People of the Moon(41)

He sighed, rubbing his aching knees, and struggled to his feet. Then almost fell as his blood-starved legs refused to hold him. Knowing what was coming, he hobbled over to the bench and sat while his flesh prickled with renewed circulation.

“Priest?” a voice called from above.

“Yes?” he replied, wincing as he finally managed to stand. He limped to the base of the ladder and looked up to find Burning Smoke, Pinnacle Great House’s war chief, staring down. The moon-faced man’s skin sagged and seemed to slip off the bone as he bent over the smoke hole.

“We have the young hunter you wanted to see.”

“I am coming, Burning Smoke.” He climbed slowly and deliberately up the use-polished ladder and into the Fifth World. There, blinking in the morning sun, he squinted at the vista. Pinnacle Great House perched high above the First Moon Valley. Only the sacred spires of rock at the end of the ridge rose any higher.

This was a holy place, more the realm of eagles than of men. It was here that Sister Moon, every eighteen and a half sun cycles, returned home from her journey across the sky. For a single season she rose between the rocks, casting a Blessing light between them to illuminate Pinnacle Great House.

He stopped, as he always did, to take in the view to the north. He could see across the mountains to the high peaks above timberline—some still spotted white with snow. They drew the eyes, especially those of a desert-dweller such as Water Bow had been for most of his life.

Turning to the southwest and looking down the long V of First Moon Valley, the mountains slowly gave way to the mesa land, and finally to the distant desert. He could see the River of Stones shining like a silver thread where the sunlight reflected from its surface. It lay cupped by a gentle green valley dotted with fields. Finally, in the distance, a series of buttes rose in successive layers until on the farthest horizon he could see Smoking Mirror Butte, the last of the heights on the Great North Road, where the Blessed Sun kept watchtowers.

From that vantage point, a signal could be flashed by means of pyrite mirrors, illuminated by means of fire, or sent by means of smoke. In the old days an observer at Center Place Town just above Straight Path Canyon waited to bear news to the Blessed Sun. Smoking Mirror Butte was the relay that held the northern frontier together.

But what of the present? He stared at the distance, thinking about the new center the Blessed Webworm was building at Flowing Waters Town on the Spirit River. Was it appropriate to move the whole of the Straight Path Nation there? Or were the other voices, those that pleaded for a move farther to the south, the correct ones?

He lifted his eyebrows, wrinkling his parchmentlike forehead. Who knew?

It was only when he looked at the surrounding valley that he remembered their precarious position here. Now, with this unknown hunter in custody, he was more acutely aware of it than ever.

Below the heights that Pinnacle Great House dominated, he could see clusters of houses descending the ridge to the southwest. Here and there, patches of trees obscured yet more houses. The valleys that lay on either side of the rocky mountain atop which he lived were intensively farmed; patchworks of fields used every bit of arable land. The drainages feeding the valley bottom had been dammed, ditched, or diverted in one manner or another. Each flat spot, including the gentle shoulders of the surrounding ridges, had been built upon. Sometimes at night, when the home fires were twinkling around the valleys, it was hard to tell where the stars stopped and the houses began. On days when the air was calm a thick veil of blue smoke hung heavily in the valley, so many were the cook fires.

Now, in midday, he could see the endless clusters of buildings, the sinuous paths that led back and forth between the settlements. A lot of people lived here in this valley oasis, fed by consistent water, frequent rains, and the fertile soil. So very many people.

And most of them hate us.

It was a sobering thought.

But safety lay in Pinnacle Great House’s impregnable location. Sheer cliffs fell away immediately to the south, while steep rocky talus and the near-vertical slope to the north made approach from that direction difficult. The only easy access, if it could be called that, lay along the knifelike ridgetop that made an irregular descent to the southwest. That narrow causeway was controlled by a small fortified structure called the Eagle’s Fist. It perched across the trail a stone’s throw from the great house. Perpetually manned by warriors, it was a formidable barrier past which any assailant had to pass.

Adding to Pinnacle’s security, the houses of the Made People—the warriors and craftsmen who served the First People—could be seen clinging precariously to the restricted ridgetop just below the narrow approach to the Eagle’s Fist. While the Made People harbored resentments of their own, here, too, they were the outsiders, the interlopers who had come in the wake of the First People’s conquest, to help administer, oversee, and ensure the functioning of Pinnacle House. They were the eyes and ears of the Blessed Sun, the strong backs upon whom both the Matron and Webworm relied.