The Dawn Country(13)

Horror sparkled in Ogwed’s eyes. “You mean they found him, gagged him, and they’re cutting him to pieces and swallowing his flesh while he watches? That’s it, isn’t it?” The youth’s eyes rolled around in his head, darting this way and that as though he was on the verge of bolting into the blackness.

Cord said, “Stop wasting breath. We’re going home.”

He climbed back up and perched on the highest block of stone to survey the country to the west. Lines of tumbled and irregular hills, softened by the winter-gray mat of forest, stretched out before him. There, just beyond those ridges, lay the familiar forests, streams, and fields of home.

Or what was left of them.

Feeling hollow and drained, he started down the other side at a shambling trot. He couldn’t feel his legs, though he knew when his moccasins hit the ground: Each step jolted his body. Dzadi and Ogwed struggled along behind him.

When they rounded a bend, a tiny light flickered. A campfire. Down the western slope of the mountain, perhaps one-half hand of time away. Friend or foe? He’d worry about it later. Right now, they had only one task: to stay on their feet.





Six

Gonda turned when his eleven-summers-old son, Odion, sat up in his moosehide blanket, as though he’d heard something, and tipped his head to listen to the night. The boy was twenty paces away, sitting beside the Flint girl, Baji. They both looked terrified. Odion’s shoulder-length black hair hung around his face in a mass of tangles, and his dark eyes had gone wide. His gaze was riveted on the dense plums and sumacs that created an impenetrable thicket on the northern slope.

Odion tilted his right ear toward the east, then turned to Gonda. Almost breathlessly, he said, “Father? Do you hear that?”

Gonda shook his head. Odion pointed up the mountain toward the pass.

“Are you sure, Son?”

Odion and Baji nodded in unison.

Gonda quietly walked around the fire where the other children and the two Hills People warriors, Sindak and Towa, slept rolled in blankets. His former wife, War Chief Koracoo, stood guard there. She obviously hadn’t heard anything either. She stood with her back to him, vigilantly keeping watch on the trail that led up the mountain. Her red leather cape, painted with a blue buffalo, looked black in the faint light. Her legendary war club, CorpseEye, was propped on her shoulder.

As Gonda approached, she didn’t turn. She knew the sound of his steps better than her own. They had been married for twelve summers—until she’d returned to find their village burned to the ground. Then she’d set what remained of his belongings outside their smoldering longhouse and, according to the ways of the People of the Standing Stone, divorced him. He walked to stand at her shoulder and whispered, “Odion heard something. Did you?”

The tiny lines around her black eyes deepened. After the devastating attack on their own village, Yellowtail Village, they’d both cut their hair short in mourning. Chopped-off black locks framed her beautiful oval face. At the age of twenty-seven, she stood twelve hands tall—very tall for a woman—and had a straight nose with full lips and a wide mouth. “No. Earlier, I thought I heard wolves, perhaps human wolves, near the pass, but …”

They both stood absolutely still and listened. During the attack, several of the Yellowtail Village children had been stolen by the enemy. Last night, they’d rescued their own children—Odion, and their eight-summers-old daughter, Tutelo—plus a Flint girl named Baji and another boy, Hehaka, whose people they did not yet know.

Koracoo’s head tilted to the right. Gonda held his breath. Bitter cold gripped the forest; it had driven the sap out of the trees, freezing them solid and leaving their mighty hearts dreaming of spring. They were too cold even to pop and snap with minor temperature variations.

Yet Gonda heard snapping in the distance. And it was rhythmic.

“Men. Running.”

“Yes,” Koracoo whispered. She spun around to survey the camp. Her gaze lingered on the children. “One of us should remain by the fire while the rest of us hide.”

“I’ll be the bait. Go. Get the others up and packed.”

Koracoo trotted away, rousted everyone from his or her blankets, and ordered them to pack. Hands flew, rolling blankets, stuffing belongings into packs. Then Koracoo sent Sindak and Towa out into the northern sumac thicket with the four children. She lightly trotted to hide in the plum grove to the south of the fire.

A herd of deer thrashed through the plums, startling Gonda into instinctively grabbing for his war club, but they trotted past and disappeared into the forest.

Gonda walked back and crouched before the fire. Reluctantly, he placed his war club to the side, near the tripod where the boiling bag hung, and pretended to be warming his hands before the tiny blaze. Far off, branches cracked as men staggered into brush and trees, then curses erupted, and finally feet stumbled down the mountain trail. Thirty heartbeats later, they arrived.