People of the Nightland (North America's Forgotten Past) (17 page)

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Authors: W. Michael Gear,Kathleen O'Neal Gear

BOOK: People of the Nightland (North America's Forgotten Past)
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“I was plotting to kill him. Isn’t that enough of a reason?”
“No,” he said softly. “Many of our people have tried to assassinate
him. I just gave it up as a bad idea for a lone man. Outside of me, you’re the only one who is still alive. I find that interesting.”
Her laughter exploded from within, shaking her, maniacal. Peals of it rolled out of her chest, waking Ashes, who stared up at her in dismay.
Skimmer couldn’t stop. She laughed, and laughed some more, until the laughter mixed with tears, and tears into sobs that wrung her soul dry.
She was vaguely aware of Windwolf and Ashes. Their gazes locked and held, sharing some terrible communication.
Images flashed across her soul … the enclosure, the stone mauls sailing down from on high, the screams … the little girl dragging her sister …
In the end, she lay slumped wearily against the stone, her body trembling, chin on her filthy chest. Within her, only emptiness remained. Fear, hatred, horror—all of it had drained away, as exhausted as her cold flesh.
His gaze softened. “I would hear your story.”
“Kakala’s warriors came with the morning,” she began. She told the whole story: Words, with all the feeling of stone, seemed to tumble from her mouth. As if from a distance, she heard herself, wondering how she could tell it so flatly, without inflection or passion. But in the end, they were only words, fleeting things that died on the cold air.
Through blurred eyes she saw he sat stone still, hatred and grief flickering over his handsome face.
He took several long drinks from his water bag, but gripped it tightly, as though to wring the life from it. Ashes blinked, nodding on occasion. Sometimes she’d watch Skimmer, other times, Windwolf, perhaps to see if he understood.
When Skimmer had finished, the long silence was broken only by the red squirrels chattering and the wind in the trees.
Windwolf finally said, “We’ll kill him for what he did.”
Somehow she mustered the words: “Don’t make promises you can’t keep. I’ve been trying for three summers to kill him and haven’t—”
“We
will
get him.”
She turned dull eyes on his. “We?”
“You haven’t lost your fervor for battle, have you?”
“Fervor? What is fervor?”
She contemplated the dark circles beneath his eyes, the deep lines etching his forehead. What was he doing out here alone? Didn’t he
know the Nightland clan Elders had offered safety in return for his dead body?
Windwolf said, “You don’t want to join the fight?”
Ti-Bish’s mad eyes stared out from the fabric of her soul. “I want a place where my little girl and I can live without worrying about being killed in our sleep.”
He rose to his feet again and frowned at the trail. “There is a price for such freedom.”
“I’ve already paid it.” A sob rose in her throat again. Her shoulders heaved, but she didn’t make a sound.
“Obviously you didn’t plan to kill the Guide by yourself. Did you have an organized group?”
She mustered enough strength to nod.
“How many?”
“Two tens.”
“How many of those were warriors?”
“They’re all dead. It doesn’t matter.”
“Did you see them killed, or is there a chance the warriors might have escaped? Can you send a runner to—”
“
Stop it!
” she cried. “Can’t you see how … how tired and …
I want to be left alone!
”
“We all do.” He studied her for several moments before asking, “Think you could sleep?”
She wiped her wet face on her sleeve. “Yes.”
“Good.”
Skimmer watched him nock a dart in his atlatl and prop it on his shoulder. She leaned her head back against the rock and stared up at the vast reddish orange heavens.
Even the sky is bleeding.
She closed her eyes, thinking to only nap.
W
indwolf eased through the trees, sticking to cover as he made a careful scout of their surroundings. The spot where Skimmer and Ashes slept wasn’t the best hiding place they could have picked, but he hadn’t the heart to wake them.
Such compassion could get us all killed.
He growled at himself, irritated more with his own fatigue and depressed spirits.
Nashat and Karigi waded in and murdered over two tens of women and girls! Just like they were cracking nuts!
He winced, hatred and loathing rising like bile into his throat.
He backed away, having searched the approaches to the best of his ability. Stepping around the tree, he cocked his head, studying Skimmer and the sleeping girl. Despite their awkward postures where they were propped on the rock, neither had moved. He raised the flat of his hand to the sky, measuring six hands up from the horizon to the sun. To have slept that long, in such an uncomfortable pose, told him just how exhausted they were.
He hunched down, reaching for a slab of dried meat in his pack.
Clamping the hard stuff with his teeth, he twisted a piece off, chewing. Food would buy him some time before he, too, collapsed.
Skimmer lives.
He glanced back toward Headswift Village.
But what does that mean for us?
He studied her slack expression, partially hidden by her gore-matted stringy hair. The odor of death clung thickly to her clothes. It took no stretch of belief to imagine her secreting herself beneath a pile of the dead.
Would I have had that kind of desperate courage?
When he and Bramble had fought the Nine Pipes band so many years ago, he hadn’t had a very high opinion of Hookmaker. Brave and brash, the young war chief had led his warriors straight into Windwolf’s ambushes three times. In each, the Nine Pipes warriors had fought bravely, standing and casting while Windwolf’s warriors shot them down one by one from concealment. Each time they had finally broken and fled. When the Nine Pipes had finally offered a settlement, it had to have stung.
Yes, Skimmer had stood against him and Bramble when they tried to forge an alliance. Why wouldn’t they? But now, with those events so distant in the past, neither he nor Skimmer were the same people they had once been.
So, Skimmer, have they finally broken you?
She reminded him of an eggshell, fragile, so easily shattered. He had seen the terror bright in her eyes, watched her shake uncontrollably as she relived the memories of those last days in the pen.
He shook his head.
What little push would it take to crack what remains of your shell, Skimmer?
“Not much,” he whispered to himself, and sighed.
He started to rise, figuring to make another scout of the surroundings. In the split instant before he could comprehend, the world seemed to tense. Then the jolt shivered earth and air. A soft boom followed by a faint rumble accompanied the quake. Squirrels chattered; birds cried and flew.
Windwolf felt it through his feet, into his very bones. Such things were commonplace, but they always left his soul tingling.
It was a measure of Skimmer’s and Ashes’ exhaustion that they slept right through it, only shifting to new positions as the stone and ground they rested on quivered.
He looked out to the north. “Too bad it didn’t bring your rotted ice caves crashing down on your heads!”
 
 
T
he dream began as it always did … Windwolf was running, running hard … .
 
 
A
head of him, just over the hill, he could see the roof of the ceremonial lodge where Bramble should be waiting. He charged headlong for it. As he crested the hill, Walking Seal Village filled the hollow. Hawhak’s Nightland warriors fled in panic before them, some turning, casting wild darts that hissed as they cut the air, then clattered and snapped as they hit the hard earth.
“Windwolf! This is madness!” Silt yelled behind him.
The village was in chaos. Fleeing Nightland warriors reminded him of hares on the run.
My people! Where are my people?
“Continue the attack, Silt!” Windwolf commanded. Heedless of danger, he ran with all his might, heading straight for the center of the village and the large, round-topped lodge. He caught a glimpse of several Nightland warriors sprinting from the opposite stand of trees. Kakala, Keresa, and … and
Goodeagle
?
No, it couldn’t be!
He’d just had a glimpse.
How could this have happened? What had he missed? But for the chance encounter of a fleeing woman, he’d have walked right into the trap. What had gone wrong? Something … something critical. Bramble had sent word that she was meeting to talk peace with Deputy Karigi.
Peace?
He heard Silt’s feet hammering the ground behind him. “Windwolf, the villagers need us,” Silt panted. “We have to press the attack on the Nightland warriors! If they regroup, it will go badly for us!”
“Do it!”
he ordered.
Windwolf passed the first of the lodges, leaping over the body of a Nightland warrior who stared terrified at the dart point protruding from the middle of his chest.
Breath tearing at his throat, Windwolf raced past the first lodge, instinctively shooting a glance inside. The blurred image had to be fantasy. Those couldn’t be people piled in there!
He raced full-out for the ceremonial lodge. A Nightland warrior burst from behind the next lodge, paused long enough to cast a wild dart, and ran for all he was worth. The whistling dart passed off to the left. Silt, on the run, grunted as he cast his own dart. It sliced the air past Windwolf’s head, arced out, the shaft gleaming in sunlight as it pierced the fleeing warrior’s right buttock. The man tripped, landing hard on his chest and screaming.
Silt cried, “Bramble knew what she was doing! She bought us time. We have to go. Now! Do you hear me?”
“I told you to press the attack!”
Windwolf leapt the fallen warrior, who was reaching behind himself, fingers slipping along Silt’s shaft.
Kakala’s inside. With how many more?
Heedless of the danger, Windwolf rounded the side of the great lodge and charged full tilt through the doorway. He heard Silt shout, “Hurry! I’ll cover the door, but they’re coming fast!”
Windwolf’s heart hammered against his ribs as he burst into the main room. Panting, he raised his atlatl, ready to drive the first shaft into Kakala’s breast. The room was empty, the great fire in the center smoking.
“Bramble?” he bellowed.
He threw back the first door curtain and leaped inside, crying, “Bramble?” The clan room was empty, parfleches, packs, and sacred bundles spilled out on the floor as if by angry children.
He bolted for the next chamber, shouting, “Bramble! Where are you?” He dove through the door curtain, ready to kill.
The sacred shields had been smeared with blood and excrement to kill their Spirits, and left on the floor. Overturned parfleches, wooden dishes, wadded-up hides, and Clan Matron Agate’s gutted body lay before him.
The only sounds were the horrified shrieks of the warriors outside, fighting for their lives.
“Bramble!”
He searched the piles of bloody hides. A fierce battle had taken place here. Had she … had she made it out? Was she even now waiting for him in the forest beyond the village?
Hope leapt within.
He rushed to the next chamber.
She lay naked, sprawled across a sacred mammoth hide, her hands bound to a pole. A tall war dart had been driven deep into her chest. Blood leaked red and slick from her mouth and nose. The fluid smearing the insides of her thighs was proof of what they’d done before they’d killed her.
He cast his darts aside, cut her hands loose, and knelt, gently lifting her head. His eyes fixed with disbelief on the dart shaft sticking out between her breasts. Blood pumped out around it, but she was still breathing.
He snapped off the dart and murmured, “Bramble, hold on. I have to get you out of here.”
As he slid his arms beneath her to lift her, she groaned. Her dark eyes flickered, and a faint smile touched her lips. Barely audible she whispered, “Foolish. You shouldn’t … have come.”
“Save your strength, we’ve—”
“No.” She shook her head weakly. Blood-matted locks of long black hair fell over his arm. “Listen …” She twined weak fingers in his hide sleeve and seemed to be mustering her failing strength. “Goodeagle … betrayed … us. Goodeagle was … was here. Karigi … he …”
She gasped, and her body convulsed.
“Windwolf?” Silt yelled. “Windwolf,
it’s now or never
!”
Feet came pounding through the lodge. Silt threw back the curtain, and came to a sudden halt when he saw Bramble slumped on the floor, her beautiful face slack with death.
Windwolf gathered her in his arms and pulled her tightly against him, murmuring, “No.”
Silt gave him five heartbeats to mourn, then gripped his sleeve and roughly dragged him to his feet. “She’s
dead
! We have to hurry!”
Together they ran back to the village and straight into a barrage of darts … .
 
 
“
W
indwolf?” a woman’s voice called.
“Bramble?”
“Windwolf!” she hissed. “Hurry. Get up!”
A hard kick in the side brought him wide awake, lunging for his weapons. Before he’d even made it to his feet, he had a dart nocked in his atlatl. “What is it? What’s wrong?”
He was in the spruce lands, trees bathed in faint reddish gray light. Instead of Bramble’s blood, he smelled sweet air scented with spruce.
Skimmer was giving him a wild look, her fragile eyes wide.
Skimmer! Bramble’s dead.
He pinched his eyes shut, shaking off the last of the Dream.
Fearfully, Ashes asked, “Mother?” and scrambled to her knees.
“Quiet!”
Skimmer pointed. The gray rays of false dawn filtered through the trees to the east, but between the dark trunks warriors moved. They were working their way down the slope, taking their time, being thorough. In the front, he recognized Keresa.
Windwolf grabbed Ashes and pulled her to the ground behind one of the boulders. Skimmer ducked down beside them.
“Have they seen us?” Windwolf asked, trying to clear the fragments of the Dream.
“I don’t think so, but they may not be the only scouting party out looking for you.”
He spun around and scanned the slopes below them. “Let’s go.”
Doubled over, keeping to cover, he hurried down the trail. Behind him, he heard Skimmer and Ashes stumbling, their moccasins sliding on the gravel.
Ashes whimpered, and in a cold voice that brooked no disobedience, Skimmer hissed, “Stop it!”
Ashes went silent.
Windwolf made it to the base of the slope; the trail forked. He surveyed the forest. The spruce boughs swayed in the wind, their needles glimmering.
When Skimmer and Ashes came to a halt beside him, Skimmer asked, “Do you know these trails?”
Windwolf pointed. “This leads back to Headswift Village.”
“Won’t they be waiting for us there?”
“Almost certainly.”
“Then why—”
“Not now!”
He led them on a roundabout path through the spruce, then charged straight south across a patch of snow shadowed by the trees.
“We’re leaving tracks!” Skimmer’s voice carried the seeds of panic.
“Headed straight south,” he added. “When we reach the other side, we continue south; but just long enough to let our moccasins dry. Then, at the first outcrop of stone, we turn back toward Headswift Village.”

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