Tribe: The Red Hand (Tribe Series Book 1) (9 page)

A squirrel shucking seeds from a pinecone eyed her from a sunlit branch, and in a coop set away from the cabin, chickens clucked and scratched to the disinterest of a pair of nanny goats sharing an adjoining pen. Out behind the cabin, farther up the hillside, four pigs rooted and grunted nosily in their slop troughs.

That wasn’t so hard, was it?
Kestrel thought, letting the sights and sounds of familiar surroundings calm her. Taking another deep breath, she imagined she was only going for a stroll through the forest. Before the serene illusion had a chance to break apart, she set off.

The wooded path she followed began in the shadow of the protective cliffs soaring above the village, ran by her family’s home, and then snaked its way down the mountainside, passing several timber-and-stone cabins tucked deep within stands of fir and pine. If she had not known they were there, and if the owners’ dogs had not barked at her passing, Kestrel would never have noticed them. Within each cabin resided a Red Hand and their family, or a hunter and theirs. For several generations the loose, well-hidden perimeter had thwarted many surprise attacks that befell the village.

Of course, when raiding parties came howling out of the forest, one need not be a Red Hand or hunter to fight. From a young age, everyone in the village learned how to use any weapon at hand. The difference between a common villager and a Red Hand was that a Red Hand spent their lives learning the tactics of warfare, going on raids, and launchings counterattacks in defense of the village. Becoming a Red Hand was a choice few made, and fewer achieved.

Kestrel lifted a hand in greeting to the people she saw ghosting through the woods. All waved back. Some were other Potentials, young men and women like her who would one day make this very same walk. They were her friends and family, but after tonight, their paths would separate, until they either became Red Hands themselves, or failed and were sent into the Dead Lands. Of all the people she saw, only her mentor, One-Ear Tom, spoke to her.

“Are you ready, young Kes?” The grizzled warrior was leaning against a tree with his arms folded across his chest, as if his only task in life was to watch the world grow older, one day at a time. His long white hair hung over his shoulders, contrasting against his black roughspun shirt. He had seen many and many years, but still had a warrior’s powerful bearing.

“Only because of your training,” Kestrel said evenly. Skittish as she felt, she was just happy she had not choked on the answer. “Are you ready?”

One-Ear Tom grinned, showing the scant handful of lonely teeth left to him. “My part in all this is far easier than yours. Though, after what you did,” he said with that same glint of approval in his eyes that she had seen in her father’s gaze, “I suppose the ceremony will be easy for you.”

Kestrel’s smile felt brittle.
In that moment, she almost told One-Ear Tom the truth about everything. For many years, she had spent more time with him than anyone else, and she trusted him as she would a relative. Aiden’s voice spoke up from the depth of memory, and her smile hardened into a rigid slash.
Say nothing about any of this.

Kestrel waved stiffly and moved down the trail.

On the outskirts of the village, the smell of hot metal and the ring of hammers filled the air. She paused beside an area filled with bristling mountains of rusted iron, twisted steel scrap, and weeds. No matter if you were a farmer, a hunter, or a Red Hand, the villagers collected anything that had potential use and brought it to the blacksmith, Fat Will, and his son, Short Will. Between the two of them, they could transform almost any sort of junk into useful tools or weapons, of one sort or another.

Behind the heaps of rusty scrap rose the cedar-shingled roof of Fat Will’s forge, and from its wobbly brick chimney climbed an ever-present plume of smoke. If habit held true, Fat Will would be late to the ceremony. Of all the people in the village, no one worked harder, except for farmers, but even they had the winter months to rest before the next year’s planting.

You’re stalling again
, Kestrel told herself, and left Fat Will to his labor.

The sudden and violent need to vomit coiled through Kestrel’s belly as soon as she saw the village wall, a sheer bulwark of stone and earth rising twenty feet in height. In her mind’s eye, she imagined the villagers standing watch for her, their faces calm, but their eyes alive with doubt. Far away, in one of the lower summer pastures, a calf bawled for its mother. The sound was at once urgent and forlorn. Kestrel felt a kinship with the poor beast.

“You are a Red Hand,” she told herself in harsh tones, and the greasy twisting of her insides slowly eased. She strode through the Mountain Gate and entered the village.

As soon as Kestrel saw how deserted the village was, she felt like a fool. If she had been thinking clearly, she would have known this was what she would find. The real show, after all, was at the Bone Tree.

That’s where they’ll be waiting. That’s where they’ll be watching. That’s where I’ll have to
—

The need to spew her last meal struck again, but this time the sensation made Kestrel angry.
Stop this!
she chided herself.
You are Red Hand, and the first enemy a Red Hand slays is fear. Go to the Bone Tree. Go now, and let all know that you do not fear!

Kestrel obeyed her silent command, and quickly strode along the wide dirt tracks winding through the village. Dogs nosing about for scraps of anything to eat looked up at her passing, wagged their tails, barked happy greetings, then went back to their eternal searches. Ever watchful cats were more elusive, keeping to the shadows between stone and timber buildings, or lurking under two-wheeled carts loaded with everything from firewood to metal scrap bound for Fat Will’s forge to wooden buckets loaded with the first berries of summer. She knew the hour was growing late, as red and gold now smudged the evening sky.

Every time her stride slowed, she told herself:
Go!

Before long she was running, her legs carrying her through a row of timber granaries standing on wooden posts along one side of the village green, across this large open space reserved for festivals and marriage ceremonies, and then through a row of cabins.

Soon after, she passed from the village through the Bald Hill Gate, and sprinted up a forest trail thick with the sweet smell of evergreens, her feet drumming lightly over a carpet of pine straw.

It struck her that she was racing to outpace her fears, while at the same time running straight toward the very thing she feared most. Even as she considered this, she burst into the open field below the Bone Tree and skidded to a halt, panting, nervous eyes darting.

People milled about everywhere. She had known them all her life, but they all looked like strangers.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

A few villagers might have noticed her abrupt arrival, but most were busy eating, laughing, or trying in vain to wrangle unruly children who were chasing each other about. Again, if she had been thinking straight, she would have remembered this was how it always was … at least until the actual ceremony began.

Kestrel’s gaze climbed briefly above the villagers to the Bone Tree, standing alone atop a large grassy knoll. Knowing what would happen when she stood beneath it, she dropped her gaze, and found her mother talking to Mary, a short plump woman who worked the fields with her. Aiden stood on the opposite side of the clearing, speaking with his band of Red Hands. The other four bands were clustered nearby.

“I was beginning to think you’d changed your mind,” said her father, coming closer with a warrior’s easy, yet somewhat dangerous gait. His clothing, a black leather vest over a gray roughspun shirt, leather trousers, and soft-soled boots, was similar to what most men wore in the village. His long hair, iron gray at the temples, swept back from his brow, and was held in place at the back with a leather thong. Nothing in his appearance marked him as an Elder—pretension of any sort was frowned upon in the village. Nevertheless, a quiet air of authority surrounded him, and a touch of stateliness.

Kestrel sought an answer, but could not find the words. With no better choice, she showed Matthias her teeth in what she hoped resembled a confident grin, and not a terrified grimace.

“I’d tell you not to be nervous,” Matthias said, proving that her expression was less than she had hoped for, “but that’s impossible, isn’t it?”

“Were you nervous?” Kestrel blurted.

Matthias laughed. “Nervous then, and nervous now. I feel as if I’m about to go through the ceremony myself, instead of you. But you will do fine.” His features grew sober. “Have you asked the Ancestors to bless you?”

“Every day for as long as I can remember.”

“Do you think they have?”

Kestrel remembered cutting her palm on the mountain, and giving her blood in return for their aid. “Yes. But no one can know the ultimate will of the Ancestors,” she said by rote, “until they have returned us safe to hearth and home.”

He glanced skyward, and she followed his gaze. The first stars of the evening twinkled in the far east. To the west, the sky glowed with the last dying fires of sunlight.

“I don’t pretend to know the will of the Ancestors,” Matthias said, dropping a comforting hand on her shoulder and turning her toward the Bone Tree, “but in you, I have been blessed.”

Again, Kestrel could find no words. She wondered what her father would think if he knew Aiden had helped her after the Kill? Disappointment, to be sure, and if not for that, she would have told him right then. Part of her
wanted
to tell him as much as she had wanted to tell One-Ear Tom, but she simply could not tell the truth. She had worked her entire life to become a Red Hand, and it was not fair that Aiden had intervened for the sole purpose of destroying her dream.

Damn him
, she thought, and decided that even if her silence displeased the Ancestors, she would take the secret to her grave. She had fought the lion and defeated it. And after, she had nearly gotten away from the Stone Dogs. Aiden’s showing up had denied her the chance to defend herself or escape, and she refused to take the blame for that. If either of them were guilty of defying tradition, it was Aiden—he who never went against custom….
Unless he has something to gain
, she silently amended.

Her father, looking at the Bone Tree, did not seem to notice Kestrel’s scowl of concentration. “The time has come. Go now, daughter, to your purpose.”

Kestrel squared her shoulders and stepped away from him. As soon as his hand vanished, a tremendous weight fell upon her, as if he had actually been holding her up.

The villagers saw her marching up the knoll and fell silent. Even the rowdy children went still, much as she had done on many occasions when growing up.

Her heart pounded harder the closer she came to the Bone Tree. One-Ear Tom claimed the great oak, with its thick, serpentine limbs hung with tufts of moss and clacking bones, had stood old and tall when their people first arrived here.

Kestrel could believe it, for the tree’s girth was more than a dozen men clasped hand-in-hand could reach around, and its hoary bark was gray and gnarled by countless years. No other tree like it existed in these parts, which gave credence to the idea that it might be a wonder given life by the Ancestors themselves.

At the top of the knoll, the grass gave way to a wide, circular path of quartz gravel, meticulously cleaned of fallen leaves and twigs, and then smoothed with rakes. At the center of the path, just beyond the outer reach of the tree’s great limbs, stood a bench carved from black stone and swirled throughout with veins of rich cream. As far as anyone knew, it had been there as long as the Bone Tree, a forgotten monument given new life by her people.

Feeling as if something were pushing and pulling her at the same time, Kestrel crunched over the gravel and halted before the bench.

No one moved at the edges of her sight, but she felt the weight of their stares—a far heavier burden than she had previously imagined. Sweat beaded on her brow, coursed down her spine. Her pulse jumped in her throat.

Her eyes took in the sprawling lower branches above her, then rose higher. Everywhere she looked, bones hung from slender wires. The lowest still looked somewhat fresh. Those a bit higher had been bleached white by the sun. The highest bones were the oldest, and were gray, cracked, and spotted with lichen.

Hundreds of bones, perhaps thousands. The legacy of all the Red Hands who had come before her.

One-Ear Tom told that a group of wretched survivors during the Great Sorrow had gathered on this knoll, below this ancient tree, and had forged an alliance in order that a few might stand together as one against the hardships of the world.

And so had been born the House of the Red Hand. As a warning to all those who thought to attack them, they hung the bones of their vanquished enemies upon the tree. Over time, rival tribes had learned to fear the Red Hands, and their attacks diminished. In turn, the rite of the Kill gradually replaced human bones with the bones of fearsome beasts.

All that changed when, two years before, Aiden had added the skull of a Black Ear. It swung on its wire, the gaping, sightless eyes seeming to stare down at Kestrel. Some counted Aiden’s deed as an honor to the original Red Hands. Others, like Kestrel’s mother, feared it was an omen of coming trouble. All Kestrel could think was that the bones of her Kill would soon be added to these—