People of the Morning Star (66 page)

To Columella’s amazement, Night Shadow Star had ceased struggling, flipped her braid out of the way, and was smiling at Walking Smoke.

“Your Power and mine, Brother. I’ve felt your caress. Soon, you’re going to feel mine.”

Someone was tugging on Columella’s ropes. She closed her eyes in defeat. No doubt one of the Tula had finally noticed that she’d fallen.

Her souls bitter and broken, she swiveled her head and stared into Flat Stone Pipe’s frightened eyes as he hid beneath the bench and sawed at her bonds with a gray chert blade.

Sixty-one

The words spoken by Sun Wing’s porter echoed in Fire Cat’s souls: “She’s in there!” The man had pointed up the Evening Star House palace stairway, his rain-wet shirt clinging to his shoulders, hair plastered.

“Wait!” the Keeper had called as her own porters were lowering her. “War Duck’s squadrons will be here in less than a hand of time.” Even as she said it, she was staring at the still-cooling bodies of two arrow-skewered Tula and a third, brain-bashed, man.

“She may not have that long,” he’d growled back having already strung his bow. And as he charged up the stairs, he’d nocked an arrow.

He found the door half open, slipped sideways through it, and into confusion. A knot of three Tula stood just to his left. One held Night Shadow Star’s copper-bitted war club in his hands. Another was inspecting her slim Osage-orange bow, the third, and closest, had her quiver.

Fire Cat caught just enough of a glance to see two more Tula dragging Night Shadow Star toward a naked-and-painted man in the middle of the floor. Sun Wing’s nude body lay at the painted man’s feet. An arch of bleeding and disarticulated body parts as strung across the floor. The wall benches on his left held panicked and crying children. Halfway down the wall a dazed-looking man appeared crestfallen, and a bound woman lay on the floor.

The place smelled of blood and death.

He had no more time. The three Tula with Night Shadow Star’s weapons turned to gape at him in surprise.

Fire Cat shot the closest one, driving an arrow through the Tula’s chest. Then he lashed out with the bow in a slashing strike that drove the two remaining Tula back and bought him enough time to rip out Makes Three’s war club.

The man with Night Shadow Star’s bow raised it to block Fire Cat’s strike. The force of the club’s impact snapped the thin stave like a twig.

“Sorry, Lady,” Fire Cat apologized for her bow as he set his foot, pirouetted, and slammed his club past the third man’s guard. He felt the solid hit, heard the ribs cracking like crushed kindling. Fire Cat skipped, the Red Wing war cry breaking past his lips in a fierce joy.

Adrenaline surged through him, charging his body, and he caved in the side of the second Tula’s head. Even as the warrior dropped, Fire Cat landed on one foot, turned, and screamed his rage. Tula warriors were charging toward him from all over the room.

As he started forward he caught a glimpse of the back wall behind the dais. Flames and smoke curled up from the woven cane.

“Hoookaaiiiyaaaa!”
he screamed, daring again to vent the war call he’d thought forever stilled in his breast and soul. And into the midst of them he charged, his souls singing with the thrill of combat.

Before they killed him, by the Blessed Stars, they’d know what it was to face a Red Wing war chief.

“Hoookaaaiiiyaaa!”

*   *   *

At the sound of carnage inside the palace, Blue Heron looked up from the rain-slicked corpses on the ground. So much for waiting. She threw her hands up in despair. Her porters stood hunched in the pounding rain, four of them vying to hold the flat rain shield above her head in an effort to keep her dry.

She glanced around distastefully as a howling war cry issued from the half-open palace door.

Staring across the morning-gray and rain-slashed plaza, she could see no sign of War Duck’s squadron. They’d just begun to form as she and her party had loaded into canoes for the ferry trip across the river.

A second cry howled from behind the door.

“Pus, rot, and blood!” she bellowed. Thrusting an arm out, she ordered the gawking crowd, “You all! Yes, you! I
order
you in the name of the Morning Star. When chief War Duck’s warriors arrive, tell the squadron first to get up these stairs and storm the palace. You tell them the Keeper said so!”

“Keeper?” her war second, one of the ten warriors who’d accompanied her, asked.

“We’re going in there. If it’s a Tula, kill it. They’ll be the ones fighting us. Hard to miss.”

And with that she plucked up a rain-soaked war club from the dead Tula lying at her feet and started up the stairs.

I have lost any sense I ever had.

But perhaps the Red Wing had bought them the time and opportunity they needed. Had to admire that. Even now he was probably dead, and if Walking Smoke’s Tula hadn’t secured the door, if they weren’t nocking arrows in their bows even as she charged up the long stairs ahead of her ten warriors, maybe it would be enough.

Maybe.

To her surprise, huffing and puffing, she made it to the top, flicked a salutary finger at the guardian posts—it would have to suffice—and ran as fast as her old legs would carry her.

Hearing her warriors’ feet pounding on the wet clay behind her, she panted her way into the protection of the veranda, half expecting a hissing blur of arrows to skewer her.

Even more surprised, she charged through the door unopposed, and into the palace great room.

Where she stopped short, trying to make sense of what she saw. Madness everywhere. Three Tula were moaning and dying to her left, children were screaming, the back wall was on fire, human body parts were being kicked around on the floor as the crazy Red Wing danced, and whirled his war club, in the midst of a frenzied circle of Tula. Sun Wing, thankfully alive, lay in the midst of a broken pot. A beguiling smile on her face, Night Shadow Star was tugging on a painted man whom Blue Heron assumed was Walking Smoke. She seemed to be leading him back past the dais and toward the burning wall.

“Keeper?” her war second asked.

“Go!” she ordered. “Kill Tula.”

Then she charged forward, half stumbling over slippery pieces of human beings and bloody matting. The way the fire was now racing up the back wall, it wouldn’t be long before the roof caught. When that happened, it didn’t matter how hard it was raining outside, the tinder-dry interior would explode in flame.

With fighting all around, men screaming, shrieking, and dying, she bent down at Sun Wing’s side, her fingers fumbling at the knots.

“Hey! Niece! Wake up! Help me here.”

Sun Wing’s glazed expression remained frozen in fear, her swollen eyes fixed on nothing. Half-strangled pants broke from her heaving lungs. Inhuman, barely audible squeals slipped past her locked jaws and compressed lips.

Blue Heron yanked at the knots, caught movement, and ducked as one of her warriors backed toward her, smashed a heel into her side, and toppled backward. As he did, a Tula war club hissed wickedly through the air where his head would have been.

Blue Heron huddled protectively over her niece’s body as the Tula uttered a blood-curdling scream and leaped on the fallen warrior.

Hideous shrieks sounded and Blue Heron’s body rocked as the two men fought on top of her; each time one of them kicked, she bore the brunt.

And then, peering from under her arm, she watched the Tula lift his war club, and slam it down on her warrior.

Enough of this!

Her fingers wrapped around the handle of the war club she’d taken from the Tula outside. Getting to her knees, she swung the stone-bladed ax into the back of the Tula’s head. Watched his body jump under the impact, stiffen, and fall forward onto her now dead warrior.

She was panting, air tearing in and out of her lungs. Her heart was hammering at her chest. The sensation of the Tula’s skull crushing, the snapping sound of the bones breaking, and the feel of it through the war club’s handle, would be with her forever.

She gasped, placing her left hand to her heart. Coming to her senses, she shot a look around the room. Fire Cat still stood, his helmet now missing and blood streaming down the side of his head. Two Tula danced about trading blows with him. Another Tula was staggering as he slammed blow after blow into her war second’s stumbling body. Around her lay dead Four Winds warriors intermingled with dying Tula.

As she exhaled and glanced back to Sun Wing, a hard hand knotted in her hair, lifting.

Blue Heron shrieked at the pain, struggling to get her feet under her. She’d never been lifted by her hair before. Never wanted to experience it again. Scared witless, she glanced sidelong at a bloody young Tula warrior. The man’s face, so close to hers, had a desperate look. Anxiety lay in the darting of his eyes as he looked around the room. The rear wall was roaring in flames now, smoke billowing.

The way he held her, her back was toward him. If she tried to kick or strike, the agony in her scalp became unbearable.

“What do you want?” she hissed.

“Out,” he barked in a guttural accent. “You save.”

“Do you know who I am?”

“Out. You save.”

“I’m the Four Winds Clan Keeper. I can—”

A long chipped-stone ceremonial knife was placed against her throat, the keen edge slightly angled over the still healing scar where a similar blade had once been placed.

“Out. You save.”

“I can help you,” she suggested, trying to control the fear in her voice.

“Out. You save.”

“All right!” she gasped. “Out. I save.”

He muttered some sort of agreement in Caddo, and began dragging her toward the door.

She tried to resist but the knife just pressed tighter against her throat.

On the verge of squealing in panic, she nevertheless heard a familiar chiding voice say, “Keeper, you do get yourself into the most fascinating predicaments.”

Sixty-two

Seven Skull Shield reached out from behind and fastened his hand on the Tula’s right wrist where it held the knife against the Keeper’s throat. At the same time his left hand clamped on the Tula’s throat; he squeezed, digging his thumb and fingers deep into the man’s neck, surrounding the Tula’s voice box. As he did, Seven Skull Shield arched his body, pulling the Tula up and back.

“Let her go, you piece of steaming shit,” he growled, and put every ounce of strength he had into crushing the man’s windpipe and peeling the knife hand from the Keeper’s throat.

The Tula’s left hand finally turned loose of the Keeper’s hair, and Blue Heron wiggled out of his grip and away from the deadly knife.

And then, like having a wildcat in a bear hug, Seven Skull Shield’s life got very, very interesting.

The Tula might have been greased the way he slipped out of Seven Skull Shield’s grip, and whirled, landing catlike on the balls of his feet. The long chert blade was held low, poised to strike. Like an animal’s, the Tula’s face contorted into a feral visage, lips up, teeth exposed, a growl bursting from his now hoarse and bruised throat.

“You piece of stinking dog shit!
” Seven Skull Shield bellowed, rolling his shoulders. Then he screamed, balanced on his feet, and threw himself at the Tula.

“You maggot-mouthed bit of latrine filth!”
He tried to catch the knife hand, missed it, curled away and partially blocked the darting cut. Not enough. He felt it slicing along his ribs.

“I’m gonna break you! Cook and eat your tongue! Stomp your pus-dripping shaft! Pop your maggot eyes like eggs, you piece of vomit!”
He drove himself into the Tula, bulling the man into a pile of bodies. The Tula toppled backward as he tripped over a severed leg.

Now in his element, Seven Skull Shield let the fury boil up from his gut. His knee, faithful weapon of the consummate brawler, jerked up like a stone maul at the same moment the two of them slammed onto the floor. The Tula grunted as his testicles were crushed.

“Gonna beat you, stomp you, pull out your guts!”
Seven Skull Shield howled, raising his head and driving it down like a rock. The Tula’s nose crunched under the impact.
“You sucking scum. Fly piss, worm penis piece of slime! Gonna hammer your balls with a rock!”