People of the Moon(14)

With word of the rededication of the great kiva, a crowd had gathered—mostly farmers from outlying farmsteads. They had journeyed in from their shabby pit houses in the canyon bottoms, or from their cornfields along the mesa tops. Rudely dressed, and for the most part ignorant, Leather Hand despised them as filthy vermin. At sight of him or his warriors their eyes bugged out, and their mouths hung open in wonder. They might have been seeing gods instead of mere men.

Beyond them, the irregular shape of the Tall Pinon Great House baked in the bright sun. Oriented with the long axis running north-south, the three-story edifice had been plastered with tan mud, the images of the old gods still visible on the walls. Unlike so many of the towns, Tall Piñon’s great house hadn’t been repainted. As much as Matron Husk Woman disapproved of Webworm and his policies, she’d disapproved even more of Crow Beard’s thlatsinas.

Leather Hand fought the urge to snarl at the thought. While great houses were the symbol of the Straight Path Nation’s political authority, the kivas were the real heart of their Power. How dare the Priests upset the fragile balance by desecrating them on a false Prophet’s orders?

“Well?” one of the Priests asked.

“Continue with the reconsecration. The kiva now basks in beauty.”

Smiles passed between the Priests. Leather Hand could see the artists’ visible sighs of relief.

He took no time for the others, but gestured his warriors to follow and headed for the great house. As Leather Hand crossed the road and passed through the crowd, they melted away from him and his sweat-damp warriors like fat from a hot obsidian blade.

Up the gentle slope he passed a line of black-on-white seed jars set close to the wall and climbed the pine-pole ladder to the first-story roof, then up to the second. He stopped before the third-story room block. Turning on the clay roof, he looked out across the flat with its blocky pattern of buildings. In the southeast, Thunderbird Mountain thrust up like a low dark triangle against the skyline. To its left he could see the sprawling shape of Green Mesa. Far View Town was up there—the peg that anchored the Blessed Sun’s authority firmly among the Green Mesa villages. That was the ancestral home of the Buffalo and Coyote clans of the Made People. For that reason, Far View was symbolic. Given its commanding view of the vast northern frontier, it was tactically vital. More than one hundred warriors lived there under yet another recalcitrant Blue Dragonfly Clan Matron. With its stone-lined reservoir, tall towers, and remarkable canals, it reeked of the First People’s authority. Lose it, and suffer a blow to the very heart of the Straight Path Nation—not to mention line-of-sight communications with the Blessed Sun in Flowing Waters Town.

He turned his gaze northeast to the Spirit Mountains. All but a few patches of snow had melted from the high peaks. On a scorching day like this, he could almost wish he were up there in those cool heights.

Those rugged high mountains belonged to no one. They were the refuge of desperate barbarians and slaves who had fled the authority of the Straight Path Nation. Hunting parties of the Tower Builders who lived up north frequently prowled there. Sometimes those high peaks and mountain meadows were the haunts of even wilder barbarians who drifted in from the buffalo plains and then vanished back the way they had come.

Not all dangers were human. Rumors told how the high country was the home of monsters, malicious spirits, and witches. It was said that a man who died in the shadows of the timber-cloaked canyons would lose his soul forever—that it would wander lost and frozen, struggling through snow in winter, confused and dazed by the dense stands of trees in summer.

Turning his gaze to the northwest he could see the distant Salt Mountains: isolated peaks deep within the Tower Builders’ lands. To the west were the green summits of the Cedar Mountains. They shimmered in the hot light. Just to their south lay Windflower Village on the northern banks of the River of Souls. Beyond that lay the Red Rock lands, where the Blessed Sun’s domain extended clear over to the Great Canyon.

Straight south the Bearclaw Mountains had a silvered look in the hot light, and below them, the fanglike projection of World Tree Mountain jutted skyward.

He could see it all: his province and area of responsibility as ordered by the Blessed Webworm.

“The first and foremost task,” Webworm had said uncertainly, “is to reassure the people. The south is not an area of concern. Traders tell us that the Mogollon chief, Jay Bird, is happy to rest on the laurels of his victory. No, the problem is in the north. Some of the Matrons, Husk Woman at Tall Piñon and White Cloud Woman at Far View Town, along with their allies, are working against me. Seeing their lack of respect, the subject peoples under their rule may take this opportunity to break away. If they do, it could even spread to the Made People. That, or the Tower Builders might think us vulnerable and weak.” He had looked straight at Leather Hand and said, “You will take as many warriors as you need to stabilize the north. Do not fail me.”