People of the Lakes(14)
He was called the Black Skull. His past had been filled with terrible deeds—both inflicted and suffered. Some thought him possessed by malicious Spirits. Others suspected that a more malignant evil lingered in Black Skull’s soul. Most believed him to be the greatest warrior who had ever lived. All considered him the most dangerous man alive. No one called him a friend.
Green Spider shook his head as he watched. “He’s haunted, terribly. He doesn’t like me much. He doesn’t like anyone.”
‘ ‘ is a man in pain, searching, as you are. As I am.”
“What could Many Colored Crow be searching for?”
“A hero, a Dreamer willing to travel north and recover a sacred Mask. Are you that hero? I will show you Power and Truth, allow you to experience what few other humans have ever experienced, if you will commit yourself to my cause.”
Green Spider stared uncertainly at the brooding warrior, the first seeds of doubt cast in his soul. Did he only Dream? Or did he truly fly like the Spirit of Many Colored Crow?
“Concentrate on the warrior. Green Spider. Look into his soul.”
As the morning Songs of the Red Bloods filtered through the City of the Dead like predawn mist, Black Skull–armed with his deadly war club–ducked through the low doorway and stepped out to stand between the carved poles. Muscles rolled under the sun-bronzed skin of his massive shoulders. He perched on the balls of his bare feet, poised on powerful legs that corded as he shifted his balanced weight.
Scars crisscrossed his flesh, some ‘ them puckered, others ragged. His face, too, had taken its share of abuse. A Copena war club had crushed the left cheekbone, leaving his face lopsided.
The jaw had been broken and had mended askew, which added to the off-balanced effect.
Hefting his war club, Black Skull bounded to the top of the platform mound behind his house.
Despite the wreckage of his face, keen black eyes cataloged the familiar scene, checking, as he did every morning, that everything occupied its place, that nothing had been disturbed in the night.
The doorways remained closed on the storage huts, the misty haze of smoke rose lazily over the charnel houses below the death mounds. Here and there, fires crackled up from the crematoriums, accompanied by the chants of mourning relatives.
He nodded, shifting his gaze to the east, where the sunrise remained hidden behind thick clouds. His wealth of blue-black hair had been knotted into a single tight bun at the nape of his neck.
His scarred right hand gripped the heavy war club, made from the stout wood of an old hickory. The weapon had been carefully crafted, thinned, and polished. The warhead consisted of a stream cobble the size of a goose’s egg, ground to a sharp point on one end, then grooved. Green sinew had been used to bind it to the rectangular wooden, shaft. When the sinew dried, it had shrunk tight around wood and stone. Inset immediately below the cobble were two copper blades—each sharpened into a murderous spike.
As he stared out at the City of the Dead, Black Skull began swinging his club, loosening the muscles in his shoulders. He switched the club from hand to hand, twirling it ever faster as he listened to the weapon’s whirring song. Weaving and feinting, he began to leap from foot to foot, shifting and spinning as he twisted and swung his club. With the grace of a dancer, he pirouetted around the terrace on his mound top, aware of the harmonic perfection of his body as he moved.
“I would have to travel with that killer? It is said that he murdered his own mother.”
“He did. Her ghost continues to torment him. Like you, he seeks to surround himself with order, with predictability. Unlike you, he is unwilling to look beyond his rage.”
With one final leap, Black Skull vaulted into the air, dropping into a crouch as he landed; the wicked club flashed down to stop within a finger’s width of the sandy surface of the mound top.
Panting, Black Skull straightened, raising the war club to the blessing light of the new day. From under his feet, he could feel the approval of the ancestors, hear their faint voices as the ghosts of the Winter Clan murmured. Throughout the night, the ancestors had slipped through the walls of his house and lurked about Black Skull’s bed, irritating his Dreams, blowing eerily across his face, and whispering into his ear.
Black Skull filled his lungs with the chilly air and watched his breath condense into a frosty cloud. The odor of cook fires carried to him, and he could sense the eyes of the people checking on him, knowing he practiced with his club every morning.
A dog barked, and the crying of a child carried to Black Skull’s position atop the Spider mound. In the gray morning, the central temple where the Elders waited seemed particularly ominous.