People of the Nightland(11)
“We are Night Clan.” She shifted to relieve her cramped legs. “Nashat leads the Council, and you are the clan war chief. There’s nothing Karigi can do about it until Wolverine Clan unseats Nashat.”
“For that, at least, I can thank Nashat.”
She looked up. “But you know that someday, sometime, he’s going to repay you for striking him at Walking Seal Village. Karigi doesn’t forget.”
Kakala was silent for a while. “No, he doesn’t.”
She frowned, eyes on the fire again as she remembered Walking Seal Village. The look in Bramble’s eyes haunted her. She could still hear Windwolf’s panicked cry from the other side of the lodge.
“What are you thinking?”
“About Walking Seal Village.” She reached for another stick of wood and tossed it onto the flames. “Have you ever thought about how different it would have been if Bramble had lived? If Karigi had sent her out of the village before Windwolf attacked? A living Bramble would never have become the symbol the dead one has become. With her alive, we could have finally trapped Windwolf. The Sunpath People would have been beaten within six moons. This has dragged on for two solid winters. They fight like madmen.”
“Windwolf does,” he admitted with grudging respect. “I swear: Wolf Dreamer protects him. How many times has he led desperate charges against us? I’ve seen an entire war party try and kill him in a fight, but the darts slip harmlessly around him.”
She added, “I’ve seen him stop a panicked flight with a word, turning his warriors, leading them against us when all sense would urge them to run.” She gave Kakala a wry smile. “And in the end, it is we who break and flee.”
“I liked him,” Kakala said sadly. “Back in the old days. He and Bramble both.” He stared down at his pipe, words dying in his throat.
“What were you going to say?”
He inspected the stone tube for a moment, then said softly, “That if I could go back, I would change what happened at Walking Seal Village.” He sighed. “Even if it meant walking into that room and driving a dart straight through Karigi’s midnight heart.”
She glanced around. “I wouldn’t say that too loudly.”
Kakala grunted. “The difference between us is that Karigi does what he does because he likes it. We do it because it is our duty to our people.”
“Is that why you have started to warn women and children before our attacks?”
He shot her a questioning look. “Do you disapprove?”
She twisted her thick hair into a rope. “When I disapprove, you will know.”
He smiled at that. “I do not know the reasons for this vision of the Guide’s. If our people are truly to travel through the ice to a paradise, well and good. But I will not become a monster for him.” A pause. “My Dreams are bad enough as it is.”
“Nightmares, you mean.”
“Oh, yes.” He reached for his pack, finding the little pouch of chopped sweet sumac and tamping the leaf into his pipe. “But that is between us.”
Soft weeping could be heard on the night. Keresa looked over, seeing a dark shape rise from the darkness just under the trees. Moments later, Goodeagle walked into the firelight, prodding a crying woman before him. Ever since Walking Seal Village, he had been a different man, broken somehow. Not that it ever kept him from taking his pleasure from one of the slave women.
Kakala’s eyes narrowed as he watched the wretched woman walk back to a fire. Then Kakala jerked his head toward the warriors’ fires. “They don’t need to know their war chief has bad Dreams about the things he’s done.”
Keresa lifted her lip, thinking about the joy it would bring her to split the traitor’s head with an ax.
“Or their deputy, either,” she added.
Four
Late-afternoon light streamed through the spruce forest, dappling War Chief Windwolf’s path like scattered amber shards. The air was heavy with odors of conifer and the scent of damp soil. At times he could hear Silt’s soft padding as the deputy followed reluctantly behind him.
Windwolf veered wide around the low-hanging spruce branches. His black hair—cut short in mourning—blew around his oval face, forcing him to squint his brown eyes. Wind Woman’s cold breath had begun to eat through his finely tailored buffalo coat and pants, and nibble at his bones. He tugged the laces tighter, shivered, and kept walking.
He carried a pack on his back; long war darts hung from his left hand. A battered war club dangled down his back from a thong, and an atlatl was easily at hand, laced to his belt.
To the north, a full seven-day walk away, the Ice Giants rose like massive snow-covered peaks. He caught periodic glimpses of them as he crested the high places. A windblown haze of white haloed the Giants. Even from this distance he could hear the faint Singing of the supernatural beings. No other sound like it existed in the world. A rich harmonic of different notes Sung at the same time, it was unearthly, and frighteningly beautiful.