The Dawn Country (37 page)

Zateri rushes to hug me, but hesitates when she sees my bloody shoulder. She stops and just stands in front of me, tears in her eyes. She is a head shorter than I am, and the arm she extends to tenderly touch my good shoulder is skinny. “We were so afraid we’d be too late. As soon as we could escape, we came looking for you.”

Baji breaks in. “Where’s Wrass? Is he … ?” Baji’s eyes suddenly go huge. She is looking to my right, toward the brush.

I jerk around and see a hunched form weaving through the tangle of branches.
No … it can’t be … My heart won’t let me believe …

Baji turns to Auma. “I don’t know who you are, girl, but give me that ax you’re carrying.”

Baji’s tone is commanding. Auma instantly hands it over.

“And I want one of those stilettos,” Zateri says, and extends a hand to Auma, who pulls it from her belt and places it in Zateri’s hand.

Auma sobs, “What if it’s a warrior? What are we going to do? We can’t fight! We have to run!” She starts to back away.

“You can run if you want to,” I whisper. “But I can’t. I won’t. Not ever again.” Though I can barely walk, I stiffen my spine and stagger toward the brush.

“I’m right behind you, Odion,” Baji says.

“So am I.” Zateri’s steps are catlike.

Forty-five

A
s the Cloud People drifted through the night sky, the landscape alternated from pitch black to moon-silvered in a matter of moments. When moonlight streamed through the maples, Koracoo picked out the trail again. Dredged through ankle-deep snow, it cast a crooked black line through the white. Towa was taking the old woman away from the river and out into the dark depths of the forest where gigantic trees loomed.

Koracoo silently paralleled his course. After spending almost one moon on the trail together, she knew Towa: He had an implacable sense of honor. Following his chief’s orders must be tearing him apart. But would he kill her to save Gannajero?

Ahead, a tangled stack of rotted timbers created a dark wall. The trail vanished when the clouds shifted, melting into the utter blackness. Five heartbeats later, it reappeared silvered in moonlight, veered wide around the deadfall, and snaked back into a grove of maples. A few old leaves clung to the branches and rattled in the breeze, but Koracoo heard no human sounds. No feet crunching snow. No whispers.

She circled the deadfall, keeping her eyes on the fallen timbers. The tangle made a perfect hiding place. Wind Mother whistled through the dead branches, carrying the earthy fragrance of decaying wood. One step at a time, she followed the wide curve past the deadfall and halted behind a massive sycamore trunk.

Cloud People darkened the sky again, briefly turning the world dark and cold. She shivered beneath her cape. Her shirt was sweat-soaked from the fight. Now that her body was cooling, the warmth was draining out of her muscles. When the clouds moved on, snowflakes pirouetted from the heavens like white wisps of eagle down, softly alighting on the ground and branches around her.

Koracoo gripped CorpseEye in both hands and examined the way the trail slithered around the tree trunks, heading off to—

A carefully placed foot squealed in the snow behind her. She knew how he moved.

Without turning, she called, “Towa? Let’s talk.”

“Toss CorpseEye aside and spread your arms, then turn around.”

Koracoo reluctantly did as he’d instructed and turned to face him. In the icy wind, his long black hair played around his broad shoulders. She said, “Do you have any idea what you’re doing? This is wrong, Towa.”

As he walked closer to her, his cape swayed around his long legs. “I know you want to kill her. So do I. The gods know she deserves to die for what she’s done, but I can’t let that happen.”

“Do you trust Atotarho? Really? You actually believe the Wolf Clan is going to install her as the new clan matron?”

As Towa came nearer, she could see his grimace. He was having a very hard time with this. “If they do, it’s a death sentence. It may be her birthright, but the other clans will instantly start plotting her murder.”

“Then I doubt that she’ll live more than a few days after you get her home.”

“I doubt it, too. But it’s still my duty to get her there.”

“I admire your loyalty to your chief, Towa, but why would he give you such orders when he knows the other clans will never allow her to rule? You need to think this through, before you—”

“I have.” Towa nervously licked his lips. “I’ve done little else over the past moon. My guess is that once he gets her home, he’s going to turn her into some sort of prize he can parade around to elevate his status among our people. He’ll boast that he captured her; then he’ll send word out to all the surrounding villages so he can sacrifice her to the cheers of a huge crowd.”

“Blessed Spirits.” Koracoo’s hard jaw went slack. Towa had always been the thinker, the one who worked a problem every step of the way until his conclusion was more than probable; it was a near certainty. “That makes perfect sense.”

“The irony is that the only way he could get her to go along with it was to send her the most cherished artifact of his clan—the Horned Serpent gorget. She’d have never believed him otherwise. Never once in the entire history of our people has the gorget left the hands of our leader. Sending it to her was a stroke of genius.”

A flush of revelation sent heat surging through Koracoo. “This journey had nothing to do with rescuing his children, did it?”

Towa gestured weakly. “The only thing I can say for certain is that the story convinced you to help him. You’d have never helped him if it hadn’t been for Zateri, would you?”

She laughed softly. “No.” It didn’t matter now. She had more important things to worry about. “Did Gannajero tell you where she’d hidden Odion and the other children?”

“Somewhere in the forest, that’s all I know, but they can’t be far away.”

Koracoo closed her extended hands to fists. “What are your plans, Towa? You going to kill me to keep me from killing her … even knowing she’s destined to die shortly after you get her home?”

He braced his legs. In an agonized voice, he replied, “From the first instant that Chief Atotarho pulled me into his longhouse and gave me these orders, I’ve been sick to my stomach. I hate this, Koracoo. But please don’t force me to make that choice. I can’t—”

“No, you can’t, good friend,” Sindak called from the darkness. “I won’t let you do something you’ll regret for the rest of your very short life.”

Towa spun to look at Sindak. Though Koracoo couldn’t see him, apparently Towa could. He stared directly into the darkness near the tangled wall of deadfall and said, “What do you mean ‘very short life’?”

“I mean, if you make any move to kill Koracoo, I’ll have to kill you. And doing so will destroy my life, Towa. I love you like a brother.”

“Sindak, what am I supposed to do? Disobey the orders of our chief? How can I ever go home and face my family—?”

“Atotarho isn’t worthy of your loyalty. Don’t you know that by now? All of this has been an exquisitely well-planned ruse to elevate his status. It wouldn’t surprise me if Akio was an unwitting part of it, just like we were.”

Towa’s head cocked. “Are you saying he wasn’t a traitor?”

“Of course he wasn’t. Zateri was the bait to draw Gannajero in. If the chief had called Akio into his longhouse and given him special secret orders to make sure his daughter was captured, Akio would have been just as goggle-eyed with loyalty as you are tonight.”

“You mean … that’s why the chief went out on that Trading mission? It was the setup to make sure his daughter was captured?”

“Makes sense, doesn’t it? You always wondered why he picked the two worst warriors in the village—you and me—to undertake the mission of rescuing his beloved daughter. The only thing that makes it worse is that he actually picked the
three
worst warriors: you, me, and Akio. He must have thought we were idiots. Of course we’ve proven that, haven’t we? Especially you.”

As Towa’s aim began to quake and dip toward the ground, Koracoo said, “Towa, we need to know where Odion and the other children are. Where did you stash the old woman? We have to ask her.”

Sindak called, “Stop being an idiot. Tell her, Towa.”

Towa let out a shaky breath and closed his eyes. He gestured to the right with his bow. “She’s over there, hidden in that copse of dogwoods.”

Koracoo’s eyes narrowed. The copse was only twenty paces away, close enough that the old woman could have heard every word they’d—

Koracoo grabbed CorpseEye and lunged for the dogwoods, running with the club out in front of her to help her keep her balance in the slick snow. When she veered around the dogwoods, she saw the place the old woman had stood, listening and watching. The snow had been tamped down from constantly shifting feet.

Koracoo shouted, “She’s gone!”

Forty-six

A
s Gannajero waded through the snow, headed south to where they’d stowed their canoes on the riverbank, she burned with rage. Most, maybe all, of her men were dead. She could always hire more—that wasn’t the problem. In the past twenty summers, she’d hidden stashes of wealth in ten different places—enough to pay an army if necessary. One of her stashes was less than two days north of here. In four or five days, she’d be back to Trading as vigorously as before. But she had to make it to a canoe before dawn. Her trail through the ankle-deep snow was impossible to hide. The instant War Chief Koracoo had enough light to track, she would come, hunting like a starving wolf following a hapless rabbit.

Gannajero grasped the upthrust branch of a fallen maple and studied the moonlit forest. The gleaming silver patina that covered the trees seemed dull in contrast to the brilliant snow. Ahead, a small clearing created an irregular oval on the low hillside. A deer trail threaded across the snow and through a thicket of brush, then wound through the middle of the clearing. She stepped onto the deer trail and plodded forward. If she were lucky, several deer would run this trail throughout the night, obliterating her tracks. But that would only slow Koracoo down.

As Gannajero headed for the clearing, her rage grew to a conflagration. Her brother thought he could trap her by sending her the sacred gorget!
And it had almost worked.
All of her life, she had dreamed of that gorget. Her earliest memory was of her mother slipping it over her head and saying, “Someday this will be yours.” Though Gannajero wasn’t allowed to play with it, she used to sit next to her mother in council and stare at it. She had counted the stars and knew every graceful curve and color variation in the carving. Deep inside her, in the dark space between her souls, the gorget’s voice lived. It had called to her for thirty-two summers. Even when she was far away in distant alien empires, it begged her to come home. That’s why twenty-five summers ago, she’d made an exact copy for herself. Carved it from memory with painstaking attention to detail. Though she’d known it wasn’t the sacred artifact, it had comforted her. At least until her demented brother stole it from her.

Her gnarled hand rose to caress the gorget where it lay upon her chest. So many times she had tried to get home. Once, when she’d seen sixteen summers, she’d made it to the gates of her village—by then it was called Atotarho Village—only to be told by her brother’s henchmen that she was an imposter. The Wolf Clan said that Atotarho’s only sister was long dead. They’d dispatched a war party to drive her away.

“My brother, the great Atotarho, couldn’t stand to look into my eyes.”

She followed the trail through the brush, and when she emerged, movement on the far side of the clearing caught her eye. It resembled a black spider stepping across the snow on three enormous long legs. Occasionally beads or shells flashed in the moonlight. Then she realized with a start that the “legs” were actually long shadows being cast by three—

A single high-pitched cry of recognition pierced the trees. She gasped and ran. Feet thrashed the snow behind her. Wailing at the tops of their lungs, their voices blended to create one inhuman cry. She kept stumbling over roots and rocks hidden beneath the snow, falling and dragging herself to her feet, plunging on.