The People of the Black Sun (8 page)

“Perhaps, but we need allies far more desperately. We can't be the only ones who believe that the war must end. There are others. I must find them and convince them to make peace with us.”

“Father plans on doing the same thing among the People of the Mountain this winter. If everything works out, by Spring, our new alliance may have tripled in size.”

He swallowed hard and lowered his gaze. He seemed to be trying to decide how to tell her something. “Baji, please thank Cord for me. He—”

“He's right there.” She pointed. “You can thank him yourself.”

“No. I— I need to speak with you.”

He lifted his gaze again. The longer they stared at each other, the more her emptiness increased.

Baji hesitated, then, in a reverent voice, asked, “Will you tell those you meet about your Dream?”

Dekanawida tenderly reached out to stroke her hair, but his hand halted before he touched her. He closed his fist on air and drew it back. In a strained voice, he said, “Baji, I know you are War Chief, and you have duties, but I want you to come with me.”

She blinked in confusion. “I can't.”

“Just for one moon. Surely Cord will grant you that.”

“My people are in danger, Dekanawida. It's impossible.”

Dekanawida wrapped his arms around her shoulders and powerfully crushed her body against his. “I need you, Baji. Please come with me?”

A warm rush flooded her veins, frightening in its intensity. “You are betrothed to another.”

His lips brushed her face, and he murmured against her hair, “My marriage is a political alliance. My future wife told me so herself.” He tightened his embrace.

For a blessed timeless moment, she allowed herself to believe that she could go with him, and happiness filled her. She slipped her arms around his waist and hugged him so hard her injured arm shook. “I can't abandon my village now. Not when we may be attacked at any instant by Atotarho, or the Mountain People, or the People of the Landing. You know I can't. If you were still a deputy war chief, you would do the same.”

… but he needs a body guard. There is no one better to protect his back than me.

Dekanawida slowly released her. A mixture of disappointment and despair shone in his brown eyes.

“I knew you'd say that. I had hoped not, but…” He expelled a breath. “You've always been the honorable one. I have just one last thing to say. Baji—”

“Please, don't.” She knew that tone of voice. “It's useless, we can't—”

He continued as if she hadn't interrupted. “—my feelings for you have not changed. No matter what happens, I will find a way for us to be together, to marr—”

“Let it go, Dekanawida.”

He frowned out at the battlefield for a long time, watching the burial teams. The Standing Stone People were piling the dead near the Bur Oak Village palisade. The mound was already three or four deep.

Finally, he softly asked, “Are you sure?”

“I have to be.”

He bowed his head, and seemed to be mustering his strength. At last, he said, “If you ever need me or … or want me … send word. I'll be there as soon as I can.”

The Flint burial teams had lifted the litters and were carrying them toward the war party. They were almost ready to leave. She said, “If you are ever really in trouble, Dekanawida, you know I'll be there.”

He balled his fists at his sides. “Yes.”

Their gazes locked. Both desperate. Both at a loss for anything else to say.

She petted Gitchi's big head one last time, and smiled when he wagged his tail. “Please tell Tutelo I love her.”

“I will.”

The hardest thing Baji had ever done was to nod, turn her back on him, and stride away.

She did not glance back. It would have been a small selfish act that would have given him hope.

 

Seven

Sky Messenger

My heart slams against my ribs as I watch her walk away. Dreams die with each step.

“Come, Gitchi,” I whisper.

I stride back to Bur Oak Village with Gitchi trotting slightly ahead. Hearing my Flint name, Dekanawida, and touching her, have left me feeling wounded and dazed. Everything inside me shouts to go after her, that if we have more time to talk, we will find a way to be together. But my feet resolutely do not turn from their path. They carry me down the hillside, through the dead grass, and out into the corpse-filled meadow east of Yellowtail and Bur Oak villages. As Elder Brother Sun edges higher into the sky, he casts shadows behind each frosty body. Like dark fingers, they imploringly reach for the villages, or perhaps to their relatives who walk the battlefield. To the west, beyond the burned villages, snow creates a patchwork beneath the leafless maples and sycamores that rise and fall like dove-colored waves.

My shoulder muscles contract, bulging through my shirt. Almost all the warriors of the Standing Stone nation lie dead upon the grassy plain just beyond Reed Marsh. Thousands. Their frozen bodies create a rumpled blanket of small white humps. No mourners have ventured out that far to search for loved ones, but they will, soon.

I follow Gitchi, veering around two teams carrying burial litters piled high. As the morning warms, Wind Woman blows the snow across the battlefield like a low sunlit haze. It mixes with the acrid black smoke rising from the smoldering village palisades, smoke on its way to the Sky World where it will deliver knowledge of the battle to the Blessed Ancestors.

Weeping mourners flow around me like phantoms, averting their gazes. When they do accidentally meet my eyes, they quickly bow and look away. Soft reverent murmurs carry as I pass, which makes me feel hollow. They have known me since I was a child. They watched me grow up, become a deputy war chief, and transform into what I am today. Or, rather, what I became yesterday afternoon: something alien, not quite human. A man to fear. I myself have not yet come to grips with the freak storm. How can I expect them to treat me differently?

I put my head down and walk straight for Bur Oak Village. Though the exterior palisade has mostly been repaired, the inner palisades are little more than a collection of flimsy blackened logs, leaning against one another, ready to topple at any instant. Our People believe that the souls of lost warriors move into trees, and it is these trees that we cut for palisade logs, thereby surrounding our villages with standing warriors. I ache for these lost souls. They must feel as though they, too, failed in their duty to protect the People.

Reed Marsh is alive with birdsong. Snow coats the cattails. They are glistening white stalks in a sea of shallow blue water. I can make out the largest birds that perch upon the stems. Hawks. They sway in the cold breeze, hunting the marsh for breakfast.

Voices drift from inside Bur Oak Village. The council is still in session, awaiting my return. I pick up my pace. Wampa guards the gate. She has seen twenty-four summers and wears a slate gray cape decorated with brown spirals. A war club is tucked into her belt, but she also carries a bow and quiver slung over her left shoulder. She has already cut her black hair in mourning—as I will do later today. It hangs in irregular locks around her oval face, highlighting her wide mouth and narrow lips … which press tightly together as I approach.

I ask, “How is the council proceeding?”

A dusting of dark gray ash continues to fall, coating the snow. Gitchi trots through the gates ahead of me and into the plaza, where he stands looking back, waiting.

Unlike the mourners, Wampa stares straight at me, but there is curiosity behind her gaze, as though she's not quite sure how to respond to me. Me. A friend of more than fifteen summers. Guardedly, she says, “I haven't heard much shouting. That's a good sign.”

“Generally, yes. Though this morning I think it's because no one has the strength to shout. We're all still staggering about like ducks hit in the head with rocks.”

As I try to pass by, Wampa grips my sleeve to stop me, and whispers, “Sky Messenger, tell me the truth.”

The warriors on the catwalk above us stop, and start to gather, seeking to listen to our conversation. Four men and two women, bows and quivers slung over their shoulders, look down at us.

“I know very little, Wampa. The council hasn't decided—”

“We lost around three thousand warriors yesterday. What are we going to do? There are barely three hundred trained warriors left in the entire Standing Stone nation. The rest are children and elders barely strong enough to draw back—”

“That is what the council is discussing, Wampa. Give them time.”

With a faint tinge of panic in her voice, she says, “I've heard that Chief Atotarho still has four thousand warriors. Four thousand of the eight thousand he started with. Do you think that's true?”

The catwalk erupts with the low hiss of conversations.

Reluctantly, I nod, and Wampa swallows hard.

“That's the best estimate we have. Two thousand of his warriors were from Coldspring, Riverbank, and Canassatego villages—the villages that made peace with us. And we think another two thousand died in the battle. That leaves four thousand. Our scouts tried to count the warriors still alive as they fled through the forest yesterday, but no one knows how accurate that number is.”

She releases my sleeve and slowly lowers her hand to rest on the hilt of the war club tucked into her belt. “Even if the true number is half that…”

She doesn't have to finish. We both know what it means.

I fold my arms across my chest and stare down at her with my brows lowered. “The great warrior woman hasn't given up, has she?”

“Of course not. We're going to survive this. I just don't have the faintest idea how. The Flint People are leaving”—she flings a hand in the direction of Baji, but I dare not look—“and I've heard that Zateri's faction of the Hills People will also be heading home to their villages. It's foolish for us to remain here. Maybe we should abandon Bur Oak and Yellowtail villages and go with them?”

I shake my head. “That notion has already been entered into the council, Wampa. Chief Yellowtail suggested it, and High Matron Kittle objected. Despite our hasty battlefield alliance with Matron Zateri's faction yesterday, Kittle does not trust the Hills People. She said our newfound alliance is too uncertain, and that if we move there and they change their minds, we will be surrounded by enemies. There are so few of us left, we can't risk it.”

“Then perhaps the Flint People? Chief Cord—”

“He is a good friend, yes. But our alliance with the Flint People is just as precarious. While Cord may continue to support us, we have no way of knowing what the other Flint matrons or chiefs will do once they hear that our nation was almost exterminated yesterday. They may use it as an opportunity to finish the job.”

Her eyes narrow as she gazes out across the misty battlefield. She is a tough warrior. I have seen her prowess in battle. But despair touches her words: “Then we are alone.”

The warriors on the catwalk are silent.

On this dreadful day, only Wind Mother's song through the marsh hallows and heals. We all seem to be listening to it.

I straighten my shoulders and, with a confident nod, say, “Others will join us. I give you my oath. Though the gods know, befriending the Mountain People is going to take a strong stomach.”

Wampa laughs. Before Atotarho came to power and changed the Hills People, the Mountain People were the most unfathomable, contrary, and brutal People in the land. It's inconceivable that the Standing Stone nation and the Mountain People could ever be friends. Nervous chuckles eddy across the catwalk. On the war trail, when things looked hopeless, I was always able to make my warriors laugh. I laugh, too, joining them.

“That's the old Sky Messenger talking,” Wampa says softly, for my ears alone. “He was one of the finest warriors in the Standing Stone nation. But I think he is gone. I heard Matron Jigonsaseh talking this morning. She says you have given up your weapons for good. So while many of us will be fighting to the death for our people … you will not.”

Her words are not an accusation, but a subtle question. “My duty rests elsewhere, old friend. I must gather more allies for our cause—the cause of peace. If I march into the villages of the People of the Landing or the Mountain People with a war party at my back, or a war club in my hand, my message will ring hollow. They will not listen to me. I must go alone … and unarmed.”

She glances up at the warriors gazing down upon us, judging their expressions. “You'll be killed on sight, Sky Messenger. We have, after all, been slaughtering their people, burning their villages, and stealing their families for slaves for generations.”

“They may kill me. But if they don't, and I have a chance to speak honestly with their councils, I believe I can win them to our side.”

Wampa utters a disbelieving grunt. “You are either deluded or a very great Dreamer.”