“For a little while.”
He rose, pulled his soot-smudged cape straight, and tugged the blanket up to Baji’s chin.
She rolled to her side to watch him.
Branches clacked as he pulled them from the woodpile and tossed them onto the coals, then he knelt and blew upon them until flames leaped through the fresh tinder. The delicious tang of cedar smoke rose. Cedars were sacred trees. Their smoke healed and purified. She breathed it in, letting it work its magic on her wounded body.
Images from the dream she’d been having when she woke flitted behind her eyes.
She’d been with Cord, walking down the trail, looking for her own body among hundreds of dead Flint warriors. She’d rounded a bend and seen herself lying face-down, covered with a thin blanket of snow. She’d lived for a while. As her strength had waned, her feet and hands had dug troughs in the ground, kicking, clawing to get away. Afterward, the victorious Hills warriors had stolen her jewelry and weapons. Even her cape had been stripped off, probably to be carried home to a beloved wife back in Atotarho Village. In the process, her limbs had been left akimbo. Cord had let out a cry and rushed to her side. “Gods, someone help me! I think she’s alive!” Cord had dragged her into his arms and clutched her tightly against him. What a curious sensation that had been. She’d understood that she no longer inhabited that body, but somehow, it was all right.
She’d had such dreams before. All warriors did. It was the afterlife soul’s way of preparing for the inevitable, but the dreams had never before been so vivid, so lifelike. The tears in Cord’s eyes still broke her heart.
Gitchi softly nosed her hand, as though to bring her back to this camp on the rocky hilltop.
“I’m here, Gitchi,” she whispered. “Everything’s all right.”
Gitchi curled his bushy gray tail over his forefeet, and his yellow eyes studied her for a long moment, before returning to the valley below.
Save for the popping and snapping of the fire, a vast silence had imprisoned the morning. Down the hill in the trees, fifty paces away, she saw the corpse of the man she’d killed last night. Shadows darkened the spot, preserving the snow where he lay. His lips had shrunken back over his gums, revealing the rotted teeth in his gaping mouth. Where Gitchi had ripped out his throat, an ocean of frozen blood spread across the snow.
Looking at him gave her a strange otherworldly sensation.
It was as though a desolation lay upon the world, lifeless, its presence so cold and indifferent it possessed not even a hint of sadness. Rather, it seemed to be watching her with the infallible eyes of eternity … and waiting. Though she had no idea what the desolation waited for.
Baji propped herself up on one elbow, then gingerly shoved to a sitting position. Her headache pounded for ten heartbeats, making her nauseous, then it slacked off to a constant, but bearable, ache.
She staggered to her feet, and walked over to slump down beside the fire. When she extended her frozen hands to the warmth, it struck her as odd that they didn’t immediately tingle, as they always did on cold winter mornings like this. She rubbed them together to get the blood going.
Sky Messenger frowned at her. When she’d risen, he’d been in the process of twisting a pot of tea down into the hot coals. He finished, moved the tripod with the cook pot to the edge of the flames, and rose to his feet. “I don’t want you to get cold.”
He walked over, retrieved their blankets, and draped them snugly around her shoulders.
His breath frosted when he said, “You must stay warm, Baji. You know as well as I do that head wounds have curious effects. Do you recall what happened to young Janoh?”
“Janoh?” She had to search her memory. “Blessed Ancestors, I do.”
“So do I. After he was clubbed in the head he seemed fine. He joked as never before. For two days he made everyone laugh out loud. His only complaint was that he couldn’t feel his feet striking the earth.”
“I remember. He told everyone that he’d learned to fly and grew angry when anyone insisted he was still running, but just didn’t know it.”
Sky Messenger gave her a grave nod. “Then on the third day he fell over dead right in the middle of the trail. It happened so fast, the warriors on the trail behind him had no idea what had happened.”
“Until later, you mean, when we all understood that his soul had been flying. It had leaked from his cracked skull and been hovering close to his body.”
Sky Messenger pointed a stern finger at her. “I’m taking no chances with your head wound.”
“Don’t want me to learn to fly, eh?”
“No.”
He drew open the laces on his belt pouch and pulled out a bag of jerky. As he crumbled the dried meat into the cook pot hanging from the tripod, he said, “In fact, if you get light-headed, or lose feeling in your hands or feet, or have any other unusual symptoms, I expect you to tell me. Agreed?”