Desolation made even that effort unworthy. What point would be served by watching the last of his world slip away? Misery and humiliation, pain, and ultimately ignominious death awaited him; and though he knew the river’s Power bore him no malice, it seemed to be rushing him south to Cahokia.
Once there, after his hanging body endured the brutality, the thirst, the slicing and searing of his flesh, they’d chop him apart. His leg bones would be stripped of meat and sinew, cleaned, painted or engraved, and given away as gifts.
His arm bones would hang from some wall. His head would be carefully skinned, the skull polished to a sheen before being painted. Thereafter his gaping eye sockets would vacantly stare out at some Cahokian Men’s House. Or perhaps it would grace the wall of the Morning Star himself.
Pustule of an imposter that he is!
Fire Cat winced and tried to shift his aching arms. They’d been bound behind him; the tight cord ate into his wrists. But what was that compared to the dull agony in his legs? Or the pain that burned through his wrenched back, shoulders, and arms. No sensation remained in his hands.
I was once the man known as Fire Cat Twelvekiller, high war chief of the Red Wing Nation. Now I am a dead man.
For whatever capricious reason, Power had abandoned him, his family, and his nation.
He dared not glance over his shoulder where what remained of his family crowded in the canoe bottom. He could feel his sister White Rain’s body where it pressed against the back of his thighs. On White Rain’s other side, his youngest sister, Soft Moon, huddled in misery, her head down. And, back to them all, Fire Cat’s mother, Matron Red Wing, sat disconsolately, hands bound behind her. Her agonized stare remained fixed on the north as it vanished behind the river’s forest-lined loops. Everything they had lived, dreamed, and hoped now receded as the current and the strong paddlers rushed them inevitably toward the south. Toward Cahokia … and death.
Fire Cat had only a foggy memory of the days since the Morning Star’s warriors had taken them by complete surprise. Dazed by the impossible, his memory was a confusion of sunrises, shivering and endless nights, disconnected events, and half-remembered images.
He still wasn’t sure how the Morning Star’s warriors had accomplished the impossible feat of moving several thousand battle-hardened veterans upriver without raising an alarm. Or how—even more impossibly—the thousands had penetrated Red Wing town’s palisades undetected that last fateful night.
Behind the soothing darkness of his closed eyelids, he relived that terrible moment. He’d been sound asleep. Where could a man feel more safe than in his own bedroom in the Red Wing palace atop its mound, his wife’s warm body snuggled against him?
The impact of hard bodies as they slammed him down into the bedding had shocked him awake. His startled yelp rang in his ears. He’d frozen in that instant of confused disbelief. The screams of his second wife, False Dawn, tore at his memory as freshly as when she’d been dragged, clawing frantically at the blankets, from their bed.
Fire Cat had struggled for all he was worth, bellowing, trying to strike out as callused hands grasped his arms, legs, and head. Through the fog of his memory, the number of assailants remained a mystery. Five of them? Perhaps six or more? Who knew?
All he’d glimpsed in the darkness was shadowy arms, shoulders, and elbows as he was grabbed by the hair, his head pulled back. A leather wad was thrust into his mouth. Then a hide sack had been dropped over his head. They’d ripped the blanket away, wrenched his arms back, and bound them. The mass of their bodies proved too much to dislodge; his thrashing legs had been tied.
They’d borne him silently from his room. He’d heard False Dawn’s pleading and whimpering as they’d carried him across the matting in the main room, out into the night, and down the wooden stairs.
No sound of his first wife, New Fall Moon, or their two infant children had come to his ears. All he’d heard was the elated murmurings of his captors. He’d felt only his body bouncing as they bore him away into the night.
Through it all, his souls had quaked with a panic and fear like nothing he’d ever known.
They had dropped him in this canoe, followed by the gritted order, “Do not resist. If you do, your family will be killed. Do you understand?”
Somehow, shaking with terror, he’d managed to nod. Only upon hearing the bitter weeping of his sisters did he begin to understand the extent of the tragedy.
“So,” a man had said softly, “that’s the great Red Wing Fire Cat? The one they call twelvekiller? The scourge of the north? Doesn’t look like much, does he?”
“Not bound up like a puppy fit for a starving dirt-farmer’s stewpot, he doesn’t,” another answered.