People of the Nightland (North America's Forgotten Past) (49 page)

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Authors: W. Michael Gear,Kathleen O'Neal Gear

BOOK: People of the Nightland (North America's Forgotten Past)
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A lung. She punctured a lung.
Goodeagle could hear shouts from beyond his shelter. Had they caught her?
He forced himself to his feet, wincing, hating the fear more than the pain. He staggered past the hanging, wandered down the tunnel, and stopped short, propping himself against the cold ice, heedless of his bare skin.
“Dead!” a warrior called, running toward the front. “The Guide is dead! Murdered!”
More shouts broke out from near the entrance. Goodeagle coughed, feeling warm fluid on his lips.
He forced himself to stagger forward, blinking, feeling as if his soul were already loose in his body.
He slumped to the floor, oddly weak, and watched the milling confusion as Bishka and Rana were overrun by the pressing crowd. In an endless stream, people hurried past, filing into the caverns.
Goodeagle watched them go, coughing blood, gasping for breath. He leaned back against the ice, thankful for the cold on his skin.
No one noticed him, but the Nightland People continued to pass, shouting in fear and confusion. It all grew faint as Goodeagle began to shiver.
The pool of blood around his buttocks spread, frothy and red, as his life drained away.
“Bramble, Windwolf, I’m so sorry … .”
He toppled on his side as the world turned gray.
T
he spruce gave way to willows as Kakala led the way down the sloping bank that led to Lake River. He pushed through the greening stems of willows, aware of the first mosquitoes that hummed up from the damp earth.
Summer would be coming, and with it, a plague of insects. Time was close when he’d need to brew a concoction of spruce, sticky geranium, and nightshade leaves to mix with grease. The concoction worked to keep the worst of the mosquitoes, bots, and black flies at bay.
But that was for another day, assuming they all lived that long. By pushing, they had reached the river, and just in time. He had seen the worry on Windwolf’s face as the weaker of the captives that dogged their path dropped behind. Now only three women remained with them. All Windwolf had managed to save.
Kakala stepped out onto the gravel shore. Was it his imagination, or was the river running higher? The normally wide channel should have been covered by interlaced snakes of current. When he had crossed no less than a moon past, there had been six distinct channels. Now there were four.
“I don’t know,” he muttered as the rest of them stepped out onto the
rocky beach beside him. “Water’s up. Most of the stones in the ford are covered. Think we ought to make camp and try it in the morning?”
Skimmer fixed him with her oddly luminous eyes. “No. Karigi is right behind us.”
Kakala looked back at the willows, able to see the tips of the spruce rising above them. “You’re sure?”
“Trust her,” Windwolf said, as he wearily stretched his tired muscles. “Only a fool argues with a Dreamer. She may serve Raven Hunter, but he also serves his Dreamer.”
“We go,” Keresa decided, her attention on the river. “But if Karigi’s that close, we should take measures.”
“Wade up the current? Hide our trail?” Skimmer asked in a hollow voice. “No time.”
Kakala took matters into his own hands, picking his way through the rounded stones to the first channel. He splashed into the water, trying to remember where the shallow places were.
Cold leached through his moccasins, biting his tired feet. He stared at the water, reading the ripples of current, winding his way across the slippery bottom. The amount of silt in the water surprised him; it obscured the bottom, hiding the rocks he hoped to use for purchase.
Behind him, Skimmer, Kakala, Windwolf, and the rest followed behind.
“You know what you’re doing?” Windwolf called over the purling water.
“Of course,” he lied. “This was my main trail south. I had to cross this every time I made a raid.”
But the river hadn’t been running this high. He looked nervously upstream. Had a storm passed? But when? And why hadn’t he seen the distant clouds?
“The end of the world, War Chief,” Skimmer chided, her knowing eyes flashing. “We don’t have much time. You had best hurry.”
Kakala wadded onward, sloshing through the cold water, wincing as the current tried to pull his feet off the rounded rocks.
He was up to his thighs, fighting for purchase, as he studied the rushing water. What gave the current such added strength?
Slogging into shallows, he reached back, giving Skimmer a hand. Her skin was cool against his; her knowing smile as she met his eyes sent a curious calm through him.
What was it about her? He shook his head, making sure the rest climbed, dripping, onto one of the rocky islands. Even as he watched, the water seemed to be rising, creeping in around dry stones.
“Come on,” he ordered, almost trotting across the dry rock and wading into the next current.
Then he stopped, staring at the rocks. Yes, that black one. A gravel bank lay just to the west of it. He changed his course, splashing along upriver as he hurried.
“Look!” Windwolf shouted, pointing.
A tree came floating down the next channel, branches broken, roots rotating as the great pine rolled along with the river.
“One of those catches us, we’re gone,” Keresa reminded.
Kakala led them safely to the next narrow strip of dry riverbed. He thought he heard a faint shout over the sound of the river, and looked back. The willows they had just left remained empty, almost forlorn in appearance.
Kakala watched as one of the Sunpath women stumbled, went down, and scrambled for shore. She emerged wet to the bone, looking cowed and worried.
The great tree had been beached, water breaking around the roots where it had come to rest against a submerged rock.
“No time to waste,” Skimmer cried, wading into the next of the braided channels.
“No!” Kakala barked, pointing. “Over here. It’s shallower.”
He hurried forward, feeling the cold in his feet. Gods, they were already going numb! That’s when he noticed the first piece of ice. He took a second glance, seeing a thin band of gravel in it as it floated past. Glacial ice? Here? This river drained Loon Lake, and he could think of no glacial ice anywhere around the perimeter of Loon Lake.
So where did it come from?
With rising unease, he frowned at the silt-choked water, trying to remember the path he’d used to cross last time. The great rock with the white quartz scar was the key. He lurched to the downstream side, where the current split, following a long flat rock that lay just under a U-shaped ripple.
Then he took a step, lost his footing, and sank. Cold washed around him, numbing, shocking his skin. He floundered around, losing his grip on his darts, letting the current take them. He got his feet
under him and pushed off the bottom. Orienting himself, he fought the current and climbed up on a submerged gravel bank.
“I don’t know another way!” he cried. “We’ll just have to cross it.”
He watched Skimmer bravely leap, splash, and almost keep her feet as she fought her way across. Then, one by one, they each made the crossing to the shallows.
“Trouble!” Keresa called as she rose dripping from the water. She pointed back to the bank.
Warriors were emerging from the willows they had just left. Kakala squinted across the distance, recognizing Karigi out in front. The river drowned the man’s orders as he gestured his men forward.
“Does he know the ford?” Windwolf asked.
“As well as I do.” Kakala turned, trotting into the next channel. He knew this one: Take the route that winds between the two gray boulders. Each had a long gravel bar behind it.
He sloshed through the water, stepped in a hole, and went down again. Fighting for purchase, he struggled as the current whirled him around. Frantic, he braced on a stone, and floundered ahead. Behind him, the others were coming, but one of the women was in trouble. The current was carrying her downstream.
“Leave her!” Skimmer ordered. “There’s no time.”
“But, someone—” Windwolf began.
“No!” Skimmer pinned him with hard eyes. “We make it now, or die!”
Kakala forced his way ahead, taking a quick glance over his shoulder. Karigi’s men were splashing through the first channel, war darts in their hands.
“Up there!” Skimmer pointed as she hurried beside him. “That high rocky point!”
Kakala nodded, seeing where shale bedrock rose above the bank. A narrow trail led up the side, a place more fitted to deer than humans.
He splashed into the final channel, wading through water up to his chest. Mercifully, the current was slow here, but it kept dragging him downstream, his progress more swimming than anything else. Then, with each sodden step, he rose higher, finally climbing out on the rocks.
Karigi’s warriors were crossing the second channel, just out of dart range.
“Hurry!” He pulled Skimmer up, indicating the trail. “Climb! Help the others up.”
He pulled Keresa, and then Windwolf up the steep bank. Kishkat stopped to help, adding his strength as the floundering women, fear bright in their faces, were pulled from the water and started up the nearly vertical trail.
Windwolf stared at the pursuing warriors. “I don’t suppose you have any ideas? I lost the last of my darts splashing around in the river.”
“We all did,” Kakala replied. “Let us hope they lose theirs, too.”
Windwolf chuckled grimly, then attacked the steep trail. He made it partway up, moccasins slipping on the mud left by others. Kakala watched him grab a root and muscle himself up.
He barely heard the hissing dart over the growing roar of the river. It missed his shoulder by a finger’s width and splintered against the shale.
Kakala scrambled for the now-greasy trail. He leapt, caught Windwolf’s root, and prayed it would take his weight. Spruce root was fibrous stuff, good enough for constructing baskets. This one ripped loose, dropping him a couple of hands’ length, then held.
Handhold by handhold, Kakala pulled himself up until Windwolf reached down to jerk him the rest of the way.
Gasping, Kakala flopped onto the moss-covered soil and asked, “Now what?”
He looked back at the river. Four lines of Karigi’s warriors were tracing their way across the channels.
 
 
K
eresa took long enough to ensure that Kakala was safe, then looked around. “We need weapons.”
Windwolf nodded. “Did we lose all of our darts?”
“Oh, yes,” Kakala told him darkly. “Running isn’t going to do us much good, either. Not with that many behind us.”
“Sticks, rocks, anything. Find them!” Keresa ordered, staring desperately around the shale formation on which they stood.
“It is time.” Skimmer’s voice had an eerie certainty that stopped Keresa short.
“Time?” she asked.
Skimmer unlaced the leather bundle from her belt and walked to the high lip of the shale formation. She raised the bundle high, a soft Song rising from her lips.
Windwolf started forward to pull her back out of sight but Kakala laid a hand on him, saying, “No, this is Power.”
Keresa searched her soul, trying to hear the words that Skimmer Sang. They seemed oddly familiar, but alien, as if from another language. Then an odd prickling sensation began along Keresa’s limbs, as though a warm wind was blowing.
A dart hissed through the air above them and vanished among the spruce branches. Keresa ducked, dropped to her belly, and crawled up to the edge. The river below them was washing over the small beach where they’d just passed.
“I wish she’d get down,” Windwolf muttered as he slipped up next to Keresa.”
“Can’t you feel it?” she asked.
“Feel what?”
“The Power.”
“No.”
Keresa shook her head. “You belong to Wolf Dreamer.”
In the river, Karigi’s men were having troubles of their own. As she watched, two of the lead warriors waded into one of the channels, fighting the current, searching for footing. Both went under at the same time, bobbing up to be carried away thrashing and splashing. One managed to pull himself out in waist-deep water; the other continued to flounder about as he was carried farther downstream.
The great pine, Keresa noted, was no longer beached, but had been washed away. Two of the small islands they had crossed were no longer visible. A large chunk of ice came bobbing and spinning down the closest channel.
Skimmer’s rich voice called, “Come, Raven Hunter! The time is now!”
Keresa watched in horror as the waters rose, sweeping more of Karigi’s warriors away, whirling them about, whisking them downstream. Others turned back, desperate to return to the far bank. Some even made it.
“Karigi!” Kakala pointed as he came to kneel beside them.
She could see the war chief where he had climbed up onto a great
boulder, wet and bedraggled. He kept looking about him in bewilderment as more and more of his warriors lost their footing and were swept away.
Terengi started to crawl up on the rock, only to have Karigi kick him viciously in the face. The man fell back, splashing into the current, and was carried headlong in the rush of the murky waters.

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