People of the Longhouse(29)

Eleven

As she slid deeper into sleep, the dream swept over Koracoo … . She led her war party up the trail toward Yellowtail Village at a dead run. Ahead, a gaudy orange halo gleamed against the velvet darkness. Veils of snow gusted by. The pines and oaks drooped mournfully beneath the weight, creaking and groaning in the wind. And in the depths of the trees, she saw the silver-silk flash of people moving. Quiet. Deathly quiet. As though they feared being seen.

Heartbeats behind them, enemy warriors filed out of the darkness, clutching bags or bows, smiling as they trotted right for Koracoo’s war party.

“Mountain People!” she cried, and her fatigued warriors charged out to meet them. The sounds of clubs striking flesh, grunts, and shrieks tore the night.

Koracoo leaped upon the closest man … .





Her hands jerked. She woke and glimpsed the plank walls of the prisoners’ house, smelled the sweet walnut oil in the lamp.

A dream … just a dream.

But when her eyes fell closed again, the fragrance of the oil became the pungent odor of smoke, and blind terror stalked her as she again charged headlong up the trail with her heart beating in her throat. The sound of one man’s feet pounded behind her.

“Koracoo! This is foolish!” her deputy, Deru, called. “We should stay with our war party!”

As she rounded a bend in the trail, he caught up with her. He was a big, muscular man with massive shoulders. He gripped his war club in a tight fist.

“Go back, Deru!” she yelled as two Mountain warriors leaped onto the trail in front of her. Koracoo danced in with CorpseEye. She slammed the first man in the face, and spun to catch the second man behind the knees. When he hit the ground, she was on top of him, hammering his brains out. Her warriors flooded around her, shrieking war cries as they charged for home.

And ran straight into a group of enemy warriors herding freshly captured women and children before them. All of the children were crying, and several of the women clutched babies in their arms.

“Those are my children!” a man cried.

Another yelled, “That’s my wife!”

The sharp cracking of war clubs filled the night. Women and children scattered. Koracoo waded in with her war club swinging. In the darkness, she couldn’t tell the identities of the children who ran past, but she kept searching, searching for her own family. Asleep, dead, or reborn in another body, she would know her children. She knew the way they moved. Even in darkness she would recognize them, wouldn’t she?

A mother with four children rushed down the trail toward her, one little boy gripping the woman’s torn dress and sobbing. As the boy ran closer, Koracoo could see his blood-soaked shirt.

Koracoo broke free of the battle and ran hard for the village. Deru was right beside her.

“Gonda must have been overrun.”

“Clearly,” Deru answered.

How had she so miscalculated the number of warriors he would need to defend the village? She’d missed something. Something critical. He should have been able to hold off a force three times his size.

Gonda, where are you?

Koracoo leaped a fallen log and sprinted for the rear palisade, her heart jamming against her ribs. Enemy warriors still surrounded the burning village. Twenty or more stood laughing near the front gates. Were they totally unafraid? Was there no one left to fight?

Forgive me, Gonda. …

Tears of desperation burned her eyes. She reached the wall—found a charred section that had been mostly burned through—and used CorpseEye to bash a hole in it. Then she hit the ground and slithered through on her belly.

When she got to her feet, the air was so thick with smoke she could barely see across the plaza, but the vision stunned her. Every longhouse burned, the flames leaping fifty hands into the sky, and the dead scattered the ground. Cries and screams laced the air. Many people wandered the plaza, turning over bodies, obviously searching for loved ones.

“Koracoo!” Deru scrambled through the hole and stood at her shoulder. “This is dangerous. What do you think you can do here? We should at least wait until our war party catches up before we—”

“I must find out what happened.” And find Gonda and my children.

Koracoo trotted through the smoke. As she veered around a smoldering section of wall, she caught sight of a little boy crouching in the shadows. Five or six summers, his soot-coated face was streaked with tears. He stared up at Koracoo and clenched his jaw.

“Oh. No.” Koracoo headed toward him.

“Koracoo, we don’t have time. If we’re going to do this, we—”

“I can’t just leave him here. He’s alone and scared.”

She hurried to the boy. Blood clotted his cape. The child stared up at her as she stroked his filthy cheek.