Leopard in Exile (29 page)

a large leather-covered flask.

"No tricks this time?" Wessex asked.

"I wouldn't dare. No, in a few more miles the chains come off as well. I won't insult you by asking for

your parole, of course."

"Of course," Wessex grinned wolfishly. The flask was warm between his hands, and he drank

appreciatively. Then he lay back and regarded the river through half-closed eyes, laying his plans.

Sarah, The Daughter-of-the-Wind, and the young warrior Meets-The-Dawn traveled west and south,

through a beautiful unspoiled land that had barely felt the touch of the European conquest. The

untrammeled landscape beckoned to her as the manicured estates of England never had. This was the

heritage she had been born to take up.

Why had she not gone to her Cree kinfolk when she first lost her parents, instead of allowing her cousin

Masham to co-opt her as an unpaid servant? Her Cree relatives would have made a place for her among

them—she might even now be happily tending her firstborn, instead of wandering the wilderness on a

hopeless quest. She could have been happy with Meets-The-Dawn.

The realization brought Sarah no comfort, only a nagging sense of discontent. The lack of a child to bless

her marriage troubled Sarah deeply, though she and Wessex had not spoken of it. He seemed content

that his titles and dignities should pass elsewhere—well, so was she, but she wanted a child for itself, not

as an heir to the Dukedom. A marriage without children was a lonely one, no matter how much its

partners loved one another.

And she did love Wessex, impossible though he often was. Though she was saddened by the loss of

what might have been between her and Meets-The-Dawn, it was a theoretical regret only. She did not

mean to pursue a romance with him, though the young Cree warrior had given her clear indication of his

interest. And who would know what she did, out here in the wilderness?

I will know
, Sarah told herself firmly.

"We are entering Numakiki lands," The Daughter-of-the-Wind announced one morning. "We must go

carefully, for the omens are potent, yet they are hard to read."

"Who are the Numakiki?" Sarah asked, her hands busy with the familiar morning tasks. The fire must be

fed, so that their morning porridge could be boiled, and so there would be embers to carry in a clay jug

through the day—simple tasks such as any hunter might perform, and Sarah did them without thinking.

"They are a strange people who came from the south in the long ago. Their own storytellers say they

came from the land of the sunrise, and were sent away because their ancestors performed a great evil.

When we first saw them, we thought they were sick, or cursed, for their hair and skin and eyes had no

color at all." The Sahoya smiled wickedly, relishing the joke. "Like you, Sarah, and the other English."

"The Numakiki are English?" Sarah said, still more confused.

"No," The Daughter-of-the-Wind answered. "The Numakiki are the Numakiki. Their name in Sioux is

'Mandan,' which means 'people.' They worship an invisible wind that looks into men's souls to punish or

reward, so they say, and they guard their privacy fiercely, though they maintain trade with the Arikara

Sioux and a few other tribes to the south such as the Choctaw and Natchez. We will be fortunate to

cross their lands without being seen."

But luck did not seem to be a thing in very great supply this day. Before the sun was very much higher,

Sarah became certain they were being followed.

Their path had led them to the bank of a great river, which the Sahoya had said they could follow for

many miles. Sarah knew that rivers took the place of roads here in the wilderness, and that they were a

natural pathway for trading posts and settlements. But Sarah did not know if traders had even been this

far west, for New Albion seemed very much a land that had been left in the hands of its original owners.

"We are hunted."

Meets-The-Dawn spoke softly, for her ears alone. His watchful obsidian eyes flickered right, then left,

indicating the presence of their stalkers. The Daughter-of-the-Wind strode on ahead, serenely confident

that whatever danger they courted would not touch her. Though Sarah admired the Creek shaman, she

had to admit, if only to herself, that she didn't
like
her very much.

"I know," she whispered back. "Perhaps they are only curious. When they see that we mean no harm,

they will leave us in peace."

"May it be so," Meets-The-Dawn answered soberly.

They walked south, in sight of the great river, for several hours.

"This is not right," the Sahoya said, stopping. She gestured toward the horizon.

"What is it?" Sarah asked, and then she smelled it for herself. Smoke.

"There is a settlement near her," she said slowly.

"A settlement where none should be, unless I have led us far wrong," the Sahoya answered. "I fear it is

the city of the Numakiki. I had meant to bring us to the river many miles downstream from it, but I fear

now that we are harried to its very gates, as the hunter drives the game."

"But we have done no harm," Sarah said. "All we ask is safe passage across their realm."

"And perhaps we shall receive it," the Sahoya answered. "I have trusted the spirits to guide us upon our

path," she said, sounding faintly dismayed, "and they have led us to this."

"There is an expression among the English," Sarah answered. "It is 'play the hand you are dealt' Perhaps

we are meant to meet with the Numakiki and gain wisdom from them."

The Sahoya turned away and walked on without speaking, her silence eloquent of disbelief.

When they had walked only a little further, Sarah understood the reason for the other woman's silence.

Stretching before her, on a low island in the center of the swift-moving current, was a city the like of

which Sarah could not have imagined. It was larger than any Indian village she had ever heard tell of, with

housing for hundreds, even thousands, of people within its vast palisades. It was as if an Egyptian temple,

or a medieval castle, or some mad conflation of the two, had been transported to the depths of this

uncharted land.

"What is this place?" Sarah asked, stopping. "Who are these people?"

"Sorcerers… madmen… I know not. But without their goodwill, we will travel no farther, Sarah," the

Sahoya answered.

Even from here, the small party could see the watchmen on the tall stone towers mat edged the city—and

more to the point, the watchmen could see them. Sarah blinked, as a series of bright flashes came from

the nearest tower.

"They are using a heliograph!" she exclaimed.

"They signal the warriors who pursue us," the Sahoya said, discontent in her voice.

A few moments later, the men following Sarah and her companions showed themselves. There were

twelve of them, all tall men armed with round bark-covered shields and long spears. Many of them had

light hair and pale eyes. Their leader, who wore a curious round cap of painted leather that extended in

back all the way over his shoulders, advanced and spread his hands in a gesture of friendship, bowing

slightly and speaking words that were incomprehensible to the travelers.

The Sahoya copied his movements, speaking first in her own tongue, then in Cree, and at last in English,

but it was plain that he understood her as little as she did him. Sarah spoke to them in French with no

better luck.

The warrior band—an honor guard if not an execution party—surrounded the travelers and moved on

down the river. Sarah and her companions had little choice but to accompany them, and soon they were

in sight of their destination.

A raft lay beached on their side of the river. It was made of unpeeled logs decked with smooth-sanded

boards. Two ropes of braided leather stretched from two stout poles outside the palisades to a matching

set of poles driven deep into the clay of the bank, forming the railings of a bridge without a floor. Another

Numakiki stood beside the raft, and to Sarah's astonishment, he wore a sword girded about his

waist—not a rapier such as Wessex often wore, but a broad flat sword such as knights in fairy tales

carried. When he saw them, he began making the raft ready for the crossing, flinging carved wooden

hooks over the leather ropes and setting the butt-ends of the shafts into holes drilled in the raft.

When all the passengers were aboard, the sword-bearer pushed off from the shore with a long

birchwood pole. Two of the warriors on either side grasped the braided ropes, and by a combination of

pulling and poling, the raft traversed the swift-running river safely.

They were met upon the island side by another delegation of sword-bearing Numakiki. Up close, the

stone towers were even more spectacular than they were from a distance, the huge blocks of native

granite polished as smooth as river stones and fit together almost without a visible seam.

"What do you suppose they want with us?" Sarah asked. The Daughter-of-the-Wind shook her head, as

baffled as Sarah.

They were led up the road to the gates of the stockade, and waited outside as the gates were drawn

open smoothly by an ingenious mechanism of ropes and pulleys. As the gates swung open, the travelers

were greeted with an amazing vista—a vast medieval city built entirely out of stone. Sarah could see that

Meets-The-Dawn and the Sahoya were as stunned as she, for none of them had ever seen anything to

match this. Even London, with its many imposing public buildings, looked positively ramshackle in

contrast with this cyclopean city.

The city seemed to be organized around an open central space, and as they were led toward it, Sarah

could see that the central square was dominated by an enormous flat-topped pyramid. A slender figure in

a long white robe stood at the top. Sarah frowned in disbelief. Despite all possibility, there was something

familiar about that figure…

"
Sarah
!" Meriel cried. She ran down the steps of the pyramid, black hair streaming behind her, and flung

herself into Sarah's arms. "How strange you look! I took you for an Indian at first, dressed like that, but

it
is
you!"

Surprised and delighted to see her friend again, Sarah held her close, startled out of her childhood

stoicism. "Meriel! What—How—"

Meriel stepped away from her, gesturing emphatically to the warriors surrounding the travelers and

speaking rapidly in the Numakiki tongue. Sarah regarded her friend in wonder. Meriel was wearing a

long white sleeveless robe of native homespun, with a scarlet leather cloak about her shoulders. Her hair

was held back with a thin gold fillet, and about her throat she wore a crudely fashioned golden cross.

"They won't harm you," Meriel told Sarah after a moment. "I have told them that you are of the

Book—but who are your friends?"

"You can
talk
to them?" Sarah asked in surprise. Meriel had certainly changed from the shy little mouse

Sarah had known two years before, the sheltered young noblewoman desperate to escape her uncle's

kingmaking ambitions.

"Of course." Meriel seemed confused by Sarah's bewilderment. "They're speaking Latin."

"I was terribly afraid until I realized that was what it was," Meriel told them later. "I know that many who

discover their city are executed—that might well have been my fate had I not realized that I knew their

tongue," Meriel admitted.

The travelers had been lodged in a stone guest house near the great pyramid, and feasted lavishly by an

old man Meriel named the "Prester," or chief. With Meriel to translate for them, matters had become

much more friendly, though their weapons and possessions had still been taken from them, and Sarah

mourned the loss of her Baker rifle.

While the party had so far been treated as honored guests, Sarah knew the difference between that and

the hospitality that she expected to encounter in any Native settlement.

"But how did you get here?" Sarah asked. "I came to Baltimore to find you—and then when you were

gone, I thought you must have gone to Nouvelle-Orléans to look for Louis, and so I followed you

there—or I thought to."
And why did you go, if you were not going in search of him
?

"Has there been any word of him?" Meriel asked quickly, and Sarah saw that the younger woman's eyes

bore the haunted expression of too many bleak nights filled with sleeplessness and worry. She shook her

head sadly and watched the hope in Meriel's eyes dim.

"He is in God's hands, then," Meriel said softly. "As for me, I… came here for other reasons. But I must

go to Nouvelle-Orléans as soon as I can arrange to leave. I have an… appointment there."

"You must tell us your story, Lady Meriel," The Daughter-of-the-Wind said courteously.

"I will tell you what I can," Meriel answered deliberately.

Their Latin was so debased by the years, even centuries, of their isolation that it had taken Meriel weeks

to realize that this was the language they spoke. At first, her captors had understood her halting Church

Latin as little as she had understood their curious hybrid tongue, but slowly her ear had become

accustomed to their speech. On the second day of her captivity, the Prester had returned her rosary to

her, and stayed to listen to her prayers. From that had come her freedom, for she later learned that

rosaries were part of the treasure they guarded, though the Numakiki had long since forgotten their use.