People of the Nightland (North America's Forgotten Past) (5 page)

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

BOOK: People of the Nightland (North America's Forgotten Past)
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Kakala’s warriors split off as they crested the low ridge, running to bolster Hawhak’s fleeing men.
Keresa caught glimpses of sunlight shining on darts as they lanced down on the fleeing warriors. Then she redoubled her efforts, dashing after Kakala toward the ceremonial lodge. Keresa, always faster than her thick-legged war chief, reached the doorway first.
A fire smoldered in the main room. Hides lay in disarray. Hangings marked the partitions for other rooms off to the sides. The place was empty.
“Goodeagle?” Kakala called as they followed her in. “Which way?”
“The chamber on the right.”
Keresa jumped the fire, almost colliding with several of Karigi’s warriors as they emerged from the chamber, confusion on their faces. One shot her a dismayed look—one that reeked of guilt.
Guilt?
Kakala ducked into the room.
She heard raucous male laughter mixed with Karigi’s shouted orders as he rallied his warriors.
Keresa ducked through behind Kakala, and stared in disbelief. Bloody, her hands bound to one of the lodge poles above her head, Bramble lay naked. The bite marks on her neck, breasts, and belly were red, the smears of semen inside her thighs proof enough of what she’d endured.
The chamber looked like it had been blasted by one of the Meteorite People. Parfleches and broken baskets scattered the floor. The hides under Bramble were twisted and rumpled. She must have fought like a bear when she’d realized the truth.
The plan had been Karigi’s: They’d set Bramble up to believe she’d be bargaining, buying him off so he’d let the women and children leave before he attacked. In reality, Karigi was supposed to capture her and drag her off to a safe place before setting his trap.
What’s she still doing here?
Keresa took a deep breath, grip tightening on her atlatl with its nocked dart. Karigi, grinning, leaned against the back wall. He reached for his weapons, saying, “On to the next victory.”
“Goodeagle!” Bramble sobbed, oblivious. “Goodeagle … get out!”
In a tight voice, Goodeagle said, “Kakala, you told me you wouldn’t
hurt
her!”
“Goodeagle?” Bramble called, as though he were the last sane thing she could cling to. Then, understanding seemed to dawn. She blinked, and Keresa watched the woman’s fear turn to disbelief, and then hatred.
Eyes wide, Goodeagle backed until he hit the wall.
Yes, you see now, don’t you?
Keresa shot Karigi a thin stare.
I never liked you, animal.
“War Chief Karigi?” Kakala asked in an unsettlingly calm voice, like the hush that falls before the storm strikes. “Why is she still here?”
Karigi propped his dart over his shoulder and said, “I know you ordered us to—”
“Windwolf is
right behind us!
Get your warriors out there … and support Hawhak!”
Karigi blinked. “What? Why? Isn’t that Windwolf’s destruction we hear?”
“No! We’re discovered! Surprised. Do it!”
Karigi took a step back, ordering, “Terengi, take your men and bring me Windwolf’s head.”
Glancing at each other, the men filed out, striding past Goodeagle.
Kakala stood so still, so quiet, that Keresa saw Karigi fidget nervously.
“War Chief, I intended to bring her to you as soon as my warriors had finished—”
Kakala slammed a fist into Karigi’s stomach. When Karigi dropped to his knees, his dart cartwheeled across the floor.
Kakala hissed, “If I didn’t need you … !”
Karigi staggered to his feet, shaking. “I’m Wolverine Clan! You struck me! When I tell our Elders—”
Kakala grabbed him by the front of his war shirt and threw him brutally against the wall. “You were supposed to be ready to attack Windwolf!”
“But, he was … was …” Karigi stammered, glaring at Bramble.
“You were so involved with your toy you forgot everything? If you’d prepared your warriors, as we agreed, by now Windwolf would be dead!”
Kakala backhanded Karigi and sent him toppling over a woodpile. Karigi got to his feet, bellowed like an enraged mammoth bull, and rushed. Kakala’s kick caught him in the chest.
Keresa’s eyes shifted, watching Bramble. She edged a foot toward the dropped dart, toes moving spiderlike toward the shaft. Keresa started forward.
“She’s after my dart!” Karigi shouted from where he had sprawled onto the floor. He lunged, grasping the dart before the woman could.
Outside, one of Karigi’s warriors shouted, “We’re overrun! Run! Windwolf’s warriors! There must be ten tens of them!”
Keresa hesitated, looking back at the door.
Bramble screamed.
Keresa spun back as Karigi drove the dart into Bramble’s chest.
Karigi’s eyes gleamed. “She might have killed someone!” he explained, ignoring Kakala’s clenched fists and enraged face. Outside, someone screamed in pain and fear.
“Let’s go!” Kakala shouted, glaring his boiling rage at Karigi. “Windwolf’s warriors are getting closer!”
Goodeagle stumbled back against the wall. “I didn’t know he’d do this, Bramble. I swear.”
Faintly, almost inaudibly, she whispered, “Goodeagle?”
Keresa hesitated at the door, hatred brimming as she watched Goodeagle’s horror. “You coming? Or staying?”
“Coming.” He took a fumbling step toward Bramble, then blindly turned and ran. “This way! We’ll go out the back.”
She pelted after him, her atlatl at the ready. Where had Kakala and the rest gone?
Feet pounded through the chamber across the lodge, and she heard Windwolf’s agonized shout, “Bramble?”
Keresa winced, soul pierced by the fear in the man’s voice. By Raven Hunter’s breath, if they didn’t get away what had happened to Bramble would be child’s play compared to what they’d do to her.
The memory of the bite marks and semen on Bramble’s body sent a chill through her souls.
Bramble was too good to deserve that!
Then she was out the door, racing Goodeagle for the safety of the forest. As she ran, a voice in her head asked,
What kind of people have we become?
TWO WINTERS LATER—THE EQUINOX MOON
H
ow did this happen?
The Nine Pipes woman known as Skimmer walked with her head bowed. A heavy pack hung from her back, filled with half-cured meat.
She shot a worried look at her daughter, Ashes, who stumbled along the forest trail ahead of her. Ashes, too, carried a pack, smaller, but all that her ten-summers-old body could manage.
They were but part of a line that wound down from the spruce-pine forests above Lake River. The way descended shale slopes, and into a narrow gap that led down to a gravel beach bordered by thick stands of willows.
Skimmer shot a wary glance to the side, seeing Nightland warriors, each carrying weapons, ensuring that none of the women tried to step into the brush, drop their pack, and slip away.
I am a captive!
The notion still stunned her. Only days ago, she had been free.
Free! Oh, Hookmaker, why didn’t you listen to me?
But he hadn’t. And now, her only memory of him was his broken
and bleeding body, lying before the great hearth in the Nine Pipes’ winter camp.
She looked out, past the line of sweating women captives bent under their loads, and tried to find Kakala. But he had already disappeared into the willows, probably to scout the river ford.
“Ashes? Are you all right?” she asked as her daughter stumbled over an exposed root and almost fell.
“F-Fine, Mother. I’m tired. That’s all.”
“It’s only a little farther.” She glanced up at the low-lying sun in the west. The Nightland always let them camp at night. She tried to measure the angle of the sun. Kakala would push them across the river, though. The Nightland still believed that the Lame Bull lands on the other side offered some protection from the Sunpath warriors who followed Windwolf.
She winced at the man’s name. Windwolf, the same warrior who had decimated her people five summers back in a bitter fight over hunting boundaries. Then she had cursed his name. The man had been a menace to her small band, beating them at every turn until Hookmaker had finally sued for peace.
She had hated him with all of her heart. Then, with the coming of the Nightland attacks, Hookmaker had argued for peace, perhaps still stung by the defeat Windwolf and Bramble had handed them.
“It is not our concern,”
Hookmaker’s words echoed in her memory.
“If the Nightland want to war with Windwolf, let them! We’ve suffered enough at his hands!”
“How wrong you were, husband.” She shook her head, wondering how it had all gone so wrong. Poor Hookmaker, he’d paid for his belief in peace.
When the attack came, it had been without warning, just at the breaking of dawn. She had been stewing dried camel meat in a hide bag when the first whoops brought her upright. She had seen the Nightland warriors emerging from the trees, tens of them, racing through the scattered lodges in her camp.
“Ashes! Run!” she had shouted, and dove inside to find Hookmaker’s weapons. Wrapping her fingers around her husband’s atlatl and darts, she had emerged and handed them to him, and watched in horror as he fumbled to nock a dart, then cast it. Panic had dulled his reflexes; the dart hissed high over the attacker’s heads.
Skimmer had stood rooted, disbelieving as Kakala charged up and knocked Hookmaker down with one blow of his war club.
Husband, you never were a warrior.
The thought lay dully in her head as she picked her way down a slope, her back and hips aching under the load.
Oh, she had tried. The memory of the argument she and Hookmaker had had lay like a sour shadow in her soul. In the end, she had even traveled to Headswift Village, pleading with Chief Lookingbill to help her murder Ti-Bish.
And to think I once gave him food.
She could still see his hollow face and hunger-filled eyes as she handed him a bowl of hot food.
When was I ever foolish enough to allow pity a place in my soul?
This was how he had paid her back?
Never again. “I will survive,” she hissed under her breath. She watched Ashes carefully wind her way through the willows. The winter-bare stems rasped on her clothing and the pack she bore.
As she broke out of the willows, it was to find Goodeagle, the traitor, standing there, watching as each of the women stepped from the trees.
She met his leering eyes, narrowing her own. Each night he picked a woman, ordering her off into the trees for his pleasure. So far, he had taken Kicking Fawn twice, and Blue Wing once.
“Need help with the load?” he asked Ashes.
Her daughter just bowed her head, trudging forward.
“Don’t even think it,” she barked.
“How about you, Skimmer?” he asked. “Tired of the cold at night?”
“Oh, yes, Goodeagle,” she said with cunning. “Pick me tonight. If nothing else, I’ll gouge your eyes from that too-pretty head and tear your testicles off your body.”
He matched her pace as she followed the line of women down to the first of the shallow channels.
“Do you know why we attacked your little band at the Nine Pipes camp?”
“Guide’s orders, I heard.”
“He wanted a Nine Pipes woman.” Goodeagle sloshed into the shallow water with her. “Maybe he heard that it was you who was plotting to kill the Guide.”
“Your Prophet can run his head up his ass and breathe deeply for all I care.”
“Such anger, Skimmer.”
“You should know. It was you, as Windwolf’s deputy, who put it there.”
Goodeagle nodded. “You and Hookmaker never did understand war.”
“We were hunters, you piece of filth.”
“That’s what killed the Sunpath People,” he said. Then in a lower voice, “That’s what killed me. But I understand now.”
“I hope the rest of the women here are right, and Windwolf comes to free us. I want to see what he does to you.” Skimmer put her concentration into keeping her feet on the slippery round rocks under her feet. The water was cold, with rims of ice on the rocks. She sloshed through, with the current pulling at her thighs.
“You always had to go it alone, didn’t you?” Goodeagle asked. Then he paused. “And now you’ll do it with Councilor Nashat.”
“Is that why you betrayed Bramble? Because she couldn’t see it, whatever
it
is?”
He looked away, a spear of guilt on his face.
“Go on,” he muttered. “Shiver yourself to sleep tonight. And while you do, imagine what the Nightland are going to do with you.” Then he turned. “Blue Wing! When you cross, drop your pack. I think I’ll give you the honor of warming my robes tonight.”
Skimmer sighed as the man walked back down the line to match his pace with the hapless Blue Wing’s. Once she had admired both Blue Wing and Kicking Fawn for their good looks, and the way men watched their bodies as they passed. Now she knew it for the curse it could be.
“Is that true, Mother?” Ashes asked. “Did he really kill Bramble?”
“After a fashion, yes.” She took a breath, walking out onto one of the rocky islands, following the wet trail the others had left on the rocks. “But then, maybe we all did.”
“Good.” Ashes said softly. “Bramble was evil.”
“And Windwolf?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” Ashes said between panting for breath. “People here think he’s going to come and rescue us.”
She considered that as she followed Ashes into the next ford.
Would Windwolf come to rescue the Nine Pipes? Even after all that we did to ensure that none of the other bands would join him in an alliance?
“We have only poisoned ourselves.”
She followed the long line across the narrow channels, through the willows on the far bank, and struggled, her muscles protesting, up into the trees on the first terrace.
“Camp here!” the warriors called as they entered a small clearing in the trees.
Skimmer shrugged out of her pack, looking around at the rest of the captives. These women, people she’d known for years, now appeared as strangers, expressions haunted, faces slack, and eyes dull. Each was living her grief, remembering dead husbands, brothers, and sons left lying, unburied, in the smoking ruins of the Nine Pipes camp. They had become strangers.
As I have become to myself.
“We’ve been fools, Ashes.”
And now it’s too late.
 
 
F
lames danced and flickered as they greedily consumed a collection of broken branches placed on the flames. The fire cast its warmth and light, cheery in the cool night. Keresa sat cross-legged and watched the branches burn, lost in her thoughts. Across from her, Kakala puffed at a stone pipe, blowing out wreaths of blue smoke to rise toward the star-speckled night sky.
She could hear the soft whisper of Lake River, the great braided river that drained from Loon Lake, a great oval-shaped body of fresh water that lay to the west. Technically, Lake River marked the boundary between the Lame Bull and Sunpath territories. Kakala’s warriors had forded it earlier in the day, wading through the interwoven channels.
Around them, spruce and hemlock reflected the firelight. Raising her eyes, she could see the five fires the slaves had made in the center of the clearing. The rest of her warriors were spaced around them, most relaxing and talking after having eaten.
Between them and the slaves, stacked bundles of meat and fat had been laid out in a ring. The warriors kept bright fires, a deterrent to hungry bears, wolves, and lions. A stack of branches lay readily at hand in case any of the animals decided to challenge the humans. They would be met by burning brands and sharp darts.
Hunting darts were made with detachable foreshafts that fitted into hollows on the main shaft body. When hunting animals, especially large ones like mammoth and buffalo, the stone-tipped foreshaft was driven deeply into the animal’s body, the springy fletched main shaft detaching to bounce back from the animal’s side. A hunter could retrieve it, twist another foreshaft onto the dart, and cast again. The embedded foreshafts continued to cut tissue, and allowed the blood to drain from the hole in the animal’s side.
In war, her people preferred a solid dart, one that splintered, or broke its point on impact, so that an enemy warrior couldn’t pick it up and cast it back again.
Keresa lowered her eyes to the fire.
“You saw the Lame Bull hunters watching us ford the river today?” Kakala asked casually.
“They just watch.” She shrugged. “They know we are just passing through.
“So far.” Kakala puffed on his pipe before blowing the blue smoke through his puckered lips.
“So far?” She glanced up at him.
“How many of the Sunpath bands are left?” Kakala narrowed an eye as he studied her across the fire.
“Maybe nine. All far to the south and west.”
“Nashat is a clever old wolf,” Kakala muttered. “He made sure the Lame Bull People knew we just wished to pass in peace. Now we have destroyed most of the Sunpath villages, scattered their people, and left a whole countryside empty.” He smiled. “All but a band of Lame Bull People here in the spruce lands. The Lame Bull People have talked themselves into believing our quarrel was with the Sunpath.”
She raised her eyes. “You think it is not?”
Kakala chuckled softly to himself. “I think this was most cunningly done. Nashat knew the Sunpath People, understood how independent and disorganized they were. So, what would you do, Keresa? Tackle a large traditionally fragmented enemy? Or take on an easily united, but smaller foe?”
“The Lame Bull People would have been a tougher nut to crack, but they’d have fallen.”
Kakala nodded. “And what effect would that have had on the Sunpath People to the south?”
She nodded, already knowing where he was going. “Seeing what
we did to the Lame Bull, they’d have overlooked their differences and united with Windwolf to fight us, wishing to avoid the same fate as the Lame Bull.”

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