The People of the Black Sun (52 page)

“True enough, but do you think they're happy because anything, even death, is better than the life they've been forced to live these past few summers?”

Hiyawento glanced at Towa before he turned his gaze back to the smoke rising into the sky in the distance. “Maybe. I have to admit that I feel a bit of it myself. Anyone who tells me he can end the constant warfare and suffering, which has tormented our Peoples for generations, must be a supernatural Spirit hero. In fact, Towa, I am absolutely certain that Sky Messenger is the human False Face promised in the old stories.”

Towa shifted the pack on his back, rebalancing it upon his shoulders. “I am, too, but I still do not understand this raucous euphoria.” He paused a moment, then a broad smile came to his face. “I mean within a few days, we'll probably all be in the Land of the Dead, and it doesn't have a single decent Trader. I'm not ready for that.”

“How do you know it doesn't have any decent Traders?”

“Oh, come, come, do you know
anyone
who's seen a Spirit wearing an exceptional buffalo wool shirt, or carrying arrows made from extra hard chokecherry from the far west?”

Hiyawento thought about it. “No.”

“See? Someone would have noticed. People always notice such things.”

“You're trying to take my mind off what's ahead, aren't you?”

Towa chuckled. “Just making conversation.”

“Yes, I see.” Hiyawento smiled.

In the distance, a man's head appeared, bobbing along the trail. Hiyawento couldn't see his body yet. He ran just below the swell of the trail.

“Runner coming.”

“Hmm?” Towa followed Hiyawento's gaze, but apparently didn't see anything. “How far away?”

“I forgot you can't see well at distances. If we maintain our pace, our paths will collide in five hundred heartbeats.”

Towa squinted hard at the place he thought the runner must be. “If the runner has any sense, he'll take one look at the crowd behind us and veer off the trail into the forest until we pass.”

“Unless he's coming to find us. The Bur Oak scouts should have spotted us one-half hand of time ago. I'd hoped they would give my runner information about what was happening and send him back as I'd asked.”

Towa's handsome face tensed. “Maybe the scouts saw the horde following us, and they're still trying to figure out what to do—providing they're not already under attack and too busy to care about us.”

“Towa, can you stay here? Slow Tiyosh down while I run ahead to see who he is?”

“Yes, go on.”

Hiyawento forced his legs to work harder, trying to get far enough ahead that he'd have at least thirty heartbeats before the masses arrived.

As he pounded down the trail, he saw the man crest the hill. Different cape. Not his messenger. Hiyawento pulled an arrow from his quiver, nocked his bow, and held it aimed at the ground—just in case.

The man shouted, “Hiyawento!” and pounded to meet him, his short black hair flopping over his ears.

“Disu?”

Sindak's man, from Atotarho Village.

Disu's broad face looked like sculpted walnut—tanned and shiny—running sweat. As he trotted up, Hiyawento opened his mouth to speak, and Disu said, “Don't talk, just listen. First, your messenger is safe. He was just exhausted. That's why I came. Second, Tagohsah did not lie to you. Bur Oak is about to be attacked by both Atotarho and Wenisa. And”—he took a deep halting breath—“Sky Messenger is Wenisa's prisoner. I don't know how it happened, but he—”

“Are you sure?” he asked in panic.

“Yes, absolutely.”

“Is he alive?” Hiyawento's mouth had gone dust dry.

“For now, but his head wound looks bad.”

“Where's Baji?” He didn't ask about Gitchi because if Sky Messenger had been captured the dog had certainly been killed while trying to protect him.

“Baji? The Flint War Chief? I have no knowledge of her whereabouts. Are you expecting a Flint war party?”

“No. I—”

“Then please listen. We have no time. When your messenger told us you and the crowd would arrive around dawn, we gathered our warriors to discuss—”

“You have warriors?” He gripped Disu's arm. “How many?”

Disu sliced a hand through the air to cut off the discussion. “It's a long story. There are thirty-one of us hiding in the forest to the south of Bur Oak Village. In the spirit of the new alliance, Saponi wishes me to tell you that while he can lead them into battle, he is not a War Chief, and you have led warriors against Wenisa many times. If you will accept command of these warriors, they have each sworn loyalty to you. Including me.”

Hiyawento's grip tightened. “Tell me quickly about the battlefield. How many warriors will we be facing?”

“Around two thousand from the Mountain People and another three to four hundred of Atotarho's warriors.”

The numbers stunned Hiyawento. “Atotarho only has three or four hundred? What hap—”

“Will you command or not?” Disu asked impatiently.

“Yes, I accept. I don't know how much we can do, but thirty good warriors can do something, and we will. Where exactly is Saponi holding his warriors?”

“In the hills just south of where Matron Zateri's forces were camped a few days ago.”

Hiyawento swung around to look behind him. Towa and Tiyosh were still twenty paces away. He said, “Wait here,” and ran back to them.

Towa's face had gone pale. “Is that Disu?”

“Yes. Bur Oak is surrounded and Sky Messenger has been captured. I must accompany Disu back to evaluate what's going on. Can you lead the crowd to the hills just beyond the old sunflower fields south of Bur Oak Village? Keep them hidden. Even if they will not fight on our side, when the time comes the sight of so many people suddenly appearing will disrupt the battle and give Jigonsaseh a little more time. One last thing.” He put a hand on Towa's shoulder. “Before you arrive, make Tiyosh remove that cape. If you and Tiyosh can arrive a few hundred heartbeats before the crowd, it will look like Sky Messenger was just captured by the Mountain People moments ago. There's a slim chance it might rally the Landing warriors to join the Peace Alliance. If it does, we need to get the warriors separated from the rest of the crowd, and ready to fight. Can you do that?”

“Of course I can, I'm a Trader. I can talk people into anything.” He slapped Hiyawento's shoulder. “I'll meet you there.”

Hiyawento sprinted back to Disu.

If the Faces of the Forest were on Sky Messenger's side, how could everything have gone so wrong?

 

Fifty-three

When sunlight finally crept across the meadow, Negano was standing beside Atotarho and Nesi, but his eyes had fixed upon Chief Wenisa, waiting to see the big man's reaction when he finally noticed how few warriors Atotarho possessed. Wenisa's army remained in the same position, surrounding the camp on three sides, but many warriors had squatted down or gathered into small groups to talk. Their strange Mountain People accents lilted through the warm smoky air.

Chief Wenisa's voice trailed away suddenly and his jaw slackened as his gaze swept the meadow. After a time, he bent down to whisper something to his War Chief, Powink. Powink subtly nodded. A tall, skinny man, Powink, had a long sallow face that gave him a perpetually sad expression. Like Wenisa, his clothing was little more than a thin leather sieve. So many tears and rips shredded his knee-length war shirt that from a distance a man might mistake them for black paintings.

Nesi whispered, “They know.”

“Apparently,” Negano softly replied.

For the first time, Negano could see that Wenisa had one extraordinary eye. It was dark as coal and filled with a strange wolflike clarity. The cruelty of a predator that feels neither regret nor shame in the act of killing, for it is simply life. His shaggy eyebrows tilted upward and had wild gray hairs curling from their midst.

Negano shifted his weight, trying not to appear uneasy. He'd ordered his three hundred seventy-six warriors to align on the western edge of camp, just out of bowshot of Bur Oak Village, and out of bowshot of most of Wenisa's army. In the open space between the armies, rotting corpses sprawled. Bones, kicked and scattered about in yesterday's attack, lay in tangles, held together by fragments of shirts and pants. Barely fleshed skulls studded the battlefield like half-sunken rocks. Each wore a shrunken rictus that resembled a gleeful smile, as though the souls that remained with the bodies knew they would have company by nightfall. All day yesterday, as his warriors had run back and forth across the meadow, the skulls had rolled and tumbled. At one point, there'd been so many bouncing in the air that the battlefield had resembled a macabre ball game.

Atotarho's gaze slid to Wenisa and his wrinkled mouth tightened. Gray hair hung over his sunken leathery face, flipping in the light breeze. The rattlesnakes braided into the locks flashed when he repositioned his walking stick to support his crooked body. “There's nothing we can do about it.”

Atotarho turned and gave Negano a hateful look, as though it were his fault that so many had deserted in the night.

Negano took the hint. “If you don't mind, Chief, I think I'll walk among our warriors to judge their moods.”

“Do so.”

Atotarho returned to discussing the strategic situation with Nesi, his former war chief of many summers ago. As Negano started to walk away, Nesi gave him an apologetic look.

Negano needed to speak with Nesi alone … but the opportunity had not yet arisen, and he had to face the fact that it may not.

Negano weaved silently between the tangled corpses, his empty hands clasped behind his back, threatening no one. He wandered, nodded to warriors, and soaked in the fragments of conversations he heard. These were tired men and women, disheartened more than ever. As he'd ordered, they stood with their backs to the Standing Stone nation, and their lowered bows aimed vaguely in the direction of the huge Mountain army facing them across the meadow. Each studied Negano as he passed, ready even now, even after everything he'd done to them, to follow him into the Land of the Dead if that's where he led them. Loyalty lasted too long. It cost too much. Though he thanked the Spirits that warriors had that failing.

Negano slowly made his way to the southern end of the line, and stopped beside a muscular woman warrior named Ohonsta. She had a reputation for humor, but this morning her smooth triangular face showed nothing; it was empty, inscrutable. Her red-rimmed eyes stared at him as though gazing out across some vast unfamiliar country, which he knew came from utter exhaustion. “It won't be long now. Pass the word down the line that my first order is going to sound like madness, but they must not hesitate to follow it.”

Ohonsta blinked. She seemed to be trying to imagine what that order might be. She said, “You're going to order us to slice our own throats? Everybody is ready to do that anyway. It will make perfect sense.”

He smiled briefly. “We aren't certain the Mountain People will betray our agreement, but if they do, we've made other arrangements. Be ready.”

“I'll pass the word.”

Negano continued walking. To his left the charred palisade of Bur Oak Village rose like a hulking forty-hand tall monster. Widely spaced warriors with bows stood upon the exterior catwalk. The two interior catwalks, however, looked vacant, which meant High Matron Kittle no longer had the warriors to guard them. In addition, many of the guards he could see were white-haired elders or children barely tall enough to peer over the top of the palisade. Yesterday, every time a child had fired, he or she had first climbed up, probably onto a wooden block, to aim and let fly. His warriors had, of course, seen the same thing and begun targeting the children before they fully got into position to aim. Negano had no notion how many they'd killed, but the number had surely left parents reeling with grief.

Today they would fight to their last breaths to justify the sacrifice of their childrens' lives.

When Negano reached the place in the middle of the line that stood fifty paces from the gates of Bur Oak Village, he stopped and took a long moment to stare up at Sindak who was staring squarely back. The slant of sunlight cast shadows over Sindak's deeply sunken eyes, but his hooked nose and lean face were clearly identifiable.

As Ohonsta's message traveled down the line of warriors, it moved from mouth to mouth past Negano, and his warriors stared questioningly at him … then they turned and followed his gaze to Sindak. Barely a handful of days ago, Sindak had been their War Chief. He had led them to victory after victory, and they'd loved him for it. Ominous chatter started. Negano made no attempt to still it.

He was walking a tightrope over the abyss. He had to watch his step. He'd positioned his forces here in the hopes that his words would not get back to Atotarho. If they did, the old chief would suspect treachery and immediately issue an order of his own designed to supercede anything Negano ordered. Would his warriors still obey him if he countermanded their Chief? He didn't know.