“I remember you,” she spat. “You and your grasping hands.”
“I’m going to grasp you again,” he told her. “I’ll consider it a warm-up before your uncle gets here. He’ll see the canoe, be expecting you. I might even be done with you and have a fire going before he gets here. Jaguar Hide’s head will be on Deep Hunter’s hearth by nightfall. A gift from my clan to his. He will be obliged to me and to Snapping Turtle Clan. I suppose you know, a great many good things come to a hunter who has a Speaker obliged to him.”
“I’m carrying a child!”
“Not after today,” he told her offhandedly. “I haven’t decided yet whether I’ll cut it out of you, or just leave it to rot in your body.”
“Salamander is married to your kinswomen!”
“No one will know what happens here. Besides, the Speaker and Clan Elder will be making other arrangements for Pine Drop and Night Rain. They’re too valuable to waste on your silly Salamander. So, are we going to do this easily, or am I going to have to soften you up a little? Conscious or knocked dumb, it won’t matter to me.” With one hand he pulled the knot loose that held his breechcloth. The fabric fell away from his erect penis.
“Do as you will,” she murmured, trying to sound broken, wondering how she could turn to lay her fingers on the ax.
“Toss it away.” He wiggled his club. “The ax you are wearing. I’m not the fool Saw Back was. Toss it to one side, or the first blow I land will be right in the middle of that big belly of yours.”
She bit her lip, a sinking sensation folding around her hammering heart. With half-numb fingers she pulled the ax free, giving it a weak-hearted toss. Was it still close enough?
“Prepare to die, you stinking barbarian bitch.” He leered at her, dropped to his knees, and slapped her legs apart. He was reaching for the hem of her kirtle when movement flashed in the corner of Anhinga’s vision.
She barely recognized Salamander as he rose behind Eats Wood and swung a stone-headed ax down onto the crown of the man’s head. Bone snapped. A violent shiver shot through Eats Wood’s body. His eyes popped in surprise. A spasmodic jerk of his legs drove his face into the crushed grass between Anhinga’s tense thighs.
She gaped, speechless, glancing back and forth between her husband and the jerking body. Blood, bright and red, welled from the oblong hole in Eats Wood’s head. His hair soaked it up like a vibrating brush as his twitching worsened. A gasping rattle came from his throat.
“Are you all right?” Salamander stepped over the man’s body.
“I …” Words were dead inside her. She could only nod, her eyes fixed on Eats Wood’s quivering body. She almost collapsed again when Salamander pulled her to her feet. She shrank against him, burying her face in the hollow of his shoulder and bursting into tears.
Forty-three
Spots of blue broke the overcast of gray winter clouds. The island, normally her refuge against the world, now felt oppressive, dangerous. Anhinga’s souls kept flashing images of the assault. The leering expression on Eats Wood’s face hung behind her eyes. She could glance over her shoulder to see the tree. Beneath those branches, Eats Wood’s body was growing cold, his empty eyes turning gray.
His angry and frightened souls are rising, staring at me from among those naked branches. A shiver traced down her muscles, as if he were reaching out for her with ghostly fingers.
She didn’t feel better. Not even Striped Dart’s arrival, a half hand of time ago, reassured her. Salamander sat close beside her. He kept reaching out, patting her in reassurance. When she looked into his eyes, though, she could see the disquiet he tried so hard to hide.
Panther’s blood! Why am I still scared? After all I’ve been through, I shouldn’t be shaken by anything!
“Anhinga?” Salamander asked as he leaned forward, searching her face.
“I thought it would be Saw Back,” she whispered.
The fire popped, blue smoke rising from the fire pit that separated her from Striped Dart. Her brother looked anything but happy; the deep grooves of worry might have been carved into his forehead. She could tell he didn’t approve of the situation. His expression darkened at Salamander’s solicitation, as if he begrudged this stranger’s intimacy with his sister.
Salamander made a face as he scrubbed Eats Wood’s blood from his ax. He kept shooting curious glances at Striped Dart.
In the moons since Anhinga had seen him last, Striped Dart, too, had changed. She didn’t remember this long-boned young man, his hair coiled tightly on top of his head. He wore a new puma hide; the gray-brown pelt hung over his shoulders with white belly fur gleaming in the gray light. He had a triangular face, attractive, much like hers but with harder, masculine lines. A stifled anger burned behind his brown eyes and reflected in the set of his jaw. He held an ax in his hand and slapped it against his callused palm.