The Broken Land (53 page)

Hiyawento and Sky Messenger fought side by side, guarding each other’s backs as they had done since they’d seen eleven summers. Slowly, inexorably, they were closing in on her father’s position. When they got there … when they got there …

Zateri closed her eyes and let the darkness soothe her fear and hurt. She didn’t want to see any more of this. Dear gods,
no more of this
!

Sixty-three

Sky Messenger

T
here is a sudden deafening roar when the sides converge. War Chief Sindak is in front of me, blocking the path to Atotarho, who has retreated into his lodge as though the thin deer hides will protect him.

I glance to my right, where Hiyawento swings his war club. He needs no help from me. Someone yells, “Got to pull back!” Another shouts, “No, no! Can’t. Nowhere to go!” The Hills warrior in front of me has wild eyes; his head shakes violently. He leaps for me with a stiletto in his fist. The sharpened white bone shines as it plunges toward my heart. I flip sideways and he crashes by. My war club crushes his hip. Ten paces from the war lodge now. Sindak’s face, the face of the man I consider to be one of my saviors, is raw and determined. He’ll never let me pass, never let me get to Atotarho.

I am aware suddenly of the cold tears blurring my eyes.

As though the world has slipped sideways, from the corner of my eye, I see Atotarho step from the war lodge hauling a little girl by the arm. She is perhaps eight or nine, gagged, but when she spies Hiyawento, she goes crazy, trying to scream, twisting to get away from Atotarho, falling to the ground kicking. Hiyawento is occupied, running down a wounded man. There’s something familiar about her, but I can’t place it. She looks like someone I know.

From the lodge behind her steps a man. His cape is stunning, made of thousands of bluebird feathers. He has his hood pulled up. The blue fluttering around his hidden face and down his chest creates a sensation of movement, as though he’s about to lift off the ground and fly away. When he sees me, he tilts his head like a man who has heard a blast of thunder right over the top of him. As though he can’t quite hear, or is deaf and trying to understand the world through sight alone.

When people see him, a hiss erupts, the gasps like a beating of great wings.

Then … a cry. A long, shuddering, deep-throated wail.

Hiyawento lurches past me.

The next few moments happen so quickly, I can’t move, can’t …

Hiyawento throws himself at Sindak, and Sindak pivots and swipes Hiyawento’s feet out from under him with his war club. Hiyawento lands hard. As Sindak brings his war club into position for a killing blow, there is an instant of hesitation. His eyes tense. I unthinkingly jump between Sindak and Hiyawento, my club cutting upward, crashing into Sindak’s. We are eye to eye, shoving each other, trying to gain leverage, but I can see it in his face. He wishes he didn’t have to do this. From the edge of my vision, Hiyawento leaps, slams Atotarho to the ground, and roars like a wounded grizzly as he grabs the old man around the throat.

“Help! Help … me!” Atotarho cries. He’s choking. Struggling.

“Leave my daughter alone! Leave her alone, you—”

Negano’s club takes Hiyawento squarely in the left shoulder, knocking him off Atotarho and sending him rolling.

“Hurry, my chief, get up!” Negano shouts, and drags Atotarho toward the lodge.

Hiyawento slowly crawls for the little girl. Tears are streaming down her face. She’s trying to wriggle free of her bonds to get to him.

Blessed gods, that’s why she’s familiar. She looks like Zateri. Zateri as a child.
She’s Hiyawento’s daughter. His oldest daughter. Kahn-Tineta.

“Sindak,” I hiss through gritted teeth, “let the girl go.”

So low no one but me can hear it, he says, “I knew nothing of this. Give me a chance.”

Our eyes lock.

Negano runs back, jumps between Hiyawento and his daughter, grabs her, and suspends a stiletto over her heart.

The ragged cry that escapes Hiyawento’s throat could sunder the world. Two of Atotarho’s guards grab him and haul him four paces away from his daughter.

Atotarho cries, “Drop your weapons! Do it or the girl dies!” He lifts a hand, ready to give the order to plunge the stiletto into her heart.

Negano is ready, the stiletto poised for a lethal blow.

I shove away from Sindak, pause for only a moment, then my war club drops from my hand. Every other Standing Stone warrior follows my lead. Dull thuds sound as the weapons fall.

Atotarho turns to Hiyawento. “Order your warriors to cease fighting! Retreat!”

Without an instant’s hesitation, Hiyawento turns to a warrior I do not know. “Call retreat.”

“But War Chief!” the man objects.

I bellow,
“Do it now!”

The man hesitates for a moment; then the horn trumpet blares three times. Warriors turn to stare, confused, afraid to step away from their opponent for fear their skulls will be crushed.

The words go down the line like dropped rocks,
stop, stop, retreat.

Gradually, like a gigantic monster dying, the roars and grunts dwindle to an agonized base note of moans spiked with sobs. The battlefield seems to churn as the mist swirls around retreating men and women.

A breathless silence descends.

I am sucking air, my exhausted arms like dead weights.

Atotarho careens as he turns and sternly orders, “Bring me that child.” The rattlesnake skins flash and flutter in his hair.

Negano carries her over and dumps her at Atotarho’s feet. A hoarse cry explodes from Hiyawento’s lips, and he struggles ferociously against the muscular arms that hold him. The little girl’s sobs shred my heart. They must be tearing Hiyawento apart. His face has twisted with a mixture of rage and hate.

“Kahn-Tineta,” Atotarho says in an affectionate voice. “You’re such a pretty child.”

I look at Sindak and find him staring at me. His eyes plead for me to wait, wait.

I know if I make one wrong move, that little girl will be the first to die.

Now that we’ve stopped fighting, my body is cooling down, the sweat chilling on my skin. A rhythmic whooshing thump pounds in my ears. After several heartbeats, my vision goes strangely gray and shimmering, as though a veil of tears wavers between me and Wrass. He has not looked at me. He has eyes only for his daughter. She’s reaching for him with her bound hands, her fingers flexing in a
please, please
gesture, crying against her gag.

Atotarho twines clawlike fingers into her sleeve and drags her to her feet. Holding her, he says to Hiyawento, “You dare to defy me! I should kill your daughter before your eyes! I will kill her if your forces do not surrender and pledge themselves to me.”

Hiyawento’s face twists with hatred. “I don’t have the authority to—”

“I know that! Get it!”

Hiyawento turns to look out across the battlefield toward where Zateri and the other matrons stand on the southern hilltop. He’s dying inside. I can feel his agony in my own strangling heart. He gives Kahn-Tineta a desperate smile. Nods. “Tell your forces to stand down and I’ll speak with the matrons.”

Atotarho nods to Sindak.

Sindak turns. “Saponi, tell them to back away!”

Saponi trots out onto the field, and the order flies through the ranks like swallows diving. Men and women step back.

Atotarho flicks a hand at the men who hold Hiyawento, and they release his arms.

Hiyawento braces his feet, seems to be trying to resign himself to this last betrayal, and slowly trots away. He does not even look at me.

A strange crawling sensation, like icy ants, runs up my neck. My head swivels toward the war lodge. The Bluebird Witch is staring at me. When he walks toward me, it is as though he’s gliding on air. His feathered cape faintly rustles as he spreads his arms like a huge bird and hops around in a bizarre dance that resembles Crow hunting mice in a field. Shrill caws rip from his throat. “I saw it, you know,” he hisses. “I saw what he did to you after he dragged you into the forest.”

I can’t feel my body. Just the air cooling, growing unbearably icy. My insides are freezing into amber pools of brilliance. Images flare …
A muscular giant swaying, his eyes rolling … “You, Standing Stone boy, go with War Chief Manidos. Get up, boy!” … Tutelo wailing in a high-pitched voice I’ve never heard before, “Leave my brother alone! Leave him alone!”

I stagger backward. As though to defend myself from the memories, I thrust my hands out before me.

Manidos crushes my hand, drags me away into the forest. My heart is thundering. He’s walking very fast. I keep tripping. I …

Atotarho says, “What’s wrong with you? I asked you a question.”

Facedown. His heavy body crushes me. A rough hand covers my mouth. Lips against my ear. “Lie down, boy. Stop crying or I’ll cut your heart out.”

… Pain. Shock.

I twist my head, looking for Wrass. Watching him as he stumbles out into the warriors’ camp. Dumping the bag of poison into the stew pot. If I can just … see him … I can … stand this—

Sindak’s voice breaks in. “Chief, end this battle. You’re asking your warriors to murder their cousins!”

I look at Sindak, at the warriors behind him, and shout, “Sindak’s right. Chief, clear the battlefield so we can talk to one another. Please, just give me fifty heartbeats to—”

Atotarho laughs, the sound low and disdainful. “Clear the battlefield? You’ve always been a coward. I remember when you were a boy, you …”

I’m trembling all over when I turn eastward and lift my arms into the air, as though reaching out to touch the Sky World. I shout, “This war must end! We’re killing Great Grandmother Earth!”

There is a momentary hush.

A curious far-off rushing sound echoes to the east. Everyone hears it. The battlefield whispers as warriors turn, their eyes wide, asking questions. It is as though the mist has been suddenly sucked away, leaving cold sparkling sunlight behind. I squint against the brilliance. The rushing grows louder, like a tidal wave coming in, and a black wall boils over the forest canopy, swelling into the sky, rising so high it blots out Elder Brother Sun’s face as it floods toward us.

“What is that?” Atotarho props his walking stick and shifts to look at it.

Sindak’s dark eyes narrow. He shouts, “Get down! Everyone get down!”

A few people obey and hit the ground, but most run, trying to find cover before the leading edge of the blackness strikes. At the first opportunity, Sindak pulls a chert knife from his belt and cuts Kahn-Tineta’s bonds, but orders, “Stay down!”

She flattens on the ground.

I seem to be frozen, my hands extended over my head, as though I am the first to surrender to the monstrous storm. Shocked cries erupt. A torrent of fleeing warriors floods around me, the Standing Stone warriors trying to get back to the safety of the villages, the Hills warriors just running, running with all their strength. A few dive behind boulders; others crouch near the most massive tree trunks.

I turn to the east. Into the storm. Close my eyes. Voices fill the wind—powerful, hushed, as though the ancestors have walked the Path of Souls back to earth and are riding the backs of the Cloud People, soaring straight for us. For me. The thundering of their ghostly feet pounds in my chest.

“Blessed gods,” Sindak shouts. “Run!”

I open my eyes. The men who’d thrown themselves to the ground rise and flee. One carries Chief Atotarho over his shoulder. There are only two people before the war lodge now. Two people left in the open. I kneel before Kahn-Tineta. She seems too terrified to breathe. “I’m Sky Messenger. Stay with me. You’re safe with me.”

Her tear-streaked face is disbelieving. She looks over my shoulder just as the trees on the eastern hills explode. Dark fragments of branches and leaves blast upward into the spinning darkness and vanish, crushed to powder.

“Please, let’s go. We have to run!”

“No, don’t run.”

“It’s coming! It’s going to kill us!” Kahn-Tineta throws her arms around my neck in a stranglehold.

I clutch her tightly against me, whispering, “Just listen, Kahn-Tineta. Close your eyes and you’ll hear them. Our ancestors are telling our story on the wind.”

Against my cheek, I feel her squeeze her eyes closed, and I lift her into my arms and stand up to face the telling. All stories are lived between the listener and the teller, but until this moment I have never realized there is a third person in the story. The silence. Just before the ancestors enfold us in their arms, silence steps into the space between us. It is a pause in the heartbeat of the world. But I feel it like muscular arms tightening, pressing us close, encircling us with an invisible palisade of human bodies.

And perhaps that’s what it is. Perhaps the souls of the lost warriors in the palisade logs have stepped out for just a moment, just an instant in time, to defend us, as they have always defended their people.

“Hold me! Don’t let go of me!” Kahn-Tineta screams.