“I remember.”
Wolf tracks covered the ground around the girl’s gnawed body.
Wren lifted her eyes to the forest. Dark forms moved through the shadows. Their arrival must have interrupted the wolves’ feast, but the pack would return as soon as darkness fell—and Rumbler and Wren had better be gone, or they might be eaten, too. A few wolves could be bluffed, even by children, but a large pack would not easily yield such a wealth of meat.
“That was my mother’s lodge.” Rumbler lifted his chin toward one of the charred rubble piles across from the main plaza fire. In a voice almost too low to hear, he asked, “Do you see her, Wren?”
Wren’s gaze darted over the chaos of blackened poles, and bark walls. “No. I don’t see anyone in the house, Rumbler. You didn’t see her in the plaza?”
He shook his head.
“Could she have been in one of the other houses?”
A tiny flicker of hope had entered his eyes, and she could see it building to a blaze of certainty. “When your people attacked, we were both in our house. That is the last place I saw her. If she isn’t there, and she isn’t—”
“What about when your eyes were flying, Rumbler? After Mossybill and Skullcap captured you. Did you see your mother then?”
He wet his lips. “No. I didn’t see her in the village at all. Wren? Do you think … maybe … ?”
She walked forward and put a hand on his back. “Maybe, but I think we should keep looking for a while. Do you remember what she was wearing? That way I could help you look.”
Rumbler gestured awkwardly with his mittens. “The only thing that wouldn’t—wouldn’t have been eaten or burned, was a silver gorget, about this big.” He drew a circle in the middle of his mitten to indicate the gorget was about as big as his palm. “An upside-down tree is etched into the silver.”
“And she has a green tree tattooed on her forehead, isn’t that right?”
He nodded, and whispered, “Thank you, Wren. For helping me.”
“Why don’t you go that way, toward the lodges, and I’ll search the far side of the plaza.”
“All right.”
Rumbler walked for the remains of his own lodge, and began searching the wreckage. Just before Wren turned away, she saw him pick up something, clutch it to his chest, and then tuck it into his cape pocket.
On the opposite side of the plaza bodies scattered the outskirts of the village—mostly those of children. Arrows stuck out of their backs. Two little boys had died with their arms around each other, as though they’d had just enough time to see that the other lay close, and reached out. Not even the wolves had been able to tear them apart.
Sickness welled in her throat.
Jumping Badger had said … he’d said that they had struck Briar’s house first, and stolen Rumbler. Why did they have to keep killing? Why shoot little children who were running away? What harm could the children have done?
A breath of wind blew through the valley and stirred a patch of hair on one of the babies’ heads. Wren could suddenly feel it between her fingers, soft and fine—
Her stomach rose into her throat; she hit the ground on her knees, retching violently. Her bow landed five hands away. Her eyes blurred as another spasm shook her. The smell of rotting bodies and burned lodges seemed to grow more powerful with every breath she took. She retched until her belly ached and her nose ran.
Then she sat up.
Rage, like a poison, seeped through her body. It swelled her head and chest, made her skin tingle—and bestowed a bizarre clarity on her thoughts. The faces of every warrior who had been here flashed across her souls, and she hated each one. Hated them with a passion she would never have imagined she could feel. If they had stood before her now, she would have gladly killed them.
But they are my relatives. How can I wish them dead? Elk Ivory taught me how to make arrow points. Blacktailed Wolf taught Skybow how to cast a lance. Think, Wren! They could not have done this. Elk Ivory would never shoot a child of four winters in the back. Blacktailed Wolf would never cut open a woman’s womb and bash the baby’s brains out. It must have been … a few warriors. Jumping Badger’s chosen. They must have done this.
Wren nodded to herself, and groped for her bow.
As Grandfather Day Maker dipped toward the western horizon, eerie shadows were born among the ruins. Charred twisted arms that earlier had reached for nothing suddenly stretched toward Wren, dozens of them, edging closer and closer. Her fingers tightened on her bow. Did the souls that lurked near those grotesque bodies know she belonged to the Walksalong Clan? Could they smell it in her blood?