People of the Raven (North America's Forgotten Past) (56 page)

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Authors: W. Michael Gear,Kathleen O'Neal Gear

BOOK: People of the Raven (North America's Forgotten Past)
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F
rom his position in the Council Lodge, Rain Bear studied Great Chief Cimmis. The North Wind chief lay under a blanket, breath wheezing in and out of his crushed chest. A double strand of rope had been tied around his hips to keep the compress over the spear wound. Firelight flickered like burnished copper on his sagging cheeks. The old man’s eyes were fevered, pain-bright, but he was alert, knowing full well what was happening.
Behind him, the Four Old Women sat silent, owl-eyed, still stunned as the realization of their captivity sank in.
“What’s to talk about?” Talon thrust out his arm and looked one by one at the occupants of the Council Lodge. The place was huge, but when the old women had ordered it built, they’d had no idea what its first use would be.
“Kill them,” Sleeper agreed. “For the pain they have caused our people, I say that we boil them alive and leave their corpses on the beach for the gulls and crabs to pick at.”
“Yes!” Goldenrod agreed.
“Death.” Black Mountain slapped a hand to his thigh in agreement.
Rain Bear glanced at Evening Star and Kaska, who watched with uneasy eyes.
Rides-the-Wind eased back from where he’d been inspecting Cimmis’s wound. “You may kill them most gruesomely if you wish,
but I would ask you, is that the message you want to send to the rest of the North Wind People?”
“The time of the North Wind People is over,” Black Mountain growled. He looked at the two matrons. “Besides, Evening Star and Kaska have served us well.”
Kaska flared, “I do not serve the Raven People, Chief. My goals are not yours.”
“We’ll remember that,” Black Mountain said darkly, “later.”
Rain Bear interjected wearily, “This isn’t about peoples.”
“Then what is it about?” Goldenrod asked bitterly. “For years we have served the—”
“And they have served
us
!” Rain Bear thundered. “Like I said, this isn’t about peoples; it’s about them!” He pointed at Cimmis and the Council. “It’s about the decisions they made that led to the murder of tens of tens of people, Raven and North Wind alike!” He rose painfully to his feet, glaring. “What we do here will affect everyone. Don’t you understand? It’s our families that we’re talking about. If we choose the wrong path here today our sons and daughters will continue to kill each other until we are all so weak the Cougar People or the Buffalo People will move into our lands, and we will be
their
slaves.”
“He is right,” Evening Star said. “We must confine our punishment to the Council and the great chief alone.” Images of her dying family flickered in the back of her mind. “Death.”
“Death,” the others assented.
“Life!”
a sharp voice barked.
All eyes turned to see Matron Astcat standing in the doorway. She held Tsauz’s hand. Carefully, she walked into the Council Lodge and braced herself. She shot a fond look at Cimmis. “Hello, my husband.”
He couldn’t seem to find words, but nodded a faint greeting as he labored for air.
Astcat turned, taking in the chiefs. Rain Bear felt the Power in her as their eyes met. She gave him the briefest of nods.
“Oh, yes,” Astcat said wearily, “something must be done to atone for the Wolf Tails, and the raids, and the fear.” She narrowed her eyes, staring at the Four Old Women. “You have ruined the Council. You have brought us to the teetering edge of destruction. Because of you, our time is done.”
“You don’t—” Old Woman North began.
“Quiet!”
Astcat cried.
“Why shouldn’t we kill them, Great Matron?” Rain Bear asked reasonably.
Astcat gave him a wary smile. “I will bargain with you, Great Chief. If you will allow me to declare them Outcast, I am prepared to divide up the North Wind clan grounds among the Raven People. We will surrender our villages to you, live among you, and teach you everything that we know. We will work beside you, gathering clams, digging roots, and fishing.”
“Great Matron!” Kaska cried in dismay.
Astcat fixed her with keen eyes. “My soul has been away for a long time, Kaska. I was lost in a vision of the future, and this is how it shall be. We are losing ourselves as it is. Let us make the process as painless as possible, shall we?”
“But our traditions,” Evening Star cried. “Who will keep them alive?”
“We all will.” Astcat pointed to Rain Bear. “Look at the great chief! His daughter is my granddaughter. She is married to a Raven Singer.” She pointed to Pitch, who watched soberly from the side. “Tsauz here is half Raven, and he will be my husband.”
Talon made a hacking sound as he cleared his throat. “We can have all of your territory anyway, Matron. What if we just take it and turn the tables, enslave the North Wind People as they have enslaved us? Why should we do it your way when we can do it ours?”
Astcat’s keen gaze bored into him. “That’s a fair question, but the Wolf Tails are still out there, and I am the great matron. At my order, they can either disband, or you may awaken some morning to find your children headless—assuming they survive the wars. I assure you the North Wind People will fight for their lives. I offer you an opportunity to let your children grow up, War Chief. How do you want it? Easy, or hard?”
Talon had visibly paled. “You would do that? Disband the Wolf Tails?”
She nodded. “I never liked the idea anyway.”
“And who would follow you?” Sleeper asked. “What if we ended up with someone like Old Woman North as great matron? Or an Ecan as great chief?”
“Evening Star will succeed me as great matron. If she hasn’t earned your trust, no one can.”
Rain Bear took a deep breath. “Chiefs, I think there is a great deal of wisdom in the great matron’s words.”
Astcat turned, her face like carved wood as she met her husband’s eyes. “Cimmis, you and the Four Old Women are hereby declared Outcast! I order Matron Kaska to assign a party of her warriors to bear you across the mountains to the lands of the
Striped Dart People. There, she will leave you with any who wish to accompany you. You, and your followers, and any such descendants as they may have, may never return to our lands under pain of death.”
“Why,” Cimmis whispered, “my wife?”
Her voice, tight with love and pain, almost broke as she said, “It is the price of my people’s survival, husband.”
She turned, eyes like wounds, and hobbled slowly from the Council Lodge. Tsauz clutched tightly to her withered hand.
 
 
E
can curled on his side. He lay screened from view by a skirt of low-hanging fir branches. Brittle fir needles prickled against his sweat-hot cheek and stuck to his skin. His breath came in fast gasps. With each inhalation, with each heartbeat, the spear sticking through his body moved.
Ecan opened his mouth, blinking against the pain and fear. His belly was on fire, burning as gut juices leaked from his torn intestines and gurgled inside him. The stink of it clogged his nostrils where intestinal fluids and blood continued to leak out of the wound.
He heard them, the rapid pounding of feet as two warriors hurried past. Twisting his head, he could see them through the screening branches. Cimmis’s men, they ran with a purpose.
Hunting me?
But they didn’t even look his way, trotting past, casting anxious looks over their shoulders. Fleeing. But from what?
Ecan lowered his head back to the duff, his hands gripping the spear point that stuck out from just to the right of his navel.
Gods, he was dying. The spear had caught him from behind, lancing through his right kidney, angling down through his stomach and intestines. He’d cut enough people open, listened to their screams as he’d pawed through their living guts, to know how he was hit.
I’m dying!
The thought sent a shiver of fear through him.
“I am to be great chief,” he whispered to the shadows where he lay. “Do you hear me? Great chief!”
It was all so unfair! He’d been betrayed at every turn. Betrayed by Evening Star, White Stone, Coyote, Cimmis—all of them!
He blinked, aware of the hot blood that dribbled from the spear shaft onto his hands. He tightened his fingers around the spear, feeling the keen edge of the point. Did he dare pull it out?
Could he? The very thought of feeling that long shaft sliding through his guts sickened him.
Fear coupled with shock and sent a feverish heat through him. Sweat prickled on his skin just before his body jerked, and he threw up great gouts of clotted blood.
Whimpering, he lay back, the stench of his wound rising to tease his nostrils. Tears leaked from his eyes and turned the world silver.
Movement! Something creeping through the branches. He blinked to clear the glassy sheen from his eyes. Then blinked again.
Yes, it was a puppy! A little black dog with a white face.
“Runner?” he gasped. The puppy was watching him intently, studying him.
But if Runner was here, was Tsauz close by? His heart leapt. Tsauz! Yes, his son had come for him!
“Tsauz?” he tried to cry, having a hard time finding the breath.
The world seemed to shimmer and float in a way that was watery and liquid. A warm haze began to gray Ecan’s vision. Only Runner remained in focus as he stepped ever closer, his black shiny nose sniffing warily.
“Take me to Tsauz,” Ecan gasped, fighting to keep the world in focus. All he could see was the puppy. It was smiling now, wagging its tail in anticipation.
Then he remembered War Gods Village, recalled driving the spear into the little puppy’s side, hearing the shriek of pain and fear. Gods, was that why Runner was here? To claim him?
As if in answer, the little dog threw its head back and yipped in delight.
As his soul loosened from his body, Ecan knew the true taste of fear.
“
W
hat are you feeling?” Rides-the-Wind asked as he crouched next to Cimmis. The great chief lay on his litter, a blanket covering all but his head and arms. Around them, people passed. They shot uneasy looks in Cimmis’s direction, whispering behind their hands. Two guards ensured the old man’s safety.
Cimmis managed a bare whisper. “Rage.” Blood caked his lips. When blood from his punctured lungs built up, racking coughs expelled clotted phlegm. The pain had to be excruciating.
Rides-the-Wind looked down into the old man’s pain-glazed eyes and felt, what? Sympathy? No, more curiosity than anything else. “I have often wondered if for every good there is an evil. A balance in the way the world was first Sung.”
“There is only suffering,” Cimmis whispered dryly. “If I could stand, only for a moment …”
“You would do what?”
“I would choke the life from her body!” He winced with the vehemence of his words.
“Do you have so little love for her?”
“No,” the old man whispered. “It’s because I still love her that I want so badly to make her pay.” He turned his head away, tears leaking from the corners of his eyes.
“Do you wish to tell me anything, Cimmis?” Rides-the-Wind considered
the old man. “You will be standing before Gutginsa’s spear soon. I am curious as to how you will be judged.”
“I’ll live,” he swore. “Just wait and see! From exile, I’ll come back, and when I do …”
“Yes?”
“I will see them scream in agony.”
“Have you no room in your heart for anything but anger?”
He reached up, gasping from the pain in his crushed chest, and wiped his eyes. “I loved … her … .”
“Then,” the old Soul Keeper mused, “perhaps there is hope.”
“Hope … is a myth.”
 
 
R
ain Bear stepped around the edges of the Joining ceremony, heading to where Rides-the-Wind knelt beside Cimmis. He’d been there all day, right at the edge of the palisade, talking with the captive chief. A hard-eyed guard of Kaska’s warriors ensured his safety.
Pitch’s voice carried in the clear morning air. “And will you, Astcat, matron of the North Wind People, accept this man Tsauz as your husband, to become great chief of the North Wind People?”
Astcat took Tsauz’s hand and called in a loud voice, “I accept Tsauz.”
Over ten tens of people had come, including many from the once slave village. They watched with wary but curious eyes. Tsauz stood to Astcat’s right, a tall boy with his chin up, wearing Pitch’s red ritual cape.
“So, it is done,” Evening Star said as she walked up and took Rain Bear’s hand. “And now, I have a question for you.”
“Yes?”
“Will you, Rain Bear, great chief of the Raven People, join with me, Evening Star, of the North Wind People, to be my husband, and to eventually become the great chief of the North Wind People?”
He studied her for a moment. “Are you sure you want to do this?”
Her steady blue eyes seemed to bore into his soul. “If I have to build a new world for my people, I want to do it with the man I love. My people will trust you.”
He hesitated for a moment, just staring into her eyes. “Yes, Matron, I will Join with you.”
 
 
G
reat chief?” Dogrib said. “You had better come see this.”
Rain Bear left the Council Lodge where he, Evening Star, Talon, and Kaska had been talking.
“What is it?”
“Dzoo.” Dogrib shot him a grim glance. “She just appeared headed this way down the trail.”
“Is she all right?”
“She looks fine. She’s leading a party bearing someone on a stretcher.”
“Thank Gutginsa she’s safe.” They’d been worried. Dzoo’s blessing would be critical if they were going to maintain the fragile peace. “Do you think she found Ecan?”
“I can’t say, my chief. No one has found him yet.”
As Rain Bear followed Dogrib through the gate he could see her. In the clear morning light, Dzoo walked at the head of a small party of former slaves. They carried a litter, upon which a person lay.
The way Dzoo moved was magical, almost as if she floated above the ground. Her body dipped and swayed as she sang a melody that was at once haunting and joyous.
Above her, a column of crows wheeled and cawed, as if drawn by the bizarre sight.
Rain Bear and Dogrib stepped out to meet her, and both men shivered as Dzoo’s voice rose to a high pitch and ended in laughter.
“Dzoo?” Rain Bear asked. “Are you all right? We’ve had warriors searching for you.”
When her large eyes fixed on his, he felt the world sway, and reached out to brace himself on Dogrib’s shoulder.
“I thank you for your concern, Great Chief. I have been Dancing with Coyote. It has taken a while to teach him to fly.”
“Coyote? Fly?” He glanced at the litter, noticing for the first time that the bearers looked scared half out of their wits.
At a gesture from Dzoo, the litter clattered to the ground—and no sooner were the bearers free of the poles than they broke and ran like quail from a weasel.
Rain Bear stepped forward, frowning, trying to make sense of what he saw. The gruesome thing indeed looked like a huge bloody bird.
“Wings,” Dzoo whispered as Rain Bear puzzled over the flaps of skin that hung down from the spread arms. “Skinned wings.”
The organs had been removed from inside the torso, leaving a blood-caked hollow, the spine visible where the ribs curled up. The eyes were gone; the face had been carefully sliced away from the underlying bone. But the thing that drew the eye was the erect penis that stuck up from the crimson-caked pubis. A stick had been inserted to extend it far beyond human dimensions.
A dizzying sense of Power whirled through the air, and Rain Bear stepped back, wincing. Dzoo caught him and kept him from falling. Dogrib was making a sucking sound, as if he couldn’t quite fill his lungs with air.
“It’s all right, Chief Rain Bear. He can’t hurt you.” She smiled as she held up a blood-streaked obsidian fetish. It had been carefully chipped into the shape of a coyote’s head. “I’ve placed Coyote’s soul in here. It’s obsidian, so sharp and brittle. All I have to do is snap it in two, or crush it under a rock, and his soul is gone forever.” Her smile was predatory. “And he knows it.”
Dogrib had turned away, a green color rising in his face.
She pulled the familiar coyote-tracked bag from the belt at her waist and dropped the fetish inside.
Rain Bear would have sworn he heard a faint, high-pitched scream.

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