The Dawn Country (38 page)

Her legging caught on a piece of deadfall and flung her forward. Before she could thrust out her arms to cushion the fall, she hit the ground hard, and the platter-sized gorget made a loud crack.

“No!”

When she sat up, she saw half the gorget shining in the snow. Her hand shot out to retrieve it … and they closed in around her.

Their pale faces seemed to have no other features than eyes. Huge black eyes. Their chests were rising and falling swiftly.

They were just children. Little more than scared mice. Gannajero rolled to her knees and shouted, “Get away from me before I witch you and rip your hearts from your bodies, you stupid brats!”

That high-pitched scream erupted again. It was earsplitting. With one hand, the boy swung a war club over his head and charged her. The Flint girl, whose name she couldn’t recall, followed him swinging an ax … and Chipmunk Teeth leaped forward with a stiletto clutched in her fist. The other two girls stood by with stunned expressions. The pretty little girl that she’d had such high hopes for had a vague sweet smile on her face.

Forty-seven

T
he child’s scream momentarily froze Koracoo in her tracks; then as recognition filtered through her shock, she shouted,
“Odion!”

Her feet kicked up puffs of snow behind her as she rounded a clump of brush and dashed headlong toward the snow-bright clearing ahead, where dark patches—people—moved against the white. CorpseEye had gone fiery in her grip, leading her on.

“Koracoo?” Sindak called. “Wait! This could be a trap!”

She didn’t even slow.

An eerie chorus of children’s screams rang through the night, possessing a terrifying animalistic rage—pure emotion without reason or remorse.

She charged across the clearing toward where the children stood, calling, “Odion? Odion, answer me! Are you all right?”

When she was twenty paces away, her son turned to look at her. He blinked as though awakening from a dream and seeing her for the first time. Even in the soft moonlight, she could tell that he was drenched in blood. It covered his face and cape as though poured over his head. His left arm was hanging limply at his side, but in his right hand, he carried a war club clenched in his fist. The expression on his face wasn’t that of a child, but of a victorious warrior standing over the dead body of the man who’d killed his family.

Baji stood beside him with a dripping ax, and Zateri stood two paces away with a stiletto. A short distance away were two other girls. She did not know them. One was standing. The other, younger, lay on her side curled in the snow. She had a finger tucked in her mouth, sucking it as an infant would.

In a shaking voice, Odion called, “Mother, she—she was trying to escape. We had to stop her!”

Koracoo dropped to her knees in the snow, laid CorpseEye on the ground, and—careful of his wounded shoulder—enfolded Odion in her arms. “Thank the gods you’re all right.”

“We couldn’t let her escape, Mother,” he repeated as though explaining. “She threatened to witch us. She was going to get away.”

“She would have just bought more children,” Baji said with unnerving calm, but as she lowered her hand, the bloody ax toppled into the snow, and tears slid down her cheeks. “We had to end it.”

“Mother, I think my shoulder’s broken.”

Koracoo gently probed the injury with her fingers. His collarbone had been snapped, but it hadn’t broken through the skin, which would protect him from the evil Spirits who fed on such wounds. “You’re going to be all right, Odion, though it’s going to be agony for a while. Is anyone else hurt?”

Baji and Zateri shook their heads; then they all turned and looked at the little girl curled in the snow. Her long black hair feathered across the snow. “When Odion hit the old woman in the spine and flattened her in the snow, something happened to Conkesema,” the older Dawnland girl said. “She collapsed like her feet had been knocked out from under her.”

“Is she your sister?”

“She’s my cousin. I’m Auma.”

Sindak and Towa halted a few paces away, and Towa said, “What happened?”

Sindak softly replied, “I can’t tell.”

Koracoo’s gaze moved to the body. Had it not been for the broken gorget around her neck, the mutilated corpse would have been unrecognizable. The children must have kept striking her long after she was dead.

Odion suddenly shoved away to stare Koracoo in the eyes. “Mother, we left Wrass. He’s hurt. We have to hurry. We have to go get him before the warriors find him!” He broke into a run, heading up the hill.

“Her warriors are dead, Odion,” she called after him. “They can’t hurt anyone now.”

“All of them? Some must have escaped.” He stopped long enough to hear her answer.

“A few escaped, but I think they’re long gone.”

Odion took a deep halting breath, then exhaled the words, “Maybe, but maybe not. They may still be out there. We have to find Wrass. I have to know he’s safe.” He charged up the hill again.

As Koracoo rose to her feet, Sindak walked to stand over Gannajero. For a time, he just frowned; then he bent and pulled the broken gorget over her head. “Where’s the other half?”

“I don’t know, but we’d better find it,” Towa said. “Chief Atotarho will want it.” Towa knelt on the opposite side of the body and began brushing at the snow, searching for it.

“Forget it,” Koracoo said. “There’s no time. Towa, I want you to get back to camp as soon as you can. Take Cord and Gonda and go find Wakdanek. Wait for us along the eastern shore. We’ll meet you.”

“But, Koracoo, that gorget belongs to the Wolf Clan. If I don’t return it, Atotarho—”

“Once I start asking questions the last thing your chief will be worried about is the gorget. Go on. Conkesema needs her father far more urgently than you need a broken piece of shell.”

Towa looked at Conkesema lying in the snow. Her sweet face looked oddly happy. “You’re right.” He sprinted away.

Sindak turned to Koracoo. “And what of me, War Chief?” Locks of his black hair had come loose from their tie and danced around his beaked face in the breeze. He kept glancing at Baji and Zateri, then at the old woman’s body, clearly shocked by what the children had done.

Koracoo used CorpseEye to gesture to Sindak’s wounded shoulder. “I need you to help me get the children back to camp. Can you carry CorpseEye?”

An expression of awe creased his face. “Yes.” He extended his hand, and she placed the club in it. Sindak drew it back as though he’d just grasped hold of a deadly serpent.

When Koracoo knelt at Conkesema’s side, the child didn’t even blink. She just sucked her finger and stared blankly at the night sky. “I’m slipping my arms under you,” Koracoo announced. As she lifted her, the girl let out a faint whimper. “Everything’s all right. I’m going to take you to your father.”

Koracoo turned. “All right, let’s all follow Odion.”

Forty-eight

T
he screams and shouts had stopped, but Odion still had not returned, and Wrass was shaking badly, more afraid than he’d ever been in his life.

If she killed Odion, there’s nothing left, no hope … .

“Wrass?”

He went stone still. The faint call seemed to swirl around on Wind Mother’s breath, like a distant echo bouncing through the trees.

He pulled his bowstring tighter and tried not to move.

There was something out there. An odd tang rode the wind, like the tang of carrion. His hands clenched on the nocked bow as his gaze swept the trees and brush that fringed the clearing. If his first shot missed, he’d never be able to nock a second arrow fast enough to defend himself. Which meant his first arrow had to fly true. He braced his shaking arms on his drawn-up knees.

He’d dragged himself down the hill to the edge of the trees to get away from the sounds and small jerks Dakion’s body continued to make. He was almost invisible here. If he could …

He twisted around when something wavered in the darkness to his left.

Like great black wings flapping, the man’s cape billowed around him when he walked out of the forest. He stopped five paces away, his back to the snow-blanketed clearing, and lightly clasped his hands before him. The man carried no weapons. The old copper beads that ringed the neck of his cape had turned blue-green from lack of polishing. The man’s face, as white and luminescent as seashell in the gloom, flashed when he cocked his head to study Wrass.

Wrass whispered in awe, “You … you’re real. When I saw you on the river I thought you were just a figment of my fever. Are you … ? You’re Shago-niyoh, aren’t you?”

The man stepped closer, and as he knelt in front of Wrass, shining strands of his fine hair blew across his cheeks like moonlit spiderwebs.

In an eerily quiet voice, he asked, “Do you recall what I told you that night on the river?”

Wrass licked his cracked lips. “About Elder Brother Sun blackening his face with the soot of the dying world?”

The man nodded, but it was such a subtle gesture, Wrass almost missed it.

“Yes, I remember. Why?”

“I made you a promise.”

Wrass had to think about it. “You said that I would know the one who is to come. At the end of the world. The Human False Face who will don the cape of white clouds and ride the winds of destruction … .”

Wrass stopped when the man turned, lifted a hand, and pointed to the opposite side of the clearing, where a boy ran across the snow. He was holding his left arm, running as hard as he could, calling,
“Wrass? Wrass, are you all right?”

A strange light-headed sensation came over Wrass. In awe, he whispered, “Are you sure?”

The man smiled, but it was a sad smile, filled with loss and longing, as though he could see the way ahead, and it was not an easy path. Softly, he said, “Help him, if you can.”

The man’s cape flared as he rose to his feet and walked away into the trees. In moments, he was gone, swallowed by the darkness.

Odion charged straight for the last place he’d seen Wrass, and when Wrass wasn’t there, he panicked. He spun around and cried, “
Wrass!
Wrass, where are you?”

Two adults and three children followed a little way behind Odion. One of the adults seemed to be carrying something.

“I’m down here, Odion!” he shouted back. “Near the trees!”

People started running toward him, but Odion was in the lead, his legs pumping, trying hard to get to Wrass first.

Forty-nine

Odion

I lie on the packs with Gitchi curled against me. The puppy’s head is healing, though he still whimpers in his sleep. I pet his fur gently and watch Wakdanek on the opposite side of the canoe. He rocks Conkesema in his arms and whispers in her ear. She hasn’t spoken or taken her eyes from him since we found him waiting along the riverbank with Hehaka and Tutelo. The little girl has one hand twined in Wakdanek’s shirt sleeve, as though she’ll never let go.

The night is quiet and cold. Mist hovers low over the river, and I imagine that if I just reach out I can touch it. Along the banks, it creeps among the tree trunks like ghostly white arms.