People of the Longhouse(10)

Gonda went left. It took another half-hand of time before they reached the base of the mound. It stood three times the height of a man. As Elder Brother Sun climbed higher into the sky, the layer of ice began to melt, leaving the wet shells glistening like river rocks.

“Another track,” Koracoo called, and pointed at the ground.

Gonda worked his way over to her and stared down at the place where the man’s sandals had skidded off the shells, heaping them into small piles.

There were several more such piles all the way up the midden slope. At this time of the morning, each cast a shadow. “He was careful until he got here; then he started rushing. See where he slipped?”

“Yes.”

“Stay here,” she ordered. “I’ll see if there is anything on top of the midden.”

“Koracoo, please, let me do it. You will be a perfect target standing alone at the top. There may be enemy warriors watching from the trees. I am more expendable than you are.”

“Stay here.” She started up the slope.

Gonda kept his gaze on her. She was moving slowly, climbing, studying, climbing. Since the attack on Yellowtail Village and the loss of their children, he panicked whenever she was out of his sight.

She’s all right. Leave it be.

They had faced so many hardships together. Behind them were burned villages, friends long dead, and young dreams smothered beyond all recall. He knew her better than she knew herself … and she him. Why couldn’t she forgive him?

His practiced warrior’s gaze moved over the forest, searching for odd colors or shapes—anything that would reveal a hidden enemy—then darted back to Koracoo. She was almost to the mound top.

In the sky above her, twenty or more ravens soared, their wings flashing in the sunlight. Such large flocks were a common sight these days. Whenever people went to war, they did not go alone. Carrion eaters followed them, waiting their turns to feast.

“There’s a body up here,” Koracoo called.

Gonda’s eyes widened. He glanced at the ravens again. He should have known. “A body? That must be what he was dragging. Male or female? Can you tell?”

Koracoo walked to the edge of the mound and gestured for him to come to her, but added, “Don’t disturb the tracks.”

Gonda veered wide and hurried up the opposite side of the slope. Long before he reached the top, he could smell the stench of rotting human flesh. Then he saw the girl lying on her back. The birds had pecked out her eyes and devoured most of the flesh of her face. Worse, wolves had been at her belly. Ropes of half-chewed intestines snaked across the shells. The broken shaft of an arrow protruded from her chest.

Gonda gestured to the arrow. “He was a good shot. That’s straight through the heart.”

“Or he was close.” Koracoo swung CorpseEye up and rested the club on her shoulder. The red quartzite cobble glinted. “Her clothing marks her as one of the Hills People, and look at her jewelry.”

“Yes, I see.”

Shell bracelets encircled the gnawed wrists, and beautiful copper earspools decorated the girl’s lobes. An elaborately carved conch shell pendant lay a short distance away. It was gorgeous: A False Face with a long bent nose, slanted mouth, and hollow eyes stared up from the shell. The False Face Spirits who inhabited such masks could cure illness. Had the dead girl been ill? The leather thong had probably been chewed through by the wolves and the pendant dragged off.

Gonda walked closer and searched the area around the mangled corpse for any clues that might reveal her killer. The longer he studied the body, the more unease he felt.

Koracoo clenched her fist around CorpseEye. “She is not one of our children.”

“No. Do you think we’re on the wrong trail?”

“It’s possible, but many villages have been attacked in the past few days. She may have been herded into a group of captives that included our children.”

“Child slavery is an ugly part of warfare, but it—”

“This was not warfare,” Koracoo said.

“What do you mean?”

Koracoo used CorpseEye to point. “If she’d been killed by enemy warriors they would have taken that magnificent jewelry.”

Gonda looked at the copper earspools again. Even now, though he’d have to pull them through rotting flesh, they’d be worth a fortune in trade. “I didn’t think of that.”

Koracoo walked around the other side of the body. “And no enemy warrior would have carried her up here to the top of this mound. He would have left her where she fell. Who would go to the effort of carrying a dead girl to the top of a trash mound?”

“A man who wanted to make a point.”