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The Dawn Country(12)

By:W. Michael Gear


Toksus yipped in fear as she dragged him into the small clearing surrounded by silver maples and shoved him to the ground. “Stay there or I’ll slit your throat.”

“What about the others?” Kotin asked.

“Leave Hawk-Face. He’s too sick to run, but bring the girls. Tie them over by that tree.”

Hawk-Face. That’s what she called him. She had unpleasant nicknames for all of her children. Zateri’s was Chipmunk Teeth because her two front teeth stuck out.

Wrass sank back against the packs. All he wanted was to close his eyes and sleep forever.





Five

By the time Cord reached the massive chunks of rock that clustered at the base of the pass, he was stumbling and gasping for breath. He propped himself against a stone slab and waited for his men to catch up.

Dzadi emerged from the darkness first. The old bear slumped down in the middle of the trail and flopped back against the rocks. Panting, he asked, “How … many? How many—?”

A long wailing howl pierced the darkness and was answered by shrill yips from lower on the trail: Wolf Clan warriors calling to each other across the lone and silent mountain.

Cord tried to count the dark shapes of his men coming up the trail. “I only see two.”

“Are you sure?”

Cord searched for a time longer before he said, “We lost one.”

“Which one?”

“I’m not certain yet.”

Twenty heartbeats later, Ogwed trudged up along the trail. Five paces behind him, Wado was keeping himself upright by sliding his back along the rock wall, side-stepping up the switchback with his knees quivering. Both looked like they might drop at any instant.

“I don’t see Neyaw,” Cord said.

Dzadi bowed his head. “I’m not surprised. The fool probably decided to hide somewhere. Sneaked away with his tail between his legs.”

Cord didn’t answer. His gaze fixed on movement. Two switchbacks down the trail, a stone’s toss to the south, stood a cluster of boulders girdled by plum and sumac. A circle of dark forms coalesced around the boulders. Cord watched them close in on the rocks.

A shrill cry, triumphant, almost made Cord jump out of his skin. As it echoed away, bows twanged. A man screamed in pain and fear, the sound buried beneath a din of snarls and yelped war cries. Black forms writhed over the boulders.

If Cord hadn’t known better, he’d think it was a pack of wolves downing a struggling deer.

Ogwed cried, “Is that Neyaw? Neyaw!” He started to turn back, but Dzadi brought him down hard in the middle of the trail.

“Leave it be, boy,” Dzadi said. “He’s gone.”

If it had been daylight, their Dawnland pursuers would have sacrificed Neyaw to their Sun God and eaten his flesh, giving the best parts, the brain and tongue, to their most honored citizens. In the darkness, they were, perhaps, dispensing with the ritual.

Dzadi patted Ogwed’s shoulder, then released him. “Neyaw was a fool. Don’t you make the same mistake. Don’t fall behind.”

The young warrior sat up and stared down the trail. Suppressing tears, Ogwed said, “He didn’t deserve to die that way.”

Wado added, “We are Flint warriors. We should all die in great battles, fighting to protect our people. That’s what warriors do.”

Dzadi exchanged a sad glance with Cord, then raised his eyes to the narrow defile just above them. The black chunks of stone resembled huge stair steps.

“Get up,” Cord ordered. “We have to make the pass while they’re busy with Neyaw.”

“But we need to rest. I can barely walk!” Wado objected.

Dzadi said, “You’d better be able to run, boy.”

As they climbed, the war cries grew louder—enough to throw his warriors into short-lived panics where they almost shoved each other off the blocks in their haste to reach the pass.

When they crested the trail and staggered into the gap, Cord could see the forested hills of Flint country in the distance; unwarranted joy warmed his veins. The trail down the other side of the mountain was a silver slash that cut through a thick sumac-and-hickory forest. Even staggering and half-dead, they could run it in their sleep.

Behind him, Dzadi cursed and stamped his feet.

“What’s wrong?” Cord called.

“We lost another one.”

“What?”

“Wado’s gone.”

Cord leaped down from the high point and searched their back trail with care. Nothing moved. The desolate frozen-hearted wilderness had swallowed all sound, save the ragged breathing of the men beside him.

Ogwed stared up at Cord. “Do you think they got him?”

“He might have run off,” Cord replied gently.

“Or maybe he fainted and they found him. That’s why we didn’t hear a ruckus,” Dzadi said without thinking.