“No.” Hunter gave the old warrior an askance look. “But then I feel the same way when he enters my lodge.”
Wind Scorpion rubbed his forehead. “I pray she didn’t stuff those ropes … She is so much more than I thought she was.”
Twenty-five
The young warrior called Kit Fox stood off to the side, his knees shaking as he watched Sleeper examine Crater’s bloody body. The man lay on his back, blood running from his nose and mouth. Crater’s eyes were wide open, staring blankly at the orange gleam of dawn that sheathed the hills.
They had made camp in the trees on a bench above Wasp Valley. From that vantage point, they had been able to see the fires in Wasp Village where it jutted out into the sea. Now, as the morning sun brightened, they could make out several small villages of Raven People, as well as the slave quarters that served Wasp Village. Finding Crater had been a surprise that shocked each of the remaining warriors to the core.
“His skull is cracked,” Sleeper said. “He was struck from behind.”
“But I heard nothing, War Chief!” Kit Fox blurted. “I only got a glimpse. The light was bad!” He hesitated. “It … it looked …”
“Yes, go on.”
Kit Fox winced, fearing the war chief’s reaction. “It looked like a huge coyote. The head, the ears …”
Sleeper’s hide cape flapped around his long legs as he stood. He searched the faces of the four remaining warriors. When they’d left War Gods Village, they’d been ten. They were being picked off one by one by an assassin who made no sounds and left no footprints. Panic sparkled in each man’s eyes.
They’d expected to be the hunters, waiting for an opportunity to kill Ecan, not the prey.
In the beautiful valley below, Ecan’s warriors moved along the trails that encircled Wasp Village. Could one man be doing this? One of Ecan’s warriors? Why send one man when he could simply turn his entire war party loose to hunt them down? And more to the point, after all the care they had taken to reach this place, how had the killer located them? It was enough to send shivers through the most hardened of veterans.
Sleeper frowned at the corpse. “When it’s fully light, we’ll try to track him down. We’ll find him. I swear it!”
The warriors glanced uneasily back and forth. A quick look was all that it took to see their flagging courage. If he pushed, they’d break and run.
Sleeper walked a few paces away, and his gaze moved over the leafless alders, as though imagining every dark branch where a man might hide. A magnificent vista of dawn-tinted hills veined by dark drainages stretched before them. He looked eastward up Wasp Valley toward the rolling base of Fire Mountain, two days’ run away.
Through gritted teeth, Sleeper hissed, “Very well, Ecan, you and your mysterious Coyote win this time. But we’re coming for you.You just wait and see. When we do, I’m going to have a hand in bringing you down.”
He turned to his men. “Come. We’re going back to report to Chief Goldenrod.”
Dogrib and five guards surrounded Pitch and Roe, monitoring the crowd and giving them the privacy they needed for the ritual preparations. Pitch supervised while Roe pulled up the edges of the worn hide and deftly stitched it closed around the headless body of Matron Weedis’s son, Flying Squirrel.
People clambered over the mountaintop, and more kept coming. Many of them had been traveling for days or even moons, by foot or canoe, to get here for the ceremonial. Despite the devastated village around them, the War God pillars still stood tall and massive—and that’s what they’d really come to see.
As Roe sewed, Pitch felt ill. Horror was such a powerful weapon. Every person who looked upon a headless body quaked deep down in his soul. Didn’t Cimmis realize that horror engendered wrath the likes of which none of them had ever experienced before? Even Roe, ordinarily a calm-minded woman, had her teeth clenched; it set her jaw at an odd angle.
“Are you all right?” Pitch gently asked and reached out with his good hand to touch her long red hair.
She looked up. “I want every one of them dead, Pitch.”
He let his hand fall. “Your lineage is North Wind.”
“The Council declared my mother Outcast when she fell in love with Father. I will make certain, when the time comes, that Stonecrop is adopted into Father’s clan. That way he never has to suffer because of my mother’s blood.”
As though embarrassed by the vehemence in her voice, she lowered her gaze and continued working the bone needle through the hide. The young man’s neck gradually disappeared as Roe sewed the shroud closed.