People of the Longhouse(88)

“Find cover!” she ordered. “Now! Run for the trees!”

Gonda leaped up instantly and dashed away, his long legs stretching out, heading for the forest shadows. He was accustomed to such abrupt orders, but Sindak and Towa stared at her as though too stunned to move.

Koracoo growled, “I ordered you to run! Run!”

Both men seemed confused, but they charged after Gonda, disappearing into the trees.

Koracoo raced in the opposite direction, pounding along, and stamping out, the tracks they’d made this morning when they’d left the ramada. She ran up and back, confusing as much of the sign as she could in the time she had. It wouldn’t help much, but it might force the enemy to stop long enough that she could kill them.

When she spied a pile of deadfall in a copse of sourgum trees, she dove behind it. The scent of damp, rotting wood filled her nostrils. A few scarlet leaves still clung to the branches and rattled in the breeze. From here, she could watch the trails in both directions and see across the clearing to where Gonda was hiding. And he, in turn, would be watching her.





Thirty-five

It didn’t take long.

Less than one thousand heartbeats later, two men trotted up the trail, coming from the east. They had their heads down, tracking. They would have passed the ramada where Koracoo’s party had made camp last night. The enemy warriors knew their prey was close.

Koracoo studied their plain buckskin capes and rabbit-fur leggings. They bore no clan symbols and had no distinctive designs that she could clearly identify as coming from any of the five Peoples south of Skanodario Lake. An old knife scar cut a white ridge across the tall man’s ugly face. He was big, with meaty shoulders, and would be a formidable opponent if she had to face him. The other man, shorter and skinny to the point of looking starved, would be easier.

When they trotted to the place where she’d tried to obscure the trail, they stopped. They were less than twenty paces away.

The big man said, “The tracks go in both directions here.”

“Yes, someone started running back and forth, as though panicked.”

Skinny’s gaze moved around the clearing, searching for hidden threats. He had a strangely narrow face, as though the bones had been pressed between boards when he’d been a baby. “Do you think these were made by people from Hawk Moth Village? Or is the old witch right and we’re being followed?”

Hot blood surged through Koracoo’s veins. The old witch? She clutched CorpseEye in a hard fist.

“I don’t like this, Galan. If it weren’t so lucrative, I’d say we just sell all the children and run home to our families.”

Galan nodded. “Well, go, if you want to. But I’m staying. This war is making me rich. In another moon, I’ll have enough goods to provide for my wife and children for the rest of my life.” His gaze scanned the pile of deadfall where Koracoo hid. He seemed to sense something amiss in the shapes and colors. “Not only that, I can do whatever I want to, and my clan can never find out. How often does a man have such freedom?”

“Don’t you worry that someday you’ll meet one of the children, and she’ll be able to identify you? I do.” Hanu tapped the scar on his face. “Even twenty summers from now, I’ll still have this.”

Galan laughed. “Gannajero never sells children without a guarantee that they’ll be bashed in the head when the buyers are finished with them. By the time she lets them go, they’ve seen too much to be allowed to live. Just make sure you do what you want with them before she sells them.”

The desire to kill consumed Koracoo’s flesh at the same time that grief drowned her heart.

These men were scouts. They must have been dispatched to search out Gannajero’s back trail. That meant the children were not far ahead of them. Her odds of rescuing them would substantially improve if Gannajero had two fewer warriors.

All I have to do is follow their tracks right back to her lair. …

Probably. But they’d lost the trails many times before. Which meant she couldn’t just kill them. A pity.

She was shaking with rage when she laid CorpseEye aside and nocked an arrow. Shifting slightly, she aimed at the big man’s chest, and let fly. Before it had even struck his heart, she’d grabbed CorpseEye, leaped the log, and was pounding toward Galan.

The man saw her, cried, “No!” and raised his war club. His feet kicked frost into the air as he charged her, screaming.

Koracoo lifted CorpseEye just as the man swung at her head. When their clubs met it sounded like lightning cracking. He shoved her away, and Koracoo ducked, spun, and bashed him in the kidney.

“You bitch in heat!” he cried, and swung his war club blindly. “I’m going to kill you!”