Bad Cast slowed, unsure of the footing, and not a little frightened by whomever lurked in the darkness. So far, it hadn’t been what he would call a stellar day. Most of it had been spent being shuttled from one of his clan’s dwellings to another, depending on where the Red Shirts were headed.
Nerving himself, he called out, “I am Bad Cast, of the Blue Stick Clan. With me is Wrapped Wrist, my friend and kinsman.”
“Do you know the way?” the voice asked.
Wrapped Wrist called back, “I’ve been there before.”
“Good. Proceed,” the shadowy voice called.
“What if the Red Shirts come this way?” Bad Cast asked. “They’ve been searching for us all day.”
A low chuckle came from the dark shadows at the side of the trail. “Let them. By morning they’ll be in pieces. Long gone.”
Bad Cast suffered an uneasy tingle in his guts. He jumped when Wrapped Wrist placed a hand on his shoulder and said, “Come on. It’s this way … I think.”
“Don’t overwhelm me with your certainty.”
Bad Cast let Wrapped Wrist lead. Loose rock and dirt slid under his sandals. They climbed through a ragged patch of timber and out into a clearing. He could smell smoke and make out the faint square cast of the masonry wall atop the Dog’s Tooth.
Wrapped Wrist led him unerringly to a gate in the wall. Stepping through into the plaza, he looked around. Light came from gleaming coals in a shallow-basin fire pit in the plaza floor. Pit house fires painted the ladder tips protruding from their smoke holes in dull red. The two-story clan house loomed dark and brooding in the night.
Together they felt their way forward. Not even a dog barked. It was eerie, as if people were purposefully staying out of their way.
“Rot!” Bad Cast growled as he stumbled over a grinding stone hidden in the shadows.
“Quiet,” Wrapped Wrist warned. “Half the mountain will know where we are.”
“What about Spots? Do you think Soft Cloth got a message to him?”
“I hope. Last I heard the Red Shirts didn’t have him yet.” Bad Cast placed a hand to his belly. He wanted to be anywhere but here, sneaking around First Moon Mountain under the cloak of night. More than anything, he wanted to be home, playing with his baby, enjoying Soft Cloth’s company. Instead he was out stumbling around in fear, hunted by the Red Shirts, in who knew what kind of trouble.
His stomach hurt.
“There,” Wrapped Wrist said, pointing at a stubby-looking kiva visible between the pit houses. Like veins of light, cracks in the kiva wall gleamed with translucent red. What looked like brush around the bottom resolved into seated people, most of them young men.
“What is this?” Bad Cast asked, hearing the muted whispers among the seated men.
“I have no idea.”
“You are Wrapped Wrist?” A shape rose and detached itself from the fringe of the crowd.
“Yes?”
“Come forward. They’ve been waiting for you.”
“Who?”
“You have been summoned, hunter. They want you and Bad Cast inside.” Dark shapes shifted as a path was cleared.
His guts turning sickly, Bad Cast followed Wrapped Wrist to the steps that led up to the kiva entrance. A hanging covered the doorway, effectively blocking anyone from seeing inside.
As they approached, a hand pulled the hanging aside, exposing the square entryway in the curving side of the structure. When Bad Cast hesitated, a rude shove urged him forward. He ducked below the lintel into the interior. From the painted walls, this kiva belonged to the Black Shale Moiety, of which his Blue Stick Clan was a member.
The interior was spacious, fifteen long paces across the diagonal. The floor had been excavated into the soil to the depth of a man’s waist, then lined with a multicourse stone wall and bench. This in turn had been plastered over with a dark clay. Poles set at intervals were lashed together to create walls. These had been interwoven with willow stays, then packed with a coating of clay to create wattle-and-daub walls. Rafters ran from the poles to a square framework of wooden beams supported by thick logs rising from the kiva floor. A large square opening in the middle of the roof provided daytime illumination as well as a place for the smoke to exit.
The First People mocked these local kivas, smiling crookedly at their mud-caked walls and thin roofs. They joked about the giant square openings that allowed rain and snow as well as ample sunlight inside. Compared to the complex heavy-log roofs in the First People’s kivas, maybe these were more like ramadas than anything else, but they remained a defiant symbol in the face of the First People’s occupation of their lands.
A low fire burned in the stone-lined hearth cut into the center of the floor. Its light bathed the sturdy roof supports and sent a shine over the clay-washed walls.