“Silly, in this temperature, a snake would be as slow as a stick.” But he kept a hand atop the lid, clamping it in place as he rounded the great kiva. At the southern entrance several people waited, taking their turns one by one. Each carried a package, jar, or bundle of cloth: all equinox offerings tied to some sort of prayer for the coming season.
When his turn came, Spots carefully entered, bearing the beautiful pot. He made his way down the stone-and-pole steps and crossed the floor to the great crackling bonfire.
“You come to do honor to the season?” a white-robed Priest asked.
“I—I have an elk heart.”
“We receive your offering,” the Priest intoned. “Place it in the fire. Let the smoke rise and bear it to the Star People.”
A swallow stuck in his throat as Spots grasped the bowl, tossing the lid and bloody heart into the center of the flame.
Even the Priest stepped back as the heart exploded in a loud hiss.
“You’d think it was a snake.” The Priest laughed.
“Yes,” Spots agreed absently. “You would.”
He was turning to go when, to his amazement, he swore he saw a bloodred serpent come slithering out of the big severed artery. It whipped and twisted in the flames, growing smaller until it was but a flicker of red leaping this way and that over the coals.
“Gods,” Spots breathed.
“Tell the next to enter,” the oblivious Priest told him.
Once outside the Dusk House walls, Spots lifted the beautiful vessel high. As he smashed it on the hard-wet ground, he heard a faint cry in the snow-thick night.
Blessed Gods, what did I witness this night? Then, in panic, he ran as he’d never run before.
Fifty-eight
As wind-whipped snow whirled out of the night, Bad Cast kept to the shadows below the Pinnacle Great House wall. The sound of fighting rose above the moaning of the storm: wood clattering on wood; screams that tore from wounded throats; shouts of anger and insult; the meat-smacking sounds of war clubs hammering home.
The war chief had given him permission to leave after he’d guided the warriors to the mountaintop, but Bad Cast lingered. His heart pounded in his chest. His mouth was fear-dry, and his breathing came in gasps. Every muscle was charged to the trembling point.
A body sailed off the roof, thumping loudly as it landed in the snow a hand’s length from Bad Cast’s foot. The dying man issued a rasping gasp, twitched, and went still.
Peering, Bad Cast was able to determine that the face belonged to a stranger. A well-crafted war club lay beside the man’s limp hand.
Bad Cast grabbed it up, surprised and awed that the handle was so warm. He hurried to the stairway that led up to the first floor. As his head cleared the wall he could see knots of warriors surging back and forth. They twisted, leapt, dodged, and slashed at each other, mere shapes in the falling snow.
A sprawled figure was alternately screaming and weeping as it kicked and bucked on the packed clay. Bad Cast stepped onto the roof, bending to see one of Ironwood’s warriors. Was it Thorn Petal? The man had two feathered arrow shafts protruding from his chest. Even as Bad Cast extended a hand, the man uttered a croaking rasp and went still, his eyes staring into the falling snow.
Something hissed through the air beside Bad Cast’s ear, and he leapt for the shadow of the dividing wall.
I’m not a warrior! That fact repeated down in his souls as he crept along the wall.
At that moment one of the white-robed Priests emerged from the Blue Dragonfly Clan kiva in the plaza floor. The man carried a pine-pitch torch in his hand as he emerged like some bizarre worm from the smoke hole. He stood on the ladder, torso protruding, waving the torch as he peered at the melee.
Bad Cast saw Crow Woman turn and hammer the man in the crown of the head; she skipped away. Wrapped Wrist trotted behind her, jabbing this way and that with a handful of hunting darts.
The Priest toppled, his robe snagging on one of the ladder uprights, and there he hung. The torch, pinned by his robe, set the cloth on fire. Yellow light leapt, illuminating the tumbling patterns of snowflakes where the wind whipped them in and out of the fighting.
Bad Cast suffered a sudden shiver. Ironwood’s warriors were most definitely outnumbered. Six of them had been crowded back toward the western room block.
Where are the elders? Bad Cast forced a swallow down his tight throat and ran for the ladder leading up to the third-story roof.
Yes, that’s where they’d be. Outside of Wrapped Wrist, he was the only one who knew the way. Assuming, that is, that the elders were being held in the same northern room where they’d kept Ripple.
On the third floor, he ran to Burning Smoke’s room hesitated at the doorway, and glanced back at the kiva. The dead Priest’s robes flared as the man’s hair caught fire. The corpse had a gruesomely black char to the skin. Then, the cloth burning through, it fell, one leg across a ladder rung, the body half in and out of the smoke hole. Smaller flames were licking on the dry wood of the entry.