as black and translucent as obsidian, and cut just as keenly. “I’ll meet you at the midden.” Koracoo stepped away.
Gonda went left. It took another half-hand of time before they reached the base of the mound. It stood three times the height of a man. As Elder Brother Sun climbed higher into the sky, the layer of ice began to melt, leaving the wet shells glistening like river rocks.
“Another track,” Koracoo called, and pointed at the ground.
Gonda worked his way over to her and stared down at the place where the man’s sandals had skidded off the shells, heaping them into small piles.
There were several more such piles all the way up the midden slope. At this time of the morning, each cast a shadow. “He was careful until he got here; then he started rushing. See where he slipped?”
“Yes.”
“Stay here,” she ordered. “I’ll see if there is anything on top of the midden.”
“Koracoo, please, let me do it. You will be a perfect target standing alone at the top. There may be enemy warriors watching from the trees. I am more expendable than you are.”
“Stay here.” She started up the slope.
Gonda kept his gaze on her. She was moving slowly, climbing, studying, climbing. Since the attack on Yellowtail Village and the loss of their children, he panicked whenever she was out of his sight.
She’s all right. Leave it be.
They had faced so many hardships together. Behind them were burned villages, friends long dead, and young dreams smothered beyond all recall. He knew her better than she knew herself … and she him. Why couldn’t she forgive him?
His practiced warrior’s gaze moved over the forest, searching for odd colors or shapes—anything that would reveal a hidden enemy—then darted back to Koracoo. She was almost to the mound top.
In the sky above her, twenty or more ravens soared, their wings flashing in the sunlight. Such large flocks were a common sight these days. Whenever people went to war, they did not go alone. Carrion eaters followed them, waiting their turns to feast.
“
There’s a body up here,”
Koracoo called.
There’s a body up here,”
Koracoo called.
Gonda’s eyes widened. He glanced at the ravens again. He should have known. “A body? That must be what he was dragging. Male or female? Can you tell?”
Koracoo walked to the edge of the mound and gestured for him to come to her, but added, “Don’t disturb the tracks.”
Gonda veered wide and hurried up the opposite side of the slope. Long before he reached the top, he could smell the stench of rotting human flesh. Then he saw the girl lying on her back. The birds had pecked out her eyes and devoured most of the flesh of her face. Worse, wolves had been at her belly. Ropes of half-chewed intestines snaked across the shells. The broken shaft of an arrow protruded from her chest.
Gonda gestured to the arrow. “He was a good shot. That’s straight through the heart.”
“Or he was close.” Koracoo swung CorpseEye up and rested the club on her shoulder. The red quartzite cobble glinted. “Her clothing marks her as one of the Hills People, and look at her jewelry.”
“Yes, I see.”
Shell bracelets encircled the gnawed wrists, and beautiful copper earspools decorated the girl’s lobes. An elaborately carved conch shell pendant lay a short distance away. It was gorgeous: A False Face with a long bent nose, slanted mouth, and hollow eyes stared up from the shell. The False Face Spirits who inhabited such masks could cure illness. Had the dead girl been ill? The leather thong had probably been chewed through by the wolves and the pendant dragged off.
Gonda walked closer and searched the area around the mangled corpse for any clues that might reveal her killer. The longer he studied the body, the more unease he felt.
Koracoo clenched her fist around CorpseEye. “She is not one of our children.”
“No. Do you think we’re on the wrong trail?”
“It’s possible, but many villages have been attacked in the past few days. She may have been herded into a group of captives that included our children.”
“Child slavery is an ugly part of warfare, but it—”
“This was not warfare,” Koracoo said.
“What do you mean?”
Koracoo used CorpseEye to point. “If she’d been killed by enemy warriors they would have taken that magnificent jewelry.”
Gonda looked at the copper earspools again. Even now, though
he’d have to pull them through rotting flesh, they’d be worth a fortune in trade. “I didn’t think of that.”
he’d have to pull them through rotting flesh, they’d be worth a fortune in trade. “I didn’t think of that.”
Koracoo walked around the other side of the body. “And no enemy warrior would have carried her up here to the top of this mound. He would have left her where she fell. Who would go to the effort of carrying a dead girl to the top of a trash mound?”
“A man who wanted to make a point.”
Koracoo straightened. She had an oval face with full lips and a small narrow nose. “What point?”
“That she was filth? Or refuse? Perhaps her killer hated her.”
Koracoo thoughtfully gazed out at the Forks River. “Or perhaps he loved her. The view from up here is beautiful. I can see halfway across the Hills People country.” She studied the body again and softly said, “All we know with fair certainty is that she was carried up here by one of her own people.”
Gonda used the toe of his moccasin to smooth out a ridge of shells. “Should we keep following this trail? Or go back and start over at Yellowtail Village?”
Koracoo tensed. “This is still the best trail we’ve found. The only trail. I say we follow it wherever it leads.”
He exhaled a breath and nodded. “I agree. Which direction should we go? Do we follow him to the west? Or do we backtrack him to the east and hope we find the place the girl was killed? If we find him, he may be able to answer all of our questions.”
“If he chooses to, which I doubt.”
“There are ways to ‘encourage’ his cooperation.”
Koracoo shook her head. “That will take even more time and may be fruitless.”
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