People of the Weeping Eye(23)

Alligator Town had been built on an older Albaamaha village site. The place had been occupied off and on, but finally abandoned because of its location so far downstream. Then, during the rulership of his cousin, Fire Sky, a party had come downriver, and with Albaamaha labor, they had built a town here. As was demonstrated on this day, a location so far from Split Sky City was difficult.

Flying Hawk considered the problem as his canoes closed. The town had been built on a low rise, above flood stage, with fertile soils close by. The place had good access to the western uplands, while cypress and tupelo swamps were located just upstream. The resources could support a larger population, a stronger military presence, but it was difficult to force people to live so far from their relatives and clan holdings. It would be worse after this. Rot and curses, he wanted this place as a southern bastion of Sky Hand authority.

“Be ready,” his nephew Smoke Shield called. A different tension ran through the warriors. Their eyes sharpened as scouts appeared on the bank, waving the all-clear.

“Take us in,” Flying Hawk said evenly.

At his order, the canoes lanced across the roiling river, the first of them driving onto the beach as the warriors piled out. As if demonstrating their proficiency before their high minko, the warriors deployed in a perfect skirmish line, two of their fellows pulling the lightened canoe higher onto the bank. Canoe by canoe, his warriors landed and swarmed up the bank, shields held at the ready, bows and war clubs in their hands.

He felt his heavy war canoe grate as it slid onto the canoe landing. As quickly, the warriors leaped over the gunwales to pull the craft onto the beach. Paddles clattered as they dropped them for bows, shields, war clubs, and lances.

Smoke Shield was standing, hands on hips as he looked up the canoe landing toward Alligator Town. Apparently satisfied with the distribution of warriors approaching the town, he turned toward Flying Hawk and strode through the beached canoes. The man moved like an agile cat, strength coiled in his smooth muscles. A fiery anger betrayed the calculating passion that burned behind his gleaming black eyes.

I see trouble brewing there, Nephew. Pray that this time you unleash it on our enemy.

Flying Hawk rose from his seat and took his war chief’s hand. His young nephew steadied him as he stepped out onto the shore. Smoke Shield Mankiller, Flying Hawk’s sister’s son, was next in line to follow him as high minko. The war chief had just passed his twenty-sixth winter, and—but for the hideous scar that marked his crushed cheek—would have been a most handsome young man. On this day he wore a spread of red, white, and black feathers in the high roach atop his head. A single warrior’s forelock hung down almost to the bridge of his nose. Three pristine white beads were knotted along its length. The forked-eye design had been tattooed around his eyes; but the red bar across his cheeks had been mangled by the deep scar that left the side of his face misshapen. For the purposes of this day Smoke Shield had painted half of his face red, gathering the color’s Power for war; the other half was black, symbolic of mourning for the dead.

Flying Hawk’s warriors had stopped in a defensive formation, feet braced on the packed sand of the landing. Their keen eyes studied the brush lines on either side, weapons and shields up in case of attack from the ruined village just beyond the terrace. Flying Hawk could see the partially charred walls of the palisade.

“Your litter, High Minko,” Smoke Shield said as porters came forward with his covered seat. Six brawny Albaamaha men lowered the litter to the ground, stepping back so that Flying Hawk could seat himself. He checked his hairpiece to make sure it hadn’t shifted. The ornament was made of thinly beaten copper the length and width of his forearm; a rendering of an arrow splitting a cloud in two. The base was inserted into the hair bun he’d twisted tightly against the back of his head.

A bright cloak made from flamingo feathers Traded up from the south covered his shoulders, and a large shell gorget decorated with the symbol of his people—a human eye staring out of the palm of an extended hand—hung on his chest. About his waist was a warrior’s triangular-shaped scalp apron, the point of which hung down between his knees. The spotless fabric was bleached to a startling white and contrasted to the stylistic black hawk embroidered on the flap.

Smoke Shield handed him his mace. Chipped from fine chert and nearly as long as his arm, it flared at the top in the shape of a turkey tail, a symbol of his people’s victory over one of the monsters in the Beginning Times, before the current world came into being.

“Let us go and see to the damage,” Flying Hawk said as he settled himself cross-legged in the litter. His men barely tilted the litter as they lifted it to their shoulders and started up the terrace from the canoe landing.