People of the River(12)

The palisade consisted of upright poles that rose twenty hands high around the central section of the village. The wall had been thickly plastered with clay and baked as a protection against fire, insects, and rot. Badgertail knew that away from the lake, on the western side of River Mounds, the Conmion-bom fended for themselves, unprotected by either palisades or professional warriors, though every male would be armed with a club and bow. He hoped they had witnessed his approach and fled into the hills.

"They're up there," Bobcat warned, indicating with a tilt of his head the shooting platforms that had been erected along the length of the palisades.

"I see them."

Faces glowed, the pale blue of flesh just visible over the sharpened ends of the poles. Four warriors occupied each platform; that would make nearly six hundred in all. More would be huddling inside, using the forty-five mounds in the village as cover. Badgertail anticipated around eight hundred armed opponents: desperate men and women who must win this battle if they were to feed their families through the rest of the winter.

He halted and called up to the platform over the main gate: "Leader Badgertail wishes to speak with the great Moon Chief. Will he open his arms to embrace his relatives this day?"

Jenos' rusty voice shouted back, "Will my father's obscure cousin order his warriors to lay down their bows until we have finished speaking?"

Bobcat huffed indignantly, "That old bear-bait!"

Badgertail smiled grimly at the insult. The people of the mounds traced kinship through the females. A man belonged to his mother's clan, disciplined his sister's children. When he married, he went to live in his wife's house and work her clan's fields. He had no say in his wife's household and could not speak to his mother-in-law, but must avoid her at all costs, not even meeting her eyes.

The Warrior Clans consisted of men and women bom through the mating of the Sunbom with the Commonbom. Such mating had taken place when Badgertail's mother coupled with his Sunbom father. Jenos had just insinuated that no one believed the claim of Badgertail's mother—and this, if true, would have stripped Badgertail of his warrior's status and privileges.

Badgertail called back, "Your obscure cousin will—for one hand's worth of time, Jenos. No more. If you will guarantee my party's safety for the same length of time."

"I will."

Badgertail tumed cautiously and signaled Locust to obey. Through the long years of warring, she had never let him down. He knew that she'd be pacing now, anxious, upset by this development. She liked "clean" hit-and-run battles, where no foolish diplomacy twisted the circumstances out of her control. Badgertail touched Bobcat's shoulder reassuringly and faced the gate. He could hear his war leaders calling out in the voices of their Spirit Helpers—Owl, Falcon, Wolf—to signal they'd dropped their bows.

The gate slid back to reveal three lines of warriors, kneeling, bows drawn. Badgertail and Bobcat extended open hands before them and stalked boldly forward.

Four men and one woman fell out of the first line, surrounding them and forcing them down a narrow pathway that wound through the village. Badgertail noted that Jenos took another trail. Why? Was it a trap? Or perhaps Jenos needed to get to the rendezvous point ahead of him to . . . what?

Grass-mantled mounds rose darkly against the pastel glow of dawn. Each mound had been crowned with a plastered wall, and beyond that, thatched roofs rose sharp against the dawn: the proud houses of the elite clans. How many of them would remain standing when night settled on the wounded land?

His people constructed three kinds of mounds: platform mounds, which rose like truncated pyramids and supported prestigious buildings such as temples and the houses of the elite; conical mounds, where the most important leaders were buried; and ridge-top mounds, which served as markers for the village boundaries. Only great warriors were granted burial in these mounds, so that they might forever guard the village. Badgertail gazed appreciatively from the mounds to the silver circles of ponds that dotted the trampled winter grass. Despite the tension of the situation, their ethereal beauty soothed him.

In the Beginning Time, Mother Earth and Father Sun had been married. But some cataclysmic event had torn them apart and cast Father Sun into the sky. Mother Earth had twisted herself out of shape trying to reach up to touch Father Sun so she could ease her need for him. Then, when First Woman and First Man were bom, they had commanded all of their children to help Mother Earth. For three hundred cycles, Badgertail's people had been carrying baskets of dirt on their backs, trying to bridge the gap that kept Mother Earth and Father Sun so far apart.

The guards led them past the mud-plastered houses of the craftsmen and across the central plaza with its tall poles, the top of each carved into a clan totem. People garbed in brightly dyed fabrics watched anxiously from the peripheries as they crossed the chunkey court. Last summer—no more than nine moons past—he had played on this very clay, wagering his skill and some of Tharon's finest goods, in competition with Jenos' champion, Mallow.