People of the Longhouse(73)

The man staggered and had to grab hold of a birch limb to keep standing. Then he lifted his head, saw Towa, and pinned him with wide, vacant eyes.

Towa blinked. The impact of that gaze struck him like a spectral fist in the dark. His scalp prickled. When his grandfather had been dying, there had been a moment at the very end when Grandfather’s eyes had suddenly opened … but there was no soul there, no awareness, just a sort of surprised stare. That’s what he saw now.

Softly, Towa called, “Who are you?”

The man didn’t seem to hear him. He kept holding onto the branch for a few instants longer. Then he swayed on his feet, and slowly toppled facefirst to the ground.

Towa watched him for fifty heartbeats before he released the tension on his bowstring and gazed out at the trees again. Only a few faint triangles of sunlight managed to pierce the canopy. The rest of the forest was cloaked in shadow. The man had been calling to a friend. Was there someone else out there Towa needed to worry about? He inhaled a breath and let the scent of wet wood fill him, then cautiously walked forward.

Towa stopped two paces away and studied the man’s shaven head and the white feathers in his roach. The man didn’t seem to be breathing. His war club had bounced from his hand, but it was within easy reach.

Towa slung his bow and tucked his arrow back into his quiver; then he pulled his war club from his belt.

Leaves crackled as he walked to stand over the man. He kicked him in the side. Nothing.

Towa knelt and scooped leaves away from the man’s face. His brown eyes were open, and dead. But just to make sure, Towa touched the man’s eyeball with his finger. Again … nothing. Towa flipped the man’s cape up and tugged his pack from his shoulders, then rummaged through it.

Stunned, he pulled out a magnificently etched copper breastplate. Leather cords hung from the corners of the plate, clearly for tying it on. A master artisan had etched the copper with hundreds of miniature False Faces. Some had wide smiling mouths and long noses. Others had hideous, terrifying expressions with enormous eyes.

Towa rested it to the side and continued going through the pack. The breastplate seemed to be the only thing of real value the man owned—along with several bags of food.

“You won’t need these anymore,” he said softly as he drew open the laces of several small sacks that contained jerked duck, hard acorn meal biscuits, sunflower seeds, walnuts, and hulled beans. Even a bag of what looked like chunks of dried squash.

Towa stuffed all the food into his own pack, then rose to his feet. He didn’t know what to do with the copper breastplate. It was too large to carry in his pack. But he certainly wasn’t going to leave something so rare and beautiful here to corrode. It was awkward with his wounded shoulder, but he managed to flip up his cape and tie the breastplate on over his chest.

Towa squinted at the man’s trail. He could see it clearly in the leaves. It was serpentine, weaving all over the place. He followed it eastward.

Late in the afternoon, Towa reached up, taking sight on the sun and moving his hand, palm width by palm width, to the western horizon. He had less than one hand of time left before he’d have to head straight for the fork in the trail to meet Sindak, Gonda, and Koracoo. He continued following the dead man’s trail.

When he entered a thicket of shining willow, he saw two deep knee prints, then another set, and nearby he found grooves in the mud left by frantic fingers. The man had fallen down several times in the thicket, clawed his way back up, and staggered on. Towa kept walking. On the other side, he saw a narrow deer trail lined by holly and headed for it, expecting to see more of the man’s tracks there.

Instead, he found another set of tracks. The man’s lost friend?

Towa knelt to examine them. The distinctive herringbone weave was made only among the Hills People. He whispered, “A Hills warrior? What are you doing out here, my friend?”

As he rose to his feet, he wondered if one of the other Hills villages had dispatched a war party into Flint lands. If so, this man had gotten separated from his party, because there was only one set of prints.

Or … perhaps Atotarho had decided he couldn’t trust Koracoo and Gonda?

Towa’s thoughts drifted back to his conversation with Koracoo the first night on the trail, when she’d suggested that Atotarho had not sent Towa and Sindak to help rescue the girl, because he’d wanted his daughter to be captured. That idea had been plaguing Towa for days. His hand rose to touch the sacred gorget where it rested beneath his cape. Atotarho had given Towa specific instructions to present the gorget to Gannajero within moments of laying eyes upon her.

But he did not know why. The gorget was valuable, yes, very valuable, but would it be enough to buy back Zateri and the other children?