White Otter’s lips might have been mute, but her eyes said, I’ve seen how you look at her when you think no one is watching.
“You’re changing the subject,” he growled. Then he paused, sudden inspiration coming to him. “Wait! Who was guarding the gate?”
She shook her head. “No one. I didn’t think it strange because of the dance the night before. The whole village was up for most of the night.”
Nine Killer frowned fitfully. “Stone Cob would have set the guard that night. Maybe, with all the excitement, he forgot.”
Nine Killer didn’t like things to be forgotten, not when it came to keeping the Flat Pearl Village safe.
“Thank you, White Otter. If you think of anything else, please, come and tell me.” She smiled up at him. “Yes, Uncle, I will.”
Nine Killer rose to his feet, and clasped his muscular hands. So, Copper Thunder had followed a warrior out into the night? Which warrior? All the men from the Independent villages wore their hair tied off on the left side of the head.
Then a chill ran down his back. Yes, all the men. Even the Mamanatowick’s warriors!
Twenty
The ridge turned out to be steeper than Panther had anticipated. Each foot had to be placed with care on the narrow trail that led straight up through the trees.
“Oh, be assured, War Chief, Grass Mat—or Copper Thunder, as he calls himself now—is entirely capable of arranging a marriage with Greenstone Clan at the same time he’s scheming with the Mamanatowick,” Panther declared between puffs as he stopped to catch his breath.
Sun Conch wasn’t even breathing hard, nor was the War Chief. Only Panther’s lungs labored.
Nine Killer didn’t seem to’ see the forest, or the steep ridge they climbed. He stood there, expression clouded, his right hand resting “on the war club that lay over his broad shoulders.
“Scheming what with the Mamanatowick? The destruction of his new wife’s people?” Nine Killer shook his head. “That doesn’t make sense. Why marry Red Knot at all? If he was scheming, why not just ally with the Mamanatowick, and crush us?”
“Then the man White Otter saw had to be one of yours.”
“I just can’t make myself believe it.”
“War Chief, only your heart doesn’t want to believe it. Your head knows better. You, and your allies, have shared the war trail, taken care of each other. If one of your men is dealing with the Great Tayac, you feel betrayed. Such a betrayal frays the very fiber of your soul, but you must never forget that nothing lies beyond human capability.” Panther propped his foot on the steep slope and looked up the game trail. “You need only remember your loyal lieutenant Stone Cob. Who, I remind you, was supposed to post the guard that night.”
They had climbed halfway to the top of the ridge, following the route of Red Knot’s illfated morning journey. Panther wished he hadn’t insisted on seeing the spot for himself.
“I can understand Stone Cob warning Three Myrtle Village.” Nine Killer fingered his war club and glanced reassuringly at Sun Conch. “He had kin there. Everything we do is for the clan.” “Everything for the clan,” Panther mused as his eyes roamed the old trees that rose from the steep slope. The way the naked branches wove together over his head, he might have been in a huge lodge supported by a thousand mighty posts.
From the inlet, he could hear geese and ducks. Without seeing them, he knew the loons were diving for young menhaden in the shallows. The forest around him echoed in birdsong. Not the boisterous chatter of summer, but a mellow chittering that filtered through the trees. He watched a nuthatch prance up the bark of an elm, which led his eye in turn to a flight of tundra swans winging overhead, the air rasping with each beat of their powerful wings.
The girl whose trail they now followed would miss the migration of her namesake come spring. She wouldn’t see the hordes of red knots swarming the beaches for helmet crab eggs. She would never see the return of the ospreys in the new year’s third moon. Such visions had died just up above him.
Everything we do is for the clan. He resumed his climb, pondering that terrible truth. The clan was everything: the rule and guide of the
people. That thought needled him, as if a thread lay in it, somehow, some way. All he had to do was pull it, and the knot would come unraveled for him.
Nine Killer looked preoccupied, unhappy with the thoughts circulating behind his eyes. He climbed easily, the muscles rippling in his short legs. Sun Conch followed along behind them, looking through every gap in the maze of trees, peering up the trail to ensure that disaster didn’t descend from above.