Saponi nodded. “At most, this will delay your arrival by a few hands of time.” He gestured to the left fork. “If we go now.”
“Why don’t you just give me the answer, so we won’t have to delay our journey at all?”
Water ran around Saponi’s moccasins. Freshly fallen autumn leaves and twigs filled the stream. “War Chief Sindak said we had to show you, not tell you.”
Hiyawento expelled a breath—and took the right fork. As he headed down the trail to Sedge Marsh Village, he fretted over what Sindak wanted him to see. One destroyed village looked pretty much like another.
The guards had changed positions. Rather than both men walking in front of him to protect him from a frontal assault, as they had been, Disu now strode out in front, while Saponi walked behind Hiyawento. He wasn’t sure he liked this, and he cast an uneasy glance over his shoulder. Probably they were just taking better care of him … but he felt like a caged packrat. If they were attacked, he could neither advance, nor retreat. He’d have to strike out through the brush.
As they continued down the trail, wind-tormented branches clattered and slashed the air above them. He bowed his head against the downpour and concentrated on plodding through the storm.
Two hands of time later, the water in the trail turned black, filled with ash or soot, and dread quickened his pulse. He twisted around to stare up at the beech trees that lined the trail. Gray streaks trickled down the trunks, as though not so long ago they had been coated with ash. When they reached the crest of the hill that looked down upon Sedge Marsh Village, he went numb.
Below, eight blackened pole skeletons stood where there had once been longhouses. The charred palisade had been breached in so many places he couldn’t count them. The souls of the warriors that abided in the trees must be straining to keep it standing.
Disu and Saponi walked to stand on either side of him, and followed his gaze to the ruins below.
“I see a destroyed village,” Hiyawento said. “A place where my relatives lived. It saddens me … but I don’t know why I’m here.”
“Come,” Saponi said. He started down the hill.
Hiyawento expelled an annoyed breath, but followed. When Saponi scrambled through one of the gaping holes in the palisade and trotted out into the plaza, Hiyawento felt a strange sense of foreboding—and it was more than just the ghostly screams of rage that must fill the air. He turned round and round, searching for dead bodies, stray dogs, orphaned children. He didn’t even see scattered baskets or broken pots lying on the ground, dropped by fleeing people when the attack came.
He shouted at Saponi, “This village was burned three days ago. Where are the dead bodies?”
Saponi slung his bow and folded his muscular arms. “Didn’t you wonder why War Chief Sindak wasn’t present at the War Council?”
“Yes. Everyone did.”
“He wasn’t there because he was here.”
“Why? What was he doing?”
“We were ordered to care for the bodies.”
Confused, Hiyawento shook his head. “We … then, you and Disu were with Sindak’s party?”
“Yes.”
“But their relatives, those that survived the attack, should have returned to take care of that.”
Saponi’s lips smiled, but there was no humor there. “Atotarho told them he’d kill them if they tried to bury their relatives. He said they were traitors who deserved to wander the earth forever.”
“But … then he ordered Sindak to form a burial party?”
“Yes.”
He wiped the rain from his eyes with the back of his hand. “You are, I sense, about to get to the point of why you brought me here.”
Saponi put a hand on Hiyawento’s shoulder. “Walk with me. There’s more to this story. Something more interesting.”
Saponi strode northward with his cape billowing around his legs.
“Interesting? That’s a strange word to use, given the circumstances,” he said as he followed.
“You’ll see.”
As they marched across the muddy plaza, Hiyawento’s gaze searched the skeletons of each longhouse. They were empty, as though the people had just packed up and moved, then fired the village behind them. The whole scene was so odd.
They stepped through the palisade, and Saponi slogged out across the wet leaves, then led him down into a narrow trough between two low hills. Leaves filled the trough. The drenched branches of towering sycamores and chestnuts flailed high over their heads. Occasionally twigs snapped off and pattered the ground like hailstones.
Reverently, Saponi said, “The people are here. We stacked them seven high in a row two hundred hands long; then we burned them. We buried them as best we could, given that we were all terrified and anxious to get home.”