People of the Thunder (North America's Forgotten Past) (7 page)

Screaming Falcon and I will remake the Chahta world!
Had he not just sacked the Sky Hand’s Alligator Town? Had he not burned their southernmost holding and taken its chief and his relatives captive to hang in White Arrow Town’s wooden squares? Power favored the Chahta, and with it, she and Screaming Falcon would lead her people to new vigor, prestige, and influence throughout the land. Morning Dew would one day be the matron of White Arrow Chahta, and—with her warrior husband at her side—the world would kneel before her.

The very thought of it made her breast swell, her souls tingling in giddy anticipation.

Onward she flew, rounding the houses and granaries, sprinting down narrow gaps between the buildings, slipping left and right, trying to throw off Screaming Falcon’s pursuit. This day would mark the beginning of greatness.

Morning Dew rounded the base of the palace mound, scarcely throwing a glance at the high building atop the earthwork. Then she turned, running headlong down the center of the plaza. As Morning Dew passed the tall pole that represented the Tree of Life, she allowed her
fingers to graze its wood, painted in red and white stripes. Arms pumping, she bolted straight across the stickball grounds.

She heard Screaming Falcon as he closed; his breath was blowing like a buffalo’s as his feet matched the cadence of her own. And then, as his hand dropped on her shoulder, she experienced a tingling rush that jolted her entire body.

Slowing, smiling her joy, she turned, intending to gaze into his face . . . and recoiled in horror.

The world went dark, as though a blanket had been thrown across the sun. She was but vaguely aware that White Arrow Town lay abandoned around her, the buildings nothing more than blackened posts jutting up from rectangles of gray ash. Her mother’s body lay to her right, arms and legs sprawled, hair spread over the blood-soaked ground. The ugly wound in Mother’s head gaped, seemingly alive with maggots.

Corpses littered the earth, broken, blackened with dried blood. Baskets were upturned, pots shattered, pestles and mortars lay on their sides. Dark oily smoke hung low over her head.

Her gaze fixed on Screaming Falcon’s face; a cry choked in her throat. He was staring at her, a hollow pleading in his wounded eyes. The swollen deformity of his broken jaw made his head oddly out of proportion. Filth and dried blood matted his hair, and his skin had a pale and sunken look where it wasn’t blistered from burning, or scabbed with dried blood.

She blinked, following his arms and legs to the corners of the heavy wooden square where they had been tightly bound with layers of thick rope so that he hung, sagging and spread-eagled like wild meat ready for butcher. Old bruises mixed with new, and trickles of blood leaked from long shallow slices on his naked body. Blistered flesh mottled with gray and red marked the places that burning torches had been thrust against
his body. Where they’d burned the pubic hair from his crotch, the skin was puffed and weeping pus.

She took a faltering step, reaching out, her fingers seeking reassurance that this was no specter. Her eyes locked with his as she touched him. His pain and desperation flowed into her like a cold wave, staggering her on her feet.

“I am so sorry,” he croaked from a thirst-dried throat.

“Screaming Falcon?” she pleaded, aware of the chill where her hands rested on his chest. Then there was warmth, sliding down her fingers, trickling over her palms. She looked down, stunned by the blood that coated her hands with sticky darkness.

She was clutching something, a thing alive, that pulsed, spasmed, and then went still. No woman raised in a society of hunters could fail to recognize it. She clutched a human heart.

When she raised her eyes, it was to find Screaming Falcon staring at her through dead eyes, a look of disbelief reflecting from his damaged face. In a slurred voice, he said, “You and your pride brought us to this.”

Morning Dew threw her head back. The anguished howl started deep in her lungs, swelling, bursting from her throat with a hideous shriek. . . .

“Morning Dew!”

The harsh voice brought Morning Dew awake. She jerked upright, aware of the blanket falling from her shoulders. She sat on a pole bed built into a wall. “What . . . I was . . . Where are we?” Blinking to clear her souls of the images shredding her mind, she stared around the darkened interior of Heron Wing’s house. She knew this place: Split Sky City. She was a slave. Screaming Falcon was long dead.

Everything was where it was supposed to be. The pole beds lined the walls, dimly illuminated by the glowing coals in the central hearth. Overhead the thatch roof
was lost in the darkness. She drew cool air into her starved lungs, aware of fear sweat cooling on her too-hot body.

“Morning Dew,” Heron Wing called again, her voice softer now. “You were Dreaming.”

Morning Dew rubbed callused palms into her sleep-heavy eyes. “Yes . . .”

“A bad one?” Heron Wing asked.

“I’m all right,” Morning Dew insisted. “Go back to sleep.”

“Mother?” Little Stone asked from his bed. “Morning Dew? You screamed. Is something wrong?”

“Everything’s fine,” Heron Wing insisted gently.

Morning Dew watched the woman across from her sit up. She could feel Heron Wing’s piercing stare through the dark. Sense the question that rose inside her.

“It’s all right,” Morning Dew added, laying her blanket to one side and swinging her feet to the mat-covered floor; anything to forestall Heron Wing’s next query. The split cane beneath her soles was warm as she stepped over to Stone’s bed. Despite the dim light she could see the little boy’s face, make out his wide dark eyes staring up at her. “I’m sorry I woke you.” She forced a laugh and lied, “I was playing stickball in the Dream. I just made a goal. You know how that is. I’ve heard you scream, too, just like that, when you made a goal.”

“I guess,” Stone answered. But she could hear the hesitation in his voice. Heron Wing’s son was just as smart as his mother. Nevertheless, little Stone worshipped Morning Dew’s ability as a stickball player, and an adoring gleam had filled his eyes ever since Morning Dew had won the women’s solstice stickball game for Hickory Moiety.

“Go back to sleep, Stone. Dream of stickball and all the goals you will make.”

She could barely make out his smile as she tucked his colorful blanket up around his chin. Then she retreated
to her bed, thankful that Heron Wing’s other slave, Wide Leaf, was spending the night with her new Albaamo lover. It would save her from suffering the nasty old woman’s knowing gaze and thinly veiled comments.

Morning Dew reseated herself on the edge of her bed and pulled her blanket up around her shoulders. A quick glance told her that Heron Wing had lain down again. The woman’s blanket rustled, and the pole bed squeaked as she resettled her weight.

Screaming Falcon . . . we would have been so happy.

But her brother Biloxi and Screaming Falcon had precipitated disaster when they brazenly raided Alligator Town and burned it to the ground. The White Arrow Chahta had been doomed from the moment the first arrow was loosed.

She clamped her eyes shut at the first stinging tears. What fools she and Screaming Falcon had been. Barely past childhood, they had had no understanding of the Sky Hand. Not of their numbers, strength, or resolve. Knowing what she did now, Smoke Shield’s daring raid against White Arrow Town seemed like a bitter blessing. He had broken the White Arrow Chahta with a single blow. In the end that was probably preferable to a slow and lingering death. Pain was better ended quickly.

It was only after Stone’s sleep-breath purled in his throat that Heron Wing surprised her by stating softly, “There’s nothing you could have done, Morning Dew.”

“I know. Dreams are beyond a person’s control. I think Stone accepted the stickball story.”

“I meant about your husband. Before you screamed, you called out for Screaming Falcon. You couldn’t have helped him. You were Smoke Shield’s slave. Had you so much as set foot out of the palace, he’d have maimed you, then beat you half to death—if not all the way.”

“I know.”

“Suppose you had slipped away, managed to cut Screaming Falcon free. Your husband was weak, half-delirious,
and captives cut down from the square can’t so much as walk until their circulation returns. You would both have been killed in the end: He would have died an even harder death. You would have had to watch it, and then suffer the same.” She paused. “For the time being, you may be my slave, but the future is an unknown river. Who knows what you will find at its end, Matron? Remember, I have my reasons for wanting you back with your people one day.”

“I know.” She took a deep breath. “They still don’t have any clue who killed my . . . the captives, do they?”

“No. Smoke Shield is sure it was the Albaamaha, which if true, may turn into a fire that burns us all. Personally, I hope it was some Chahta warrior who was lucky enough to slip in, kill the captives, and sneak away in that miserable fog.”

“You’d think we would have heard if one had.”

Heron Wing paused, then asked, “Morning Dew, when you were at White Arrow Town, did you ever hear of any Chahta plotting with the Albaamaha? Perhaps even the silliest rumor of any Chahta clan, no matter how obscure, treating with the Albaamaha?”

“No. We Chahta think even less of them than you Chikosi do. And, believe me, had anyone been inciting them, for whatever purpose, someone would have said something to Mother.”

“And among the Red Arrow Moiety?”

“War Chief Great Cougar has his own ways. But not even he would deal with Albaamaha.” She shook her head. “Not the man I know.”

“You know him well?”

“Well enough.”

“Would he have sent a man to kill the captives?”

“Had he been behind it, every Chikosi in the world would know. Great Cougar is never subtle.”

“My wish,” Heron Wing finally said, “is that we never learn who killed your husband, brother, and the others.
It would be better as a forgotten mystery. But I fear that Smoke Shield will never let it rest. In the end, it could bring us all to grief.”

As if you knew the depths of grief!
She winced; the very thought had been unkind.

“Grief,” she whispered, rubbing her hands as if to sponge them free of blood. “That’s all I have left.”

An orange-red morning sun hung low over the southeastern horizon and cast its gaudy light over Rainbow City. It colored the thickly plastered house walls, even softening the gray-black of old thatch on the high roofs. Under the crimson light the packed clay of the plaza, with its chunkey and stickball grounds, was made to glow. The sacred red-cedar pole, crafted from the trunk of a mighty tree, seemed to burn with an inner fire. High atop their mounds, the palaces and temples rose proudly against the sky. Even the smoky haze that rose from so many morning fires had a cherry hue. In the distance, beyond the packed houses, elevated corn cribs, and ramadas, the high city palisade made an irregular barrier against the distant sky. A fuzz of winter-bare treetops was barely visible in the distance.

What should have been a lazy morning was anything but. Long before the faintest glimmer of day, people had begun to gather before the two storage houses where Trader’s winnings from the fabled chunkey game had been stored.

Old White stood before one of the storehouses. Beside him were Trader and the Contrary, Two Petals. Trader’s dog, Swimmer, sat at Trader’s feet, ears cocked, watching the proceedings.

Old White was a weathered man, his hair almost
snowy. It was said that he had been from one end of the earth to the other. That he had traveled more lands, seen more people, than any other man alive. To many he was known only as the Seeker—a man whose exploits bordered on legend. Nevertheless, he stood tall, his shoulders still broad. On this day he wore a buffalohide cloak that hung down to his knees. Through the open front could be seen a white fabric hunter’s shirt belted at the waist, where a large pouch hung. Over one shoulder he carried a sturdy fabric bag, some heavy object pulling down at the cloth. His right hand clutched a Trader’s staff made of supple ash, bent over at the top to form a crook, its end terminated in a finely carved ivory-billed woodpecker’s head. From the crook hung three white heron feathers. The staff had been carved to represent spiraling serpents, one red and the other white.

For the moment Old White stared thoughtfully at the river of humanity that had formed up along the plaza perimeter. He could see people stretching along the southern boundary in front of the Warrior Clan Palace, past the Men’s House, and on to the Winter Solstice Temple. From there they lined the eastern plaza edge along the river’s steep bluff, the Healer’s temple, and finally the high chief’s palace atop its great mound on the northeastern corner of the plaza. The crowd then continued east, edging the chunkey grounds, and extending past War Chief Wolf Tail’s house atop its low mound. The crowd was watched over by Yuchi warriors under orders to keep things civil and orderly despite the myriad of old rivalries and slights that always infected a population.

“How many?” Trader asked from behind him.