The Dawn Country (34 page)

The shorter man says something low, then trots away into the darkness. Dakion props his war club on his shoulder.

Wrass tilts his head, motioning me to come closer. I slide away from Conkesema and go to sit by him. “Wrass, how could she have known that I would be there?”

“Doesn’t matter now. Listen to me.” He reaches into the knee-high moccasin on his wounded leg and pulls out a wooden stiletto. It is made from hardwood, probably maple, though I can’t tell in the darkness, and has been ground to a sharp point. It’s about three times as long as the deerbone stiletto that Sindak gave me. Long enough to puncture a lung or heart. Wrass hands it to me and says, “I made these in case I had to fight off wolves. I have another in my other moccasin, but I don’t think I can …” He clenches his jaw to hold back tears. “When the time is right, you’re going to have to do it, Odion.”

Fear constricts my throat. I close my fingers around the smooth wood. It’s warm from being close to his body. “All right, Wrass.”

I’m scared, but not scared enough to fail him. Wrass risked his life to help me escape, and dying is less frightening to me than letting him down. I glance around at the other children and tuck the stiletto into my moccasin.

Forty-one

S
indak gritted his teeth and glared at the people in the firelight.

Gonda had Hehaka’s thin body clutched against his chest and was growling, “Stop fighting me!”

The boy let out a shrill cry and kicked his legs harder. “No, I have to go to them. They’re my family!”

Gonda glanced at his war club, bow, and quiver where they lay in the snow near the small fire, as though wishing he could grab one. Gonda, as well as he and Towa, still had deerbone stilettos tucked into their leggings, but none of them dared to reach for stilettos until they had no other choice.

“Let me go!” Hehaka shrieked.

“What about your father, the chief?” Gonda yelled in the boy’s ear.

Hehaka’s shrieking dropped to a wail. “He doesn’t even remember me. He won’t know who I am.”

“No man ever forgets his son. He’s probably spent most of his life trying to find you.”

“No one came for me. No one! I used to lie awake praying someone would come. But no—”

“Hush!” Gonda ordered, and turned to watch Koracoo lithely stride into the firelight.

Her short hair clung wetly to her face, highlighting her high cheekbones, full lips, and slitted eyes. Out in the forest, whispers started as men began discussing her. They probably all knew her reputation … and that of CorpseEye. Sindak looked at the club resting in the snow. He was surprised no one had come to get it yet. Did that mean Gannajero needed every man exactly where he was?

Koracoo stopped two paces from Gonda, facing Kotin, and the man’s gaze traced the line of her breasts, narrow waist, and lingered on her hips. He chuckled softly, as though she were already his.

Koracoo, who had undoubtedly endured such arrogance many times, called, “You’re an outcast, little better than a slave. Where is your master?”

Kotin threw out his chest. “I speak for the mighty Gannajero.”

“If Gannajero is here, why am I talking to you? Is she too cowardly to face me?”

Kotin chuckled again, and his yellow teeth reflected the firelight like those of an old dog. “In a few moments, you’ll all be dead. Why should she waste her time—?”

“
Because,
” Towa called, “I bring a message for her from the great chief Atotarho.”

Sindak spun to stare at his friend. As Towa marched past, Sindak said, “What are you doing?”

“Carrying out my chief’s orders.”

“What?
Now?
”

Towa gave him an irritated look, held up his hands, and continued into the firelight. The amber gleam turned Towa’s buckskin cape golden and shaded every determined line in his handsome face.

“Kotin?” a warrior called from behind Towa.

“Let him come!” Kotin said with an exasperated look.

Towa walked to stand on the other side of Gonda so that the three of them—he, Towa, and Koracoo—formed a defensive line in front of the canoes.

“What’s the message?” Kotin demanded to know.

When Towa shook his head, his long black hair swayed across the back of his cape. “My orders are to tell only Gannajero. Where is she?”

Kotin turned to his right, as though looking at someone who stood deep in the forest shadows.

Sindak followed his gaze, but saw nothing. Then the brush rustled, parted, and an ugly old woman tramped out of the trees. Greasy twists of hair fell around her wrinkled face. Her lips were sucked in over toothless gums, but her eyes were like boiling cauldrons of sheer hatred.

“Gannajero! Gannajero!” Hehaka screamed, and threw himself into a fit in Gonda’s arms.

Holding onto him must have been like clutching a wiry weasel with sharp claws. The boy scratched Gonda’s face and throat until Gonda squeezed the air out of the boy’s lungs and left him bug-eyed and gasping. “Don’t fight me!”

Hehaka weakly pounded Gonda’s shoulders. “I—I’ll stop.”

Gonda relaxed his hold enough to let the boy get a full breath of air into his lungs, whereupon Hehaka started sobbing.

The old woman didn’t even glance at Hehaka as she walked over to Kotin. The shells and twists of copper on her cape shook with every move, creating small flashes in the near darkness.

“So,” Gannajero said in a rough gravelly voice, “my brother sent a second messenger to follow the first. Smart. Do you carry the proof?”

Sindak wondered what she was talking about. Atotarho had already sent a messenger to her? Who? What message?

Towa cautiously walked toward her. “Is this what you’re looking for?”

He grasped the leather thong around his neck and pulled the magnificent gorget over his head. When he held it out to her, the enormous carved shell swung back and forth. Kotin’s jaw slackened in awe, probably calculating the extraordinary value, but Gannajero stood absolutely silent and still. Her gaze clung to the gorget, transfixed.

“Bring it here,” she ordered, and extended a clawlike hand.

Towa shook his head. “Not until our negotiations are concluded. Atotarho wishes to make a Trade. He will—”

“Look around you, boy!” Gannajero said. “All I have to do is kill you and your friends and the gorget is mine!”

“Yes, but you won’t have everything that goes with it. In exchange for the rights and privileges of owning this gorget, Atotarho wants both of his children back … and your guarantee that our party will not be harmed.”

“He sold me and my brother into slavery when we’d seen eight summers, and he thinks I
owe
him something?”

The ground beneath Sindak’s feet seemed to tremble.
That’s
what had happened to the twins? Atotarho had sold the children into slavery? Blessed Spirits, it couldn’t be true.

“He doesn’t think you owe him anything. He thinks you
want
something. In exchange, he demands his children.” The gorget dangling from Towa’s hand lowered a little. “That is the Trade.”

Gannajero vented a low disbelieving laugh. “When he sent me his four-summers-old son, his only condition was that I keep the boy alive, and keep my mouth shut. In exchange, once a summer, he sent me a messenger with big bags of pearls. Do you understand? He willingly let me have Hehaka. All these summers I’ve treated the boy as if he were his father. I made Hehaka go through every horror I did as a child. Now, suddenly, my brother offers me everything I’ve ever dreamed of? Why?”

Koracoo flexed her fists. “Do you agree to the Trade, or not?”

Gannajero shook her head, as though denying some inner admonition. “It’s not enough.”

Towa shifted. “What do you mean ‘not enough’? He’s offering you the rulership—”

“I know what he’s offering, imbecile. My brother, the
great
chief Atotarho, grew rich and powerful off spoils that should have been mine!” She thumped her chest. “I’m the one who should have been living in comfort, wielding the power of the clan. But for thirty summers—”

“He only wants his children.”

“You already have Hehaka.” She waved a hand in the boy’s direction and turned slightly away, checking the positions of her warriors.

“M-me?” Hehaka said in a tiny pained voice. He pushed back to stare at Gonda. “The chief wants me?”

“Of course he does,” Gonda said.

Hehaka threw himself into a kicking frenzy. “No! I’m staying with Gannajero and Kotin. They’re my family!”

As though the hidden meaning of the transaction had just dawned on Koracoo, she leveled a glare at Towa. “Hold on. What do you mean ‘rulership’? What are these rights and privileges Chief Atotarho is promising?”

Towa swallowed hard. “The chief, and his clan, are offering to restore Gannajero to her rightful position as matron of the Wolf Clan. If she accepts, she will become the most powerful woman in our world.”

Koracoo’s eyes narrowed, and Sindak knew exactly what she must be feeling: insensible rage. After all the things the old woman had done to their children, and scores of others, her clan was going to reward her with …

Gonda lowered Hehaka to the ground and softly said, “Get in the canoe.”

Hehaka turned to look pleadingly at Gannajero. The old woman shooed him toward the boat. “Do as he says. Get in the canoe.”

“But … don’t you want me? I want to go with you!”

“Want you? I never wanted you. You were my revenge. Get in the canoe!”

Tears filled Hehaka’s eyes. He waited for a few more moments, as though certain she would change her mind. When it was obvious she wasn’t going to, he ran for the canoe. Whimpering, he climbed past Baji and Tutelo, then over the packs to go sit in the rear, as far away from the commotion as he could get. Wakdanek said something to him, and Hehaka jerked a nod, but Sindak couldn’t hear their exchange.

“What about Zateri?” Towa asked.

Gannajero extended her hand again. “Let me see the gorget first. I want to know it’s genuine.”

Towa hesitated. After several moments, he apparently convinced himself it would do her no good to possess it without the rest of the bargain being fulfilled, so he walked forward and extended the thong. Her fingers clamped around it like a bear’s jaws, and she lifted the carved shell to examine it in the firelight. Her lips moved, as though speaking to it, or perhaps counting something. Her eyes widened.

“It’s … true,” she said in a stunned voice. “It’s real.” After five more heartbeats, her cold gaze lifted. “What’s the trap?”

Towa stared at her. “There’s no trap. He wants his children.”

She chuckled darkly. “That hardly seems like him.”

Kotin moved closer to her to stare at it and said, “What about the rest? When do you get all the riches?”

“When I return to the village, fool! Did you think my brother would send a flotilla of canoes carrying all the wealth of the Wolf Clan? Of course not. We—”

“Our business is not finished,” Towa interrupted. Gannajero turned to glare at him, and he repeated, “Where is Zateri?”

Gannajero slowly, reverently, slipped the thong around her neck and adjusted the gorget. It covered her entire chest. “What are your orders once we’ve concluded our negotiations?”

Sindak had been wondering the same thing. It bewildered him that after all they’d been through, Towa had remained loyal to Atotarho.

Towa’s expression was grim when he said, “My orders are to obey you as the new high matron of Atotarho Village and to protect you until you arrive home.”

Sindak blurted, “What? You’re joking! She’s a monster!” Sindak felt betrayed. The Wolf Clan intended to bring this evil old woman back to live among the children of the other clans?
Horrific.
No one would stand for it.

“Those are our orders, Sindak,” Towa replied through a taut exhalation.

Gannajero’s jet black eyes darted from face to face. “And are your cohorts also obliged to serve me?” Her gaze fixed on Koracoo.

A humorless smile turned Koracoo’s lips. “Of course,” she replied, much to Towa’s surprise. “Once the Trade is made, our duty is to help escort you and the children back to Atotarho Village.”

“We will follow you in our own canoe, War Chief,” Gannajero said suspiciously. “So we can keep track of your treachery.”

Kotin said, “When do we get paid? We don’t have to follow you all the way back to Atotarho Village, do we?”

As she stroked the gorget, Gannajero offhandedly replied, “Open my small pack. Pay the new men we hired yesterday. Separate the contents of the pack into six equal piles. Once we are finished here, they’re free to go.”

Kotin walked into the trees and grabbed her pack. As he walked back, he called, “You men. Come down.”

Five warriors trotted into the firelight; then another swerved around Sindak and loped forward. As Kotin doled out strings of pearls, shell gorgets, bags of beads, and sheets of pounded copper, the men giggled and danced around like children.

Gannajero said, “Pick up your earnings and return to your positions. You are still mine until this is finished.”

The warriors grabbed their earnings and ran back to their positions, smiling and yipping like demented dogs.