People of the Morning Star(171)

“Wait!” the Keeper had called as her own porters were lowering her. “War Duck’s squadrons will be here in less than a hand of time.” Even as she said it, she was staring at the still-cooling bodies of two arrow-skewered Tula and a third, brain-bashed, man.

“She may not have that long,” he’d growled back having already strung his bow. And as he charged up the stairs, he’d nocked an arrow.

He found the door half open, slipped sideways through it, and into confusion. A knot of three Tula stood just to his left. One held Night Shadow Star’s copper-bitted war club in his hands. Another was inspecting her slim Osage-orange bow, the third, and closest, had her quiver.

Fire Cat caught just enough of a glance to see two more Tula dragging Night Shadow Star toward a naked-and-painted man in the middle of the floor. Sun Wing’s nude body lay at the painted man’s feet. An arch of bleeding and disarticulated body parts as strung across the floor. The wall benches on his left held panicked and crying children. Halfway down the wall a dazed-looking man appeared crestfallen, and a bound woman lay on the floor.

The place smelled of blood and death.

He had no more time. The three Tula with Night Shadow Star’s weapons turned to gape at him in surprise.

Fire Cat shot the closest one, driving an arrow through the Tula’s chest. Then he lashed out with the bow in a slashing strike that drove the two remaining Tula back and bought him enough time to rip out Makes Three’s war club.

The man with Night Shadow Star’s bow raised it to block Fire Cat’s strike. The force of the club’s impact snapped the thin stave like a twig.

“Sorry, Lady,” Fire Cat apologized for her bow as he set his foot, pirouetted, and slammed his club past the third man’s guard. He felt the solid hit, heard the ribs cracking like crushed kindling. Fire Cat skipped, the Red Wing war cry breaking past his lips in a fierce joy.

Adrenaline surged through him, charging his body, and he caved in the side of the second Tula’s head. Even as the warrior dropped, Fire Cat landed on one foot, turned, and screamed his rage. Tula warriors were charging toward him from all over the room.

As he started forward he caught a glimpse of the back wall behind the dais. Flames and smoke curled up from the woven cane.

“Hoookaaiiiyaaaa!” he screamed, daring again to vent the war call he’d thought forever stilled in his breast and soul. And into the midst of them he charged, his souls singing with the thrill of combat.

Before they killed him, by the Blessed Stars, they’d know what it was to face a Red Wing war chief.

“Hoookaaaiiiyaaa!”

* * *

At the sound of carnage inside the palace, Blue Heron looked up from the rain-slicked corpses on the ground. So much for waiting. She threw her hands up in despair. Her porters stood hunched in the pounding rain, four of them vying to hold the flat rain shield above her head in an effort to keep her dry.

She glanced around distastefully as a howling war cry issued from the half-open palace door.

Staring across the morning-gray and rain-slashed plaza, she could see no sign of War Duck’s squadron. They’d just begun to form as she and her party had loaded into canoes for the ferry trip across the river.

A second cry howled from behind the door.

“Pus, rot, and blood!” she bellowed. Thrusting an arm out, she ordered the gawking crowd, “You all! Yes, you! I order you in the name of the Morning Star. When chief War Duck’s warriors arrive, tell the squadron first to get up these stairs and storm the palace. You tell them the Keeper said so!”

“Keeper?” her war second, one of the ten warriors who’d accompanied her, asked.

“We’re going in there. If it’s a Tula, kill it. They’ll be the ones fighting us. Hard to miss.”

And with that she plucked up a rain-soaked war club from the dead Tula lying at her feet and started up the stairs.

I have lost any sense I ever had.

But perhaps the Red Wing had bought them the time and opportunity they needed. Had to admire that. Even now he was probably dead, and if Walking Smoke’s Tula hadn’t secured the door, if they weren’t nocking arrows in their bows even as she charged up the long stairs ahead of her ten warriors, maybe it would be enough.

Maybe.

To her surprise, huffing and puffing, she made it to the top, flicked a salutary finger at the guardian posts—it would have to suffice—and ran as fast as her old legs would carry her.

Hearing her warriors’ feet pounding on the wet clay behind her, she panted her way into the protection of the veranda, half expecting a hissing blur of arrows to skewer her.

Even more surprised, she charged through the door unopposed, and into the palace great room.