People of the Raven (North America's Forgotten Past) (16 page)

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Authors: W. Michael Gear,Kathleen O'Neal Gear

BOOK: People of the Raven (North America's Forgotten Past)
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Evening Star said with quiet urgency, “I told you the truth. He’s going to attack you.”
“Just your presence in the village might have made him change his mind,” Rain Bear interrupted. “Let us wait and see.”
Her blue eyes glittered. “That’s not wise. Kill him while you can.”
“No. Not yet.”
Talon said, “Well, if you will permit me, I must organize a party of warriors to follow yours. Great Chief, I’ll meet you back here in a finger of time, and we will go look at that body.”
Rain Bear nodded, and Talon trotted off toward his camp.
The last of the angry villagers rounded the bend in the trail and disappeared, but their hostile voices continued to float through the forest like a foul miasma. The only people left sitting around the campfires were the very old and the very young. Even the wounded had managed to pull themselves to their feet to join the mob following in Ecan’s wake.
Roe struggled to pull Pitch’s good arm over her shoulders. “Father, could you help me get Pitch to our lodge?”
“Here, let me support him.” She moved out of the way, and Rain Bear draped Pitch’s good arm over his shoulders and hauled him to his feet. “Walk slowly, Pitch. We don’t wish to break open that wound.”
Glancing back up the trail, Rain Bear remembered the expression on Ecan’s face: knowing, smug. Why? What had happened here? Somehow it had all gone just the way Ecan had hoped it would.
S
nowbear clamped his left hand over his belly wound and used his right to quietly push aside a fir bough; he eased past, and the wolf tails on his blood-streaked moccasins whispered against the brush. When he released the bough, it bounced and swayed, stirring the thick mist that eddied through the trees.
Curse that Pitch and his sharp stiletto!
The man was a Singer! A lousy holy man. How had he done this?
He turned around.
“I know you’re behind me, witch! I can’t see you, but I know you’re there! Face me!”
When only the mist moved in response, he let out a breath and staggered up the trail.
“Think. Think!” he whispered to himself. “Do you want to die?”
This was the trail to War Gods Village, wasn’t it? Only one trail led from the shore up the mountain. He had seen it when he’d first started running, but in the fog, it looked different.
His punctured guts twisted, and he gasped. “This must be the way! Just … keep going.”
He stumbled toward a section of the trail lined with twisted alders and wind-smoothed rocks. In the swirling mist, the blocks of basalt resembled a stairway cut into the mountainside. He stepped onto the first stone, then the second. As he continued up the trail, he thought he heard a voice call his name.
Snowbear whirled and tripped over a tree root. As he careened forward, gray ropes of bloody intestines wormed through his belly wound. The scent almost gagged him. He pushed them back inside, only to have black blood gush out to drench his groin and legs. He forced himself to take deep breaths.
“Who’s there?”
A phantom, spun of ice and fog, glittered on his backtrail.
“Is that you, witch? Show yourself! I’m not afraid of you!”
From old habit, his hand went to his belt where he kept his atlatl tied—only to find it gone. Had he dropped it when Pitch stabbed him? His strength was failing. His legs had started to shake so badly he could barely keep standing.
“If you kill me, you’ll never know who hired me!” he cried. “Have you thought of that?”
He blinked at the black haze that ate into his vision. Why hadn’t she killed him?
Snowbear boldly waved his spear. “You probably think it was Ecan, don’t you? He doesn’t have the courage of a grouse! He wouldn’t dare try to kill the likes of you, witch!”
Silver sparkled to his left, and Snowbear spun so quickly he almost toppled to the forest floor. He glared wide-eyed at the fog. Wind Woman had strengthened, blowing the mist into strange, eerie shapes.
“Are there two of you?” he shouted. “Stop hiding! Face me like warriors!”
A flock of gray jays hunched in the firs, their feathers fluffed out for warmth. They watched him with bright, glistening eyes.
Then—at the very edge of his vision—he saw her.
She walked out of the mist like a black ghost, her cape billowing around her tall, slender body. A waist-length red braid draped her shoulder, and a war club hung from her belt. Her dress, the color of fresh blood, flashed beneath her cape.
Let’s Dance!
The words hung on the still air. But had he really heard them? Or were his ears deceiving him?
“Go on!” he shouted. “Kill me! Get it over with.
You’ll never know who sent me!
”
Dzoo must have moved. Her war club was now in her hand. The terrifying thing was that Snowbear hadn’t seen her pull it from her belt. He felt as if, for several instants, he’d fallen into a dark hole in the world and only just reemerged into the light. A chill tingled the back of his neck. People said that just with a look, she could make a man’s soul slip from his body.
His gaze locked on her eyes, but he saw only an emotionless calm, centuries deep.
“Don’t you wish to ask me anything?” he shouted. “Did you just come to watch me die?”
Feel the Dance?
Her image wavered, almost disappeared, and he wondered if she was really there at all.
Snowbear started laughing. Great belly laughs that forced his insides against his hand with such force intestines squirmed between his fingers.
“He is more Powerful than you will ever be, witch! If you kill me, Coyote’s Spirit Helpers will creep up from the underworlds and squeeze your heart until it bursts!”
The spear whistled as it cut through the air. It struck him in the back with the force of a fist. Snowbear slammed face-first onto the rocks. As he fought to roll to his side, his guts slithered out like dying worms. They lay on the snow, slowly writhing. To his amazement, he could feel them growing cold.
The vision of Dzoo dissolved into a tall and muscular warrior. The man trotted to Snowbear, kicked the spear from his hand, and stared down. Snowbear could see every blood vessel pulsing.
Dogrib! Blessed Ancestors, I’m dead.
More warriors ran up, but Snowbear’s gaze remained on the legendary young man who had fought so valiantly in tens of battles.
“Do you know him?” a man asked from behind Snowbear.
Dogrib scrutinized Snowbear’s face, then shook his head. “No. But he’s definitely one of the Wolf Tails. Look at his moccasins.”
Snowbear’s head trembled.
Dogrib knelt beside him, gripped his chin, and forced Snowbear to look at him. “Where’s Dzoo? Her tracks vanished halfway up the trail. What did you do with her?”
Dogrib’s mouth kept moving, but Snowbear couldn’t hear his words. A glittering silence had descended.
Warm fingers touched his throat.
Snowbear saw his precious spear point pendant swinging before his eyes. Dogrib wanted to make certain he saw it, for it swung there for what seemed an eternity before his enemy ripped it from Snowbear’s neck and cast it as far out into the mist as he could.
Cold filtered through Snowbear’s arms and legs, numbing them. Finally it seeped into his face. As his vision went gray, he realized Dzoo was looking at him from across time and space. The last thing he saw was her two luminous eyes pulsing with bright bloody trails … .
 
 
C
immis sat in his usual place in the Council Lodge, behind Old Woman East. His attention had begun to wander a hand of time ago. The session was dragging on forever, and he could have cared less about who would occupy which lodges at Wasp Village. His gaze drifted absently over the lodge. The largest structure in Fire Village, it spread ten body lengths across and was decorated with exquisitely painted hides and beautifully woven sea-grass blankets dotted with shell beads. On either side of the door stood lineage poles the height of a tall man. The lines of descent had been masterfully carved, one for each of the four clans. He swore that every time he sat here, the eyes of Cougar and Bear stared right back at him.
Old Woman North tapped the hearthstones with her walking stick and said, “Old Woman South and her family should occupy the lodge closest to Mother Ocean. The sand will make it easier for her to walk.”
Old Woman South smiled in agreement. She had bad knees. Walking across pebbles was agony for her.
Old Woman East raised a hand and said, “My son wishes that lodge! He will be the one who gathers crabs and fishes for us. He should have that lodge!”
Cimmis held his tongue. Who would squabble over such things when tomorrow or the next day the world might tumble down around them? More than anything, this kind of idiocy demonstrated how far the North Wind People had fallen.
He shut it out, seeing the afterimage of dentalium shells ringing Old Woman East’s neck as he closed his eyes. What wealth, and most of it came through Rain Bear and Sandy Point Village. Ecan should have been there by now.
A faint smile crossed his lips as he speculated on how that meeting had gone. One of the joys of his brilliance was concocting schemes such as this. If it worked out one way, Ecan was already dead, his body mutilated and desecrated on the way to one of the Raven People’s most holy ceremonies. If so, Cimmis was well rid of Ecan and his constant trouble. Further, Rain Bear and the peace coalition would take a serious blow to their prestige. The recriminations for Ecan’s murder would destroy any chance that Rain Bear might have to create an alliance among the squabbling Raven clans.
If it worked out the other way, Ecan would be allowed to pass,
and carry out his plan. That way, too, would discredit Rain Bear. The rival clans would blame him for allowing Ecan to pass and commit his evil deed. Better, one of the Raven People’s pillars of faith would be cracked at worst, broken at best. The symbology was masterful.
Then, a moon from now, when he was no longer necessary, no one would raise an eyebrow to discover Ecan’s murdered body lying in his new lodge at Wasp Village. His death would obviously be blamed on some Raven assassin, the result of what Ecan had done to their ceremonial.
Perfect symmetry, balance, and poise in politics. Cimmis reveled in it.
Hushed voices sounded beyond the lodge, and the Council went silent.
A woman called, “Kstawl, daughter of Chief Cimmis, would speak with him!”
Cimmis sighed and clapped his hands to his knees. “Forgive me. I’ll return as soon as I can.”
He hurried to the door and stepped outside into the gray veil of dusk. High up on Fire Mountain a whirlwind careened back and forth, whipping the red cinders into the air where the hot soil had melted yesterday’s snow.
Kstawl wrung her hands and said, “Please come, Father. It’s Mother. She’s—she’s biting at me like a dog and foaming at the mouth! I don’t know what to do!”
Politics had symmetry; his life didn’t. He hurried after his daughter, heedless of the staring slaves.
 
 
C
immis sat on the floor, Astcat limp across his lap. As Kstawl anxiously worried her way around the lodge, firelight cast her shadow in huge relief against the walls and painted shields. The faces of Killer Whale and Wolf seemed to recede when she crossed in front of them, only to leap out again as she passed.
He dipped his fingers in the water cup and dribbled it into Astcat’s lax mouth.
“Swallow, my wife. Please, swallow.”
He tenderly massaged her throat, but she didn’t respond. She’d suffered a seizure at dusk and had been shaking periodically for the
past hand of time as though her soul hovered somewhere high above and was preparing to leave for good.
Blessed Song Maker, is she dying this time?
Though he’d been trying to prepare himself for such an event, he hadn’t done a very good job. At the thought she might die, his heart had begun to pound so hard he thought it might burst his ribs.
Kstawl gathered the cooking bags she needed to prepare a soup of dried onions, pink fawn lily bulbs, and rice root. Astcat’s favorite. Cimmis hoped the rich, sweet smell would draw her soul back.
He rocked Astcat in his arms, and his soul continued to shred. Was she trying to take him with her to the House of Air? He’d seen it happen to people who loved each other more than life. Within a few days of one’s death, the other followed.
Cimmis buried his face in her gray hair and whispered, “Come back, my wife. Just for a short time. There are things I must do here before I can go with you.”
Kstawl looked expectantly toward the door, and Cimmis lifted his head.
A voice from outside called, “I announce the arrival of Old Woman North. She would speak with Chief Cimmis.”
Kstawl turned to him, and he nodded.
She walked to the door flap and pulled it back. “Please enter, Old Woman North.”
The ancient woman’s walking stick appeared first, followed by her shriveled face. Wind Woman had teased her thin gray hair around her head, turning it into a spiky mass of tangles. She wore an elaborately painted cape that bore the mythological images of the War Gods, Song Maker, and Old Woman Underneath Us, who held up the world.
Old Woman North’s faded eyes glanced from Astcat to Cimmis, and her mouth puckered. “A runner just arrived,” she said in her hoarse dictatorial voice. “Ecan’s party has arrived safely at War Gods Village. I thought you would wish to know in case we must prepare for an attack.”

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