People of the Nightland(8)

She looked out, past the line of sweating women captives bent under their loads, and tried to find Kakala. But he had already disappeared into the willows, probably to scout the river ford.

“Ashes? Are you all right?” she asked as her daughter stumbled over an exposed root and almost fell.

“F-Fine, Mother. I’m tired. That’s all.”

“It’s only a little farther.” She glanced up at the low-lying sun in the west. The Nightland always let them camp at night. She tried to measure the angle of the sun. Kakala would push them across the river, though. The Nightland still believed that the Lame Bull lands on the other side offered some protection from the Sunpath warriors who followed Windwolf.

She winced at the man’s name. Windwolf, the same warrior who had decimated her people five summers back in a bitter fight over hunting boundaries. Then she had cursed his name. The man had been a menace to her small band, beating them at every turn until Hookmaker had finally sued for peace.

She had hated him with all of her heart. Then, with the coming of the Nightland attacks, Hookmaker had argued for peace, perhaps still stung by the defeat Windwolf and Bramble had handed them.

“It is not our concern,” Hookmaker’s words echoed in her memory. “If the Nightland want to war with Windwolf, let them! We’ve suffered enough at his hands!”

“How wrong you were, husband.” She shook her head, wondering how it had all gone so wrong. Poor Hookmaker, he’d paid for his belief in peace.

When the attack came, it had been without warning, just at the breaking of dawn. She had been stewing dried camel meat in a hide bag when the first whoops brought her upright. She had seen the Nightland warriors emerging from the trees, tens of them, racing through the scattered lodges in her camp.

“Ashes! Run!” she had shouted, and dove inside to find Hookmaker’s weapons. Wrapping her fingers around her husband’s atlatl and darts, she had emerged and handed them to him, and watched in horror as he fumbled to nock a dart, then cast it. Panic had dulled his reflexes; the dart hissed high over the attacker’s heads.

Skimmer had stood rooted, disbelieving as Kakala charged up and knocked Hookmaker down with one blow of his war club.

Husband, you never were a warrior. The thought lay dully in her head as she picked her way down a slope, her back and hips aching under the load.

Oh, she had tried. The memory of the argument she and Hookmaker had had lay like a sour shadow in her soul. In the end, she had even traveled to Headswift Village, pleading with Chief Lookingbill to help her murder Ti-Bish.

And to think I once gave him food. She could still see his hollow face and hunger-filled eyes as she handed him a bowl of hot food.

When was I ever foolish enough to allow pity a place in my soul?

This was how he had paid her back?

Never again. “I will survive,” she hissed under her breath. She watched Ashes carefully wind her way through the willows. The winter-bare stems rasped on her clothing and the pack she bore.

As she broke out of the willows, it was to find Goodeagle, the traitor, standing there, watching as each of the women stepped from the trees.

She met his leering eyes, narrowing her own. Each night he picked a woman, ordering her off into the trees for his pleasure. So far, he had taken Kicking Fawn twice, and Blue Wing once.

“Need help with the load?” he asked Ashes.

Her daughter just bowed her head, trudging forward.

“Don’t even think it,” she barked.

“How about you, Skimmer?” he asked. “Tired of the cold at night?”

“Oh, yes, Goodeagle,” she said with cunning. “Pick me tonight. If nothing else, I’ll gouge your eyes from that too-pretty head and tear your testicles off your body.”

He matched her pace as she followed the line of women down to the first of the shallow channels.

“Do you know why we attacked your little band at the Nine Pipes camp?”

“Guide’s orders, I heard.”

“He wanted a Nine Pipes woman.” Goodeagle sloshed into the shallow water with her. “Maybe he heard that it was you who was plotting to kill the Guide.”

“Your Prophet can run his head up his ass and breathe deeply for all I care.”

“Such anger, Skimmer.”

“You should know. It was you, as Windwolf’s deputy, who put it there.”

Goodeagle nodded. “You and Hookmaker never did understand war.”

“We were hunters, you piece of filth.”

“That’s what killed the Sunpath People,” he said. Then in a lower voice, “That’s what killed me. But I understand now.”

“I hope the rest of the women here are right, and Windwolf comes to free us. I want to see what he does to you.” Skimmer put her concentration into keeping her feet on the slippery round rocks under her feet. The water was cold, with rims of ice on the rocks. She sloshed through, with the current pulling at her thighs.