The People of the Black Sun (25 page)

“Fortunately, no one who knows me would ever count me out.”

He smiled. “True. However, we must be careful. I don't think we should run the trail for a few days. Walking will be good enough until you're feeling stronger.”

“I thought you were in a hurry to get to the country of the People of the Landing?”

“That was before I knew you were hurt.”

The statement worried her. She did not wish, in any way, to detain or sway him from his mission. If coming here had …

He sat up and looked down, just staring into her eyes, as though what he saw there went straight to his heart. The blanket coiled around his waist. Like all warriors on the war trail, he'd slept in his cape. It hung crookedly about him.

Baji touched his short black hair. “Did you cut it for Tutelo's husband?”

It was dangerous to say the name of the dead too soon after they'd been lost, or it might draw their souls back to earth, and they'd never again be able to find their way to the afterlife.

“He was a good man.”

“I'm sure he was. Tutelo wouldn't have loved him otherwise.”

Sky Messenger petted the long waves of her hair that spread over the blanket. “I'll build up the fire and get breakfast made. Why don't you lie here and stay warm.”

“For a little while.”

He rose, pulled his soot-smudged cape straight, and tugged the blanket up to Baji's chin.

She rolled to her side to watch him.

Branches clacked as he pulled them from the woodpile and tossed them onto the coals, then he knelt and blew upon them until flames leaped through the fresh tinder. The delicious tang of cedar smoke rose. Cedars were sacred trees. Their smoke healed and purified. She breathed it in, letting it work its magic on her wounded body.

Images from the dream she'd been having when she woke flitted behind her eyes.

She'd been with Cord, walking down the trail, looking for her own body among hundreds of dead Flint warriors. She'd rounded a bend and seen herself lying face-down, covered with a thin blanket of snow. She'd lived for a while. As her strength had waned, her feet and hands had dug troughs in the ground, kicking, clawing to get away. Afterward, the victorious Hills warriors had stolen her jewelry and weapons. Even her cape had been stripped off, probably to be carried home to a beloved wife back in Atotarho Village. In the process, her limbs had been left akimbo. Cord had let out a cry and rushed to her side. “
Gods, someone help me! I think she's alive!
” Cord had dragged her into his arms and clutched her tightly against him. What a curious sensation that had been. She'd understood that she no longer inhabited that body, but somehow, it was all right.

She'd had such dreams before. All warriors did. It was the afterlife soul's way of preparing for the inevitable, but the dreams had never before been so vivid, so lifelike. The tears in Cord's eyes still broke her heart.

Gitchi softly nosed her hand, as though to bring her back to this camp on the rocky hilltop.

“I'm here, Gitchi,” she whispered. “Everything's all right.”

Gitchi curled his bushy gray tail over his forefeet, and his yellow eyes studied her for a long moment, before returning to the valley below.

Save for the popping and snapping of the fire, a vast silence had imprisoned the morning. Down the hill in the trees, fifty paces away, she saw the corpse of the man she'd killed last night. Shadows darkened the spot, preserving the snow where he lay. His lips had shrunken back over his gums, revealing the rotted teeth in his gaping mouth. Where Gitchi had ripped out his throat, an ocean of frozen blood spread across the snow.

Looking at him gave her a strange otherworldly sensation.

It was as though a desolation lay upon the world, lifeless, its presence so cold and indifferent it possessed not even a hint of sadness. Rather, it seemed to be watching her with the infallible eyes of eternity … and waiting. Though she had no idea what the desolation waited for.

Baji propped herself up on one elbow, then gingerly shoved to a sitting position. Her headache pounded for ten heartbeats, making her nauseous, then it slacked off to a constant, but bearable, ache.

She staggered to her feet, and walked over to slump down beside the fire. When she extended her frozen hands to the warmth, it struck her as odd that they didn't immediately tingle, as they always did on cold winter mornings like this. She rubbed them together to get the blood going.

Sky Messenger frowned at her. When she'd risen, he'd been in the process of twisting a pot of tea down into the hot coals. He finished, moved the tripod with the cook pot to the edge of the flames, and rose to his feet. “I don't want you to get cold.”

He walked over, retrieved their blankets, and draped them snugly around her shoulders.

His breath frosted when he said, “You must stay warm, Baji. You know as well as I do that head wounds have curious effects. Do you recall what happened to young Janoh?”

“Janoh?” She had to search her memory. “Blessed Ancestors, I do.”

“So do I. After he was clubbed in the head he seemed fine. He joked as never before. For two days he made everyone laugh out loud. His only complaint was that he couldn't feel his feet striking the earth.”

“I remember. He told everyone that he'd learned to fly and grew angry when anyone insisted he was still running, but just didn't know it.”

Sky Messenger gave her a grave nod. “Then on the third day he fell over dead right in the middle of the trail. It happened so fast, the warriors on the trail behind him had no idea what had happened.”

“Until later, you mean, when we all understood that his soul
had
been flying. It had leaked from his cracked skull and been hovering close to his body.”

Sky Messenger pointed a stern finger at her. “I'm taking no chances with your head wound.”

“Don't want me to learn to fly, eh?”

“No.”

He drew open the laces on his belt pouch and pulled out a bag of jerky. As he crumbled the dried meat into the cook pot hanging from the tripod, he said, “In fact, if you get light-headed, or lose feeling in your hands or feet, or have any other unusual symptoms, I expect you to tell me. Agreed?”

She pursed her lips in silent chastisement. “Of course. I'm not as dimwitted as you think.”

“When you're thinking properly, no.”

He reached out to stroke her throat, and a strange shimmer lit the air, as though the light itself had fluoresced, leaving all living things aglow, softening sight and sound. Sky Messenger's tanned face had a golden glitter.

Baji's heartbeat slowed, barely there. Time seemed to linger, stretching like a bobcat on a warm summer afternoon.

In a tone that was at once hurt and half-angry, he said, “I'm glad you're here. Don't ever leave me again, Baji. I couldn't bear it.”

“I won't.”

He stroked her throat again, then turned away, and drew two wooden cups and spoons from his pack. After he'd placed them beside the fire, he said, “Hiyawento is going to meet us.”

“Really? Where?” The news gladdened her heart.

“On the trail to the east of Shookas Village, but it'll probably be a few days. First, he needs to lead his warriors to Canassatego Village. Coldspring Village, Riverbank Village, and Canassatego Village decided to combine into one village.”

“To protect each other?”

“Yes.”

Baji squinted at the mossy patterns on the rocks that thrust up here and there around camp. “I pray they make it. We didn't.”

The words affected her like a knife, cutting a dark pathway inside her. She could see it—the tunnel twisted down toward an inner chamber where her soul awaited deliverance from the tormented sense of isolation. It persisted even with Sky Messenger so close she could reach out and touch him.

When he sat down and put an arm around her, the dark tunnel evaporated like fog in warm sunlight. “Tell me everything. Where did Atotarho ambush you?”

“On the main trail to Flint country. Do you recall the narrow defile that leads up over the crest of the hill and plunges down into that stubby second-growth country near the Seagull Shallows?”

“Near the Rocky Meadows?”

“Yes.”

“Blessed gods, did they hit you as you came over the hill out of the defile?”

“No,” she said solemnly, “on the far side of the valley. Just as our war party was climbing up the steep slope through the rocky ledges, I … I should have seen them. I don't know why I didn't.”

“Probably because Atotarho's warriors were under penalty of death if they even breathed until you were in position. Sometimes, there's nothing you can do, Baji.” He hugged her.

Guilt made her throat ache. “It was … bizarre. Father and I were talking about Shago-niyoh when the attack came. Did you know that Cord saw him the night the old woman died?”

Sky Messenger jerked around to stare at her. “He never told me that.”

“Nor me.” Baji fumbled with her fingers, squeezing them in her lap as dread filtered through her. “Father had just asked me if I'd ever seen Shago-niyoh again, and I'd said no. Not even when I knew you were speaking with him. I used to try to see something, anything, moving around you, or hear his voice. I never did.”

“Until a few days ago, you mean.”

“Yes.”

One memory from the battle repeated behind her eyes: Cord, bleeding badly, rising to his feet with his war club in his fist, suddenly right beside her.

“I wish I … maybe if I'd…”

Her voice trailed away, and Sky Messenger seemed to sense that scenes of the battle tormented her.
Hundreds of warriors stretched out like ants, climbing the steep incline … glitters in the sunlit air in front of the pines …

“Stop blaming yourself,” he ordered. “Cord didn't see them, either, and he was one of the greatest war chiefs your people have ever known. Did Dzadi see them and call a warning? What about your scouts?”

“No. No one saw them. But … hundreds died, Sky Messenger. Hundreds.”

“How many warriors did Atotarho have?”

“Two thousand, maybe three. I didn't have time to get a good count. We were outnumbered at least four to one, and completely surrounded. Father was wounded, shot through the right side.” Her hands clenched to fists. “Gods, I pray he's all right.”

Sky Messenger's brow furrowed. He picked up one of the wooden spoons and used it to stir the cook pot. The scent of smoked venison jerky wafted up with the steam. “How did you escape?”

She shook her head. “I don't know. Truly. I heard your voice, and I—”

“My voice?” he said in surprise.

“Yes, you cried, ‘Baji, get down!' and I leaped without thinking, just dove out of the way.” She lightly massaged the wound behind her ear. “That's why I received a glancing blow rather than a crushed skull.”

As Sky Messenger listened, the nostrils of his slender nose flared in and out, and the lines around his wide mouth went hard. He must be fighting the battle in his mind, trying to see what she had seen.

“And then?”

Baji struggled to remember. “I don't remember anything else.”

“You were completely surrounded. You were hurt. Cord was injured. You must have fought back or run.”

“Probably both … but I recall none of it.”

Gitchi must have heard the tension in her voice. He trotted over and lay down at Baji's side. As he propped his big muzzle in her lap, he looked up at her with loving yellow eyes—as though he thought she needed comforting. She petted his soft back.

Sky Messenger said, “What's the next thing you remember after you escaped?”

Out in the trees, two deer slipped through the shadows, a buck and a doe. Their thick winter coats had a pearlescent ash-colored sheen. Quietly, she said, “There's dinner.”

Sky Messenger turned. “I have plenty of food in my pack. Let them go. I'd rather hear your story.”

The doe lifted her head at his voice and sniffed the air, startled that she hadn't scented them before, then she followed the buck onto the trail, and their hooves kicked up snow as they bounded away, heading down into the sunlit valley far below.

“Odd that they didn't scent us, or Gitchi, or the campfire.”

“The wind must have been wrong.”

Sky Messenger squinted down the trail for several long moments, before he repeated, “What's the next thing you remember?”

Her head had started to pound again, and with it nausea welled. She put a hand to her belly. “I don't remember a place as much as a feeling of pure panic. I knew I had to find you, to protect you. The need was overwhelming.” She hesitated and watched the steam rising from the teapot. Behind her eyes she glimpsed trees passing, enormous chestnuts, hills in front of her that seemed to roll on forever. “Then I found myself running. That's the next thing I recall. Running as hard as I could … at the very edge of my endurance, my lungs bursting. I think I must have collapsed or fainted. I woke up in the middle of the night … on this trail.” Nausea tickled the back of her throat. She squeezed her eyes closed, trying to force it away.

Softly, he said, “All right. That's enough for now.”

“I think I need to eat something.”

“I'll fill your bowl this instant.”

As he went about filling their bowls and dipping cups of tea, Baji continued stroking Gitchi's thick fur. Why had she only told him about Shago-niyoh finding her on the trail, and not the details of their conversation?

Because I'm afraid to.