The People of the Black Sun (41 page)

Towa whispered, “Let's just walk along the edge of the camps. That will look perfectly normal to the warriors on the palisades.”

“I understand.”

As they passed each fire, Hiyawento tried to identify the thin soups that filled the supper pots: dried milkweed and ferns were the main ingredients, but occasionally he caught sight of mushrooms or chunks of desiccated grasshoppers.

Hiyawento said, “They have no meat? No corn, beans, or squash? No sunflowers?”

Towa shook his head as he weaved between two huts. Four women sat outside, talking, using bone awls threaded with cordage to sew up the holes in badly worn hides—hides anyone else would have thrown away.

“A pleasant afternoon to you,” Towa said warmly.

One of the women lifted a hand, and they fell back into their conversation, barely glancing up at Towa and Hiyawento as they casually walked by.

“A little rude,” Hiyawento murmured.

“Don't blame them. They have nothing to Trade. My presence just reminds them of how poor they are.”

The remnants of last autumn's cornfields stood along the river bank. The stalks—hacked off at the ground—had barely grown to the size of Hiyawento's little finger. They'd obviously gotten no corn from these fields. They'd cut the stalks to weave into mats, baskets, dolls, ropes, or sandals, maybe even boiled them to extract what little nutrients they contained, but they hadn't fed many people, if any.

A group of five boys walked by, and Hiyawento stared at their bulging eyes. Their heads appeared huge, wobbling on bony necks. When Towa noticed Hiyawento's undue attention, he whispered, “Take a good look. The next time you think your people are hungry, remember these children.”

Hiyawento swallowed hard. “No wonder the Mountain People have been hitting them so hard.”

Every nation was struggling to survive, so they viewed the troubles of others as opportunities. Any village that was sick or starving became a target. Their neighbors waited until they were too weak to fight back, then they attacked, ransacked the food stores, and killed their enemies.

A memory slipped from the locked door where Hiyawento kept it buried …
last spring … boiling maple sap with my three daughters … pouring the syrup into wooden molds … waiting until it hardened and turned to sugar … sweet treats and laughter … so much love in their eyes …

His steps faltered as he forced their smiling faces away. Jimer and Catta had been so beautiful.

“Are you all right?” Towa asked. He gazed at Hiyawento in concern. “You just made an agonized sound.”

“Sorry. I…” He took a breath and held it for a few heartbeats. “I was thinking about last spring. We made maple sugar candy in Coldspring Village.”

“Yes, we did in Riverbank Village, as well. I know for a fact that the Landing People didn't have a chance to. Mountain raiders tapped all their trees long before they could get to them.”

To Hiyawento's right, he glimpsed a tall man striding between huts, heading straight for them, his short black hair flapping over his high cheekbones.

As he trotted up, Sky Messenger said, “I almost didn't recognize you.”

He embraced Hiyawento and for the first time in days, Hiyawento smiled in true happiness. He pounded his friend's back. “It's good to see you. I've been worried. We've spent half our time dodging war parties.”

“Me, too.”

When they separated, Hiyawento said, “We should probably paint your face, before we try to—”

“No, not me.” Sky Messenger turned abruptly to embrace Towa. “Gods, it's good to see you.”

“And you, my friend.”

Then Sky Messenger looked from Towa to Hiyawento and his smile faded. “Tell me everyone made it safely to Canassatego Village.”

“Yes,” Hiyawento answered, “though Canassatego was attacked shortly after they arrived. But that's a long story for another time. It will be dark soon.”

Sky Messenger's eyes shifted to the village gates. “We have more important duties.”

Towa sternly said, “All right, listen to me, both of you. Let me do the talking. Sky Messenger, until you reveal yourself, I will introduce you as my new assistant, Odion. Do you understand?”

“Perfectly.” He nodded.

“All right. Follow me and act obsequious, like you worship me.”

Towa walked up to the gates and cupped a hand to his mouth. “Towa, the greatest Trader in the land, requests entry to Shookas Village!”

Laughter ran down the catwalks, and a man with a shaved scalp leaned over to look down at them. Tattoos covered his face, including a spiral on the tip of his long nose. “Towa! You're back sooner than we thought. Who are these men with you?”

“My new assistants, Wrass and Odion, both are from the Standing Stone nation. I am training them in the great and noble art of Trading.”

“And what worthless trinkets have you brought this time?”

“Many worthless trinkets, Nokweh! You will be amazed and delighted by the price I ask, I assure you!”

“Oh, yes,” the man said doubtfully. “I'm sure I will.” He signaled to someone Hiyawento couldn't see, and said, “The gates will be open shortly.”

Towa grinned up. “I'm glad to see you alive, Deputy War Chief. I feared you'd fallen to the—”

“I'm War Chief now, Towa. Our former War Chief is traveling the Path of Souls.” Grief twisted the man's bony face.

“Ah,” Towa said sadly. “I will miss him. Did the fever take him?”

“No. The Mountain People have been ravaging our country, killing anyone they can. Our women and children are afraid to go out to fill pots at the river for fear that they'll be ambushed by the vile beasts. Our former War Chief fought to his last breath to protect his people; he fell to one of their arrows.”

Towa glanced back at the huts that extended for as far as they could see. “Is that why so many people are camped around Shookas? Are these all refugees from destroyed villages?”

“A few survivors ran here from Agweron Village. The others are not refugees. Three days ago our scouts reported a huge Mountain army on the move. We assumed they would be coming here to finish us for good. Decanasora Village and Elehana Village chose to abandon their homes and move here to consolidate our forces. It makes strategy easier.”

“Strategy?”

“Yes, my friend. Haven't you heard? It's the news of the camps. We are organizing the largest army in the history of our People. Apparently the Mountain army was not on its way here, but headed elsewhere. That means their villages are poorly defended. We are going to attack and annihilate every Mountain village in the land.”

Towa gave Nokweh a pained nod. “I'm sure you will, too. Landing warriors are the best in the world.”

Nokweh glanced to his left, and said, “Get ready. The guards are opening the gates.”

“We thank you!” Towa lifted a hand again.

The gates swung open and Towa, Hiyawento, and Sky Messenger passed by the guards with respectful nods, and walked out into the crowded plaza.

Sky Messenger softly said, “If they destroy the Mountain villages it will provoke a war of annihilation. You know that, don't you?”

“Yes, of course,” Towa whispered. “But look around you. No parent can peer into the eyes of a starving child without picking up weapons and doing whatever is necessary to keep that child alive.”

“Attacking the Mountain villages will not accomplish that. They are as bad off, or worse, than—”

“I know that, Sky Messenger. I've been there.”

Five longhouses encircled the broad plaza, each stretching six or seven hundred hands long, and forty wide. Chunks of the elm bark walls had been ripped out, others were charred. Firelight gleamed through the holes like the campfires of the dead.

Forty paces ahead of them, in the middle of the plaza, people packed shoulder-to-shoulder around a large bonfire, apparently listening to an ugly little man. The fellow shouted from where he stood on a massive hickory stump overlooking the assembly. He wore his hair in a traditional Flint roach, shaved on the sides with a black bristly strip in the middle. Few teeth remained in his mouth and they were yellowed and half-rotted. To the speaker's left, the Ruling Council of the Landing People, composed of twelve elders, sat on log benches, listening. They each wore a white cape, decorated with the symbols of their clans.

“Who's the orator?” Sky Messenger asked softly. “I can't tell from here.”

“That's Tagohsah,” Towa said. “I wonder what he's doing here? His rounds usually bring him to Shookas Village in the middle of the moon. I try to arrive several days before just to avoid him.”

Hiyawento whispered, “Let's move closer so we can hear what he's saying.”

The crowd's attention, riveted on Tagohsah, didn't shift as Hiyawento, Sky Messenger, and Towa weaved through the tightly packed bodies, stepping into any gap that opened. Tagohsah must have begun talking only a short while ago, because fragments of the story had just begun filtering back through the listeners, relayed in awed whispers.

A young woman in front of Hiyawento said, “Atotarho attacked Bur Oak and Yellowtail villages with eight thousand warriors…” Then she turned back to hear the next few words being repeated, and said, “The Standing Stone army was cut down like blades of dry grass.…” She turned to listen again.

Sky Messenger and Hiyawento exchanged a look, and slipped closer, shouldering between two men. Towa followed along behind them.

A toothless old man whispered, “Atotarho's forces killed over two thousand five hundred Standing Stone warriors … that's when the Hills nation crumbled to dust … Coldspring Village, along with Riverbank and Canassatego villages, turned against Atotarho and fought on the side of the Standing Stone nation.”

Hiyawento murmured, “They're talking about the battle five days ago.”

“Yes,” Towa replied, and stepped into a slim space that allowed him to move two steps closer.

Hiyawento and Sky Messenger followed. A young warrior carrying a war club propped on his shoulder said, “Then a Flint war party appeared, lined out on the hills to the east … the Flint warriors, too, fought on the side of the Standing Stone nation … the battle was so great and terrible it shook the ground … just when it looked like the Standing Stone alliance was about to be overrun, killed to the last person … the Prophet stepped out…”

Sky Messenger's expression changed, as though the sense of wonder in the youth's voice had made his heart thunder.

Hiyawento clung to his friend's side, his hands invisible beneath his long cape, holding tight to his belted war club. A low hum of awed voices spread across the plaza, coming in waves, each portion of the tale repeated from one person to the next, but there was always someone who didn't believe. Someone who longed to earn a reputation by killing legends. Well, he'd have to kill Hiyawento first.

The youth swung around again, his starved face alight. “The Prophet, the human False Face known to the Standing Stone nation as Sky Messenger, lifted his hands, ordering the armies to stop fighting … Elder Brother Sun saw him … he sent a great monstrous storm crashing down upon the battlefield, scattering Atotarho's army like old leaves in a hurricane! Atotarho's forces ran.
They ran!
”

Hiyawento slid into a new gap in the milling crowd and managed to get four steps closer. Sky Messenger and Towa were right behind him.

“Blessed gods!” a woman half-shouted, “the Prophet alone remained to face the storm! Just before the spinning darkness swallowed him, his cape transformed into billows of white clouds, and he rode the winds of destruction like one of the Cloud People. When the storm had passed over the battlefield, the Prophet appeared again, hovering over the battlefield like one of the Sky People. Not a single hair upon his head had been disturbed!”

Towa leaned sideways to murmur to Sky Messenger, “I heard it a bit differently.”

A tight smile tensed Sky Messenger's face. “Someone should tell them the truth.”

Towa shook his head. “Bad idea. Look at them.”

Reverence lined every face and filled every voice.

Hiyawento looked around, trying to hear words through the general noise of thousands of voices.

“… the human False Face has come … he is among us right now … the Faces of the Forest walk with him…”

There was a momentary hush, then an old man with a deeply wrinkled face turned and repeated, “Atotarho attacked them again … just a few days ago. He's there now trying to starve the last survivors to death!”

Towa jerked around to look at Hiyawento and Sky Messenger. “Dear gods. Did you know this?”

“No.” Sky Messenger's voice had gone deep with shock.

Hiyawento clutched his war club tighter. He had to get word to Zateri. She'd probably already sent back as many warriors as she could afford, as she'd promised Kittle she would, but—

“I wish to speak.” High Matron Weyra stood and lifted a hand to the crowd. Thin white hair fluttered around her wrinkled face. She'd seen perhaps fifty-five summers, and had a fleshy nose that rippled when she scratched it. After the voices died down, she called, “It seems the Hills People have the same designs on Standing Stone territory as the Mountain People do on ours, and neither nation will stop at anything to achieve its goals. We must—”

Sky Messenger shouted,
“That's because we have an amnesia of the heart. We've forgotten that we were once one People!”

Towa hissed, “It's unhealthy to interrupt the most powerful woman in the nation.”

Sky Messenger boldly shouldered through the crowd. As he passed, eyes went wide, men and women shuffled backward, and a stunned chorus began to whisper across the plaza,
“It's him … Blessed Gods, it's the Prophet … it's Sky Messenger!… No, it's not, you fool … I tell you, it is! Look how tall he is. He fits the descriptions…”