Zadayi Red (43 page)

Zeya stepped outside to face the doomed. He felt calm and clear. Su-Li lit on his shoulder.

“Lay down your weapons,” he told the escorts.

“Rot in hell,” said the biggest one.

“Lay down your weapons,” Zeya said again in a simple way. “If any of you chiefs have hidden weapons, put them down, too.”

A gnarly man with a scarred face spoke up. “We got no chance, and you take away what little we got.”

“If you need a miracle,” Zeya said, “you may as well ask for a big one.”

He looked up at the trees. Dark shadows marked the leafless branches, where none had been before. Beyond the valley, V-shaped pairs of wings slashed the sky.
I see even more,
said Su-Li.

“We don’t have long,” said Ninyu.

Zeya looked carefully at the Tusca enemies.

In fact, Zeya thought, they did have a while. Some of the Tuscas were still painting their faces as their medicine guided them. Some were putting on talismans from their spirit helpers. One fixed the body of a raven on top of his head. Another tied weasel tails into his hair. Far to one side a warrior pulled the entire head of a buffalo over his own head and face. Those who were ready fell into a mob, picketed with spears and war clubs.

Zeya stepped up to the nearest escort, took his weapons out of his hands, and laid them on the ground. Then he turned to another escort. Klandagi caught on and accomplished the same with growls. Su-Li rasped at several of them. Quickly everyone was disarmed.

“Now,” said Zeya, “no matter what happens, don’t strike a single Tusca man, don’t shed a drop of Galayi blood.”

“No worries about that, is there?” said the big fighter.

Zeya’s men tittered with weird laughter.

“No matter what happens,” Zeya repeated.

By that time the Tuscas were ready. Inaj marched forth, his son Wilu beside him, and the mob tramped behind the two. Some whirled buzzing noisemakers over their heads. Then Inaj loosed the Galayi war cry, and all two hundred warriors joined
in—“Woh-WHO-O-O-ey! Woh-WHO-O-O-ey! AI-AI-AI-AI!”

The escorts and chiefs eyed each other. Only one man of them expected to live.

“Woh-WHO-O-O-ey! Woh-WHO-O-O-ey! AI-AI-AI-AI!”

“Zeya,” said Tsola, “before you go, I ask you a favor. Take off my blindfold. I want to see this.”

“Last thing you’ll ever see,” said the gnarly man.

Zeya slipped the blindfold off and laid it in her lap. The Seer wove her fingers over her eyes, shutting out most of the light.

“Woh-WHO-O-O-ey! Woh-WHO-O-O-ey! AI-AI-AI-AI!”

“Are you ready?” said Zeya.

“It’s all right to go to the Darkening Land,” said the gnarly man, “but I wanted to walk behind a man, not a boy.”

Zeya smiled freely. “You won’t walk behind either one,” he said.

The chiefs and warriors looked at each other and shrugged their shoulders.

Zeya walked casually toward the enemy, as though on an evening stroll.

“Woh-WHO-O-O-ey! Woh-WHO-O-O-ey! AI-AI-AI-AI!”

From behind, the chiefs and warriors saw Zeya begin to change. His black hair turned russet. His face became a beak and two golden eyes. He turned one of the eyes to his comrades and one to the enemy. His arms grew feathers and were wings. His legs turned to talons. He spread his wings wide—he was the biggest eagle they’d ever seen.

Exclamations burst from his followers. “I can’t believe it!” “What the hell?”

Zeya and Su-Li lifted into the sky.

His comrades stopped. Some took heart. Some thought they were abandoned and their feet wanted to flee. Then Ninyu said, “Look!”

Eagles were circling above the meadow, hundreds of war eagles.

Zeya started his own circle, close to the ground. The flock of eagles swooped down and fell in behind him and Su-Li. They wing-flapped once around the Tusca mob.

The unarmed men gaped.

The Tuscas took no particular notice. Inaj and Wilu looked at nothing but the pitiful, helpless enemies they were about to exterminate. “Woh-WHO-O-O-ey! Woh-WHO-O-O-ey! AI-AI-AI-AI!”

Zeya said to Su-Li,
May an eagle who is sometimes a Galayi kill a Galayi?

Su-Li said,
Let me do it for your mother.

On the first pass he slashed at the Red Chief’s neck with a talon. Bright red spurted.

There was no second pass. Su-Li swooped down from behind and dug into both of Inaj’s shoulders with his talons. The chief leaned his head back and screamed.

Su-Li pecked the left eye viciously. Twice. Three times.

Inaj’s screams filled the skies, and then were drowned out by the screams of his mob. Every warrior’s eyes were assaulted by an eagle, sometimes two. Every warrior flailed at the war birds with their weapons, and no man hurt a bird.

Blood streamed down faces. Men collapsed onto the ground, holding their eyes and wailing. Some eyeballs squirted onto the bloodied earth.

Zeya watched a few warriors manage to run away. He noticed that his uncle Wilu escaped. It didn’t matter. In the time a man needed to walk around his own village, the Tusca army was in tatters. Zeya looked around at his triumph.
No, the eagles’ triumph
.

He coasted down and landed beside Inaj. Su-Li stood on the Red Chief’s chest, talons deep in the flesh.

Zeya looked at the Red Chief writhing on the ground, blind, in agony, defeated. “Chief,” said Zeya, “as a grandfather, you were despicable.”

Su-Li reached down deliberately with his beak, plucked up the large vein in his neck, and bit it in half.

Tsola shut her eyes, thrust her arms into the air, and yelled, “Woh-WHO-O-O-ey! Woh-WHO-O-O-ey! AI-AI-AI-AI!”

S
unoya stopped and looked down the trail. Where it opened into a meadow, the remnants of the Tusca people wept openly, milled in agitation among their brush huts, or sat with their heads in their hands.

“They feel doomed,” Zeya said.

He had sent a runner ahead with the news. A family without men to hunt and fight would starve, or be overrun by enemies. These people faced extinction this very winter. The nip in the morning air felt like a sharp warning.

“It’s terrible,” said Sunoya.

They deserve it
, said Su-Li.

“No one deserves that,” said Ninyu.

“We’ll help them,” said Zeya.

“I lived in this village for seven years,” said Sunoya. Even though Inaj had driven her out.

Klandagi growled. They all knew his assignment. A few Tusca warriors were wounded but alive, probably hiding in the forest. Klandagi’s mother was safe in the Cavern. “Guard Zeya,” she instructed Klandagi. “He is the future. Protect him.”

At the camp Zeya said, “Let’s bring them all together.”

When the people shambled into the common, heads down, feet dragging, Zeya spoke to them kindly. “I’m sorry about your men. You’ve heard the story—hundreds of war eagles attacked them.” He hesitated. “I called those eagles to war.”

He let that sink in and went on. “You know why. They were about to wipe out the Soco band. Your Red Chief said so in the council—bragged about it. But Galayi must not shed the blood of other Galayi, ever. That’s how we will live from now on.

“Know that Galayi people did not harm your men. The eagles did.

“The other three bands have promised to take care of you. All the bands will come together tomorrow at the council lodge, the way we do for the Planting Moon ceremony every spring. Then all of us will bury your men with honor, on an east-facing slope, and with the ceremonies every Galayi deserves.

“After that comes the hard part. You will choose new families to be part of, or they will choose you. We will stay at the Cheowa village until every Tusca is taken in. Then the Tusca band will exist no more. That saddens me. The one who gave me birth was a Tusca. I grieve that the legacy of your Red Chief, my grandfather, Inaj, is hatred and mass death.

“Today let’s rest, and I’ll talk with you privately, anyone who wants to talk. Tomorrow morning we’ll walk to Cheowa.”

Zeya spent the afternoon and evening listening to Tuscas who wanted to tell the stories of their lives, to mourn the loss of husbands, fathers, and sons, to speak their dread of the future, to confide anything at all. He listened well and spoke little.

Sunoya watched amazed, stupefied. Her son. “I feel peculiar,” she told Su-Li.

You raised him to be the one of prophecy, and he has exceeded all expectations.

“I could never have done it without you.”

Thunderbird sent me here to help you.

“But I keep feeling like I’m losing something.”

His greatness sets him apart, from you and all of us.

She laid out these important words. “I came through for my mother.”

You did.

“All my life I thought maybe she was wrong.” She looked at the last two fingers of her right hand, the ones webbed at her birth. “I thought maybe I was cursed.”

She did right. You chose the good. I’m honored to be your companion.

She looked at him in shock. Her lips edged into a smile, and for a moment she felt weepy. Then the feeling came back. “I am bereft.”

Su-Li said nothing.

“What will I do now? I’m only forty winters old. Our people, if they reach forty, live to seventy a lot of times. What will I do?

You are in the prime of life. You’ll have grandchildren to enjoy.

Sunoya thought she heard something odd in his voice, but she didn’t know what it was. She’d learned long since that he didn’t tell her some things.

“I should be with Jemel,” she said. She looked down the creek. She always found water soothing. “Would you like to go flying?”

Yes
.

Again the odd tone.

“Why don’t you go?” She looked across at Zeya, who was listening to people’s sorrows. “I’d like to be alone for a while.”

Su-Li looked into her eyes, turned his head away, and launched.

Sunoya meandered along the creek. She didn’t know what she wanted. Idly, she ate some rose hips, which she didn’t particularly
care for. She found some berries the bears hadn’t yet gotten and sucked out their sweetness. She sat on a rock and dangled her feet in the cool water. Soon the creek would be cold—snow would cover the balds and on warm days melt into this running stream. She played in the bottom sand with her toes. She gazed at the leafless laurels across the stream and ruminated. Forty winters old, still vigorous and strong.
Forty winters, and I’ve done what I came to Earth for.

As the afternoon got warm, Sunoya got sleepy. She wrapped herself in her shawl and lay down in the grass. The
shhh-shhh
of the creek sang her to sleep. She dreamed that she was a bird—she couldn’t tell what kind—flying through a cloud. As a girl, when she dreamed of flying, it was exciting. Now the cloud changed everything. She couldn’t see the Earth, she couldn’t see the sky, she couldn’t see where she was going. She flapped and flapped and flapped but never figured out where she was, or where she should be, or what direction she was headed. She whimpered.

Wilu stepped from behind a tree and stood over her.

She whimpered again. That was all right with Wilu. No one could hear her, probably not even if she screamed. No one would hear them, not this far from the trail.

He put a foot on either side of her, knelt, opened her mouth, and gagged her. She waggled her head and tried to yell, but too late. Her eyes gaped when she saw his face. He smiled down at her.

He forced her hands above her head and bound them with deer hide thongs. She stared at the badger tied into his hair, a black head with a white stripe and a small jaw of amazing ferocity.

He thought,
You’ll find out just how ferocious.

When she was secure, he stood up and put a foot between her legs, on her skirt. Now she wouldn’t be going anywhere. “A virgin,” he said.

Slowly, he slipped his deerskin shirt over his head. One at a time, he slipped off his moccasins. He drew his knife out of his belt and set it beside her neck, untied the belt, held the breechcloth for a moment, and let it drop. He leered at her with hatred.