People of the Longhouse (25 page)

Read People of the Longhouse Online

Authors: W. Michael Gear

Tags: #Fiction, #Historical, #Native American & Aboriginal

BOOK: People of the Longhouse
11.39Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
R
ain fell, misty and cold, from a charcoal-colored dusk sky. Sindak’s cape and war shirt dripped onto his moccasins as he maneuvered around the hickory trunk, trying to remain hidden. He felt like a hunted animal, running for its life with no hope of escape.
Soft steps pattered the trail behind him. At first, he’d thought the sounds were nothing more than splashes of rain hitting the ground, until one of his pursuers stepped on a twig and snapped it. Now he knew better. The stealth with which they stalked him told him they were warriors.
How many?
Doesn’t matter. Even if only one man is following me, he might be the advance scout for an entire war party.”
Sindak looked northward. White pines covered the hilltop where he’d taken refuge, but in the distance he could see giant hickories and beech trees thrusting up through the ground mist. He was less than a half-hand of time from the fork in the trail where he was supposed to meet Towa, Koracoo, and Gonda. It was too late to make a mad dash for them, and he wouldn’t even if he could. No matter what happened, he would not lead the enemy to his friends.
As the steps came closer, he heard murmuring. One voice? Two? He couldn’t be sure. Sindak nervously licked his lips. There wasn’t
enough light left to effectively use his bow. If they came at him, he’d have no choice but to start swinging his club and pray.
More murmuring, the voice at once sad and reproving, as if the man were speaking to a wayward child.
Sindak closed his eyes to hear better, and it magnified the shishing of the rain and the faint tapping of the man’s feet on the trail.
More than one man …
The steps of the other two people were almost inaudible. More like wings batting air than moccasins striking earth.
It was almost night. Surely these warriors would return home when they could no longer see.
Sindak didn’t move a muscle, but his gaze drifted northward again.
Towa would just be starting to worry. He’d be staring out into the darkness with a frown on his face, probably cursing Sindak for being late. In another hand of time, Towa would stop cursing. No matter what War Chief Koracoo said, he would trot out into the forest to start looking for Sindak, and maybe run right into the arms of Sindak’s pursuers. Sindak couldn’t let that happen.
He sniffed the rain-scented breeze. It was pine-sharp and cold. Wherever men went, they carried with them the odors of their fires or their sweat, maybe the food they’d spilled on their capes. He didn’t smell any of those things.
In the distance, silver light penetrated the storm clouds and shot leaden streaks across the pine-whiskered mountains. Here and there, orange halos of firelight painted the underbellies of the clouds, marking the locations of villages. The glow to the east was probably Hawk Moth Village, but it could be a large war camp. In all likelihood, the men who followed him were from there, warriors sent out to scout the Flint borders.
Very faintly, a voice called,
“Odion?”
Then, again,
“Odion?”
Sindak’s breathing went shallow.
The howls of hunting wolves echoed through the trees as the steps moved, almost silently, up the trail less than fifty paces away. Then he heard a strange rattle. Branches clattering together in the breeze? An odor he knew only too well wafted to him: the stink of rotting flesh.
A shiver climbed Sindak’s spine.
To make matters worse, there was only one set of footsteps now. Where were the others? Had they split up? Maybe they’d spotted him and two of the warriors were sneaking around through the trees, hoping to surprise him.
Frantically, he searched every place a warrior might appear. The storm light made the brush and rocks look like crouching beasts. He gripped his war club in both hands.
The steps moved past him, heading up the trail with catlike grace. Barely there. Just one man, but clearly a man who had lived too long with death to ever be careless.
The man’s cape slurred softly over the ground, and Sindak thought he heard weeping—but it might have been the wind through the branches.
Sindak waited for the rest of the war party he was certain would be coming.
The whisper of the man’s steps eventually died away.
Sindak boldly chanced looking around the tree, out into the twilit stillness where rain sheeted from the sky and created shining puddles in every hollow. He saw no warriors.
After another quarter-hand of time, Sindak risked stepping from behind the hickory. Darkness had taken hold of the world. He flipped up the hood of his cape, quietly walked out onto the trail, and ran north toward Hawk Moth Village as fast as his legs would carry him.
W
hile they waited, Gonda, Koracoo, and Towa gathered pine poles and created a makeshift ramada beneath a canoe birch. Covered with a mixture of pine boughs and moss, it was mostly dry underneath.
“Where is Sindak?” Gonda grumbled as he crawled under the ramada and sat down cross-legged.
“I’m sure he’s coming.” Miserable and wet to the bone, Koracoo sat in the rear hunched over a cup of rainwater. This close to Hawk Moth Village, they couldn’t light a fire for warmth or to cook food for fear that they’d be seen.
Gonda said, “I say we forget about him and go to sleep.”
“Let’s give him a little longer.” Koracoo leaned back against the birch trunk.
“He’s irresponsible,” Gonda said. “He should have been here two hands of time ago.”
As soon as he’d said the word
irresponsible,
brief, agonizing images of Yellowtail Village flitted across Koracoo’s souls. She forced them away. How strange that she felt nothing now—nothing except a weariness that weighted her limbs like granite and a hunger that made her knees tremble. Even her anger was gone, replaced by a lassitude in which all things seemed vaguely unreal.
She stared out at the growing darkness.
“Something must have happened,” Towa replied from her left, where he stood against the shelter pole. “He wouldn’t be late unless something had happened.”
“You’d better be right. If he wanders in here with no wounds, I’m liable to give him some,” Gonda replied.
Towa’s mouth quirked, but he obviously knew better than to say anything. He glanced unhappily at Koracoo, who just shook her head lightly and looked away. From the corner of her eyes, she studied Gonda. He restlessly twisted his cup in his hands. His hair and clothing were soaked, and he looked to be on the verge of an enraged fit. Rage was his way of dealing with fear. Perhaps it was the way every warrior dealt with fear, but she pitied him. She saw it now with sudden clarity. She had never pitied him before. He had always been the strength in her heart, and the warmth in her souls. When had he become so weak and frightened? She wondered if maybe Sindak hadn’t been right after all, that she shouldn’t have brought him along.
No, despite everything, he deserves to search for his own children, to know for certain that he’s done all he can to find them. I owe him at least that much.
Gonda took a sip of water and glared out at the rain.
Koracoo refilled her cup from a thin stream that ran off the roof, and took a long drink. When Sindak arrived, if he arrived, they would discuss what each person had found and make their decisions about what to do tomorrow. The rain was going to make things much harder for them. They needed a good plan and as much rest as they could get.
Towa picked up one of the brown twigs that littered the ground and toyed with it, tapping it on his palm. “Maybe he found the trail. Did you think of that? Maybe Sindak found it and followed it for as long as he could before he lost the light.”
“I hope so. That’s the only thing that will save him from my wrath.” Gonda tugged his hood down over his forehead and clutched it beneath his chin. “Since none of us found anything significant today, what are we going to do tomorrow?” he asked belligerently.
Koracoo said, “Towa found fifty tracks, and two dead men, and I found two clumps of rabbit fur on branches.”
“The dead men probably had nothing to do with our children, and two clumps of rabbit fur? That’s nothing. It could have been left by—”
“I’ve never seen a rabbit jump ten hands high,” she said before he
could finish his tirade. “Therefore, I assume they were ripped from a cape. I consider both finds to be significant.”
“So are you saying I’m the only one who found nothing?”
She almost shouted at him, but stopped herself. Images fluttered up again, and she saw Yellowtail Village burning, filled with smoke, dying people laid out like firewood. Her children gone. Her husband missing. It had been the worst she could imagine. Running through the flaming longhouses, searching for survivors, the injured quivering, screams, hands plucking at her cape. And when she thought it could get no worse, she’d found her burned almost beyond recognition.
The eyes of Gonda’s souls must be seeing things equally as bad. Or worse, since he’d fought the battle. Guilt was smothering him—but she could not muster the strength to care.
“Our plan worked, Gonda.” Koracoo shifted to bring up her knees and propped her elbows atop them. Her red cape looked black in the storm light. “Both trails appear to parallel the route Sindak found through the trees.”
“Both trails? They weren’t trails. At best they were—”
“They were trails.” She bent over and drew three short lines in the wet dirt, showing the approximate locations of the sign they’d found. The lines were staggered. Towa’s trail was far west of Sindak’s, and Koracoo’s trail was far east.
“It takes a good imagination to see those three dots as parallel trails, my former wife.”
For just an instant, utter despair tormented her. She longed to yell that it was because of him that she would never again lie down as a mother and wife with her family’s love surrounding her. She would never again be able to look across the longhouse where she was born and gaze into her mother’s wise old eyes, or watch her sister cooking supper. Small things. Things she’d taken for granted now meant everything to her.
When grief began to constrict the back of her throat, she said harshly, “They are trails. If you can’t see it, it’s a good thing you’re not in charge.”
The words must have affected him like lance thrusts to his heart. His mouth trembled. He shouted, “You mean,
as I was at Yellowtail Village?”
“Be quiet, you … !” She bit back the bitter words and forced herself to take a deep breath.
Towa was watching them with his eyes squinted, as though considering whether or not to run before Koracoo and Gonda brought the entire Flint nation down upon them.
“We’re just—we are all exhausted and hungry,” Koracoo said. “Let’s not argue.”
Gonda glowered down into his cup. Black hair stuck to his cheeks, making his round face look starkly triangular. His eyes resembled bottomless holes in the world.
Towa cautiously reached out and tapped the ground beneath the dots. “All three trails seem to head in the same direction, almost due east, toward the tribal home of the People of the Dawnland. I agree that it may be coincidence, but—”
“Even if they do all head east, it means nothing! We didn’t find a single track today made by a child. Your ‘trails’ could have been made at different times by different war parties, scouts, or hunters that have absolutely nothing to do with our lost children!” Gonda declared.
Towa drew back his hand and tucked it beneath his cape. “Yes. True.”
On the verge of hopeless fury, Gonda set his cup aside and stared up at the roof.
Calmly, Koracoo said, “We need to focus on the task. If we—”
Feet pounded the trail to the south. Each of them reached for weapons and turned to look at the windblown pines. The trail, which ran with water, shone as though coated with molten silver.
“Move,” Koracoo said as she pulled CorpseEye from her belt, got to her feet, and slipped out into the rain behind the tree. Gonda and Towa vanished into the mist.
As the Cloud People shifted, a distant flicker of starlight glinted from the eyes of a man on the trail and illuminated a pale face. Koracoo studied him. She hadn’t known Sindak long enough to memorize his movements, but she thought it was him. The wind stirred the hem of his cape, swaying it. As he trotted out of the trees and saw the fork in the trail, he grew more careless. His long stride quickened, and his feet splashed in the puddles.
Thirty paces away, Towa stepped from where he’d been hiding in a copse of dogwoods, and Sindak broke into a run. Towa trotted out to meet him. They embraced each other, and a hushed conversation broke out as they headed back toward the ramada.
Koracoo remained hidden behind the tree. The pines whispered in
the wind, but she thought she heard something else out there. A voice … or distant music. Singing?
Gonda ducked beneath the ramada again and slumped down in his former position. As the two young warriors trotted up, his eyes narrowed. He looked at them like they were the enemy.
Sindak and Towa crawled beneath the ramada, smiling, glad to see each other, and Towa said, “See, I told you he was coming. Where’s Koracoo?”
“What took you so long?” Gonda asked.
Sindak unslung his bow and quiver and set them in the rear of the shelter; then he sank to the ground and heaved a sigh. “I was followed,” he said. “I had to hide while the warriors passed by.”
“Followed? Did they see you?”
“No.” Sindak shook his head, and his shoulder-length black hair flung water droplets in every direction.
“How many were there?”
“Three, I think. I was afraid to look when they passed by, but it sounded like the steps of three people.”
Towa dipped his own cup beneath the water stream coming off the roof and handed it to Sindak. “Here. You must be thirsty.”
Sindak took it with a grateful smile. “I am. Thanks.” He emptied the cup in four deep swallows and handed it back to Towa. “Where’s Koracoo? I have news.”
Koracoo silently stepped from behind the tree and walked back toward the ramada. The rain had lessened a little. Stars glimmered in the distance. When she got to within five paces, she softly called, “What news?”
Sindak swiveled around to look at her. “I found a trail, War Chief. A clear trail. It was made by three people. They kept climbing into the trees, traveled for a ways, then climbed down and walked on the ground before they retreated to the trees again.”
Gonda said, “It was probably an earlier trail made by the same three people who followed you.”
Sindak sat back at Gonda’s harsh tone. “I suppose it might have been.”
Koracoo knelt just inside the ramada. Towa and Sindak turned to watch her with expectant eyes. Koracoo reached over to the place where she’d drawn the fragments of trail earlier. “This is where your trail started this morning.” She tapped the place. “Show me the one you found today. How did it run? Where did you lose it?”
Sindak bent over the drawing and carefully sketched out what he’d found.
Towa glanced up at her. “Sindak’s trail runs parallel to the one you found, Koracoo.”
“Yes. It seems so.” She squinted at it.
Sindak frowned before asking, “These other lines are trails? You also found trails?”
“We think—”
Gonda interrupted. “Don’t be fools. We’ve lost the trail completely, and we all know it!”
Koracoo didn’t even deign to glance at him. She looked at Sindak. “How far east of here did your trail end?”
“About a half-hand of time. But I—I didn’t lose it, War Chief. I was still on it when I realized I was being followed and had to hide. After that, it was too dark to search any longer, so I ran directly here.”
Koracoo nodded. “You did excellent work today, Sindak. And you, also, Towa. We know a good deal more tonight than we did last night. Tomorrow, we will all fan out and try to follow Sindak’s trail. It seems to be the clearest. We—”
“This is a waste of time!” Gonda snarled.
“
I
decide when it’s a waste of time, Gonda. Not you.”
He flopped onto his side and turned his back to them.
Towa and Sindak went silent. They both stared questioningly at Koracoo. She said, “I will take first watch tonight. The rest of you should get some sleep.”
As she rose to her feet, grabbed CorpseEye, and stepped out into the light rain, she heard Sindak ask, “What did you find today, Towa?”
“Two dead Flint warriors, and—”
“What killed them? Certainly not two arrows from your bow. You’ve never hit two targets in a row in your life.”
“See? This is why it’s hard to imagine sometimes that you’re my best friend.”

Other books

Courtesan by Diane Haeger
Luxury of Vengeance by Isabella Carter
Dark Horse by Rhea Wilde
The Banished of Muirwood by Jeff Wheeler
Keith Haring Journals by Keith Haring
MVP by Laurel, Rhonda
April Kihlstrom by The Dutiful Wife