People of the Nightland (North America's Forgotten Past) (24 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
n all the low places, mist had settled, cloaking the village in damp, intense cold. Icicles hung from the spruce boughs. The entire world looked iron gray in the lavender light of dawn.
Windwolf followed Lookingbill as he hobbled toward the back of the ceremonial chamber. The old man had pulled up the hood of his buckskin cape to shield his bald head from the frigid air. His fleshy nose had turned red.
“Dipper is ready. No one likes this, me most of all, but—”
“I don’t like it, either,” Windwolf said, “but it’s the best I can do with the time I’ve had.”
Lookingbill turned, and his wrinkled face pinched. “I had hoped you’d tell me it was infallible, that I needn’t worry. Instead, you agree with me?”
“I try not to deceive chiefs.”
Lookingbill smiled faintly and continued toward the rear of the chamber, where a number of weapons lay piled: Four tens of darts leaned against the wall, their sharp stone points glinting; atlatls were laid out on the floor, ready for warriors in need; and a mound of bone stilettos rested to the left of the atlatls.
Lookingbill pulled a dart, as long as he was tall, from the pile and checked its balance. As he bent to retrieve an atlatl, he said, “When do you—”
“Chief!”
A young warrior dashed into the rockshelter and blinked while his eyes adjusted to the darkness.
“I’m here, Lone Eagle. What is it?”
“War Chief Fish Hawk said to tell you that our scouts have reported. The Nightland warriors are coming!”
“Very well. Get to your place.”
“Yes, Elder.”
The youth ran from the chamber, and Lookingbill expelled a breath. When he turned back to gaze at Windwolf, his eyes tightened. “War Chief, you look like you just stared into Raven Hunter’s eyes and he stared back.”
Windwolf did not smile. “Raven Hunter always stares back, Chief. That is my personal nightmare.”
 
 
S
ilvertip huddled in the dark angle of two leaning rocks at the mouth of his mother’s chamber. He stared down at his feet, clad in deerhide moccasins with mastodonhide soles. His feet looked small in the gloom.
In the rear, his mother sat across from Skimmer and Ashes, the women talking softly.
He reached out, running his fingers along the side of the Wolf Bundle. Every instinct urged him to stay here, to cower in the darkness and let the fighting pass by.
He wanted to shout:
I didn’t mean it.
But the Dream from which he had just awakened had been explicit. The black wolf had looked at him with glowing yellow eyes, and said,
“It is time for you to die.”
He had stared in terror at the Spirit animal.
“Do not be afraid,”
Wolf had told him.
“Death is the only passage from this world to the next.”
He had just shaken his head.
“But you must,”
Wolf had told him.
“You cannot find your future until you lose your past. You must give up this body for the One. Only then will you Dream.”
He did want to Dream. For the moment, however, fear lay locked in his guts. His muscles were shaking, and all of his courage could barely keep him from throwing up.
 
 
G
oodeagle used all of his skill to worm his way up the slope. He kept low, sometimes crawling between the rocks. There, to his surprise, he found a small shrine. Laid out on a piece of weathered hide, he discovered a collection of shiny pebbles, a long fluted point of sacred white chert, and several twists of mammoth hair. The leather on which they lay had once been painted in the image of a wolf.
A worthless offering, for an imaginary Spirit.
He had a sudden urge to rip it up and throw it down the rocks behind him, but some impulse stayed his hand. Instead, he crawled wide around it, and wriggled up under the crest.
His gaze drifted over the jumble of rocks. The Thunder Sea came into view off to the northeast, glimmering, filled with icebergs. The white swell of the Ice Giants rode like a snowy range of mountains above the salt water.
Looking closer, he caught a glimpse of Kakala’s warriors sneaking around the perimeter of the village.
No one seemed to notice them. Far down at the base of the slope, the Sunpath villagers went about their tasks, gathering wood, feeding the dogs, playing with their children.
It seemed odd, though, that there were so few Lame Bull People out. And, looking more closely at the Sunpath, he thought something was wrong. Their postures, the way they acted, was almost wooden.
Goodeagle untied his water bag from his belt and took a long swallow. Though food had been offered, he hadn’t eaten in four days, and much of his pain had receded into a blessed haze. It was, perhaps, strange that going without food left a man’s soul clear and calm. All the way here, he’d run at the rear of the war party with his two guards. While they’d eaten their daily rations, he’d watched and listened to the warriors boast about what honors they would win when they arrived at Headswift Village.
Honors? What honors were left to win when all the world was busy destroying itself?
At night, he had crawled into his hides, ill, but too numb to feel, or relive any of the nightmares that tormented him like evil Spirits with fiery darts. In too many, Bramble stared up at him, hatred marring the face he had once loved. He would see her choke on the blood welling from inside her. When she called out his name, it was in a crimson spray that coated his skin.
He didn’t have to do the silent calculations of how many Sunpath lives had been lost, or would be lost in the moon ahead.
Windwolf, this is all your fault.
The ache in his gut started to rise again. He swallowed and forced it down.
Why were so few people out front? He shook his head. Could they be the bait? The thought affected him like a dart in his belly.
For several stunning moments, his thoughts riveted on strategy sessions held over campfires—just him, Windwolf, and Bramble. What fine times those had been. He could recall …
There are so few Lame Bull People out in front of the rockshelters.
He, Bramble, and Windwolf, they’d been stretched out on the dry grass near the Thunder Sea, watching the Nightland People pack up their camps, speculating on what it would take to get inside the Nightland Caves. Insane strategy—things to be tried only when they were already dead men, trapped, and no other path lay open to them. An ice-scented wind had blown off the Thunder Sea, rustling the grasses.
After the Nightland People had gone, he and Windwolf had explored every ice tunnel, trying to learn how the passageways connected.
Windwolf’s deep voice rose in his thoughts:
“No, two tens would be too many. If you’re going to take the caves, it’ll have to be a small war party. Six men, with specific duties, and a crowd. That’s all you will need. The war party will have no more than ten tens of heartbeats, but—
”
“Oh, no!” Goodeagle spun around and ran down the trail with his heart in his throat.
“You … fools! You stupid … stupid fools! Windwolf is going to … to kill all of you!”
C
loud People filled the brightening sky. The queer leaden light lent an unearthly brilliance to the cold world, and turned the shawl of frost on the rockshelters into a glittering mantle.
Keresa trotted up and knelt beside Kakala, expecting a reprimand for being late. “It took longer than I expected, but our warriors are ready. As you instructed, I ordered the three tens of warriors going with us to capture any Elders they saw.”
“Good. Did you dispatch a runner to inform the nearby villages that they will have refugees coming in?”
“I sent young Aniya. She’s one of the best runners we have.”
Kakala squinted up at the village. He looked as nervous as a big cat on a hunt. Sweat matted his black hair to his forehead. “Why aren’t there more people outside?”
“I’ve been wondering that same thing. Something’s wrong.”
“Do you think they got word we were coming?”
She studied the few people who were outside, mostly women and children, one old man. They acted perfectly normal. The squealing children were playing a game of hoop-and-stick, running and trying to cast their sticks through the hoop to earn a point. The women who
stood near the mouth of a small rockshelter were using jasper scrapers to clean the last bits of flesh from a buffalo hide. The old man dozed in the sunlight.
She said, “They look nervously calm.”
Nervously calm?
He shrugged it off. “They do. But then, given what the Sunpath People have been through, how could they look calmly calm?” A pause. “Maybe there’s a ceremonial in one of the rockshelters—a burial rite, or a marriage.”
Keresa whispered, “It’s possible. We should at least hear drums and flutes.” She stiffened. “I think they know we’re here and have run into the rockshelters to hide.”
Kakala nocked a dart in his atlatl. “Then … they would have taken the Sunpath People with them. Maybe it’s a village Council meeting. That would explain why there’s no music or Singing.”
Keresa nodded reluctantly and took the opportunity to nock her own atlatl. “It would also explain why the Sunpath People are outside going about their day. They wouldn’t have been invited.”
Kakala said through a long exhalation, “That makes sense.”
“Does it? I’m not so sure.”
He started to rise, but suddenly ducked and stared up at the cloudy sky.
“What’s wrong?”
He shook his head. “Nothing … I—I thought I saw a shadow. Something black … moving over me … the shadow of huge wings.”
Keresa glanced up at the sky, then pinned him with cold eyes. “It’s guilt.”
Kakala turned to scowl at her. “Remind me to punish you for being insolent.”
“I’ll bring it up next time I find you in a cage.”
Kakala hesitated for a few more heartbeats. “Do you see that woman in the pretty doehide dress?”
“Yes. What about her?”
“You’re going to capture her. I’ll get the old man. One of them is bound to be valuable to somebody.”
He stood up, lifted his atlatl, and yelled a shrill war cry.
From everywhere warriors reared up from the rocks, leaped out of their hiding places, and flooded toward the village.
Two tens of warriors headed straight for the Sunpath People,
screaming war cries. Keresa heard Goodeagle, coming from behind, screaming, “No! In the Guide’s name,
no
!”
With amazing speed, the Sunpath People grabbed their children and vanished around the base of the boulders. The soft reverberations of screams and pounding feet carried on the wind.
“Victory!” Kakala cried as he charged up the slope on his thick legs.
She followed, but her gaze kept straying to the cloudy sky, expecting to see something monstrous and black swooping down upon them.
 
 
D
eep in his rocky warren, Silvertip heard the shout of a warrior. Immediately, screams broke out on the still air. A chorus of war whoops and cries followed.
It is time.
But he huddled, frightened and shaking. His tongue had gone thick, stuck to the roof of his mouth.
Clamping his eyes shut, he whispered, “I don’t want to die.”
“It is time,”
Wolf’s voice insisted softly from the air around him.
He didn’t remember rising to his feet, or tottering out to the entrance. He blinked, half-blinded by the light, picked up a fist-sized rock, and hurried out onto the trail that led down to where warriors were running up through the boulders. His mother screamed somewhere behind him.
“I’m going to die,” he kept repeating. Tears were leaking down his round cheeks, and the sobbing made it difficult to run.
 
 
K
eresa charged straight for the woman in the doehide dress; the screaming children scattered, fleeing into the rockshelters.
The woman, running like a panicked deer, rounded a big boulder. Keresa frowned, staring at the rock formation. She could see no way out. It had to be a dead end. She was smiling as she slowed, expecting to find the woman cowering against a sheer stone wall.
Kakala shouted, “Degan, take ten men and pursue them into their
hiding places! I want as many captives as you can catch. Kill anyone who’s trouble!”
Goodeagle pounded toward them, shouting, “Go back! It’s a trap! Pull back!”
Keresa hesitated.
What’s he yammering on about?
The warriors—grinning like wolves on a blood trail—had already ducked into the mouths of the rockshelters.
Only heartbeats later, new cries erupted, but they were not the cries of women and children, rather the cries of surprised warriors.
Keresa spun around.
Nightland warriors came flooding back out. Most had darts sticking in their bodies. Three warriors collapsed on the trail, screaming, while their wounded friends ran around them, trying to get away from the hail of darts that sailed after them. Five more men fell before they reached the safety of the rocks.
Goodeagle had stopped, his expression that of dismay.
Then, all along the rim above, whooping Sunpath warriors appeared and began casting darts down at the Nightland warriors milling below the rocks.
For one startled instant, Keresa froze.
It’s a trap!
“Pull back!” Kakala yelled. And Keresa saw a dart whistle past his ear to splinter on a boulder before him.
“They’re behind us!” she cried, turning, seeing a line of advancing Lame Bull warriors. Even as she watched, the men nocked darts, bending their bodies into the deadly release.
“This way!” Keresa called, charging full tilt down a trail that led to the west. She could hear feet pounding behind her. A dart hissed past her shoulder, splintering on a rock to her right.
At least two of the warriors had taken captives, but they were hiding them in the rocks below.
In that instant, a boy of perhaps twelve stepped out of the rocks. Keresa had a momentary glimpse of his face, tear-streaked, his mouth racked with sobs. She watched as he drew back, and launched a rock straight at her. She ducked to the side, grabbed up her war club where it bobbed on her belt, and hammered the boy with a side-handed blow. She felt the smacking impact, saw his head jerk sideways under the impact, and charged past.
As she did, a woman emerged from a narrow trail, full into Kakala’s
path. He barely hesitated as he grabbed the screaming woman, spun her around, and propelled her forward.
As Keresa turned, caught sight of a pursuing warrior, and cast a dart in his direction, Kakala demanded, “Who are you?”
“I am Dipper! Daughter of Chief Lookingbill!”
Keresa caught a glimpse as Kakala’s face slackened and a gleam entered his eyes. “It must have been your miserable sister I killed a few days ago. You don’t wish to be next, do you?”
The tears in Dipper’s eyes vanished. She gave Kakala a fierce look, but her voice shook when she said, “My son! You’ve killed my son!”
Kakala bellowed, “I want a woman named Skimmer, and I want Windwolf. I have heard they are both in your village. Is it true?”
“My boy,
you’ve killed—
”
Kakala slapped her hard across the mouth.
“Answer me!”
Her split lips bled. She wiped her mouth on her blue-painted sleeve, and she looked up, eyes burning hate. “I’m
not
telling you anything.”
Two darts hissed by to clatter on the rocks.
“Kakala!” Keresa shouted. “We’ve got to get out of here!”
He looked wildly around, shouting, “Quickly! Into those caves.”
Keresa hesitated as the warriors charged past. On impulse, she reached down, grabbing the boy she’d clubbed.
Dipper’s son? He could be of value to us. They won’t know he’s dead.

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