People of the Black Sun(6)
She lowered her eyes and watched the brassy splashes of light cast over the hearthstones by the flames. They fell irregularly, like leaf-shaped puzzle pieces cut from a golden sunset.
Smiling ironically, she said, “Actually, it would be far more in my interest if you moved to my village. That is the tradition of our peoples. When men marry they move to the wife’s village. That would suit me even better.”
His brows lifted. “I hardly think that’s a good idea. Your village may well be doomed.”
She laughed. Warriors’ humor. Bizarre, given the circumstances.
She touched him one last time, squeezing his hand. “Sleep well, my friend.”
She turned and headed back across the freezing battlefield.
Three
Just a shred of sound, an exhale from a human throat.
Twenty paces ahead, a small sparkling cloud of frosted breath formed in the darkness.
The most feared witch in the land, Ohsinoh, watched it drift through the maple trunks. He’d finally located his enemy, the man they called Sky Messenger. Ohsinoh continued easing his leg through the frozen ferns, his movements barely hissing through the winter forest.
Just beyond the maples, Sky Messenger aimlessly wandered among the dead. A tall man, and muscular, Sky Messenger had a round face and slender nose. Straight black hair brushed his shoulders. Following behind Sky Messenger was his pet wolf, Gitchi.
Ohsinoh frowned. That could complicate matters. The bond between Sky Messenger and the old gray-faced wolf smacked of the supernatural. The wolf would die protecting him. Which meant Ohsinoh would have to kill the wolf first.
In the distance, the half-burned villages of Bur Oak and Yellowtail nestled together. The three rings of palisades that surrounded each village—constructed of upright logs—had been burned through in so many places they resembled mouths of rotted teeth. Smoke continued to rise from the charred areas. Even at this late hour, firelight gleamed through the gaps. Though men and women still stood on the rickety catwalks, keeping watch should the enemy return, they looked exhausted. Many heads nodded, trying to stay awake.
Ohsinoh silently inhaled and let his breath out slowly. Somewhere in the trees behind him, a Flint warrior paralleled his course. A hired murderer. A traitor to Chief Cord. To enlist his skills tonight, Ohsinoh had been forced to pay the man enough to ransom a small village.
Sky Messenger leaned over to peer into the eyes of a dead woman warrior. His lips moved, speaking to her, saying something soft that Ohsinoh couldn’t hear. How convenient that he was completely alone, except for Gitchi. Where, Ohsinoh wondered, was Sky Messenger’s avowed friend and protector War Chief Hiyawento?
Ohsinoh’s gaze shifted to the south where Hiyawento’s camp nestled on the hilltop.
Dark figures moved around the fire. Hiyawento was probably there, still grieving over the murder of his two baby daughters. Was he remembering their smiling faces? It must grow harder every day to teeter around the edges of the emptiness that had grown inside him. By now, Hiyawento’s souls must be dark open chasms that dropped away forever, as though all the light in the world had been obliterated in a single stroke when his little girls died.
Ohsinoh barely stifled a delighted chuckle. That had been too easy. Not even a challenge for his witchery.
Sky Messenger lifted his face and seemed to be studying the campfires of the dead that sprinkled the night sky, perhaps speaking with the Blessed Ancestors who lived along the Path of Souls that led to the Land of the Dead.
As Ohsinoh watched him, his sense of triumph dwindled, returning to a hatred so potent it left him feeling slightly ill. He’d first met Odion—Sky Messenger’s boyhood name—when he’d seen eleven summers. Odion had been a pathetic, whimpering little fool, terrified of everything. Ohsinoh had hated him for it.
As he pursued his prey, Ohsinoh clutched the evil-looking charm he carried in his right hand—a tortoiseshell covered with animal fur. Two white eyes, carved of shell, stared out from the center of the fur. It was unnerving, even to him. The charm reminded him of the old stories of half-human beasts that had wandered the land just after Tarachiawagon, the Good-Minded Twin, created the world. He’d found the charm among his mother’s things, cached beneath a dead red cedar tree in the faraway country of the People of the Dawnland. His mother, Gannajero, had been dead for twelve summers—but her death still devastated him. The violent manner of her murder had doomed her afterlife soul to wander the earth forever. At the age of thirteen summers, he’d been lost, starving, without hope … until her soul had stalked from the darkness and crouched before his fire. “You young idiot. Get up! I’ve come to share all my secrets with you. If you’ve the sense to obey me, you are about to be rich and powerful.”