High-pitched shrieks split the dusk, rising and falling on the wind. Surprised shouts, then screams, rang from Lanceleaf’s plaza.
Simultaneously, Beargrass and Thistle lunged for the door, throwing back the curtain to look outside.
Warriors flooded through the village gate below, their faces lurid in the red flames of sunset. They kicked turkeys out of the way, slammed barking dogs with war clubs, shot arrows into fleeing people.
“Blessed gods, what’s happening?” Beargrass whispered.
A tall warrior grabbed Matron Clover by her frail old arm, swung her around, and struck her head with his club. When she staggered but didn’t fall, another warrior shot her in the belly. She slumped to the ground, rocking back and forth, her white hair matted to her head with blood. Her screams pierced the din.
“Who are they?” Thistle cried. “They’re not Tower Builders! They’re—”
“Ours.” Beargrass almost choked on the word. “They’re Straight Path warriors.”
She couldn’t speak.
Beargrass turned, gripped Thistle by the shoulders, and looked her in the eyes. “I must fight. And you must run.”
“But there are so many of them, Beargrass! Twenty or thirty warriors! We can’t fight so many! We must—”
“I will join you at Father’s village. Run!”
“No, please, I want to—”
“Run!”
He grabbed his bow and quiver of arrows from where they lay by the door and charged outside, running down the hill for the village, his red shirt flying about his legs.
Two men ran around the plaza, smearing pine pitch on the plastered walls, preparing to fire them.
Thistle took her pack, threw in some food, an obsidian knife and bone stiletto, and ducked outside. The billowing clouds to the west had begun to shade gray with night. She fled northward, skirting cornfields. At the rim of one of the small gorges feeding into Squash Blossom Canyon, she took the trail off the caprock and down into the rock-tumbled depths, praying the darkness would shield her.
Screams rose to a terrifying cacophony behind her.
She didn’t turn around. Thorns ripped at her legs and shredded her yellow dress as she shoved through a greasewood thicket down by the drainage and pounded along the wet soil, following the canyon to its mouth. Water-smoothed stones in the drainage bottom slipped beneath her moccasins, almost tumbling her.
From out of nowhere, a crackling roar split the twilight. Like thunder, it rose to swallow the screams and shouts.
Thistle turned to look.
Even from the depths of the canyon, she could see. Flames leaped into the darkening sky, dancing like monstrous blazing beasts, licking at the bellies of the clouds.
For a moment, just a moment, she thought she heard Beargrass … screaming …
And she turned.
Three black forms raced down the hill toward her. Friends fleeing the catastrophe?
Thistle fell to her knees and crawled into a dense tangle of head-high sage. Through the fragrant branches, she watched the enemy warriors dash down toward the creek.
A short while later, someone cried out.
Thistle clenched her teeth. And prayed.
Eighteen
Cornsilk tramped her way to the crest of a juniper-and-piñon-studded hill and slowed to catch her breath. Shocks of ricegrass, wheatgrass, and winter-dried lupine made patterns on the yellow soil and bobbed in the breeze.
Stone Forehead had whined all night, declaring that he’d never be a great warrior if it got around that he couldn’t even get a young woman home—and it would be all her fault.
More than a little disgusted with herself for giving in, Cornsilk raised her bow over her head and stretched her aching back muscles while she waited for Stone Forehead and Fledgling. They hiked up the hill slowly, talking. Both carried bows in their right hands and quivers of arrows on their backs, waiting for dinner to run from behind a bush.
Though only two summers separated them, Stone Forehead stood a head taller than Fledgling and had shoulders twice as broad. Fledgling had left his hair free to blow in the breeze; it flapped over his gray shirt. Stone Forehead wore a yellow shirt belted at the waist. A pack hung lopsided on his back between his two short braids. He gestured with his left hand, probably entertaining Fledgling with war tales again.
It had been irksome having Stone Forehead around for a night and a whole day. Once she’d given in, he jabbered nonstop about his battle exploits. While it thrilled Fledgling, Cornsilk had been bored to the point of contemplating murder. She’d run ahead all day just to escape.
Dusk settled across the desert in a cool lavender veil and flowed into the spaces between the buttes, dyeing the sky a deep purple. From the crest of the low rise, she could see vast distances. Square-topped buttes jutted up across the broken country. Slanting rays from the dying sun cast their long shadows across the sage-covered bottoms and mingled with the dark slashes of drainages zigzagging down the slopes. To her right, the territory of the Green Mesa clans rose toward the sky in cool, green layers, the ragged foothills giving way to pine-covered mountains.