People of the Raven(187)

“Why shouldn’t we kill them, Great Matron?” Rain Bear asked reasonably.

Astcat gave him a wary smile. “I will bargain with you, Great Chief. If you will allow me to declare them Outcast, I am prepared to divide up the North Wind clan grounds among the Raven People. We will surrender our villages to you, live among you, and teach you everything that we know. We will work beside you, gathering clams, digging roots, and fishing.”

“Great Matron!” Kaska cried in dismay.

Astcat fixed her with keen eyes. “My soul has been away for a long time, Kaska. I was lost in a vision of the future, and this is how it shall be. We are losing ourselves as it is. Let us make the process as painless as possible, shall we?”

“But our traditions,” Evening Star cried. “Who will keep them alive?”

“We all will.” Astcat pointed to Rain Bear. “Look at the great chief! His daughter is my granddaughter. She is married to a Raven Singer.” She pointed to Pitch, who watched soberly from the side. “Tsauz here is half Raven, and he will be my husband.”

Talon made a hacking sound as he cleared his throat. “We can have all of your territory anyway, Matron. What if we just take it and turn the tables, enslave the North Wind People as they have enslaved us? Why should we do it your way when we can do it ours?”

Astcat’s keen gaze bored into him. “That’s a fair question, but the Wolf Tails are still out there, and I am the great matron. At my order, they can either disband, or you may awaken some morning to find your children headless—assuming they survive the wars. I assure you the North Wind People will fight for their lives. I offer you an opportunity to let your children grow up, War Chief. How do you want it? Easy, or hard?”

Talon had visibly paled. “You would do that? Disband the Wolf Tails?”

She nodded. “I never liked the idea anyway.”

“And who would follow you?” Sleeper asked. “What if we ended up with someone like Old Woman North as great matron? Or an Ecan as great chief?”

“Evening Star will succeed me as great matron. If she hasn’t earned your trust, no one can.”

Rain Bear took a deep breath. “Chiefs, I think there is a great deal of wisdom in the great matron’s words.”

Astcat turned, her face like carved wood as she met her husband’s eyes. “Cimmis, you and the Four Old Women are hereby declared Outcast! I order Matron Kaska to assign a party of her warriors to bear you across the mountains to the lands of the Striped Dart People. There, she will leave you with any who wish to accompany you. You, and your followers, and any such descendants as they may have, may never return to our lands under pain of death.”

“Why,” Cimmis whispered, “my wife?”

Her voice, tight with love and pain, almost broke as she said, “It is the price of my people’s survival, husband.”

She turned, eyes like wounds, and hobbled slowly from the Council Lodge. Tsauz clutched tightly to her withered hand.





Ecan curled on his side. He lay screened from view by a skirt of low-hanging fir branches. Brittle fir needles prickled against his sweat-hot cheek and stuck to his skin. His breath came in fast gasps. With each inhalation, with each heartbeat, the spear sticking through his body moved.

Ecan opened his mouth, blinking against the pain and fear. His belly was on fire, burning as gut juices leaked from his torn intestines and gurgled inside him. The stink of it clogged his nostrils where intestinal fluids and blood continued to leak out of the wound.

He heard them, the rapid pounding of feet as two warriors hurried past. Twisting his head, he could see them through the screening branches. Cimmis’s men, they ran with a purpose.

Hunting me?

But they didn’t even look his way, trotting past, casting anxious looks over their shoulders. Fleeing. But from what?

Ecan lowered his head back to the duff, his hands gripping the spear point that stuck out from just to the right of his navel.

Gods, he was dying. The spear had caught him from behind, lancing through his right kidney, angling down through his stomach and intestines. He’d cut enough people open, listened to their screams as he’d pawed through their living guts, to know how he was hit.

I’m dying! The thought sent a shiver of fear through him.

“I am to be great chief,” he whispered to the shadows where he lay. “Do you hear me? Great chief!”

It was all so unfair! He’d been betrayed at every turn. Betrayed by Evening Star, White Stone, Coyote, Cimmis—all of them!

He blinked, aware of the hot blood that dribbled from the spear shaft onto his hands. He tightened his fingers around the spear, feeling the keen edge of the point. Did he dare pull it out?