"Wolf?" He stepped forward. "Please, Wolf."
He tensed, heart slamming against his ribs. He licked his lips and swallowed. A black mote moved in the darkness. A mote that could have been a beast's nose.
The huge animal lumbered from behind the drift.
"Grandfather White Bear," he whispered in terror.
Chapter 43
Ice Fire stepped over the body of an Enemy. He hesitated, looking down into the young man's face. Barely more than a child, he'd died in the fighting, the side of his head bashed in.
"So young."
"Most Respected Elder?"
Ice Fire turned, looking toward Walrus where he picked his way through the ravaged camp. Mammoth-hide shelters lay smoldering. Smoke darkened the skies, ash swirling like snow. The dead lay in mutilated humps around the perimeter.
"Yes?"
Walrus grinned triumphantly. "We taught them this time, eh?"
Ice Fire filled his lungs, exhaling slowly, watching the condensation of breath before him. "Did we?"
A scream from behind them pierced the crystal air, grating on Ice Fire's nerves. He didn't turn, knowing without seeing what transpired with the woman.
"If we didn't," Walrus confided,, "that will." He jerked a mittened thumb over his shoulder. "Men quickly lose their fire for fighting when they worry about their wives and mothers giving birth to their foe's sons."
He cocked his head grimly. "Don't forget, we've lost nearly as many women as they have."
Walrus waved it off. "We're stronger than they are. Their fighting spirit will die long before ours."
"Maybe."
"Ha! They thought we wouldn't fight back in the depths of the Long Dark. The fools."
Ice Fire's lips twitched. Not even his counsel could hold the warriors back. Too many atrocities had passed. Too many horrible deaths discovered in the wake of the Enemy's retaliation. His own warriors wanted blood—pain for pain.
"They are us," Ice Fire whispered, the wind gusting down from the north batting the long silver braids about his chest where they hung out of his hood. "We are them."
Walrus frowned uneasily. "What did you say?"
Ice Fire looked into the warrior's confused face. "Cousins. At least, that's what the old woman said.'' He lifted a shoulder. "I can believe it, upon reflection. They speak our language. No other Enemy do that. Our beliefs are not so different. Like us, they—"
"Then they've lost something in the past," Walrus asserted arrogantly. "I see no honor in them. I found my sister and her child, the infant's brains mashed out on a rock and crawling with maggots! That's honor? No, Most Respected Elder, these are less than beasts we deal with. I, for one, shall sing praises to the Great Mystery when I finally slay the last of them."
Ice Fire stared at him, trying to see through, into his mind. Walrus looked back for a moment before dropping his eyes and nodding, striding purposefully back toward where they burned the Enemy warrior with glowing coals. The women and children had been rounded up and were being forced to watch the display, lest they consider trying to escape.
He picked his way up the side of the valley, crusted snow crunching underfoot. A wrenching scream tore the very air; his steps faltered.
Looking back, he saw his own warriors bent over the bound prisoner. The man lay writhing, spread-eagled, naked on the icy ground. Despite the distance, Ice Fire could make out the action. While the warriors whooped and screamed insults, Red Flint scooped glowing coals from the fire pit, pouring them over the man's crotch. The shrieks intensified.
Ice Fire turned, features like graven stone as he looked up to see the lights of the Monster Children's War struggling across the sky. The Monster Children? Not the tears of the Great Mystery? Already the slave women's colorful cosmology intruded, softening the dogma of the White Tusk Clan.
A blast of ice-laden wind staggered him. "Great Mystery? How can I undo this? What is your purpose here? Can such hatred ever be untangled?"
The sound of the wind through the rocks echoed like mocking laughter.
Green Water saw the woman's shape as the ever-present mists shredded and blew away as the wind picked up.
Straightening and arching her back, she stared at the hobbling figure out in the flats.
"Someone there," she said, pointing.
Laughing Sunshine and Curlew followed her finger, nodding. "One of the People."
"Dancing Fox!'' Green Water whispered. ' 'One of you go, make sure we've got a warm fire and lots of stew. She looks hurt."
Green Water unlaced her snowshoes from her pack, tying them on to her long boots. Taking a bearing on the sun, she started out, making her way down the long slope to the flats below. As the mists whirled away, the glare increased, forcing her to slip snow goggles over her eyes. Staring through the slits, she continued.