People of the Morning Star(167)
She passed between the partially completed addition to the Four Winds charnel house mound on her left and the large conical burial mound to her right. Apprehension rising, she trotted into the central plaza. Trampled grass whispered beneath her feet. She touched her forehead in respect as she passed the World Tree pole. The mighty red cedar had been felled in a distant forest, carried here by hundreds of sweating laborers. The great log had been carved and finally erected in the center of the plaza. Its sides were covered in detailed reliefs that depicted stories from the Beginning Times.
She crossed the chunkey court and approached the Evening Star House palace, little more than a dark, hatchet-roofed silhouette that rose against the stormy skies.
Three men rose from the bottom of the ramp stairs. She could see a couple of litters off to the side, and recognized Sun Wing’s ornately carved one. Her porters and a figure that was probably Feather Wand were sleeping in blankets beside it. The rest of the slumbering figures, she assumed, were messengers from the various Earth clans and assorted agents, all waiting to see High Dance.
“Who comes?” the first man asked, obviously the speaker as he raised a hand palm out to stop her and brandished some sort of staff of office.
“I bring a message for High Chief High Dance of the Evening Star House.”
“The High Chief and the Matron are involved in personal ceremonies and will not receive visitors for another day.”
“I am sent by Lady Night Shadow Star with a personal communication for the High Chief and the Matron.”
“I’m sorry.”
“You will not let me pass?” She could feel the tension rising in her gut. Her stomach began to churn, a sick burning sensation.
“I would take your message in.”
She shrugged, a slow smile of inevitability on her lips. “Then I’ll have to wait.”
Like a cold wave rolling within, the anxiety washed away, her pounding heart settled, and a crystalline certainty hardened between her souls.
She clearly remembered her question to Piasa: “Walking Smoke’s going to kill me, isn’t he?” And the Water Panther’s response.
Those chosen by Power were accursed.
Dispassionately she turned to the warrior on the right, a tall muscular man with a war club in his hand. “How about you?” she asked. “Are you up for an entertaining time under the blankets? A diversion while I wait?”
“He doesn’t speak our tongue, woman.”
“I don’t care if he can speak. Is his shaft serviceable? And if it is, what language would he praise me in?”
The man’s voice filled with disgust. “He speaks Caddo, woman. But neither he, nor his companion, is free to ‘entertain’ themselves with a woman.”
So the guards were Tula. She flipped her arm dismissively. “Thank the Spirits I’ve got fingers then, eh? I’ll wait over to the side, maybe entertain myself with my bow.”
“You do that,” the man said coldly. “Or else you could return whence you came and tell Lady Night Shadow Star that if she were to come herself, I have orders to escort her immediately into the presence of the Evening Star House chief.”
A cold breeze of certainty shivered her souls. He was inside, waiting for her.
She touched her chin with an insolent flick of the fingers and stepped back. The speaker chattered away in Caddo, eliciting laughter from the two Tula, one of whom pointed at his crotch and said something boastful.
Night Shadow Star slipped her bow from her shoulder, used her hip to string it, and withdrew an arrow.
The first Tula had just seated himself on the lowest step when her arrow drove through his breastbone with a snap. As the warrior stiffened and half rose, she was nocking her second shaft. The angle wasn’t good, and her shot pierced the second Tula’s left bicep before it thunked hollowly into his chest. From the amount of shaft remaining, it had stopped just short of his heart.
The Tula stared down at his arm where it was pinned to his side, made a half step, and turned toward her. Which allowed her to drive her third shaft through the hollow at the base of his throat.
The startled speaker had raised his hands, staring first at her, and then at the impossibility of his so-quickly-killed friends.
Her bow in her left hand, her right shucked the war club from where it hung in her belt. She advanced on him, head down, flicking the war club as if testing its balance.
The speaker glanced imploringly at the dying Tula. The first was kicking weakly, eyes wide, as he clutched the arrow shaft sticking out of his breastbone. The second was making gargling sounds as blood foamed out of his mouth and nostrils.
“No help there,” Night Shadow Star told him. “And if you run, I’ll shoot you right through the middle of the back.”