Comanche Dawn (18 page)

Reining in the bay, Horseback heard the thunder of the Fire Stick again, and two men locked in battle behind him fell to the ground. But the medicine of the enemy had gone bad, for the one killed wore the skins of a
Yuta.
It was Whip who rose, the intended target of the Fire Stick. He had wrestled his foe at the right moment to pull him into the path of the killing magic. Whip screamed a crazy war cry as he scalped the mountain warrior who had died by the Fire Stick of his own kinsman.

Turning his mount, Horseback saw the Fire Stick warrior between two of the seven lodges, making the peculiar incantations over his weapon. He kicked the bay's ribs and charged toward the seven lodges to stop this brave before he could instill the magic in the weapon again. He was riding hard when he heard the screams of the women, and saw that two of the
Yutas
had broken toward the horse herd and were trying to catch mounts on which to escape. He glimpsed his own mother running toward the horse thieves with her lance.

Horseback clashed with the Fire Stick warrior, running into him before he could finish the evil Fire Stick spell. But this warrior wore three kill feathers in his hair and knew much of battle. As Horseback swiped at him with the
pogamoggan,
Kill Feathers ducked in front of the bay and struck Horseback on the other side with his Fire Stick, almost knocking him from the pony.

Without a pull of the rein, the bay was turning, snapping his teeth at Kill Feathers. Horseback let his mount attack, but the warrior was quick and came around the head of the horse with an iron knife. Horseback caught the first thrust with his shield, but the second plunged into his leg, and the third into the bay's shoulder. The horse screamed, wheeled, and kicked just as Horseback's war club glanced off Kill Feathers's head and smashed into his shoulder.

The enemy staggered back and fell, but quickly rose. “Get off your horse and fight like a true warrior!” he demanded.

Horseback understood this talk, because his second mother, Looks Away, was born
Yuta,
though she had been made into a good
Noomah
wife. Looks Away had taught him
Yuta
words for many winters, for she hoped always for peace and trade between her old people and her new people.

But Horseback thought nothing of peace and trade now, for Kill Feathers had come to destroy him, and would carry Teal away if he could. As his blood ran hot down a leg seared by pain, a new rage engulfed him, and he remembered the day the Northern Raiders had attacked his people and killed his grandfather. The ancient hatreds he had inherited that day plunged like shadow-warriors into his soul, and it seemed the ground all around him shook with his anger. He felt his grip like stone around the handle of the war club. “I am Horseback!” he cried, and he ran upon the thrice-feathered warrior.

Reining wide with his bow hand, he passed beyond reach of the enemy warrior's knife and leaned far toward Kill Feathers with the heavy
pogamoggan.
The warrior tried to shield his head with an arm, but the power of the passing horse was in the blow, and Horseback felt bones break through the wooden club handle. The bay was planting hooves and turning back with snapping teeth as Horseback brought the club down again, landing it solidly among the three feathers.

A victory cry came from the direction of the river, and Horseback did not even have to look back to know that his fellow warriors had broken the enemy charge. Now the sound of screaming women pierced the victory yell, and he looked up to see his mother, River Woman, jabbing her lance at an enemy warrior who was trying to avoid the sharp blade long enough to notch an arrow on his bow.

The bay was tired, but leapt toward the women at Horseback's signal. The warhorse seemed to run very slowly and River Woman seemed very far away as Horseback rode to protect her. As he watched from the back of his pony, his mother made a deliberate advance with the spear, but the enemy warrior dropped his bow and caught the shaft with his hand. He was stronger than Horseback's mother, and Horseback feared he would wrest the weapon from her before the bay could get there.

Now Looks Away came darting from the brush nearby. Above her head she wielded a war axe, and her eyes were round and cold as snowflakes. Her lips curled back and she screamed as the warrior got the spear from River Woman.

Horseback was four leaps away. The enemy warrior twirled the shaft of the lance in his hand. River Woman was falling back as the enemy lunged and stabbed her below one breast. The bestial scream of Looks Away caught in her throat as her axe broke through the skull of the enemy warrior and Horseback's club knocked his brains onto the grass.

The young warrior jumped from the bay, who staggered, bleeding and heaving. He ran back to his mother, but Looks Away was already upon her. Looks Away screamed a denial of the wound that stained River Woman's deer skin dress with blood. Then suddenly, strangely, the Two Rivers casually took up the conversation they had dropped when the battle started.

It seemed to Horseback that this fight was a trifling thing to the Two Rivers. To him it was everything glorious and horrible, for his mother lay wounded on one hand, and he had counted his first strokes against an enemy war party on the other hand—and counted them well. Now he prayed that his medicine had not gone bad and caused his mother to get hurt. He feared he may have stepped upon the track of a deer, or eaten a morsel of food a deer might have taken, or offended his powerful spirit guardians in some other foolish way.

When he fell beside his mother, he found her covering her wound with a hand and trying to sit upright. She looked at Horseback, saying, “My son, you are wounded?”

“Only my leg, Mother. Lie back and rest.”

River Woman did lie back, grimacing against the pain of her wound. “Did you see Looks Away, my son? She killed a warrior of the people she was born among to protect me. You must credit her with the first stroke, and take the second for yourself, for her axe struck before your
pogamoggan.
”

“Mother, I cannot count a stroke on that warrior. It was your lance that touched him first. You must count the first stroke. Looks Away will count the second.”

River Woman smiled. “Yes, my son. You are honest. Looks Away came to defend me only a moment before you did.” She let her eyes meet those of the woman her husband had taken as a second wife, and she said, “Now Looks Away is truly my sister.”

The victory cry rose again, and Horseback glanced back to see his friends dragging the Fire Stick warrior, Kill Feathers, still alive, from the village of seven lodges. Some beat him with their bows and others kicked him all over, but they would not kill him. Horseback himself had won that honor. He might kill the captive himself, or present him to any woman in camp who had lost a husband or son in battle with the
Yutas,
letting her decide how quickly or slowly the enemy warrior might die.

As he was thinking about this, a strange thing happened. Looks Away turned from the scene of the battle won and ran. She ran until the timber stole her shadow.

18

The day of his
first battle was not the day for his mother to die. River Woman lay sleeping in the shade of the timber as the old
puhakut,
Spirit Talker, made prayers over her and wove magic around her. Looks Away had come back from the timber to stay with River Woman during the heat of the day, fanning her with an eagle's wing to keep her cool and drive flies away from her wound. Shaggy Hump went away up the river to pray.

The younger warriors gathered in the shade of the timber to talk about the battle. Echo-of-the-Wolf took the protective cover from his sacred shield to show where it had swallowed the evil power of the Fire Stick. Though the shield had saved him, the Fire Stick had broken his arm, which he now carried strapped in a willow splint and bound with wet rawhide.

Horseback marveled at the neat round hole punched in the face of the shield. He summoned his protective medicine and stuck his finger into the hole, jerking it out at first, then probing deeper. He could feel through the first layer of hardened buffalo hide into the fur packed tight between it and the back layer of hide. He forced his finger deeper into the hole until his finger touched something that moved. He jerked his hand back.

“What is it?” asked Whip, who was watching over Horseback's shoulder.

Horseback set his jaw. “I will find out.” He probed into Echo's punctured shield again and touched the unknown thing. “It moves,” he said. “It is like a stone against the back piece of hide that protects our brother, Echo.”

Echo took the shield from the younger warrior and bravely felt for the thing himself. Jerking his knife from its sheath with a flourish, he bored into the rear layer of rawhide from the back of the shield until he could push a misshapen hunk of dark gray unknown matter from the hole. It landed on the ground with a thump and lay there like something dead. The warriors surrounded it.

Finally, Horseback picked it up. It felt heavy for its size, and he knew by the way it had almost penetrated the sacred shield that it was powerful. “This is the thing that kills,” he said.

“Where are the things captured from the Fire Stick warrior?” Echo demanded.

The trappings of the enemy prisoner were laid out on a robe for study. There was the Fire Stick itself, which was passed around among all the warriors once Echo and Horseback had proven that they could handle it without incurring any evil. The only familiar thing about it was the small flint stone growing out of one side of it. Some of the men tried to put the thing to their shoulders the way they had seen Kill Feathers hold it, but it would render neither noise nor smoke. Trotter did worry it long enough to make a spark jump from the piece of flint, whereupon he dropped it on the robe, shaking his hands as if to fling the evil power from his fingertips.

Examining the rest of the captured paraphernalia, the warriors found a deerskin pouch filled with small round balls, dark gray and heavy like the misshapen thing cut from Echo's shield. They noticed that these heavy little balls just fit in the hole at the killing end of the Fire Stick. In this same pouch, they found strange hairless patches of tanned hide, very thin, perhaps from a rabbit skin.

The oddest thing among the possessions of the captured enemy was the buffalo horn. The hollow of its broad end was enclosed by rawhide that had been strapped on wet and allowed to shrink and dry hard. The point of the horn had been cut off flat, and the flat place now had a smooth wooden peg sticking out of it.

At length, Echo called on his courage and pulled this peg out. A dark, evil-looking powder poured from the narrow end of the horn. It burned the nostrils of those who smelled it. Thinking of his own sacred powder of ground deer horn, Horseback took a pinch of this black powder to a smoldering cook fire nearby and threw it onto the coals. The quick burst of flame that engulfed the powder made him leap back in momentary fear.

“Young brother,” Echo said to Horseback, “your
pogamoggan
counted the first stroke on the Fire Stick warrior with three kill feathers. This Fire Stick belongs to you.” He presented the piece to Horseback, affecting much ceremony.

“It is true,” Horseback said, taking the heavy killing tool. He looked across the clearing and saw Looks Away and Spirit Talker bending over his wounded mother. “It is also true that my father and mother will celebrate my first strokes with a giveaway dance when my mother has healed. My medicine has become so strong after our battle that I do not fear giving away all my possessions, for I know my guardian spirits will provide for me. So, I am going to give this Fire Stick away now. Trotter, my friend, you have fought well on this day. I give this Fire Stick to you.”

Trotter looked up from the powder-filled buffalo horn he had been studying, the surprise plain on his face. He took the Fire Stick Horseback offered. “I will master its magic and make it good. My brother, I now return to you the
puha
you loaned to me in the sight of our spirit-sister, the Moon, last night. It is very powerful and fills my paunch with crawling things. Now I will find my own
puha
and make it strong in my heart.”

Horseback looked at Whip. “My friend, do you wish to return the power I loaned to you? You used it well today.”

Whip snorted. “I borrowed nothing from you, Horseback. I have my own power.” He turned and walked away from the group of astonished warriors.

Just then, a cry of agony rose from the tree fine, not far away, followed by a cackle of childish laughter. The warriors turned to look at the captured Fire Stick warrior, Kill Feathers. He had been tied all day to an overhanging tree limb, his hands bound behind his back and hoisted up painfully high. His head had been struck hard by Horseback's club, and he could not stay awake, but sleeping made his weight wrench his shoulders joints and made pain shoot through his chest, making his day one of agony.

The clutch of children gathered around him had been jabbing him with arrows. One had touched Kill Feathers with the end of a stick he had held in a fire, causing him to cry out.

It was the duty of all True Humans to seek revenge against any enemy warrior who tried to kill a
Noomah
brave, and especially one who attacked a
Noomah
village full of mothers and babies. Kill Feathers knew he had risked such vengeance in coming here to make war, and now his suffering was just beginning. The boy jabbed the hot coal into the small of Kill Feather's back, making him cry out again.

Kill Feathers suddenly yelled something in the
Yuta
tongue, lifting his head to reveal a face covered with blood.

“What did he say?” Trotter asked Horseback, knowing that Horseback had learned much of the enemy language from Looks Away.

“He said, ‘I howl at this mockery. You send your children to torture me. Bring someone fierce.'”