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

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BOOK: People of the Raven (North America's Forgotten Past)

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She’d been trying to feed the matron spoonfuls of fish stew. Stew had dribbled down the front of Astcat’s dress.

Cimmis walked across the lodge and untied his belt pouch. It hurt to see his wife like this. Only a few moons ago, she had been bright and happy, her smile like sunshine in his soul.

“When did her soul fly?” he asked as he placed his pouch beside their bedding hides.

“Father, it was as though when you left this morning you took her soul with you.”

Cimmis nodded.

Before leaving, he and Astcat had discussed what to say to the Council. They had agreed it would be better to limit attacking recalcitrant villages that refused to send tribute; it was better to wait until they could call in favors from the other North Wind villages. Perhaps gather additional warriors before pushing the Raven villages.

She’d reached up and tenderly touched his face.
My husband, the
fact is, they cannot pay. These are difficult times for all of us. If we continue to harm them, they will strike back.

Kstawl rose and returned the bowl to the stew bag that hung on the tripod by the fire. As she poured the bowl’s contents back into the bag, he watched her. Her innocent oval face wore a perpetual frown.

Apparently nervous beneath his gaze, she wiped her hands on her brown dress and lifted the water bag beside the fire, preparing to wash the bowl.

“No, Daughter, don’t wash it,” he said, and walked over for the bowl. “Perhaps I can get her to eat.”

“I hope so.”

Cimmis stirred the stew and ladled the bowl full again. Kstawl stood quietly, awaiting further instructions.

“It’s late. Go and sleep. Thank you for trying to feed her.”

“I’ll return first thing tomorrow, Father.” She ducked through the flap.

Cimmis took the warm bowl to Astcat. Her eyes had stopped jerking uncontrollably. Now she stared vacantly at a fixed point in space. A small improvement.

“Here, my wife,” he said softly, and sat down beside her. “You must eat something or you’ll be as skinny as a weasel. I’d have to set your belongings outside my lodge.”

They always joked about divorce—about setting the other’s belongings outside the lodge—because it was simply unthinkable. Since their Joining day, he had taken captive women to his bed, even married them to establish beneficial political alliances, but he’d never loved them. His love for Astcat was like his heartbeat, constant and necessary.

Cimmis put his weak left arm around Astcat and hugged her shoulders. “Please try to eat. You know how it upsets me when you stop eating.”

He carefully raised the polished horn spoon full of fish stew to her lips.

She dutifully opened her mouth, chewed twice; then her mouth gaped and chunks of fish fell down the front of her dress.

Much practiced, Cimmis used the spoon to scoop up one of the chunks, and fed it to her again. This time, she chewed and swallowed.

Cimmis smiled. These were the small victories that made him happy. Not exacting the tribute owed them. Not leading war parties, or winning Council arguments.

Cimmis ate a bite of fish stew and gazed around the lodge. Blue-gray smoke spiraled up from the fire, hovered near the smoke hole, then escaped into the cold night beyond.

Most of their belongings were gone. A moon ago, when it became clear they could not survive the winter without additional tribute, the Four Old Women had made the decision to move to Wasp Village. He had ordered everything except what they needed every day to be packed and sent on ahead.

He hadn’t realized that on those rare occasions when Astcat’s soul returned to her body, she would need those things. Not so much because of what they contained, but because the baskets reminded her of where she was in the lodge. He’d come home right after dispatching the warriors with the first litter loaded with their things and found her wandering the lodge like a lost child.

He finished the stew and hugged her shoulders again.

“Well, I had another difficult meeting with the Elders. They needed you there to guide them, my wife.” He hoped she could hear. “They dismissed our argument and voted to continue the attacks.” He exhaled hard, feeling hollow. “I have been ordered to send the Wolf Tails after any North Wind person who has sided with the Raven People.”

Astcat made a tiny sound of dismay, but she still stared blankly across the room. Her fingers, however, had tightened on her yellow leather skirt. Cimmis gently tucked locks of her gray hair behind her ears—she’d hate looking so untidy.

“I explained your fear that more attacks might force the Raven clans into an alliance against us, but they refused to listen.” He clenched his good fist and made a face that resembled Old Woman North’s scowl. In a voice that sounded very much like hers, he croaked, “They owe it to us! It’s ours and we need it!”

He lifted her hand, kissed her fingers, then clutched them to his heart.

Moccasins shuffled on the trail outside, and a man called, “Chief Cimmis, I bring a message.”

Cimmis gently removed his arm from Astcat’s shoulder, made certain the hides supported her, then went to his door. As he shoved the hide aside, a rush of cold air swept in, rattling the shields.

“Yes?”

Gray-streaked black hair draped Red Dog’s burly shoulders and framed his round face. In the firelight, his bent nose seemed to jut unnaturally to the left. He wore a tattered deerhide cape and carried a stone-headed war club. He’d clearly been running since Cimmis
had first dispatched him; his face was streaked with dirt and soot, and his legs trembled.

“Forgive me for arriving so late, my Chief,” Red Dog said, and bowed. “As ordered, I passed Starwatcher Ecan’s party. He wished you to know that they were victorious at Shell Maiden Village. They took the tribute owed us and are heading to Sandy Point Village.”

“Sandy Point Village? Why? They’ve sent their tribute.”

Red Dog brushed a stringy mass of graying black hair from his brow. “Ecan said he wished to pass through Sandy Point Village on his way to the Moon Ceremonial at War Gods Village.”

Cimmis smoothed his hand over his gray beard. Ecan always attended the Moon Ceremonial as a sign of support for Weedis the North Wind Healer, whom the Four Old Women had sent to live in the village. This journey, however, was different. Weedis had defied the Four Old Women, refused to demand that her villagers turn over the tribute they owed. For that reason—no matter the wisdom of the act—Ecan had other orders.

“Did Starwatcher Ecan tell you why he was going through Sandy Point Village?”

“No, my Chief.”

Cimmis could see the reserve in his warrior’s eyes. “But you don’t think it’s a good idea?” He smiled. “Go on, speak.”

“Chief Rain Bear … well, I knew him well when he served here. He has struggled to keep the peace. Starved his village to pay tribute. His wife is recently dead. It would not be smart to act in a way that would alienate him.”

“You and I agree on that. What of Rides-the-Wind?” Cimmis asked. “I expected him to return with you.”

Red Dog winced. “He’s not coming.”

“Why not?”

“My Chief, I am only a messenger.”

“Yes, yes.”

“He says he may never return.”

Cimmis felt a cold wind blow past his soul. “Did he give you any reason?”

Red Dog, nobody’s coward, swallowed hard, a pained look on his face. “He said you and Ecan were dancing on the edge of the abyss, my Chief. And that if you weren’t careful, you would both fall.”

Cimmis narrowed an eye. “I will flay the skin from his body.” To Red Dog: “And the young matron?”

“Rides-the-Wind was being very cantankerous. He said he would
not curse Evening Star for Ecan. In fact, he’ll be praying for her safety.”

Cimmis rubbed his wrinkled brow. He had a headache building. “I shall show him a thing or two about falling into the abyss when I use cooking stones to roast his intestines in his living body.” He paused. “I need you to find Wind Scorpion.”

Red Dog shifted uncomfortably. “My Chief, I’ve been running for days.”

“I must see him
now
. Then get a good night’s rest. Tomorrow morning I want you to run a message back to Ecan. New orders from the Council.”

“Yes, my Chief.”

Red Dog bowed and shuffled toward the slave lodges that huddled together lower on the mountain.

Cimmis let the flap fall closed. He felt old beyond his four tens and seven summers.

E
very muscle felt pulled from its socket as Red Dog made his way across Fire Village to the low lodge where Wind Scorpion lived. By the gods of the sky, that had been a close one! He had seen the anger boiling behind Cimmis’s eyes when he’d been told that Rides-the-Wind wasn’t returning. The threat Cimmis had made about cooking the old man’s guts hadn’t been an idle one.

Stones were heated in a crackling fire to white-hot, and a slit was made in a man’s belly from the chest to the groin. With smoking sticks, the stones were plucked from the coals and dropped through the slit into the living intestines. The screams twined with the sizzling. All in all, it was a most gruesome way to die, smelling your guts as they cooked inside you.

Red Dog pondered that as he walked. The world was slipping sideways like a boulder on a mountain. How long before it slid and tumbled into the abyss Rides-the-Wind had mentioned?

He approached Wind Scorpion’s lodge, low and menacing, like something crouched in the darkness.

Red Dog hadn’t liked the man from the moment they’d met four summers ago. Wind Scorpion came from the east, from out in the sagebrush country beyond the mountains. It was said he’d lived with the Striped Dart People, but he had obviously once lived here, among the North Wind, and even in Fire Village itself.

Whenever Wind Scorpion looked at Red Dog, it made the hairs on his neck stand up. Something about the man, including his very smell, gave Red Dog the ghost-shivers.

Flickers of light could be seen around the door hanging as Red Dog called, “Wind Scorpion? Chief Cimmis calls you.”

Nothing. Only the sound of scurrying from inside the lodge, and a worried gasp, as though someone had been caught unawares.

Under normal circumstances, Red Dog would have waited, curious to see what happened, but tired as he was, he bent and ripped the hanging aside to see a naked slave girl jerk a red wig from her head. Her skin was painted white, dabbed with clay. She had a lithesome body, perfectly formed. She stared at him in horror, the firelight playing on her strained face.

“What are you doing?” Red Dog demanded. “Why are you here?”

She swallowed hard, crossing her arms over her breasts, shrinking down to hide her nudity. “I—I am Wind Scorpion’s slave, warrior. He—he was called away. I thought … thought you were—”

“Where is he?”

She was trembling now. “A runner came. A man. I didn’t hear what was said. Wind Scorpion just smiled, as if in triumph, and packed his things.” She was almost babbling. “He left just like that, and said nothing to me about when he’d be back. It’s been almost two days now.”

Red Dog scowled, stuck his head into the lodge, and peered around. To his amazement, images of white-skinned women with flowing red hair had been drawn on the walls. Each had oversized breasts and exaggerated hips around swollen vulvas.

Red Dog made a face and asked, “And you have no idea where he went?”

“No, warrior.” She was wringing the red wig with one hand as she stared at him.

“Well, if he comes back, tell him the great chief wants to see him
now!
”

Red Dog ducked back into the sanity of the darkness and sighed as he turned and started wearily back for Cimmis’s lodge. Now he had more bad news to deliver.

He had seen a man’s guts boiled, could still smell the stench of it. As he approached Cimmis’s lodge, his belly began to crawl inside him.

Gods, what could he do to save himself from this madness? Or was salvation already beyond his ability?

Three

T
he stars were nowhere in Starwatcher Ecan’s thoughts as he lay slumped on the weeping woman. She was really just a girl. If she was lucky, she’d seen ten and three winters. For all he knew, he might have been the first man to ever take her.

What was it about a weeping woman that made coupling so much more satisfying? Her sobbing body trembled beneath him. Was it that in that moment he had no doubts about himself? And, as Song Maker knew, he had overcome so many doubts. He and Kenada. Dead Kenada. Murdered Kenada.

In the flickers of firelight her eyes glinted, vacant, as if her soul had fled at the hot rushing of his seed inside her. Waves of her long black hair lay tumbled about the woven-bark matting upon which they lay.

How could a woman sob without leaking tears?

The same way I do, when I think of Kenada.
He hadn’t shed a tear at the news. A cold emptiness had yawned inside him, like a falling of water into a black lava tube. He hadn’t known that such a small thing as a man’s body could hold such a bottomless pit.

He reached out and wound his fingers around the girl’s silky black hair and remembered the smile on Kenada’s lips. He’d been two summers younger, never the leader, but always a willing accomplice. To know that he had been brutally ripped from Ecan’s life was like suddenly living with only half of his soul.

Ecan shifted, rising to stare down at the girl. Her round face shone with a copper tint in the firelight, the vacant eyes like glistening obsidian. No movement stirred her lips. But for the sucking sobs that shook her, she might have been as dead as Kenada.

The last time he’d looked down on a woman like this, it had been Evening Star, daughter of Matron Naida, heiress to the Ash Fall Clan. Unlike this shining black hair, he’d looked down on red curls, stared into blue eyes, and run his fingers down her pale cheeks.

A woman, North Wind or Raven, was still a woman. Just as warm, just as lifeless.
Except that Evening Star hadn’t wept when he drove his hardened manhood inside her. Jaw locked, she’d fixed her sight on something to the side, and lain there, lifeless but for the occasional blink of her eyes.

Who would have thought that she could kill Kenada?

He had been so careful to break her soul into submission. He had carefully planned the attack, using every element of surprise. When it was over he had brought the surviving captives into the plaza, where burning lodges illuminated the scene. He had watched Evening Star’s expression when he walked behind her mother, Matron Naida, and used a razor-sharp obsidian blade to slit her throat. Then, drenched in the matron’s blood, he had walked to Evening Star’s struggling husband, stripped him, and gutted him like a living fish so that his intestines tumbled into the fire.

Evening Star had withstood it, face set against the horror. It was her daughter’s screams that had finally broken her. Ecan would have sworn he saw Evening Star’s soul leave her body. She had been like clay afterward, compliant to orders. So much so that he had taken her as a slave, an example of his Power, a warning to anyone who would challenge his rising authority.

And this girl? He wondered as he searched her face for any expression. Had he truly driven her soul from her body, or might it return sometime? If he could just get it right, think of the incredible Power he would wield. No one would challenge them. No … him. There was no more they. Kenada was dead.

“Are you like her? Can you come back to yourself?”

The girl didn’t answer. The tremors running through her body massaged his manhood, and he felt himself stiffening again. Was that where Kenada had made his mistake? Had he rolled off Evening Star’s body, satiated? Ecan could imagine his brother, flaccid after his release, perhaps with his arm over his head, eyes closed, as Evening Star, like a wraith, rose from the robes. He could see her long red hair falling around her pale body as she hovered over Kenada. At
the thought of her striking, Ecan thrust his hardened manhood into the girl beneath him. She made no noise; only the opening of her mouth betrayed any awareness at all.

A
t a slight moan, War Chief White Stone turned, staring uneasily at the shelter where Starwatcher Ecan lay with the captive girl. Ecan made him nervous. Something about the man had changed over the last year, as if his soul were decomposing from a faint fuzz of mold to downright rot and corruption. Ecan had grown from dislikable to dangerous. And now, Kenada, who had balanced his moods, was dead.

He checked his guards, each positioned to cover the approaches. The canoes had been pulled up on the beach beyond high tide. The rest of his warriors lay rolled in hides and matting, blissfully asleep.

He wished that he, too, could lose himself to Dreams. White Stone rubbed the back of his neck and stared out at the fluorescing surf. Above, clouds covered the Star People. And what, he wondered, did the North Wind ancestors think of this current lunacy?

As war chief, he knew full well that Matron Astcat had lost her soul, and Old Woman North—an aged halfwit—had the force of personality to whip the other old women into obedience.

We’re losing ourselves.
White Stone stared helplessly at the night sky. The Council didn’t understand. They remained, locked away on their mountain, unaware of the reality building against them.

White Stone turned his attention back to the surf. It would be so easy. Just push one of the canoes out past the surf, and then paddle north. There were still islands out there rich in berries, roots, fish, and shellfish, where a man could make it by himself.

“Father?” the faint voice called.

White Stone sighed and turned his steps toward the other side of camp, where Ecan’s beautiful painted hide lodge stood. He stopped short of the colorful image of Killer Whale and said, “Your father is discussing matters with some of the warriors, Tsauz. He’ll be here soon.”

That was another thing. What kind of nonsense was it to bring a
blind
boy on a war party like this? The child was a constant nuisance and was never allowed near the fighting, but Ecan still demanded at least four warriors be left to guard the boy.

“I had a bad Dream,” Tsauz called from inside.

“We all have bad Dreams. Go back to sleep, boy. Your father will be here soon.”

“I saw a man, half human, half coyote. He was winding souls out of people. Pulling the souls out with a string.”

What did a blind boy see? The thought sent a chill through White Stone. “And what did he do with them?”

“He put them into stones, War Chief.”

E
vening Star shoved a dripping spruce bough out of the way and continued, half running, half stumbling, down the foggy mountain trail. The tortured terrain here consisted of long ridges thick with timber, steep slopes, and rushing white streams that carved deep ravines. In places, sandstone, shale, and limestone lay canted; in others, lava flows and volcanic mud had flattened the land. Covering it all, the riotous tangle of ferns, vines, brambles, lodgepole pine, fir, and spruce made travel perilous as she picked her way westward toward the sea.

She hadn’t slept in three days. Tired, cold, and wet, she plodded on. The small pack holding her matron’s dress and few remaining belongings swayed on her back. Her bruised and cut feet felt as heavy as the stones that abused them. Tangles filled her long red hair, and her finely sculpted face was blotched with mud and scratches. When she stared into pools, haggard blue eyes reflected the nightmares that filled every waking moment. The real horror didn’t start until she fell into fitful sleep.

She stopped, bracing a hand against the smooth bark of an alder. Overhead, squirrels chattered. The winter forest seemed to wait, anticipating her next move.

As did she.

She laughed bitterly, and massaged her aching breasts. Her moon was coming. Thankfully Ecan and Kenada hadn’t planted a child inside her.

She stared around at the somber forest. A larch, red-brown in winter drab, mocked her.

The Raven People would almost certainly refuse her sanctuary. Worse, Ecan’s warriors were on her trail. But there was one hope, one woman who might make the difference.

A stick cracked.

She spun around to look.

There’s no one there. Just keep running.

The heady confidence she’d felt after her escape had drained away like water through a cracked shell cup.

Run. Run.

As though to spur her onward, Ecan’s eyes watched from her memory. No lines marked his lean, pointed face. He might have been North Wind, but his hair was straight and obsidian black, like that of the Raven People.

His low laugh echoed in her heart—so vivid he might actually have been standing in the spinning mist, behind her. A chill ate into her like a badger into a carcass.

She forced herself to run harder.

As she entered a forested section of the trail, the odor of smoke came to her. Giant spruces rose around her like black spears. The barest of breezes stirred the massive branches. She stopped and braced her trembling legs.

They will probably kill me the moment I step into their village, but what other choice do I have? If I can’t find sanctuary, Ecan
will
kill me.

Wind Woman gusted up the slope, and with her came the sound of voices. The Raven People’s language had a breathy, lilting quality.

Evening Star clenched her fists to bolster her courage. The idea of going to Dzoo, the strange Raven People Healer, had come to her two moons ago, just after Ecan took her captive. He’d claimed her as his slave while the fires of her burning village raged around them. He had stripped her, forced her to the ground, and taken her there, amidst the wreckage of her dreams. Then she was prodded, kicked, and dragged back to Fire village, shoved into a small lodge, and left to relive the memories.

One guard had watched her during the day, another at night. They followed her everywhere. She couldn’t even walk into the forest to relieve herself without a leering audience. When she wasn’t “entertaining” Kenada, she spent her days hauling firewood, weaving sea-grass capes, and carrying Ecan’s, Cimmis’s and Kenada’s waste out to the midden in the forest.

For a while, she had believed Ecan when he claimed he was part god. Then one day she had been carrying out his waste. She’d looked down into the wooden bowl before splashing it onto the other trash below the palisade; his feces had looked no different from those of a slave. He was a man. Nothing more.

It had taken another moon to lull her guards into believing she’d accepted her fate. One night, after he’d finished with her, Kenada had dozed off. In that moment of vulnerability, she’d eased the obsidian
knife from his belt and begun hacking at his throat. Naked, covered with his blood, she had dressed. Casting around for her few belongings, she had rolled her beautiful dress and stuffed a few supplies into her small pack before slipping out into the night.

Now, trembling, she eased around a bend in the trail and stared at the village she could see through gaps in the trees. Breakfast fires winked and sent blue smoke toward the morning sky. Dark shapes passed in front of them: moving humans who might, within a hand of time, be smiling over her dead body.

Bark huts wavered in the veils of fog, and patches of silver-crested waves crashed onto the shore to the west. First she would wash, then put on her fine dress and don her jewelry. She might be seeking asylum, but she would do it as Naida’s daughter, not some ragged forest sprite with fir needles clinging to her hair.

She didn’t see any guards.

But very soon … they would see her.

BOOK: People of the Raven (North America's Forgotten Past)

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