As the enemy runs forward, the archers who’ve just fired sling their bows and charge out to meet them with war clubs in their fists. A grunting, gasping bellow rises, followed by the mushy thuds of clubs smacking skulls. I’ve given and taken such blows often enough that I can see the expressions of the wounded right behind my eyes and feel the momentary relief of the attacker in my heart.
“Hold,” Skenandoah whispers through gritted teeth. One of his hands, propped on the palisade, clenches. “Hold.”
The Hills warriors shove them back, slowly at first. The lines surge and withdraw, as though breathing the death of the world, and it is a labored death. My lungs work with them. The wounded stagger away, trying to get back, looking toward home. Some of the Standing Stone warriors reach out to Bur Oak and Yellowtail villages, as though begging their relatives for help.
The first line breaks. As Standing Stone warriors race back, the second line of archers lets fly into the screaming horde chasing them; then they charge out to meet them. The whooping, grunting struggle begins again. The line holds long enough for the wounded to flee. A new sound grows—the sound of limbs ripping from trees, feet scrambling through deadfall, and finally, the hopeful cries of people rushing toward the gates of the villages.
Skenandoah cups a hand to his mouth and calls, “Utz, don’t open the gates until the wounded are plastered against them. Do you understand?”
Utz lifts a hand and runs to press his eye to the crack between the plank gates, waiting. When the crashes of people hitting the gates drive him backward, he shouts, “Hannock, help me!”
It takes both of them to shove the locking planks aside and open the gates. The panicked group of warriors who rush through supporting their injured friends stuns me. There are so many. Blood drenches war shirts, stripes faces, clots on broken skulls. A few shove captives before them.
“Get them to the council house!” Skenandoah orders. “Bahna and Genonsgwa will care for them there!”
The arms and legs of the hardest hit dangle as their friends struggle to carry them across the plaza.
“Blessed Spirits,” Skenandoah whispers. “We don’t have long.”
I turn back to the battlefield. The second line has broken. Warriors flee. Arrows from the third wave of archers glisten as they puncture the mist and arc downward toward their targets. Despite the numbers of Hills warriors that fall, the onslaught roars forward, barely slowed as it crashes through the third wave and lunges for the last line of Standing Stone archers.
“Gods,” Skenandoah says. “They’ll be here in less than one thousand heartbeats.” He spins and calls, “Yonto, inform High Matron Kittle that our first three lines have broken, and the last is wavering. The enemy will hit the village soon.”
The young woman warrior runs for the ladder, climbs down three rungs at a time, and dashes for the Deer longhouse.
Skenandoah faces me. “I need every experienced warrior I have. Will you serve as my deputy war chief?”
I throw out my hands as though to push him away. “I—I can’t.”
As Skenandoah strides toward me, he says, “Then get out of my way.”
He shoves me hard against the palisade and continues down the catwalk, speaking to his warriors, probably selecting another for the job he offered me.
A numb sensation of helplessness fills me. My nerves hum. All down the catwalk, warriors stare at me. The revulsion is close to hatred. At this moment, many of my old and dear friends wish to crush my skull with their war clubs.
Their focus quickly changes when the first arrows rain down in the marsh to the west. The enemy archers can’t see across the thick reeds; they don’t have the distance yet. But they get it quickly. The next arrows slam the palisade and sail over the walls, where they drop into the plaza. People shriek and scatter like a school of fish at a thrown rock, running for cover. Many do not make it. By ones and twos, they fall. People race back, trying to drag them to safety. When another barrage of arrows flickers through the fog over Bur Oak Village, there is nothing for them to do but lie flat and hold the ground. Arrows lance the plaza, thudding on longhouse roofs, sending up puffs of snow when they don’t strike flesh. A dog howls. I see it struggling toward the central fire with an arrow all the way through its right hind leg.
The shouting and screams go on and on. I lose all sense of time. Arrows fall like the endless rains at the dawn of creation when the hero twins fought the monsters. Fight the monsters. Fight …
More arrows zizz as they cut the air over my head. Down the catwalk, Skenandoah walks through the mist. Unbelievable. He walks slowly, slowly along through the hail of arrows, chatting with his warriors, bending to talk to men who’d hunched down, hiding behind the wall, convincing them to stand up again, to nock their bows. To fight.