The Broken Land(12)
She flipped over, threw her arms around his neck, and hugged him fiercely. “One moon. One entire moon. So much can happen in that amount of time. Be careful. Promise me you’ll take no foolish chances. You are my heart and my strength. I couldn’t stand to lose you.”
“I will be careful. Now,” he said and pulled slightly away from her to face her, “promise me something.”
“What is it?”
“Promise me you will not make your decision about the high matron’s offer until I return.”
Her delicate brows drew together over her wide nose. “Grandmother has scheduled another Wolf Clan meeting three days from now. I promise you I will try to stall them, but I may not be able to. Why did you ask that?”
Barely above a whisper, he said, “Your father.”
Zateri rolled onto her elbows, her dark hair hanging in a torrent to the bedding hides. Her voice was thoughtful, but not surprised. “So you think he’s behind this, too?”
“Chief Atotarho always has hidden motives.” Across the fire, he saw Pedeza cock an ear. Had he spoken so loudly? He lowered his voice, “I suspect he wants you in his village for another reason.”
“Perhaps because if grandmother dies, and I do not return home to take up my rightful position as high matron, our clan may lose its right to rule, and the next clan, undoubtedly the Bear Clan, will replace him as chief?”
A hard smile edged his lips. That was something few people noticed about Zateri. Beneath her slow words lurked a stiletto-sharp mind with an almost supernatural sensitivity to tones of voice or the slightest shift of posture. There was not much she missed. That’s why, may my daughters and granddaughters forgive me, she will make a truly great high matron of the People of the Hills.
He touched her cheek. “If you need help while I am away, you can go to Sindak. You know that, don’t you?”
“He is my father’s war chief, Hiyawento.” She reached up, took his hand, and pressed it to her lips for a long moment before answering, “But, yes, I know I can trust him. I have trusted him since I was ten summers.”
Many hands of time later, lying awake listening to the wind shiver the bones of the longhouse, memories taunted Hiyawento. They were not the thoughts of daylight, but the nagging images that come only in the dead of night and will not leave a man in peace. Jumbled, events out of order, he heard the distant chaos of screams and shouts, glimpsed the old woman’s wrinkled face, and found himself lying hurt in a long-ago meadow so afraid he couldn’t stop shivering. Snowflakes fell from the moonlit sky and perched upon the bare branches like fallen stars. The black bulk of the evil warrior Dakion loomed over him like Grandfather Bear standing on his hind legs. As the man lifted his war club to crush Hiyawento’s skull, a hoarse shriek broke from the lips of Hiyawento’s best friend, Odion, barely eleven summers. Then Odion stepped into the space below Dakion’s uplifted arms, and the stiletto flashed in his hands. Odion repeatedly plunged it into the man’s chest, belly, arms, anything he could reach.
He saved me.
An odd silence descended over the memory. Dakion’s cries drifted slowly away in icy puffs. Odion’s wavering scream faded like a dancing slip of foxfire.
Why had the sound died? Was it because he could no longer bear those voices? Or because he had relived this moment so many times that the shrieks had disfigured his souls? Like thick scars they wormed through his entire life. He could trace them with his hands; he didn’t need to hear them.
In the drifting mist behind his eyes, the huge man-shaped blackness continued to writhe, heaving its bulk sideways to avoid the stiletto, trying to throw off the small boy on top of him, the boy who would not give up until the blackness stopped moving.
Though Hiyawento knew he lay in a warm longhouse surrounded by people who loved and respected him, he could not help but relive the terror of that final instant.
After an eternity, his gaze drifted over the few things arrayed in baskets lining the northern partition wall. They did not own much—no one did—but these simple things were precious to Zateri: a mussel shell bracelet that had belonged to her mother, an oddly shaped pot he’d brought her from his last battle walk against the People of the Mountain, a handful of quartz crystals that shone like shattered stars. Though deeply asleep, Zateri had one hand twined in the sleeve of his shirt, as though she couldn’t bear to have him move too far away from her. The chill of her fingers penetrated the hide and cooled his arm. Gently, so as not to wake her, he drew the bearskin up over her hand to keep it warm.
His movements must have awakened his eight-summers-old daughter. Kahn-Tineta rolled to her back and yawned a wide deep yawn that revealed her missing front teeth. She blinked around the longhouse. When her gaze finally turned to him and she found him smiling at her, she slipped from her bedding hides and tiptoed across the floor to crawl beneath the bearskin beside him.