Sindak glanced at the warriors who stood guard on the catwalk. They held their weapons in tight fists, staring out at the coming night as though they sensed it, too. Many had their jaws clenched.
“Don’t you feel that, Towa?”
“Feel what?”
“That eerie sensation, as though there’s something out there, something not human. And it’s waiting to pounce on us.”
“Like a bear?”
“No, not like a bear, like one of the Faces of the Forest, or a Stone Giant. Maybe even a Flying Head.” A prickle climbed Sindak’s spine. Flying Heads were terrifying creatures. They had no bodies, just long trailing hair, and huge bear paws for hands, which they used to capture and eat anything they wished, including humans.
Towa laughed. “Lightning? Flying Heads? You are very inventive, my friend.”
Sindak grinned, but he couldn’t shake the feeling that something, or someone, was watching him with glistening inhuman eyes.
Nine
Sonon perched on a high branch, hidden by the red maple’s thick trunk. Less than twenty paces from Atotarho Village, he had a good view.
They’d found the baby he’d covered with leaves.
Moving carefully lest the sentries on the catwalk see him, he folded his arms beneath his cape and hugged himself. Odd. He could not feel the child’s afterlife soul moving through the trees around the village. He’d been hoping to see her again. It hurt that he did not, but perhaps that was good. The girl’s soul might be staying very close to its body, which would make it easier for a Healer to find it and tie it to the child’s flesh again.
Only the faintest whisper of wings broke the silence as an owl sailed over the treetops and, somewhere in the distance, a wolf yipped. Both creatures were out on their nightly hunts, looking forward to finding and killing prey to fill their bellies with warm blood.
Sonon wiped his sweating hands on his cape. Men needed blood as much as wolves. At the edges of appearance and disappearance there was always blood.
He studied the warriors who walked the palisade catwalk. He could see their heads bobbing along as though disembodied. All around them, the endless eyes of night were opening, but the guards saw only the shadows cast by the soft glow of the evening. The communion of the night was lost to them.
Sonon rubbed his eyes. The communion was all he had. The hunter became the hunted. Perceiver the perceived. The endless eyes stared into eternity, and it stared back.
Sonon patiently waited until the darkness grew too deep for the sentries to glimpse him; then he carefully descended the maple, silently dropping from branch to branch. The wet leaves squished when he dropped to the ground.
Grandmother Moon would awaken soon. He needed to get away before she flooded the forest with light. Slipping behind an elm tree, he faded back into the striped forest shadows and melted into the blackness.
Ten
“Atotarho looked frightened,” Gonda said. “And I don’t think he’s the type that frightens easily. What do you think scared him?”
The odor of mildew pervaded the dark prisoners’ house, and insects skittered across the floor, or perhaps they were mice. Gonda couldn’t be certain. If he was lucky, they were mice, and one would scurry close enough that he could catch it and twist its head off to ease his hunger.
“Whatever it was, he didn’t want his People to overhear him talking about it.”
Koracoo sat on the floor with her back against the wall. In the moonlight that penetrated around the door, he could make out the shape of her body. No one but Gonda would realize how desperately worried she was. He could see it in the tension in her shoulders and in the way her jaw was set slightly to the left.
“Was he worried about alarming his warriors?” Gonda asked skeptically.
“My gut tells me he didn’t feel he could trust them with the knowledge.”
“Perhaps it’s just his war chief he doesn’t trust. I didn’t like him, either.”
Wind gusted outside and breathed through the wall behind him, chilling his back. He wrapped his cape more tightly around his shoulders.
Fatigue numbed him, and long ago he’d learned that sleep was essential to survival. Death walked at every warrior’s shoulder, waiting for him to drop his guard so that it could dull his wits and slow his reactions. Less than a blink was enough.
“You have to get some rest,” he said.
“I need to think for a time.”
Gonda stretched out on his side and closed his eyes. He tried to concentrate on the sensation of breathing, of air rushing in and out of his lungs. It distracted him from thinking about tomorrow. If all went well, they would return to the murder site, pick up the children’s trail, and track them down. If all did not go well …