People of the Thunder (North America's Forgotten Past) (4 page)

Until I plucked him right out of his house, along with his high minko and the Chahta Priests, and took him prisoner.
Smoke Shield had also burned White Arrow Town to the ground and stolen its matron: Screaming Falcon’s young wife Morning Dew. Morning Dew had become the matron the instant Smoke Shield killed her mother during the raid. Her brother, Biloxi Mankiller—who had also hung from one of the squares—had been the Chahta high minko. In a stroke, Smoke Shield had decapitated the White Arrow leadership, and dealt the Chahta a stinging blow.

He smiled as he remembered the glorious procession his warriors had made as they arrived at Split Sky City, marching their captives up from the canoe landing, past the Old Camp Moiety Mounds, and around the sacred tchkofa, the Council House where the Sky Hand Mos’kogee deliberated and conducted their governmental business. Yes, that had been a
glorious
day.

And it would only be the beginning!

He reached out, fingering the wood, remembering Screaming Falcon’s misery and horror as he had hung, right here, in this very wooden square. The young man’s face had looked lopsided from his broken and swollen jaw, and his flesh had been mottled, blistered, brown, and cracked from where split-cane torches had been pressed against his skin.

“I should have paid better attention to you,” Smoke Shield whispered to the empty wood. “Instead I was too preoccupied with your wife.”

Pus and rot, what a disappointment. He’d planned the whole White Arrow Town raid around stealing Morning Dew. Once she’d looked at him with the same disdain she’d have given a worm in a fruit. After he’d taken her from Screaming Falcon, burned her town, captured her
high minko brother, and wrought every other indignity upon her, she’d just surrendered herself to him without a fight.

What was the point of trying to break a woman who was already compliant?

“I expected more of you, Morning Dew.” He cast a glance over his shoulder, across the corner of the plaza to where his first wife’s house stood. These days Heron Wing owned Morning Dew. The thought of it rankled. Not so much the loss of his slave, but the way of it.

He turned back, peering closely at the heavy wood square, seeing the dark patterns where blood had stained the wood.

Everything changed that night.

He remembered the fog: thick and clinging, so dense a man could hardly see his hand before his face. All of his irritation had been focused on Morning Dew, on the way she lay under him, as unresponsive to his thrusting manhood as a soggy cloth. And while he was wetting his shaft in Morning Dew, someone was out here in the foggy night, sneaking past the guard to drive a stone sword into Screaming Falcon’s heart and then sever his genitals from his body.

“War Chief, I wanted to cut them off myself, just for the pleasure of watching your wife’s horrified expression as I handed them to her.” Perhaps that would have spurred some sort of violent reaction out of her. But someone had beaten him to it.

Who? That single act of murder had robbed the Sky Hand Mos’kogee of revenge on their victims. No claim had been made by any of the subservient Albaamaha. Not so much as a rumor floated among the Traders. What kind of miscreant would commit such a desperate act and then not utilize it as a means of belittling the Sky Hand?

Smoke Shield ran his finger over the deep pucker of his scar.

It had to be the Albaamaha.
They still chafed under the humiliation of serving their Mos’kogee masters. He already knew they had tried to betray the White Arrow Town raid to the Chahta. They
had
to be behind the captives’ murders. Anyone else would have bragged about it. Such a triumph would be shouted up and down the trails.

In an effort to discover the culprits, Smoke Shield had taken Councilor Red Awl and his wife, Lotus Root, captive. In a rude shelter, up above Clay Bank Crossing, he and the warrior Fast Legs had tortured the Albaamo mikko, and learned nothing.

Then it had all gone wrong. Red Awl and Lotus Root had escaped. He and Fast Legs had found the mikko later, dead of his wounds; but the woman . . . gods, where was she?

He reached out and placed his hand on the wood, feeling the polish of years. So many bodies had been tied here. “Screaming Falcon?” he asked softly. “Who killed you?”

If he could only figure that out, he could retaliate. It had to be the Albaamaha! They’d been stewing with revolt for years. He’d caught the Albaamo traitor, Crabapple, who had been sent to warn White Arrow Town. The man had confessed—implicating an old Albaamo named Paunch as the conspirator. So could the mysterious and missing Paunch be behind the ultimate outrage of killing the captives?

“Where are you, Paunch? Wherever it is, I
will
find you eventually.”

He narrowed an eye, letting his finger chip some of the caked blood from the square. When he found Paunch, the man
would
talk. Perhaps he even had something to do with Smoke Shield’s Hickory Moiety losing the winter solstice stickball game. He had bet everything on that game—and lost it all. His wealth, clothing, shell, and copper . . . even Morning Dew.

He shot a narrow glance back at his wife’s house across the plaza. How had she known to bet against him? In collusion with the Albaamaha? No, that was ridiculous. Heron Wing was much too influential in Panther Clan politics. She’d just bet against him because she knew it would irritate him. Gods, why had he ever married that woman?

“Forget it,” he told himself. “Taking her as a wife was your first great triumph. Your attention now must be on breaking the Albaamaha.”

He took a deep breath, turning from the empty square. He would have his revenge. And somewhere, up in the north, his most trusted warrior, Fast Legs, was even now running the missing Lotus Root to ground. Fast Legs would already have disposed of Red Awl’s body. When the woman was dead—and the stolen weapons she’d taken from Smoke Shield returned—then and only then would Smoke Shield begin to wreak havoc on the Albaamaha.

Fast Legs, what is taking you so long?

For two days a freezing drizzle had fallen, coating trees, logs, and the leaf mat with a thin layer of ice. The forest was silent, squirrels, jays, and other creatures waiting it out in warm nests.

Only I am foolish enough to be out here shivering.
Fast Legs Mankiller knotted his muscles, seeking to warm himself against the pervading cold. The good news for him was that the weather kept the Albaamaha inside their bent-pole houses. Individuals only ventured out in search of firewood, then hurried back to their snug houses and warm fires.

From the time he was a boy, Fast Legs had always stood out from the rest of his kinsmen. He’d been large for his age, and always the fastest, strongest, and most skilled at stickball, hunting, and use of the bow. And when he had become a blooded warrior—adding the honorific of Mankiller to his name—no one was as steadfast in battle, or as relentless on the war trail. Ropy muscle corded on his body, and he’d had his face tattooed with wedges like arrow points. Despite Fast Legs having fewer than thirty winters under his belt, the high minko himself had presented him with four of the honorary little white arrows to stick through his hair. More than even the war chief had been granted.

As he lay in the ice-clad forest, he wore only a hunter’s shirt with a muskrat-hide cape over his shoulders.
Muddy war moccasins clad his stone-cold feet. The staves on his bow gleamed under a rime of ice. Nevertheless he lay still as a log, peering out at the Albaamaha village where he knew the escaped Lotus Root hid. A distasteful business, this.

Images still haunted him. He would always remember the expression on Red Awl’s face as he weighted the dead Albaamo councilor’s body and sank it in a backwater swamp. To hide the body, Fast Legs had chosen an abandoned loop of the Black Warrior River, a place where few fishermen went. Using lumps of sandstone he had weighted the body and eased it over the side of his canoe. The eerie thing was how the man’s eyes—shrunken and gray with death—seemed to reanimate as the water swirled over his face.

Fast Legs had stared into the corpse’s eyes as the body slowly sank. The effect had been as if the dead man was promising some terrible justice. A fear unlike anything Fast Legs had known was born in his belly.

As he lay in the frozen forest, a shiver that wasn’t just the cold ran down Fast Legs’ spine.
I was under orders from my war chief.
But he had never really believed that Councilor Red Awl had anything to do with the murder of the White Arrow captives. Fast Legs was pretty sure that he and Smoke Shield had tortured an innocent man to death.

He made a face, feeling cold muscles pull tight in his jaw. “That’s the war chief’s responsibility,” he whispered softly. His job now was the escaped wife, Lotus Root. She’d stolen Smoke Shield’s bow and arrows the night she escaped. Fast Legs had been ordered to retrieve them, kill the woman, and make his way back to Split Sky City.

So, here he was, lurking in the forest, awaiting his chance. Too bad that Councilor Red Awl had to be from this far northern village. Fast Legs could look out past the Albaamaha village, just across their northernmost
fields, and see the hills that marked the fall line—the rugged country leading up to the divide the Sky Hand shared with the Yuchi enemy. Living in the shadow of a powerful adversary like the Yuchi made things precarious. Just off to his right, past more Albaamaha cornfields, the palisade and protruding roofs of Bowl Town—the northernmost Sky Hand settlement—were visible. How Chief Sun Falcon held this vulnerable outpost together was anyone’s guess.

Meanwhile, Fast Legs huddled in the forest, keeping an eye on Lotus Root’s bent-pole house with its thatched walls. The dwelling was larger than most Albaamaha houses, but what would a person expect a renowned mikko and councilor to live in?

Killing Lotus Root had to be done right. He couldn’t march in, knock her in the head, and march out. No, it had to be accomplished in a way that didn’t lend credence to the woman’s story. He needed to get her alone, find some way to kill her, and remove the body. The last thing he and the war chief needed was evidence of Sky Hand murder, or a body for the Albaamaha to weep over. Lotus Root simply needed to disappear. But since he had arrived here, she had played the game like a rabbit who knows the hawk’s shadow was cast upon her.

During the two days prior to the storm, however, Fast Legs had been forced to retreat from his hiding places close to Lotus Root’s village. The forest had literally been swarming with Albaamaha, as if they’d been preparing for the storm. They had spread out like crickets, picking up branches, calling back and forth, chopping at wood. So he had slipped back farther into the maze of trees until they finished whatever it was they had been doing.

Now, with the weather keeping the Albaamaha inside, he had returned. He could see a huge stack of dead wood piled by Lotus Root’s house. What on earth would she need that much firewood for?

A fit of shivering left him shaken and miserable. He shifted, rubbing his hands to make warmth, and glanced at the bow and arrows he had fashioned after weighting Red Awl’s body and sinking it in the backwater. The bow wasn’t his best work, the arrows either, with their crude points; but they’d do to kill Lotus Root. Assuming, that is, that she ever left the shelter of her house.

For two weeks he had been living off the land, trying to sneak close enough to kill her. Each time, the pack of dogs that now lived at her house had set off the alarm, causing him to flee into the darkness.

Twice, he’d sworn that passing Albaamaha had seen him. But in neither case had they raised an alarm. It was almost as if they knew he was there. Worse, he’d observed a constant procession of Albaamaha enter and leave Lotus Root’s dwelling. Was that what the firewood collecting had been about? Laying in a supply large enough that she didn’t need to set foot out of her house until summer came, or he finally gave up and left?

Gods, have I ever been this cold and hungry?

The distant palisade around Bowl Town seemed to beckon him where it dominated a thin neck of land bounded on three sides by the river. Chief Sun Falcon’s tall roof jutted up above the high walls. Fast Legs would be welcomed there, made a place by the fire, and fed real food. But with that delightful shelter would come the question: What are you doing here?

No, too much responsibility rested on him. He
had
to kill the woman, retrieve the war chief’s weapons, and get away. Even if it meant turning himself into a wild man to do it.

War Chief, you are going to owe me when this is finished.

Once again he caught himself staring longingly across the distance at Bowl Town. True, he could tell them he was hunting, and they would believe it. But, why, they
would wonder, was he hunting here? And why hadn’t he announced himself and asked them to join the hunt?

Looking down at his filthy cloak, mud-encrusted moccasins, and feeling his greasy hair, no one would believe he’d just arrived. He looked like what he was, a man who had been skulking in the forest for days. His belly growled, reminding him that he would have to sneak into the Albaamaha settlement and raid their granary in the middle of the night again. Sometime, even the stupid Albaamaha had to realize that someone was taking their corn and squash.