By the Panther’s bones, he is going to kill me! The revelation blew through her like a winter wind.
Thirty-nine
“Saw Back?” Night Rain called, unsure for the first time. “If anyone finds out …”
“They won’t,” he called over his shoulder. “We’ll hide her body until after dark. Bury it in the hollow under a deadfall. Once covered with leaves, she’ll be rot before spring: meanwhile, her souls will wail in the lonely depths of darkness.”
Anhinga swallowed hard. A vision of Spider Fire’s face lingered in her memory. Somehow she knew that’s whose jaw he wore.
“I thought about this the entire time I was exiled, bitch.” He crouched, ready to spring. “I dreamed of my fingers choking the life from your skinny neck.” He bared his teeth and leaped.
Anhinga’s reaction was instinctive. She swung her ax up from behind her. To his credit, he was quick, twisting away in midair. The sharpened ax, freshly ground that morning on a slab of Panther sandstone, sliced neatly along his ribs. The impact, pain, and surprise sent him reeling, feet slipping on leaves to dump him full on his butt.
He sat there for a moment, stunned, reaching down to run fingers through the blood that began leaking out of his side.
“You witch!” Night Rain cried. “You’ve killed him!”
Anhinga stepped back just as Saw Back bunched his feet under him and leaped for her. She could have killed him. Perhaps should have. At the last instant she turned the ax and caught him full on the side of the head with the flat. The snapping smack was loud on the still air, the handle stung her hands.
The blow sent him sprawling into the frozen leaves. He lay there, gasping, fingers clenching spasmodically in the leaf mat. A look of surprise filled his face, eyes wide and glassy, mouth gaping like a dark round hole. As she watched, the damaged skin on his freshly dented cheek reddened.
Kill him! Kill him now! She hesitated, swallowed hard, and tightened her grip on the ax.
Something in Night Rain’s horrified expression stopped her. If she killed him, she would be forced to flee—all of the moons she had spent here gone like smoke.
Think! How do you get out of this? Everything was changed. Her position was in peril. All because stupid Night Rain had to warm her canoe with Saw Back’s worm? She stalked up to her co-wife. The young woman watched her with wide eyes, jaw hanging. Anhinga reached, twisted a fistful of Night Rain’s hair, and yanked.
Night Rain came squealing as Anhinga dragged her to the tied bundle of wood. Night Rain reached out, scratching with her hands, trying to kick Anhinga. To quell her, Anhinga thumped her between the shoulders with the ax handle.
Night Rain shrieked and dropped flat beside the tied firewood. “I’ll kill you! I swear! My uncle will rip your throat out!”
“Perhaps.” Panther’s blood! What have you gotten yourself into here? She had just gone for firewood, wanting time alone in the forest to think, and here she’d twisted herself into the middle of one of the Sun People’s political messes.
Anhinga glanced at Saw Back; he was moaning as he tried to sit up. He had one hand to his face; blood from where the binding on the ax head had broken the skin was leaking red behind his fingers. When he pulled his hand back to look, she could still see the dent in his cheek. Had she broken the bone?
You can’t explain this, Anhinga. Who’s going to believe that he was going to kill you? She fingered the ax. Or you can kill them both, hide the bodies like they were going to do with yours.
No, that was too risky. No one might have cared if Anhinga had disappeared, but people would come looking for these two. She needed a reason, something people would believe. That, or she had best smack them both in the brains and run for all she was worth, hoping to make it south before the bodies were discovered.
And be a failure again? You’ll be letting yourself, Uncle, and all of your dead friends down again. Think! You’re smarter than this!
Night Rain was blubbering and shivering, her naked body squirming as she cast a frightened glance over her shoulder. “What are you going to do with me?”
“Since it’s all your fault”—Anhinga smiled as she figured a way out of her mess—“I’m taking you home.”
“Saw Back!” she squalled. “Kill her! Kill her now!”
One glance showed her that Saw Back had problems of his own. He couldn’t seem to get to his feet.
“Pick up that wood!” Anhinga gestured with the ax.
“My kirtle and cloak …” Night Rain glanced back at the blind.
“If you can rut naked in this weather, you can work naked!”
“You want me to walk back naked? I’ll freeze!”