The Dawn Country

One

Nightfall had silenced the mountains. No owls hooted; no trees snapped in the cold wind that swayed the branches. There was only the faint roar of the fire in the distance.

Sonon pulled his black cape more tightly around him and studied the frozen ground. The warriors’ feet had hewn a dark swath through the frost that glittered in the gaudy orange halo. His gaze followed their trail to the burning village. The Dawnland People had called it Bog Willow Village. Yesterday it had contained over one hundred houses.

He hadn’t expected the village to be this bad.

As he walked toward it, ash fell around him like fine flakes of obsidian, coating his cape and long hair, turning them gray. The forty-hand-tall palisade that surrounded the village had burned through in too many places. That had been their doom. They must have watched in horror as the enemy streamed through those gaps and raced across the village, killing everything in their path.

He turned back around to stare at the victory camp. Hundreds of celebrating warriors danced to the sound of drums and flutes. Most were from the Flint or Mountain Peoples, but the war party had contained a few Hills People warriors, too. He knew them from their distinctive tattoos, and the designs painted on their bows and capes. On the far side of the camp, near the river, captive women and children huddled together, shivering, watching their captors with wide stunned eyes. Before dawn came all would be sold and marched away to enemy villages. The lucky ones would be adopted into families and spend the rest of their lives trying to forget this night. The others wouldn’t have to worry about it.

Sonon took a breath and let it out slowly.

There were still times when he woke to the sound of screams that existed only inside him. For many summers he’d thought they were the cries of his twin sister, and he’d been ravaged by guilt. When he’d finally realized the voice was his own, the pain had eased a little. The day they were sold into slavery, he’d seen only eight summers. He wasn’t a warrior. There was nothing he could have done to save her—or himself.

He clenched his fists so hard his nails bit into his palms. He had to go down there, into the village. No man wished to admit he was afraid, but …

He forced his legs to walk. At first, only a few bodies lay alongside the trail, but as he neared the palisade the number increased. Desperate villagers must have fought to get outside and run headlong into a line of waiting archers. Bodies, bristling with arrows, had piled up around each gap in the defensive wall. The last few to make it outside probably had to shove their way through a mound of dead.

Sonon carefully stepped around the carnage and ducked through the charred hole in the palisade. The heat struck him first. He threw up an arm and squinted against the glare to see what remained of Bog Willow Village. In less than twenty heartbeats he was sweating, struggling for air. The smoke was so thick it was almost impossible to breathe.

Five paces away an old woman sat on the ground with her face in her hands, rocking back and forth in dazed silence. A few other survivors stumbled past. They moved methodically, searching for loved ones or bending to collect precious belongings: a dropped pot or basket, children’s toys.

I’m over here. See me?

Sonon stopped, and tiny tornadoes of ash spun away from his sandals. They whirled through the firelit shadows. Was it just his fatigue? It sounded like a boy’s voice.

Cautiously, he veered around a collapsed wall and began searching the debris. Twenty paces later, he almost stumbled over the child.

Two small arms extended from beneath a buckled wall.

Sonon knelt and pulled the boy from the heap of smoldering bark. Most of his hair had been singed off. He’d seen perhaps six or seven summers. For a time, he just held the boy in his lap and listened to the crackling roar of the fire. Somewhere in the conflagration, muted voices shouted names … and went unanswered. Occasionally, orphaned children darted by.

When he could, he staggered to his feet and carried the boy between the burning husks of two houses, then stepped through a gap in the palisade wall and trudged down to the river’s edge, where he gently rested the boy on the shore. In the wavering glare, the boy’s half-open eyes seemed to be alive and watching him.

Why do I only hear them when the struggle is over? Are the voices of the dead only audible to those trapped in eternal night?

Sonon tenderly adjusted the boy’s cape, pulling it up around his throat to keep him warm. “It’s all right,” he said. “I’ll make sure they find you. Your clan will take care of you, and you’ll have no trouble crossing the bridge to the afterlife. Your ancestors will be waiting for you.”

Though he was a man of the Hills nation, he knew the ways of the Dawnland People. They believed that the unburied dead became Ghost Fires, angry fire-beings that could not cross the bridge to the afterlife and were forever doomed to remain around the deteriorating bones. The Bog Willow Village survivors would not leave their beloved relatives to that terrible fate, not if they could help it. That meant someone would come looking for this child. His body would be ritually cleaned and prepared for the long journey; then his family would sing him to the afterlife. Having the boy out here in the open would make it easier for his relatives to find him.