Towa asked, “What did you do, Gonda?”
He lifted his head, and guilt lined his round face. “What do you mean?”
“Koracoo doesn’t trust you. Why?”
Anger hardened Gonda’s mouth. “That’s none of your concern. I—”
“If she does not trust you, how can we? Do you have a weakness we should know about? Forgive me for asking, but in the heat of battle, such knowledge may save my life.”
Gonda seemed to be weighing what he should and should not say, and Sindak found that curious. Any other man accused of being weak would have reached for his war club and started swinging. Last night, Gonda would have. But not tonight. He turned away, dug his buffalo horn spoon from his pack, and used it to shovel meat into his mouth. After he’d chewed and swallowed three heaping spoonfuls, he quietly responded, “I made a mistake.”
“A mistake?”
“Yes.”
“A mistake that led to the destruction of Yellowtail Village and the loss of your children?”
Gonda looked like he wanted to talk about it but didn’t have the strength, or perhaps he couldn’t figure out how.
Towa said, “I had children once, Gonda. A brave little boy and a sweet, beautiful girl. I lost them both, along with my wife, to a fever two summers ago. I have some idea what you must be feeling.”
Gonda’s expression softened, but he just continued eating his soup.
Sindak frowned at Towa. He never talked about the loss of his family. Ever. It hurt too much. What was he doing? Trying to create some kind of tie with Gonda?
Gonda swallowed a bite of soup and softly said, “Do you still live the nightmare of their deaths, Towa?”
“Every day.”
As Gonda brought up one knee and propped his cup on top of it, he kept his gaze on Towa’s somber face. “Then perhaps you can imagine what it would be like to live the nightmare of your children’s lives as Gannajero’s slaves. Every instant I see my children hurt, or hungry, or being tormented by enemies. Or I fear they are dead and their souls are out wandering alone in the forest, calling out to me, trying to find their way home.”
Towa’s breath misted in the air. “That must be like having a belly full of obsidian flakes.”
The scent of the campfire grew stronger as night deepened and smoke hung in the pine boughs just over their heads.
Sindak said, “They may have just been captured by an ordinary war party, and are being well cared for. No man mistreats a child he plans to adopt into his own family.”
Gonda continued spooning soup into his mouth, chewing, swallowing.
Towa gave him some time before he added, “And even if the children are with Gannajero, they’re alive. They’re too valuable to kill. We will find them and bring them home.”
Gonda’s spoon halted halfway to his mouth. “We may bring them home, Towa, but I’m not sure even our best Healers will be able to cure them.”
Out in the forest, frozen trees cracked and snapped beneath the brunt of the icy wind, but Sindak pinned his attention on Gonda’s agonized face. Brief, hard flurries of sleet had started to whip by just beyond the pine. Gonda seemed to be watching the veils of snow as they careened down the trail.
Sindak asked, “What was the mistake you made?”
Gonda set his cup down and rubbed his hands over his face. In a voice almost too low to hear, he said, “I disobeyed an order.”
Sindak shifted, and the frosty pine needles at his feet crunched. “What order?”
When Gonda didn’t answer, Towa said, “When we accompanied Atotarho on the trading expedition, we heard rumors that Mountain People war parties were scouting near Yellowtail Village. You must have heard them, too.”
Through a long exhalation Gonda said, “A Trader came through the morning of the attack and told us he’d seen Mountain warriors just a short distance from Yellowtail Village.”
“What did you do?”
“The only thing we could. Koracoo took half our warriors out to verify the rumors. They could have been false. She wanted to make certain.”
“But you did not go with her?”
Gonda stared absently at the ground. “No. I was in charge of defending the village.”
A sleety gust rattled the branches over their heads. Sindak flipped up the hood of his buckskin cape and cradled his warm cup in both hands.
Towa softly asked, “What happened?”
Gonda cast a surreptitious glance at Koracoo, and Sindak had the vague feeling that Gonda hoped she might come to his rescue by answering that question herself. When she did not, he heaved a heavy sigh.
“She ordered me to keep all of my warriors inside the palisade until she returned.”