The People of the Black Sun (4 page)

She slipped her arms around his waist and pulled him hard against her. They stood like that, clutching each other for long enough that CorpseEye's quartzite cobble head felt like it might break her ribs. The camp went silent again.

Finally, she pushed away, and said, “Very dangerous, Chief Cord. There are those among your own People who would consider this consorting with the enemy.”

“I've faced danger before. I'll risk it.”

As they gazed at each other, a connection grew between them. Like a rope being stretched tight, the fibers strained, about to fray and break loose. As his smile faded, conflicting emotions danced across his handsome face.

“Cord, I'm sorry that we can't—”

“It's
not
impossible.” He clenched his fists at his sides, as though struggling against his own impotence. “Join my people. Please present the possibility to your Ruling Council. Let them decide. That way no one could ever accuse you of suggesting it as a way to further your personal interests.” He paused. “That is, providing you think it would be in your personal interest to share your life with me.”

She lowered her eyes and watched the brassy splashes of light cast over the hearthstones by the flames. They fell irregularly, like leaf-shaped puzzle pieces cut from a golden sunset.

Smiling ironically, she said, “Actually, it would be far more in my interest if you moved to my village. That is the tradition of our peoples. When men marry they move to the wife's village. That would suit me even better.”

His brows lifted. “I hardly think that's a good idea. Your village may well be doomed.”

She laughed. Warriors' humor. Bizarre, given the circumstances.

She touched him one last time, squeezing his hand. “Sleep well, my friend.”

She turned and headed back across the freezing battlefield.

 

Three

Just a shred of sound, an exhale from a human throat.

Twenty paces ahead, a small sparkling cloud of frosted breath formed in the darkness.

The most feared witch in the land, Ohsinoh, watched it drift through the maple trunks. He'd finally located his enemy, the man they called Sky Messenger. Ohsinoh continued easing his leg through the frozen ferns, his movements barely hissing through the winter forest.

Just beyond the maples, Sky Messenger aimlessly wandered among the dead. A tall man, and muscular, Sky Messenger had a round face and slender nose. Straight black hair brushed his shoulders. Following behind Sky Messenger was his pet wolf, Gitchi.

Ohsinoh frowned. That could complicate matters. The bond between Sky Messenger and the old gray-faced wolf smacked of the supernatural. The wolf would die protecting him. Which meant Ohsinoh would have to kill the wolf first.

In the distance, the half-burned villages of Bur Oak and Yellowtail nestled together. The three rings of palisades that surrounded each village—constructed of upright logs—had been burned through in so many places they resembled mouths of rotted teeth. Smoke continued to rise from the charred areas. Even at this late hour, firelight gleamed through the gaps. Though men and women still stood on the rickety catwalks, keeping watch should the enemy return, they looked exhausted. Many heads nodded, trying to stay awake.

Ohsinoh silently inhaled and let his breath out slowly. Somewhere in the trees behind him, a Flint warrior paralleled his course. A hired murderer. A traitor to Chief Cord. To enlist his skills tonight, Ohsinoh had been forced to pay the man enough to ransom a small village.

Sky Messenger leaned over to peer into the eyes of a dead woman warrior. His lips moved, speaking to her, saying something soft that Ohsinoh couldn't hear. How convenient that he was completely alone, except for Gitchi. Where, Ohsinoh wondered, was Sky Messenger's avowed friend and protector War Chief Hiyawento?

Ohsinoh's gaze shifted to the south where Hiyawento's camp nestled on the hilltop.

Dark figures moved around the fire. Hiyawento was probably there, still grieving over the murder of his two baby daughters. Was he remembering their smiling faces? It must grow harder every day to teeter around the edges of the emptiness that had grown inside him. By now, Hiyawento's souls must be dark open chasms that dropped away forever, as though all the light in the world had been obliterated in a single stroke when his little girls died.

Ohsinoh barely stifled a delighted chuckle. That had been too easy. Not even a challenge for his witchery.

Sky Messenger lifted his face and seemed to be studying the campfires of the dead that sprinkled the night sky, perhaps speaking with the Blessed Ancestors who lived along the Path of Souls that led to the Land of the Dead.

As Ohsinoh watched him, his sense of triumph dwindled, returning to a hatred so potent it left him feeling slightly ill. He'd first met Odion—Sky Messenger's boyhood name—when he'd seen eleven summers. Odion had been a pathetic, whimpering little fool, terrified of everything. Ohsinoh had hated him for it.

As he pursued his prey, Ohsinoh clutched the evil-looking charm he carried in his right hand—a tortoiseshell covered with animal fur. Two white eyes, carved of shell, stared out from the center of the fur. It was unnerving, even to him. The charm reminded him of the old stories of half-human beasts that had wandered the land just after Tarachiawagon, the Good-Minded Twin, created the world. He'd found the charm among his mother's things, cached beneath a dead red cedar tree in the faraway country of the People of the Dawnland. His mother, Gannajero, had been dead for twelve summers—but her death still devastated him. The violent manner of her murder had doomed her afterlife soul to wander the earth forever. At the age of thirteen summers, he'd been lost, starving, without hope … until her soul had stalked from the darkness and crouched before his fire.
“You young idiot. Get up! I've come to share all my secrets with you. If you've the sense to obey me, you are about to be rich and powerful.”

Her fierce words had given him back his purpose in life. He'd changed his name from Hehaka to Ohsinoh. She'd told him every place she'd cached rare Trade goods, and witch's charms. Since that night, he'd often caught glimpses of her wandering soul light as it slipped through the shadowy forest.

His gaze returned to his enemy. Sky Messenger and his filthy friends had killed her.

Ohsinoh had been struggling for summers to avenge her. All of his life, he had worked and scraped to find every bit of knowledge he could about Power … and he had. His abilities had become the stuff of legend. People said that if anyone dared kill him, he would rise from the dead and torment his murderer for eternity. He'd become the most-feared man in the world … until today's freak storm had turned Sky Messenger into an ethereal figure of awe, no longer quite human. Ohsinoh had heard warriors muttering that Sky Messenger was the long-awaited prophet, the reborn Spirit of Tarachiawagon. Sky Messenger's newfound fame ate at Ohsinoh's vitals like a fanged beast.

Tonight, old enemy, I will avenge my mother and show these fools that you are mere flesh and blood …

He inhaled a soothing breath, and the scent of the marsh penetrated the battlefield stench.

His eyes slowly panned to the west. Like a crescent moon, Reed Marsh curved around the charred villages, protecting them on the north and west sides. Its wet fragrance mixed oddly with the stenches of blood and smoke, turning it poignant and velvet. Birds perched on the tallest cattails, their eyes glowing.

A gust of wind fluttered his bluebird-feather cape. Ohsinoh pulled his hood forward to shield his face from the bitter cold.

Sky Messenger continued on his way, stopping often, apparently to gaze down into the eyes of the dead, now frozen in their skulls and sheathed in frost. As the dead bodies stiffened, they thumped and gurgled, teeth gnashed, and gasses hissed.

The old gray-faced wolf never left Sky Messenger. Gitchi kept scanning the tree line, his eyes shining in the brilliant light cast by the campfires of the dead. Tonight, the sky was a conflagration. The wolf stared directly at Ohsinoh and went rigid. He lifted his muzzle to sniff the air. Assessing the danger.

Ohsinoh went stone still.

Sky Messenger suddenly noticed his wolf's gaze and stared out at where Ohsinoh stood.

Ohsinoh called, “It's Odion, the boy who was always afraid.”

Sky Messenger responded with Ohsinoh's boyhood name. “I'm still afraid, Hehaka.”

“But why? You are the great man now. Elder Brother Sun obeys Sky Messenger's commands.” He vented a low mocking laugh. “Isn't it enough?”

Sky Messenger appeared to be thinking about the question. After what seemed a long time, he answered, “I know where it is.”

Confused, Ohsinoh tilted his head. “Where what is?”

“Her pot.”

Ohsinoh took a quick step toward Sky Messenger, breathless, unable to believe his ears. A gust of wind flapped his feathered hood around his face. He had to be sure. “Which pot?”

“You know the pot I mean. Her soul pot.”

As though Ohsinoh was suddenly back in that terrible meadow, he could hear his own pathetic voice whisper, “
She sucked out my soul.… she sucked it out with that eagle-bone sucking tube and blew it into the little pot that she carries in her pack.… She told me that when she kills me, my afterlife soul will never be able to find its way home. I'll be chased through the forests forever by enemy ghosts.”

Gannajero had been the greatest witch who had ever lived. She'd stolen hundreds of souls—including his.

Losing your afterlife soul caused insanity. Before Ohsinoh realized it, tears leaked from the corners of his eyes, blurring his vision. Finding that pot and releasing his soul so that it could return and take its place in his body again had been one of his lifelong goals.

Suspiciously, he asked, “Why do you tell me this?”

“You've been searching for it for a long time, haven't you? If I'd known, I would have told you sooner. Do you remember our last camp on the river where she ambushed us?”

“I do.”

“Walk due northeast about one thousand paces, and you will see a small oval clearing on a hillside surrounded by maples. There are three rocks in the middle of the clearing. That's where she died. Just before Mother found us, Zateri took the soul pot from the old woman's pack and buried it between the rocks.” Sky Messenger stared hard at Ohsinoh. “Do you want me to go with you?”

Ohsinoh didn't answer for a time. He was thinking about the old woman's death. He hadn't been there, but the story had moved up and down the trails for many summers afterward. He'd heard it so often it was engraved on his soul. Baji, Odion, Zateri, and some other children he didn't know, had killed Gannajero, axed and stabbed her to death like small rabid animals.

“No,” he said, and backed away, moving deeper into the trees. Even though he'd been searching for that pot for more than half his life, he would accept no help from this man.

Sky Messenger must have assumed he was gone, for he petted Gitchi's head and slowly made his way to a high point overlooking the Flint People's camp. He gazed longingly at the warriors wrapped in blankets and hides. Beyond the camp, forested hills rolled endlessly to the northern horizon.

Ohsinoh eased through the trees, continuing to watch Sky Messenger. Why had the man offered to help him find the precious pot? They had never been friends.

Sky Messenger bowed his head, heaved a sigh, and seemed to be staring at the ground.

Was he thinking about Baji? Only a few moons ago, she and Sky Messenger had been lovers. Everyone had expected them to marry. For reasons Ohsinoh didn't understand, it hadn't happened. Sky Messenger was now betrothed to a fourteen-summers-old woman named Taya. An arranged marriage. Nothing more. Sky Messenger's sense of honor had to be vying with his need for a woman he'd loved since childhood. Perhaps he was trying to dream a new future—one that could never be.

Ohsinoh silently laughed, his heart returning to the task at hand.

Sky Messenger turned away from the Flint camp and headed back for the firelit stillness of Bur Oak Village, probably seeking shelter from the icy darkness and the soul-rending sounds of the battlefield. Perhaps from his memories of Baji.

If Ohsinoh didn't hurry, he would miss his chance.

A foot crunched the frost, too close to believe. Finally, the Flint warrior …

“You're a fool, Ohsinoh.”

Hiyawento's voice came from his right, less than ten paces away. Panic seared Ohsinoh's veins. He gripped his evil charm, spread his arms, and slowly turned.

War Chief Hiyawento carried a war club, but had no guards. He stood alone, unmoving, as though a block of sculpted darkness. He was tall, with a narrow beaked face and burning eyes. Black hair blew around his shoulders. Dressed in a worn, knee-length, buckskin cape, he might have been any ordinary warrior, were it not for his stunning presence. It was like a tingling heaviness in the air—the sense a man gets before a cougar leaps upon him from a ledge above. No one who had ever stood before Hiyawento had doubted either his will or his abilities to crush his enemy.