“Much better than watching the dust blow down south,” the guard replied.
Bad Cast kept his head lowered, but glanced up fearfully at the magnificent squared profile of Pinnacle Great House. Already the sky was darkening. He could just see Spots and Wrapped Wrist as they staggered under their huge burdens of firewood.
Far to the north, the distant high country burned blood red in the alpenglow. Bad Cast hoped it wasn’t an omen.
Nineteen
Leather Hand didn’t even bother hiding his advance. His warriors fanned out, trotting across the flats like dust-streaked wolves. Their red shirts, sweat-darkened and grimy, jerked with each step. Dust rose under their pounding yucca-fiber sandals as they came in from the north—the Blessed Sun’s vengeful beasts.
After today, Leather Hand thought, the world will be changed. Anyone who considers flouting the First People’s authority will tremble down to their bones.
He glanced sidelong at his warriors, grim men who clasped their weapons, faces hard. Would they obey when Leather Hand gave the order? Were they capable of inflicting this new horror?
And what are you going to do if they refuse?
He turned his attention to the farmstead they approached. Two poorly plastered masonry structures looked to be granaries, or perhaps summer rooms. A ramada sat off to one side. Beyond them he could see the humped outlines of three rounded pit houses, a couple of wattle-and-daub huts, tattered ramadas, and a trash midden. The place was dreamlike, washed out, devoid of the colors of life. Didn’t the people feel what he did seeing this desolate place? He was only the final scavenger, come to collect the pale shadows that remained.
They arrived in silence. Two warriors glanced into the first of the square rooms, finding only worn digging sticks, and a collection of firewood—packed from who knew who far—stacked in a back corner.
Leather Hand watched as his warriors paired off, climbed the pit house ladders, and descended like raptors into the depths. The rest of his men charged the mud huts on the southwest side of the farmstead, poking into the doorways, signaling the all-clear.
Screams and shouts broke the stillness. Then only crying children and the hushed tones of his warriors could be heard as they went about their orders.
It was almost over before it even began.
One by one, weeping children began climbing out of the pit houses. Wearing little more than rags, they reminded Leather Hand of brown spiders, so sticklike and spindly were their arms and legs. The children stared around with large-eyed, tear-streaked faces, their hair dust-matted and filthy. They clambered down the rounded roofs to the hard-packed dirt of the plaza and bawled like orphan fawns. Then came the adults, thin women first; they watched with fear-glazed eyes as they called their children to them. The men emerged last, swallowing hard, calling back and forth in their incomprehensible barbarian tongue. Their voices were heavy with fear.
And fear you should.
Leather Hand crossed his arms as his warriors cuffed and prodded the captives into a huddled mass before a low depression in the center of the small village. The women sobbed, reaching out to him with imploring hands.
Leather Hand stepped up, arms crossed, his war club in hand. What a pitiful collection of … Wait, what was that? Sunlight glinted on a polished stone bracelet that hung like a loop around a young girl’s arm. Perhaps thirteen, she stared up in horror.
“Pretty one, there,” Turquoise Fox noted as he took a position on Leather Hand’s right.
“What’s she wearing?”
“One of these.” Turquoise Fox lifted a gleaming abalone pendant. “Loot from Right Acorn’s room, I’d wager.”
Looking around, Leather Hand noticed more and more bits of colorful shell, polished jet, and gleaming turquoise. A cold rush of anger began brewing.
Turquoise Fox indicated the girl. “You wouldn’t mind if I enjoyed her before we kill her, would you? From the looks of her, she’s never had a man before.”
“Make sure you remove that bracelet when you’re done.”
Turquoise Fox leaned forward, grabbed the girl by her wrist, and jerked her, screaming, to her feet. A large-boned man—her father perhaps—started forward, only to be clubbed by one of the warriors.
The man fell, shouting, as he cradled his suddenly numb arm. Leather Hand thought he made out the words “We do no wrong!”
Yes, it was the abominable accent common to the Green Mesa villages—coupled with the local Coyote Clan dialect—that made the words almost incomprehensible.
A thin, long-haired woman was crying as she watched Turquoise Fox drag the young girl off to one side. His fist was knotted in the girl’s ragged dress; with a jerk the fabric was ripped away. As Turquoise Fox threw the naked girl to the ground, Leather Hand returned his attention to the captives.