Morning Dew nodded. “The entire region would crack and shatter.”
“Prolonged fighting with the Chahta would weaken us. The Albaamaha would revolt again, and the surrounding nations would come flooding in. We would beat them back, becoming ever weaker in the process. Our towns in the north and south would have to be abandoned. We would probably survive as a people, but why take the risk?”
She stared anxiously at Heron Wing. “My people would suffer in the process.”
Heron Wing cocked an eyebrow. “Correct.”
“I don’t understand. It’s almost as if you want us to survive.”
“Oh, believe me, I do. So does most of the Council. At least for now. Your Chahta have alliances with the Natchez and Pensacola. You pose no real threat to our existence.” She smiled. “We came from the same people, have the same gods, the same language. You are distant relatives. Traditionally we have done more Trading than fighting. Screaming Falcon’s raid on Alligator Town was a poor choice, based on an impossible ambition. Our retaliation was an accidental triumph. But I do not cast blame. People will be people.”
“The problem, you are saying, is that Smoke Shield will make such a mess of things that everyone will lose.”
Heron Wing shrugged. “That is one possible outcome.” She paused, lowering her voice. “Tell me, with the right enticement, could peace be restored with your people?”
Morning Dew glanced uneasily at the door, ensuring that no one was close. “It is possible. But negotiating it wouldn’t be easy. It would take some sort of symbolic gesture first. A lot of people were killed at White Arrow Town. My people will be frightened and enraged. Relatives are grieving. The souls of the dead must be avenged. They have to weigh that against the potential for retaliation. If the Albaamaha revolt, it would make coming to terms very difficult.”
“Too bad we’re not Charokee,” Heron Wing said.
“Charokee? You want to be Charokee?”
“The women have the political authority there. They don’t have to depend on men to make the decisions.” She sighed. “Here, I can only work in the background.”
“Greetings!” a voice called from outside. “It is Cattail! I am coming with Stone. He has finished his practice for the children’s games.”
“We’ll talk later,” Heron Wing said softly. Then as her son charged into the room, muddy, scratched, and beaming with excitement, she cried, “Welcome, my son! Tell me about your practice!”
Morning Dew busied herself with her cooking, but her mind was knotted around Heron Wing’s predictions. My people could be destroyed!
Thirty-one
Trader strode up the wooden stairs that led to the high chief’s palisade. Swimmer, who charged up beside him, panted happily, tail wagging. Sunlight gleamed on the bright red clay. He could see little rivulets eating away at the clay coating. Looking back, he saw Old White climbing, muscles not as spry. The Seeker was already puffing.
At the gate, Trader turned to admire Rainbow Town from his high vantage point. The plaza extended in a great rectangle, the corner of the mound protruding into the plaza’s northeast corner. The red cedar pole—sacred to the Yuchi—rose straight and tall into the sky. To either side of the pole the chunkey courts had been laid out east to west. The northern one, just south of the High Chief’s Mound, served the Chief Moiety, while the southernmost was for the warriors. The courts consisted of long lanes paved with smoothly compacted clay. Between them, and just south of the Chief’s Mound, the Council House rose atop its square mound, and beyond that the Men’s House dominated a mound at the southeast corner of the plaza.
The eastern half of the plaza, just beyond the moiety houses, had been reserved for the stickball field. There young men darted back and forth, tossing a small hidebound ball to each other in practice. Each of the mounds had been capped and sealed with a different color of clay, each one of the rainbow colors that held so much meaning for the Children of the Sun. The Temple Mound across from them on the plaza’s northwest corner was a brilliant white.
In the flat to the east, a sea of houses, many on low mounds, extended clear to the distant high walls of the western palisade. He could see ponds created from borrow pits, the water reflecting blue sky. Beyond the city walls, a gray pall of smoke hung above a thousand camps. From every direction along the river, people had flocked to Rainbow City for the solstice celebrations. The city reminded him of a beehive. Individuals could be seen crowding through the gates, inspecting items of Trade that the locals had spread on blankets.