People of the Silence (44 page)

The warriors followed in single file, all studying the tracks intently.

At the top, Webworm crouched down and touched the knee print in the soil. Gnat looked over his shoulder. The man had knelt here, his right knee on the ground. Only the toe prints of his left foot showed, so he’d been leaning slightly forward, probably bracing …

Gnat jerked his head up and sighted along the direction the man must have been aiming. Pale green fabric caught the light, contrasting to the winter-brown of the weeds.

He trotted forward cautiously, until he saw the long black hair that haloed the person …

Blessed thlatsinas!

He broke into a run.

Gnat dropped beside her. She lay on her face, an arrow protruding from her back. Blood drenched her green dress and splattered the crushed weeds where she’d fallen.

Webworm trotted up beside him and bent over, frowning. “Who is it?”

“I don’t know, but one arrow through the lung wouldn’t cause this huge pool of clotted blood.” It soaked the soil around her. She had to have been killed yesterday, or perhaps last night, because it had dried and blackened.

Gnat gripped her by the shoulder and flipped her onto her back.

Webworm sucked in a sharp breath.

“What sort of savagery is this?” Gnat’s fist clenched.

Her belly had been slit open from her groin to her breasts. But with great care. Not a single intestine had been pricked, and the diaphragm and internal organs remained in place, but a curious shine coated the insides of her thighs. Semen? Had she been raped? Gnat recoiled, wondering if the murderer had taken her while alive, or after he’d killed her. The smooth places in the sand, and the dirt on the back of her hair and dress … it looked as if she’d been on her back when she’d first fallen. Had he turned her over after he’d finished with her?

“Oh, Cloud Playing,” Webworm whispered. He knelt and every muscle in his strong body knotted.

Gnat clutched his weapons more tightly. Her pretty face bore streaks of blood. But her eyes had been closed by her attacker. Muddy fingerprints smudged her lids.

When Webworm’s shoulders started shaking, Gnat looked away. Webworm had once loved her. Perhaps he still did. It had nearly killed Webworm when Crow Beard had ordered Cloud Playing not to see him again. Gnat didn’t know all the details, except that she had married another, and Webworm had left Talon Town for three moons. Despite their parents, Webworm and Cloud Playing had always been friends. After her husband and children died, Gnat remembered seeing the two of them sitting on the banks of this wash, talking. She had been lonely. It had seemed to comfort her to have Webworm close.

Her name ran through the ranks:
“It’s Cloud Playing!”

“Blessed thlatsinas! Cloud Playing? Who could have done this?”

“Snake Head will be enraged! What will happen when he finds out his sister—”

“Quiet!” Gnat ordered. “Spread out! Look for more tracks! Raiders could have done this!”

The men trotted away in all directions, shoving sagebrush aside to peer under the branches, searching for mashed grass, or a thread torn from the murderer’s clothing when he’d fled.

The first shock subsiding, Gnat took a closer look. First, he turned his attention to the arrow, and his gut soured. Mogollon Fire Dogs, Hohokam, and Straight Path people, each had their own distinct style of point. A man also marked each of his shafts with his personal colors, clan markings, or perhaps the cut of the fletching.

The arrow that had killed Cloud Playing was nondescript, made of plain willow, perfectly straight and smooth, but unpainted. The split turkey-feather fletching had been tied with sinew, and the obsidian arrowhead was a simple triangle, its flat base fitted into a slit in the willow shaft, glued with pine pitch. Behind the base, the sinew had been wrapped tightly to hold the point in place.

The skin on the back of Gnat’s neck prickled. He took a deep breath and rocked back on his heels. Whoever did this had deliberately made an arrow that couldn’t be traced. Her death was not the result of a raid, or an accident. This was murder.
But who? Why?

Webworm bent forward to peer into Cloud Playing’s open belly and throttled a cry. “Blessed gods…”

“What?” Gnat steeled himself and peered inside. At the first pungency of human entrails, he held his breath and studied the way the intestines looped, and the umber-brown lobe of liver. Dirt clung to the viscera, and they’d begun to wrinkle as they dried.

And then he saw it, down low, just above where the cut ended in the tangled thatch of pubic hair. Gnat swallowed hard and used the handle of his knife to hold the abdominal wall back. His hand trembled. The murderer had deliberately sliced into her womb, cut it wide open, and …

He whispered, “That’s …
that’s corpse powder!
Inside her. Do you see it? In the shadows, it shines!”

A shudder went through Webworm. “Yes.”

Gnat got to his feet and stepped away from the body, far enough to take a clean breath of air and stare up at the clouds he’d thought so pretty. Now, despite the effects of sun and shadow, they seemed colorless, leached. He blinked and stared at the abandoned cornfields. Life was ebbing away, the land, the drainage channel, everything was drying up before his eyes. As if the world were bleeding to death, and no one knew it was happening.

Webworm rose unsteadily and came to stand beside him. “This … this is not the work of raiders.”

“No,” Gnat agreed.

Webworm slowly lifted his gaze to Talon Town, following the killer’s tracks. The Great Warriors stood tall on the rear wall of the plaza, lightning bolts aimed directly at Gnat and Webworm. Their brilliantly colored masks shone in the early morning sunlight. “This,” Webworm added softly, “is the work of a madman.”

“A crazy witch.”

“Gnat,” Webworm’s voice sounded frail. “I—I argued with her the last time I saw her. I begged her to marry me. She told me she couldn’t. I started shouting like a maniac.”

Gnat frowned. “What does that matter now?”

Webworm shook his head. His fists clenched. “I don’t know.” He turned, slung his bow, and shoved his arrow back in his quiver. Tears beaded on his lashes as, heedless of his wounded arm, he slipped his hands beneath Cloud Playing’s shoulders and knees and clutched her to his chest. Blood ran from her stomach cavity and drenched his shirt.

Webworm began walking toward Talon Town as if in a trance.

Gnat kept pace at his side until he saw Webworm’s arms shaking, and heard him say softly to Cloud Playing,
“Forgive me…”

Gnat fell back, letting Webworm go ahead. He didn’t know if Cloud Playing’s soul could hear, but he knew Webworm considered the conversation private.

Gnat looked from the Great Warriors of East and West to the human warriors scattered through the ragged weeds, and back to Webworm clutching Cloud Playing’s limp body in his arms.

Both Wraps-His-Tail and Cloud Playing had been First People. Both had been returning to Talon Town after a journey. Each had been sprinkled with corpse powder. Who could be responsible? He tried to recall who had been standing lookout on the night Wraps-His-Tail died. And who had been there last night.

Gnat shook himself. A feeling of impending doom slithered around his belly.

He studied Webworm’s broad back. The War Chief had his forehead pressed against Cloud Playing’s. Mournful sounds drifted on the morning wind. Gnat prayed none of the other warriors could hear. When a War Chief showed weakness, it sapped every man around him. In the past twenty cycles, Gnat could not recall one time when Ironwood had broken down. Ironwood had always been the rock against which men could brace their backs and fight the whole world, if necessary.

Gnat took up the trail again, weaving through the ratty patches of grass. Perhaps Webworm would not be War Chief very long. Idly, Gnat sifted through the names of men who might replace him. Wraps-His-Tail would have been next, then Cone. But Cone had been missing for half a moon. Everyone believed him dead.

Gnat scanned the trail, surveying the other warriors.

Perhaps, if he watched himself, even
he
might have a chance.

Twenty-Six

Poor Singer and Silk walked westward, hunting the drainages for the first slender leaves of wild onions. Banded humps of red-and-tan earth rolled around them, whiskered with green grass, rabbitbrush, and the tall golden shocks of last summer’s foxtails. In the distance, Poor Singer counted twelve spires of rock. Twisted and eroded, they thrust up like knobby warning fingers. Far to the north, the jagged blue peaks of the Spirit Mountains hovered above the desert, suspended on a current of hot wavy air.

Poor Singer swung his half-full basket. The savory tang of onions filled his nostrils. After the fast, he couldn’t seem to eat enough. They’d shared a big breakfast at dawn, but his stomach had started reminding him that Father Sun had more than passed his midday point. “Silk?” he called. She walked ahead of him on the trail, her loose long hair shining blue-black. “I’m getting hungry.”

“So am I.” She stopped to wait for him.

She wore a pale green dress that hugged her slender body and highlighted the golden tones of her skin. Perspiration beaded her pointed nose and broad cheekbones. If it weren’t for the despair in her large dark eyes, she would be breathtakingly beautiful, but desperation always glittered, like tears, just beneath the surface.

Poor Singer trotted to catch up. “How many do you have?” He swung his basket around to place it beside hers. “Oh, you have more than I do. Where did you find so many? I thought we’d been hunting in the same places.” Had he been eating
that
many?

Silk brushed hair behind her ears. From this side view she appeared all the more frail and willowy. “I know where they grow. My … my mother taught me.”

He heard the ache in her voice, and it wounded his heart. “I know many things about animals, but not much about plants. I guess I spent my whole life working to be a Singer instead of a farmer. But if I’m going to Heal people, I really need to know more about wild plants. Will you teach me, Silk?”

She smiled suddenly. “I’d like that.”

They walked down the slope into a low spot filled with prickly pear, patches of green grass, and a knot of scrubby juniper trees.

Silk glanced to the side and stopped. “Wait, Poor Singer. There are several more onions here. Let me get them. These will be the last, I promise.”

She knelt, took her fire-hardened digging stick from her basket, and worked it into the ground under the delicious roots. As she levered the stick back, white bulbs popped up. With agile brown fingers she plucked them from the dry gray soil.

Poor Singer’s gaze wandered. High above them, a red-tailed hawk circled lazily on the thermals, wings flashing with sunlight. Her hoarse screams pierced the quiet. The smaller male perched on a dead pine tree ahead; the male watched the female for a time, then gracefully lifted into the air and flapped toward her.

“I love hawks,” Poor Singer said. “I always wanted a hawk as my Spirit Helper.”

“And did you get one?” Silk dug for more onions. The fragrance of earth and the uprooted plants filled the warm air.

“No. Winged creatures just don’t seem to—”

At that very moment a huge black raven soared down like a black arrow, its wings tucked. It pulled up right in front of Silk and fluttered to the ground. Its bulbous black beak had to be as long as Poor Singer’s middle finger.

“Blessed Cloud People!” Poor Singer cried, stunned. “Look at the size of that bird.”

Silk watched it with slit-eyed suspicion. The raven cocked its head first one way, then another.

Poor Singer grinned. “Isn’t that odd? That the raven would show up just when I mentioned winged creatures?”

The raven hopped close enough to Silk to peer into her basket of onions.

“I don’t believe it,” she said.

“Believe what?”

She sat back on her heels and waved a hand at the raven. “Go away. Go on! Get out of here! Shoo!”

The raven hunched down and waited, as if it knew this harsh behavior wouldn’t last long.

Silk studied her digging stick for a moment, shifted her grip, as if on a club, then shook her head and sighed. “This
can’t
be the same bird that used to drive me crazy at home.”

The sound of her voice emboldened the raven. It strutted around the side of her basket and peered at Silk through one black eye. Then it lifted its thick beak and
thock-thocked.

Poor Singer cocked his head. “Turtle Village is three days’ walk to the north. How could it have followed you so far?”

“I don’t know, but it looks like the same bird.”

“What did it do to drive you crazy?”

Silk gestured uneasily. “Whenever I was outside grinding corn, this raven would come and beg until I gave him some.”

“Doesn’t sound crazy to me. Sounds smart.”

“Yes, well … that may be—but he got me in a lot of trouble. People started to fear that I might be a witch.”

Poor Singer chuckled. “You? A witch?”

Silk wet her lips nervously. “It’s not funny when people talk about you behind their hands, Poor Singer. When it happens, you take it seriously.” She paused. “If you don’t, they sneak up behind you, whack you in the back of the head, and throw a big rock on you after they drop you in a hole.”

“Your own clan would call you a witch because a smart raven came to steal corn?”

Her gaze ate into him like cactus juice on clam shell. “When people are frightened, Poor Singer, they see witches everywhere.”

The raven fluffed his feathers, head up. Poor Singer stared into its beady black eyes. From many days watching ravens and crows he knew they could be extremely clever.

“Poor Singer,” Silk said, “you’re learning to be a holy man. Can’t you make it go away?”

He folded his arms, and considered. “You mean like Sing it to Windflower Village?”

“I mean like Sing it to one of the afterworlds.”

Poor Singer smiled at the raven. Its feathers shimmered blue-black in the slanting afternoon sun. The bird had a strangely human look in its eyes that sent a sudden chill up Poor Singer’s backbone. “Silk? Tell me something. How many times did the raven come to you at Turtle Village?”