People of the Moon(151)
“What about their warriors? Could they be a threat?”
“You can muster a large war party. The Great Sun can dispatch armies. In battle they are invincible.”
“Then why don’t they ever come here?” Webworm had begun to smile, as if he’d caught her in a lie. “They took you—never to return.”
“Why should they?” Nightshade tilted her head back, staring down her fine nose in disgust. “We have nothing they want, or need. Don’t you understand? They are old. Their traditions go back to the beginning of the world. While our ancestors were moving from camp to camp, theirs were already building temples to the sun. It was their Trade that awakened the Stone Temple Builders in the south hundreds of sun cycles ago. To the forest kings we are nothing more than curious barbarians living somewhere out in the dimly perceived desert wastes.”
“Barbarians?” Wind Leaf snorted.
She spared him a quick glance. “The sort—barely above animals—that eat other human beings.”
Webworm made an irritated sound and continued scraping on his little snake effigy. “Go on back to Ironwood and Night Sun. Tell them their days are numbered.”
“The patterns are cast, Webworm. I’ve come to Dance with you.”
“What? Dance with me?” He looked up, taking in her age and smiling at the insanity of it. “It might strain you too much.”
Her voice dropped to a conspiratorial whisper. “I can send you to them.”
“Them? Who?” Webworm demanded.
“Cloud Playing and Matron Featherstone. I can free you.”
His face had gone white. He looked at Wind Leaf. “You know the bear cage? The one we kept the young grizzly in? I want it placed in the plaza. Put her there, stripped naked, where everyone can see her. It’s time the myth of the Mountain Witch is finally put to rest.”
Nightshade laughed, turning, and as Wind Leaf hurried in pursuit, she called over her shoulder, “I can free you, Webworm.”
“That’s quite a family you’ve got,” Crow Woman said as they followed the path that led across the valley bottom.
Wrapped Wrist glanced over his shoulder at the sunset. The sky was glowing red and orange over the ridges. To the north, the smoke plume was cast in evening bronze by the slanting light. Compared with that morning, the plume was larger, puffing like a giant mushroom over the high peaks and trailing off into the east in a dirty smear.
“They’re clan kin. Surely you grew up with the same.”
“No, Wrapped Wrist, I didn’t.”
Gods, did everything he said have to set her off?
Then she seemed to relent, saying in a softer voice, “I had no relatives.”
“Everybody grows up with family, cousins, lineages, and clans, although I hear some of the Tower Builders up north don’t have moieties.”
“No,” she replied shortly, “not everybody does.”
Cautiously he asked, “What about your mother?”
“Why do you want to know?”
“We travel together. I’d like to know something about who I’m traveling with.”
“She died when I was little more than five.”
“And your aunts and uncles?”
“I never knew them.”
“How could you never know them?”
“Do you have granite for brains?”
Giving her a sidelong glance, he could see her pinched expression. “Well, you surely weren’t a slave. You’d have …”The bitterness in her face was all the answer he needed.
As the light fled, he tossed the revelation back and forth between his souls. What must her childhood have been like? How on earth had she ever escaped to become one of Ironwood’s most trusted warriors?
“What incredible courage,” he whispered.
“Courage?” she whispered softly. “I’ve been scared all of my life.” As if she realized what she’d said, she hissed angrily at herself.
After a time he asked, “Where did you grow up?”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
The red ember of sunset faded in the west; gloom settled around them as they entered the trees. A party of hunters, packing deer, turkeys, rabbits, and several porcupines, passed, calling greetings.
“Someone’s going to be happy,” Wrapped Wrist noted. “The dryer it gets, the harder the hunting is.”
She said nothing.
“It’ll be a long dark walk to our divide camp. There’s a little meadow ahead that would make a good camp.”
Silence.
“Are you always infuriated?”
“Don’t worry about me, stumpy.”
Stumpy? He hadn’t deserved that ember being stuck between his blankets.