The Dawn Country(38)

Towa stared at him. “Don’t tell me that Puksu greeted you that way? I don’t believe it.”

“Puksu? Hardly. She was always sitting at her mother’s fire when I arrived home, bad-mouthing me before she even knew I’d disgraced myself in battle.”

Puksu had recently divorced him, thank the Spirits. He was heartily glad to be rid of her constant belittling voice. Even now he could hear her whine in his head: What did you do this time, my husband? Shoot one of our own men in the back?

Wakdanek asked, “Who is Puksu?”

“My former wife, the Soul-Eater.”

“Ah.”

Sindak scowled at the darkness for a while before he said, “Come on; let’s get back to camp. If we’re attacked by humans out here, I doubt Wakdanek’s barks and howls will save us.”

Sindak let Wakdanek get several paces ahead; then he grabbed Towa’s arm to stop him and whispered, “I trust that you’ve decided to tell me more about your secret orders?”

Towa looked like a condemned man waiting for the ax to fall. “Give me some time. I need—”

“To figure out what treachery Atotarho has planned?”

“I wish you wouldn’t finish my sentences. It’s—”

“Unnerving.” He released Towa’s arm. “Especially when I’m right.”





Sixteen

As the howling of wolves penetrated his sleep, Gonda flailed weakly and heard Sindak say, “Go back to your blankets, Wakdanek.”

Gonda flopped to his opposite side and slowly sank back into the jumbled dream. Memories collided, showing him fragments out of sequence and time … .

I crouch in the prisoners’ house in Atotarho Village. Wind gusts outside and breathes through the wall behind me, chilling my back. I wrap my cape more tightly around my shoulders, but I’m not going to be warm tonight, or perhaps, for the next moon. The damp, cold house stretches forty hands long and twenty wide. The walls are not of bark construction, but sturdy oak planks reinforced with cross-poles. The odor of mildew pervades the dark house, and insects—or perhaps they are mice—skitter across the floor. Koracoo sits on the floor two paces away with her back against the wall. In the moonlight that penetrates around the door, I can see the outline of her body. No one but me would realize how desperately worried she is. I see it in the tension in her shoulders and the way her jaw is set slightly to the left.

“They can’t be that far ahead of us,” I say. “The tracks were only one day old, and it looked like the warriors were herding eight or nine children. That many captives slow men down.”

Koracoo leans her head back against the wall and looks at the roof. Tiny points of light sparkle. Holes. If it rains, by morning we will be drenched.

“Koracoo, what will we do if Atotarho does not release us in the morning? Have you considered that? It would be a great boon for him to capture War Chief Koracoo and her deputy.” I pause, watching her. “We must get back on the children’s trail as soon as poss—”

Abruptly, I’m on the trail, staring down at the wolf-chewed corpse of a young girl. Koracoo says, “She is not one of our children.”

The birds have pecked out her eyes and devoured most of the flesh of her face. Ropes of half-chewed intestines snake across the shells. The broken shaft of an arrow protrudes from her chest. A short distance away, an elaborately carved conch shell pendant rests. It is gorgeous. A False Face with a long bent nose, slanted mouth, and hollow eyes stare up from the shell.

I walk closer and search the area around the mangled corpse for any clues that might reveal her killer. We’ve been following sandal tracks, distinctive ones with a herringbone pattern. I bend down, pick up the shell pendant, and subtly tuck it into my belt pouch without Koracoo seeing me. I know she would not like this—I am disturbing the dead and risk ghost sickness—but I have the sense that this pendant—

I’m back in the prisoners’ house. Warriors’ voices hiss. Feet shuffle, and shadows pass back and forth, blotting out the silver gleam that rims the door.

“Open the door,” Chief Atotarho orders.

Atotarho moves painfully, rocking and swaying as he enters the house with his lamp. He has seen fifty-two summers, and has braided rattlesnake skins into his gray-streaked black hair and pinned it into a bun at the back of his head. The style gives his narrow face a starved look. He was once, a long time ago, a great warrior. But now, his black cape covers a crooked and misshapen body. To the warriors, he says, “Close the door behind me.”

“But … my chief, you can’t go in alone. There are two of them. What if they attack you?”