"He may be twenty-eight, but he's been locked inside the palisades at Cahokia for nearly his entire life. How would you feel if you'd never even been able to dip your fingers into the creek a hundred hands behind your house? He knows nothing about the outside world. He's as much a prisoner of the Sun as the Star Ogres are."
"That may be," Bobcat scoffed, "but if he doesn't learn about the outside world, his idiocy is going to destroy our people. And Blessed Moon Maiden knows he'll never be able to marry again. Who would have him? If he can't marry, Cahokia will be cut off from the world."
Badgertail nodded somberly. "I know."
"He's so hated by the other Sunbom that I don't see how his clan elders can ever approach the others about an alliance through one of their daughters. And you, my dear brother, don't help him any. You're always coddling Tharon's weaknesses, bringing him little gifts from every battle-walk."
"We need the chief on our side. Tharon will not last forever, but neither will the chiefdom unless we are allowed to—"
"We can all pray that Tharon will not last forever. The sooner he goes, the better."
The harsh tone made Badgertail swivel his head. Bobcat met his gaze briefly before looking away in shame. Though Bobcat had turned twenty-eight two moons ago, he looked much older than that. Lines had etched the comers of his dark eyes, giving his handsome oval face an air of seriousness— unlike Badgertail, whose toadlike, bemused face tended to make people think he was smirking at them when he wasn't.
Both he and Bobcat had woven shell beads into their braided forelocks. The remainder of their skulls had been shaved, except for a bristly ridge down the center. Copper ear-spools the size of large nuts filled their distended ear-lobes, the sign of wealth and status. Tattoos adorned their bodies. Badgertail had blue spiders on his cheeks; black-and-blue mazes covered his chest, arms, and legs. He wore a fabric warshirt, dyed in brilliant colors by the master weavers of Cahokia. Heavy, shell-beaded necklaces hung at his throat, the insignia of his hard-earned rank.
Red concentric squares blanketed Bobcat's forehead. His warshirt bore his personal Power symbol: the red image of a snarling wolf. Barely visible under the fine fabric lay his conch-shell gorget with its interlaced woodpecker heads, the badge of the Woodpecker Warrior Clan.
Badgertail's hand drifted to his own chest to lightly caress the green image of a falcon that overlay his shell gorget. His fingertips tingled from the Power there. "I cannot disobey my orders, Bobcat. What would you have me do? Help destroy our way of life . . . and bring the wrath of the Sun Chief down on all of us?"
"No, brother. I would have you grab your pack and run away with me after this battle-walk. Moonseed will agree. She's an obedient wife to me. We could do it, Badgertail! We could run away. Then neither of us would have to obey his foolish orders ever again."
"And where would we go?" Badgertail asked in a melancholy voice.
"Anywhere. It doesn't matter."
Is that how Keran's legacy would end? Badgertail's muscular hands tightened on the carved wood of his oar. Keran, Tharon's legendary grandfather, had welded the small chief-doms together through a cunning campaign of diplomacy, trade, marriage, and, of course, the Woodpecker Clan—the elite warriors bom of Commoner and Sunborn. Men like Badgertail and Bobcat.
Keran had overcome the jealousies and established Ca-hokia as the major center of power, dominating not only the Father Water, but the Mother Water and the Moon Water rivers. In most cases, Keran had been able to cajole, threaten, bribe, or wheedle the other mound centers into his alliance, but when that failed, his warriors, led by the Woodpecker Clan, had forced the recalcitrant chieftains into compliance, and often into forced marriages to create kinship bonds, with their important obligations.
For two generations, the Sunbom had ruled the chiefdoms, each marrying its young men off to the other mound centers, strengthening the ties of clan and family. And for two generations, the heavy canoes of the traders had plied the waters from one end of the land to the other, bearing a variety of wealth: conch shell and sharks' teeth from the sea to the south; buffalo hides from the plains far to the west—and obsidian from the mountains beyond them. Traders even brought olivella shells from the southeastern seas. Com traveled back and forth on heavily laden canoes when harvests failed. Red pipestone and steatite soapstone traveled down from the conifer forests, and copper from the western shores of the Great Lakes in the north. Similarly, mica was brought from the southern tributaries of the Moon Water, as were fluorspar, barite and salt. From the far reaches of the Moon Water came granite, gneiss, and schist, to be ground into maul heads, celts, maces, and ax heads. From the west, beyond Pretty Mounds, came ocher, hematite, and galena. From the mountains a moon's journey to the southwest came large quartz crystals.