“What!” Gonda exploded. “We can’t stop! We have to keep looking! The snow is growing deeper by the moment. By morning, their trail will be completely hidden!”
Koracoo’s gaze wandered over the forest and came to rest upon a big pine. The area beneath the thick branches was dry and clear of snow. It was the best place to take shelter for the night.
Gonda seemed to sense her decision. “Koracoo, no. Please, let’s keep searching.” He gave her an imploring look, begging her to listen to him, to keep going.
Somewhere out in the forest, a turkey gobbled. Koracoo turned toward the sound, and Sindak hoped she’d order him to hunt it for supper.
Instead, she said, “No, Gonda. Let’s make camp and fill our bellies with what’s left in our packs. We’ll start again at dawn tomorrow.”
“But, Koracoo, we can still—
“No, Gonda.”
“You’re being hasty! Think this through before you—”
“Sindak?” She turned to him. “Could you and Towa start cracking dead branches from the trees and piling them in the dry area beneath that big pine?”
“Yes, War Chief.”
Sindak and Towa trotted away from the trail. As they snapped off the lower dead branches from two elm trees, they piled them in the crooks of their left arms and watched the interplay of emotions on Koracoo’s and Gonda’s faces.
“You’re being foolish,” Gonda said through gritted teeth. Every muscle in his thin wiry body had contracted and bulged through his cape and leggings. “We should keep searching as long as we have light. Every moment we rest or delay, our children—”
“That’s enough, Gonda,” she said, trying to keep her voice low. “Come. Let’s go over and clean out some of the pine duff for a fire pit.”
As she started for the pine, Gonda called, “You blame me, don’t you?”
She stopped and turned to face him. “For what?”
“At that last fork in the trail, Sindak wanted to go left, but I insisted we go right. You would have taken the left fork, wouldn’t you?”
Koracoo stared at him, her face still and desolate.
Sindak whispered, “Dear gods, the panic in his voice gives me a stomachache.”
Towa’s shaggy brows drew together. He whispered back, “If it does that to you, imagine how Koracoo feels. But he’s right—your trail was the better choice. If he hadn’t argued so vehemently …”
Koracoo softly said, “Gonda, I was the one who made the final decision to take the right fork. Not you. If it was the wrong choice, I am to blame. But we will not know that until tomorrow when we go back over our tracks and find the place where we erred.”
Gonda shook his fists as though he longed to scream at her to ease his own fears. After four or five heartbeats, he replied, “You don’t trust me, do you?”
Exasperated, she threw up her hands, then turned and walked to the pine, where she ducked beneath the overhanging branches and crawled back into the dry shadows.
Gonda trudged through the snow and crawled in behind her. “Koracoo, answer me.”
She propped CorpseEye against the trunk, then unslung her pack and quiver, laid them aside, and used both hands to start digging a hole for the fire pit in the pine duff. Even in the dim light, the red cobble head of CorpseEye gleamed like old blood.
When she just kept digging, Gonda reached out and his hand tightened around Koracoo’s wrist like shrunken rawhide. “I know what you’re thinking. Just say it.”
Sindak and Towa both went rigid.
Koracoo lifted her gaze to Gonda. Death lived in those dark eyes.
Gonda released her as though he’d been holding a poisonous serpent, then slumped to the ground breathing hard. “Forgive me. I didn’t mean to—”
“You’re arrogant, Gonda.” Koracoo resumed digging. “It has always been your failing. One of these days, it will cost you—or someone you love—his life.”
“You mean their lives, don’t you? Our children?”
She crawled away and began breaking off the dead branches at the base of the trunk, tossing them into a pile near the fire pit.
Gonda watched her expectantly, then dropped his face into his hands. “This isn’t my fault, Koracoo. It’s yours. If you weren’t always trying to make peace with our enemies, we’d have killed them all long ago. There’d have been no attack on Yellowtail Village.”
Her eyes filled with such a deep, aching sadness that Sindak had the insane urge to run over and wrap his arms around her. The fact that she’d kill him stopped him.
He placed another branch on the big bundle in his left arm. “I can’t hold another twig, but I’ll feel like I’m interrupting a private argument if I go back now.”