The Broken Land (42 page)

Forty-three

T
he scents of water and soggy leaves rode the evening breeze near the marsh.

Sindak halted at the edge of the aspen grove and stared out across the reeds and dead cattails. Golden leaves pirouetted through the frigid air around him, alighting on his shoulders and black hair. He paid them no notice. In the distance, a thin streamer of smoke spiraled into the dove-gray twilight. The thought of trying to talk sense into a man as grief-stricken as Hiyawento made him long to return to the insanity of the war council. What could he say? Nothing, nothing in the world, could lessen the pain of losing a loved one, especially an innocent child. Or worse, two. For a moment he hesitated, trying to imagine how the conversation might go; then he shook his head and tramped around the edge of the marsh toward the campfire. Somewhere out on the water, ducks quacked.

When he got close, Hiyawento shouted, “Go away or I’ll kill you!”

Sindak suppressed the urge to pull his war club from his belt and called, “I’m a friend. At least I think I am. Correct me if I’m wrong about that?”

Hiyawento thrashed through the brush. When he stood no more than ten paces away, he looked at Sindak with bright glazed eyes. He held his nocked bow up, aimed at Sindak’s heart. His jaw muscles trembled despite his efforts to clench his teeth—the action that of a man teetering on madness.

Sindak spread his arms. “I heard the doll was poisoned. Yesterday someone in Atotarho Village claimed he’d seen Ohsinoh talking with the chief. Have you heard this rumor?”

The bow lowered slightly, and Hiyawento’s broad shoulders shook. In a choking voice, he said, “Yes.”

“I need more information about your daughters’ deaths. May I speak with you?”

Hiyawento relaxed and lowered the bow. “Come.” He turned and walked back toward the campfi re.

When Sindak made it through the brush, he found Hiyawento standing over the dead children. They’d been laid out on their backs, their clothing smoothed, their hair combed. Each stared up at the sky with shrunken death-gray eyes. Their white faces shone in the firelight. No matter how long he lived, that wrenching image would never leave Sindak.

He knelt on the opposite side of the fire and watched Hiyawento stroking Jimer’s face.

Sindak said, “Ohsinoh would never have had the audacity to enter Atotarho Village unless he knew he’d be protected.”

Hiyawento’s eyes went shiny. In a lethal voice, he said, “The man who gave my daughter the doll he—he had painted his face white with black stripes.”

Sindak nodded. “That matches the description of the man who spoke with Atotarho.”

Hiyawento’s grip tightened on the elk hide over Catta’s heart, and words tumbled from his mouth, hoarse and broken. “He told her that … it … the doll. Was more a gift for me than for her.”

Sindak quietly released the breath he’d been holding. If he could keep Hiyawento talking, everything might be all right. “Listen to me. For the past nine moons, I’ve had a man tracking Negano. The chief has met with the Bluebird Witch several times, and Negano has delivered many bags of payment to a clearing two days’ run from here. I think Atotarho has been working with Ohsinoh for a long time, perhaps for many summers.”

“Blessed gods, Sindak, if he’s been working with Atotarho, then the chief paid him to do this! He—the old man—he wanted me to watch my daughters die. He’s punishing me for speaking out against war in the council. I swear before my ancestors that I will
kill
him! I will cut his heart out—”

“And I will help you do it,” Sindak said, and waited for Hiyawento to turn so he could stare directly into the man’s wild eyes. “But I must have proof.”

“Proof?” Hiyawento cried and sprang to his feet. “I’m not waiting for proof! I’ll kill anyone who tries to stop me!”

Sindak remained kneeling before the fire, but his thoughts were on the war club tucked into his belt. Could he get to it faster than Hiyawento could shoot an arrow through his lungs? Just as Sindak’s hand started to edge for his club, Hiyawento seemed to deflate. He hung his head, and tears filled his eyes. “This is my fault, Sindak. All … my fault.”

“None of this is your fault.”

Tears ran down his face as Hiyawento hugged himself and looked back at his daughters. “Yes, it is. I should never have come to Hills country. I should have left Zateri alone. I—I loved her so. I’d loved her since we were children. We’d endured so much together. I thought … maybe, if I just … I tried to obey my clan and marry another, but … oh, gods. I’m leaving, I tell you. I’m killing the chief, then I’m leaving and never coming back.” He put his head in his hands and squeezed as though to crush the thoughts. “Blessed ancestors, what have I done?”

“You made a life for yourself, a good life, that’s what. And a good life for Zateri, too.”

“
If it weren’t for me, none of this—”

“That’s foolish.” Sindak rose to his feet to loom over Hiyawento.

Hiyawento blinked and gazed up at him with a stunned expression. “You haven’t heard a word I’ve said. I’ve been trying to tell you—”

“You’re moaning like a twelve-summers-old boy. You still have a loving wife and daughter who need you more than they ever have. I saw Zateri on my way here. Kahn-Tineta was lying curled in a ball with Zateri stroking her hair. If you think you’re dying inside, how do you think they feel? Zateri and Pedeza have laid out clean clothes and all the ritual necessities to clean your daughters and send them on their journey. If you cared at all about them”—he waved his hand to the dead girls—“you would take them back so that their mother could prepare them. Instead, the great war chief, Hiyawento, is out hiding in the forest weeping like an infant.”

Anger twisted Hiyawento’s face. Sindak didn’t budge as Hiyawento leaned close and growled, “You’re asking for a stiletto in your heart.”

Sindak stared into those blazing eyes for several moments, assessing, before he replied, “Do you want to twist my head off and kick it around for the village dogs?”

Through gritted teeth Hiyawento said, “Yes!”

“Then you’re sounding more like your old self. You must be feeling better. So I’m leaving now.” He turned his back on Hiyawento and walked away.

When he’d gone twenty paces without an arrow in his back, he dared to exhale.

In another ten paces, he heard Hiyawento call, “Sindak?”

“Yes?” He turned.

Hiyawento wiped his eyes with his hands. His voice was stronger, if hollow. “How did the war council vote today?”

Sindak waited as Hiyawento tipped his head back and stared at the first campfires of the dead that gleamed along the Path of Souls. He seemed to be gathering his strength to speak.

“The vote was unanimous to attack the allied Standing Stone villages before they can get organized to attack us. The matrons promised to return with their final decision as soon as possible. I expect a decision tomorrow.”

“Did anyone speak for peace?”

Sindak frowned. “No.”

Guilt ravaged his face. He looked back at his dead daughters. As evening deepened, their small white faces picked up the wavering gleam of the fire. “This is just what Atotarho wanted. I played right into his hands.”

Sindak didn’t respond. If the chief had been responsible for the deaths of the man’s daughters, he was right. It was a calculated move designed to eliminate Hiyawento’s influence. And it had worked. If Hiyawento had been there, Sindak suspected the vote would have been split and never referred to the Ruling Council.

To silence Hiyawento, Atotarho was willing to murder his own granddaughters.

Hiyawento called, “War Chief?”

“Yes?”

Hiyawento wiped his face on his sleeve. “If you wouldn’t mind, I’d appreciate it if you could help me carry my little girls home.”

Sindak walked back. As Hiyawento scooped up Jimer and clutched her to his chest, Sindak gently lifted Catta into his arms. Her small body had grown stiff.

They silently walked around the marsh trail. Just before they reached the Coldspring palisade, Hiyawento halted and turned to gaze at Sindak with bloodshot eyes.

“I want you to answer a question. Do you believe Ohsinoh is Hehaka?”

Sindak tightened his hold on Catta’s cold body. “I think so, yes.”

Hiyawento didn’t say a word. He just walked for the palisade gates.

Forty-four

H
igh Matron Tila sat wrapped in hides on her bench, her back propped against the wall of her compartment. Without that support, she would have dissolved like a fistful of earth in a thunderstorm. The excruciating pain in her chest had left her trembling. She did the best she could to hide it as she looked at the old man pacing before her. Atotarho’s crooked body made his movements more of a careening than a simple placing of one foot in front of the other. His gray hair, braided with rattlesnake skins, shimmered.

She listened to his walking stick thump on the hard-packed dirt floor. She had known him his entire life, but she had never hated him more than at this moment. The emotion was so powerful it felt like a dark miasma enveloping the world, turning it into something monstrous. The expression on his gaunt skeletal face told her something had surprised him, and he didn’t like it at all.

Tila whispered, “Don’t bother to deny it. I don’t have the strength for lies. Did you know he’d kill your granddaughters?”

Atotarho’s wrinkled lips pursed. He didn’t answer for a time. Finally, he shook his head, and the circlets of skull on his black cape flashed. “No.”

His voice was genuinely troubled, but he’d perfected that tone over the long summers, so she had no idea if he truly regretted his actions or not. “You’ve turned your daughter against you for good. There’s nothing you can do now, or ever, to redeem yourself in her eyes. Do you realize that? You’ve lost her completely.”

“She doesn’t know I was responsible. She must think it was witchery, or perhaps—”

“You’re a fool.” Tila watched him try to indignantly straighten his hunched back without success. “She is
my g
randdaughter. I guarantee you she will concentrate all her efforts on destroying you. You don’t have long to rule, Chief.”

Atotarho leaned heavily on his walking stick. In the firelight, the snake eyes tattooed on his fingertips seemed to wink. “I’ll find a way to make it up to her. Perhaps start placing suggestions that her husband should be promoted to a higher position on the Ruling Council—”

Tila let out a low disdainful laugh. “You can’t ‘make up’ for killing a woman’s daughters, even if it was accidental. Besides, you won’t have the chance. If I were Hiyawento I’d be plotting your murder this instant. He just has to bide his time until the moment is right.” She sucked in an agonized breath. When she let it out, she said, “If I had the strength, I’d save him the trouble.”

Atotarho’s wrinkled face twisted with anger. He’d always hated hearing blunt words. “I tell you I didn’t know the witch would do this. It wasn’t my fault.”

“Well, that doesn’t matter now, does it?”

Stubbornly, he said, “It matters to me. I would never have harmed my own granddaughters! They are my legacy. The future rulership of the Wolf Clan depends upon—”

“You should have thought of that before you gave a witch free rein to take care of ‘your problem’ however he saw fit.”

Atotarho glared at the herb pots lining the wall to Tila’s left. Softly, he answered, “I realize that now.”

Tila sighed and let her chin fall to rest upon the bulky hides that wrapped her like a soft, many-layered cocoon. It was so hard to breathe. Her souls were itching to be released from the sick cage of her body. When all this was over, and she found herself walking the Path of Souls with her laughing daughters surrounding her, perhaps then she would be able to think clearly. But tonight it was almost impossible. Any subtlety she had ever learned in her life was gone.

Brutally, she said, “You are unfit to rule this nation, but the council cannot afford to remove you on the eve of battle.”

He jerked around. “Are you saying the Ruling Council has reached a consensus?”

“Not yet, but it will. Even though the attack on White Dog Village has split this nation down the middle, the council members do not have the heart to wait until we are attacked. The alliance will hold long enough to take the fight to the enemy. After that, I cannot say.” She shook her head. “Old Yana just walked the Path of Souls. Gwinodje is now the village matron in Canassatego Village, and she does not wish this war with the Standing Stone People. Nor, I’ve heard, does Matron Kwahseti.”

“Will they fight?”

“I believe they will. But they will do it under protest.”

His lockjawed expression gnawed at Tila.

In a voice that could make muscles flinch, he said, “Then I will prepare our war chief.”

“Sindak already knows. I told him myself. After all, he spent half the day trying to control his warriors during the council. He had a right to know. But there is something you could do.”

He gave her an askance look. “What is it?”

“When each village has made its decision, they will send warriors to join us. Within days, I expect Atotarho Village to be overrun with hungry men and women eager to do battle. We must ration our food even more conscientiously. I want you to oversee the feeding of the war parties.”