People of the Black Sun(117)
Kelek walked over and sank down on the deerhide-covered bench that lined the rear wall. Her chamber was large, four paces long by three wide. Pots and baskets nestled on the floor beneath the bench, and sacred masks hung upon the divider walls.
As she tiredly leaned her head back, a soft groan escaped her lips. The Wolf and Snipe clans had been especially vindictive today, going so far as to threaten to Outcast the entire Bear Clan, but she’d paid them little attention. It was the Bear Clan elders who had stunned her. For the first time in her life, her relatives had accused her of shaming them. It had been a difficult fight, almost unbearable.
“The old fools have no vision. If they’d leave me alone, I would make our clan legendary!”
She blinked up at the dried plants that hung from the roof poles. The corn husks had been peeled back from the ears and braided together into long ropes, allowing the kernels to dry faster. Each time someone walked by outside, his or her shadow danced over the corn braids, sunflower heads, and bean vines. Occasionally she heard soft voices, people briefly speaking with Hakowane.
Cold and desperate for sleep, Kelek didn’t bother to undress. She stretched out on her sleeping bench and pulled the hides up over her cape.
Some time later—she couldn’t say how long—Kelek was jerked from deep sleep by what sounded like someone entering her chamber. Her eyelids felt like granite weights as she fought to open them. The fires must have burned down to ashes. The only light in the longhouse came from the campfires of the dead. Streaming down through the smokeholes, their gleam coated Kelek’s chamber like a faint wash of gray paint.
She blinked at the dimness, saw nothing, and closed her eyes again. The door curtain had probably just been carelessly brushed by Hakowane.
She was almost back to sleep when she heard someone breathing close by. Barely audible, the rhythmic puffs fluttered her hair across her cheeks. Like slow poison, terror crept through her veins. Her eyes jerked open.
Less than two hands away, wide feral eyes blinked down at her. She tried to scream, but a heavy hand clamped over her nose and mouth.
He whispered in her ear, “I have been instructed to tell you that I am not Wolf Clan. I am Bear Clan, sent by our clan elders.”
He struck like lightning, the sharp knife slicing her throat in one clean stroke. When he removed his hand from her mouth, she tried to scream, but her lungs didn’t seem to have air. For twenty heartbeats she flailed on her bench, while warm blood spurted over her shoulders and chest.
Her murderer stood by watching, apparently ordered to remain until it was over.
Anger filtered through her panic. The Bear Clan bargained with the Wolf Clan. To prevent a war of retribution, they must have offered to eliminate the problem themselves …
As her vision started to go gray and sparkling, her muscles relaxed and her body went featherlight, floating.
She faintly heard her door curtain whisper when her murderer left.
Forty-five
The Path of Souls glittered brilliantly across the dark night sky, sparkled through the forest, and reflected from the branches with a liquid-silver intensity. Voices and laughter rose from around the hundreds of campfires that scattered the valley below. The air felt warmer tonight, cold, but not bone-cold, which probably meant they had a few warm days coming. Winter solstice was still about two moons away. If they were lucky, they’d have more than a handful of unseasonably pleasant days before winter’s frigid presence arrived in earnest.
Saponi lay on his belly in a dogwood thicket, staring down at Bur Oak Village. The palisades had been devastated. Glowing orange gaps flared as the breeze shifted. A short distance away, Yellowtail Village stood like a black burned-out husk.
“Gods, the battle was terrible. I really felt for them today.” Disu, who lay stretched out beside him, shook his head. “I wonder how many they lost?”
Saponi didn’t answer for a time. “More than Matron Jigonsaseh could afford to lose.”
“That’s for certain. If she lost only one-third of her trained warriors, that means she has less than two hundred left.”
“Two hundred against perhaps one thousand Hills warriors … and there are another two thousand Mountain warriors on the way.”
When they’d heard the story racing through Atotarho’s camp, it had stunned them. Mountain warriors joining forces with their old enemy, the Hills People? One moon ago no one would have believed it possible. Not just because they’d spent half of last summer killing each other, but the Mountain People were in a bad way. The plague had hit them hardest of all. Many Traders had carried the tale far and wide. The Mountain People had been so sick they hadn’t even been able to harvest their crops. Their corn had moldered in the fields, and their sunflowers been plucked clean by birds and squirrels. Any other crops that had survived had been taken in raids by their neighbors.