The Dawn Country (8 page)

Cord bowed his head and nodded. “Of course.”

Gonda scanned the terrain, noting the positions of the boulders and trees. “There’s a rock shelter near that pile of boulders. I say we hide the children in there.”

Koracoo nodded, “Towa, Dzadi, please see to that.”

“Yes, War Chief,” Towa said, and walked toward the children.

Dzadi hesitated. He turned to Cord and lifted his brows questioningly.

Cord said, “Go.”

Dzadi reluctantly stalked over to join Towa.

Koracoo continued, “Sindak, I want you and Ogwed across the ravine, behind that thicket of dogwoods.”

Sindak nodded, and he and Ogwed trotted away.

It disturbed Gonda that she’d split up the warriors, separating friends and forcing men from different peoples to work together. He’d never approved of that strategy. Gonda believed men fought harder with a friend at their back. But his way did not create alliances. Hers did. If an “enemy” warrior saved your life, he was no longer the enemy. She might be a war chief, but she was a peacemaker at heart. And that was another thing he’d never approved of. Peacemakers generally ended up dead.

“What about me, War Chief?” Cord asked. “Where do you want me?”

Koracoo studied the ravine with a practiced eye. “I want you with Gonda, up there.” She aimed her war club at the south side of the ravine.

Cord studied it, considered, and nodded his approval. “Good thinking. We’ll have clear shots.”

Gonda and Cord trudged up the slope to take their position.

Nine

B
right, tree-filtered moonlight streamed across the forest. Cord shifted, and his movements repeated in vast amorphous shadows on the surrounding boulders. When Gonda frowned at him, he went still. Fatigue had made him as stupid as a clubbed dog. If he wasn’t careful, he’d get himself—and everyone else—killed. The true sign of his fatigue was that he was almost past caring. He sucked in a deep breath. The night breeze carried the damp exhalations from the kicked pine duff underfoot. He concentrated on the scent, using it to focus on staying awake.

“Are you all right?” Gonda whispered, barely audible.

Cord shook his head, and Gonda nodded in understanding. Gonda was a warrior. At some point in his life, he’d probably been in similar circumstances, so exhausted his brain seemed to have gone to sleep with his eyes wide open.

“Do you want to sleep for a few moments?” Gonda asked. “You don’t have to be awake until we see them. It might help.”

Cord shook his head. “No. I’m not sure I’d wake quickly enough. I have the feeling that when I can finally sleep, I won’t awaken for days.”

“All right. But we can’t afford to have you dozing off in the middle of the fight.”

“I won’t.”
Blessed gods, let it be so.

Gonda turned to watch the trail again. He was a thin, wiry man with a round face. His short black hair had been chopped off with a knife, and he had a heavy brow that resembled a shelf over his brown eyes. Unlike the Flint People, who sewed finely tailored coats, he wore a plain buckskin cape that blended perfectly with the forest shadows—as was the way of the Standing Stone People. Dark splotches of blood spattered the cape’s front. Recently, he’d been in a deadly battle.

With whom?

Cord’s thoughts wandered, imagining the fight, and his head started to fall forward. He jerked upright and shook himself. It took an act of will to keep his eyes open. Whether he wanted to or not, very soon, sleep would claim him. His body would simply be unable to stave it off.

“What are you doing in Dawnland country with four children, Gonda?” he asked softly. “Are you uncommonly brave, or dim-witted?”

Gonda answered without taking his gaze from the trail. “Well, it’s a long story.”

“Tell me, if you can. It will help me keep my eyes open.”

Gonda glanced at him and smiled faintly. “Twenty days ago, our village was attacked and destroyed by Mountain warriors. They stole several of our children. Koracoo and I went after them. In the process, we had occasion to stop at a Hills People village, Atotarho Village—”

“Why would you stop there? Atotarho is an evil old sorcerer, and he hates all Standing Stone People. As well as Flint People, for that matter.”

“Well, that’s another tale. Let’s just say that Atotarho’s daughter had been captured in a raid, and he believed she was with our children.”

“Why did he think they were together? That makes no sense.”

Gonda braced his elbows on the boulder, supporting his bow and whispered, “Do you know the name Gannajero?”

Cord’s heart seemed to stop. He pinned Gonda with cold eyes. “Gannajero the Crow. She’s a Trader. But what she Trades in is so abominable, men have been trying to kill her for more than twenty summers. If she weren’t so cunning, none of us would ever mention her name again.”

“Soon, I will personally make certain her name is forgotten.”

Names were clan property. Immediately after birth, a child was given a name that had belonged to a revered ancestor. After the deaths of evil people, names were retired forever and no one mentioned them again.

Somberly, Gonda said, “Gannajero purchased our children, as well as Atotarho’s daughter.”

Cord bowed his head for a long moment, trying to blot out the horrors he was seeing on the fabric of his souls. Gannajero bought and sold children to satisfy the unnatural appetites of men who deserved to be dead. He wondered if Gonda and Koracoo had reached their children before anything bad had happened to them. “How long ago did you rescue your children?”

“Last night. Gannajero was in your victory camp, buying and selling children.”

Cord licked his dry, cracked lips. “I don’t recall seeing a woman Trader.”

“Nonetheless, she was there, with our children.”

That meant they’d been Gannajero’s slaves for more than half a moon. Too long to have gone unharmed. “Sindak and Towa are Hills warriors. Atotarho’s?”

“Yes. He sent them with us to help rescue his daughter—or so he said.”

“You doubt it?”

In a low, seething voice, Gonda replied, “I doubt every word that came out of Atotarho’s mouth.”

“You are wise, Gonda. He has a reputation for deceit that is unrivaled—except perhaps by Gannajero’s.”

As Grandmother Moon rose like a glowing ball over the treetops, she painted the forest with seashell opalescence. Every twig appeared to have been hand-polished to an unearthly shine.

Gonda said, “Gannajero still has one of our village children, a brave boy named Wrass.”

“Why do you say he’s brave?”

“He sacrificed his own freedom last night to make sure the other children got away. Every moment that we are delayed here, our chances of saving him grow slimmer.”

“How old is he?”

“He’s seen eleven summers. He’s four moons older than my son, Odion.”

An ache entered Cord’s chest and gradually filtered through his entire body. “My son had seen twelve summers.”

“Had?”

“Yes, he—he was killed, along with my wife, when the Mountain People attacked Wild River Village two summers ago.” Cord had been standing on the palisade catwalk when he’d heard Lazza, his wife, scream. She’d been clutching both children’s hands, dragging them through the thick smoke, trying to outrun five warriors with war clubs. It was a miracle his daughter had survived the blows to her head.

Gonda whispered, “Blessed gods, when will we stop killing each other?”

“When we all have food in our bellies. But not until then. The gods must give us back the rainfall and the warmth, or our great-grandchildren will still be fighting.”

Hunger stalked the land, and had for a long time. The elders said that the past one hundred summers had been unusually cold and dry. That’s why the corn, beans, squash, and sunflowers rarely matured. The growing seasons were too short. Meager harvests made people hunt harder, but after so many summers, the animals were mostly hunted out. When people couldn’t feed their children, they had to take what they needed from nearby villages. Stealing had become a way of life. When it failed, war became necessary. The battles had gotten particularly violent in the past twenty summers. No one was safe.

“As a boy,” Gonda said, “I remember the elders telling stories of a time when hundreds of small villages scattered the countryside. Can you believe that? People felt safe enough to live in small villages?”

“It was a different world. I do not believe we will ever see that again, not in our lifetimes.”

Gonda exhaled hard. “No, but sometimes at night, I dream of it.”

For as long as Cord could recall, smaller villages had been combining for defensive purposes. They built larger longhouses to accommodate the increased population and moved in together, then surrounded the new village with a thirty- or forty-hand-tall palisade of upright logs. Sometimes, they built two or three layers of palisades.

Cord surveyed the locations of the other warriors. On the opposite side of the ravine, Ogwed hid with Sindak behind the dogwoods. Cord could just barely see the outlines of their bodies through the dense tangle of branches. His gaze moved. Twenty paces up the slope, Dzadi and Towa were almost invisible in a pile of tumbled rocks. Just to their right, the four children had slithered into the low rock shelter; it was barely big enough for them to lie flat on their bellies. He could not see or hear them. They were as silent as the dead.

Cord did not know where Koracoo had hidden, but it was a measure of his exhaustion that he’d been content to allow her to lead the party. That and the fact that she had a powerful presence. Dangerous. Competent. And heart-stoppingly beautiful.

Without being consciously aware of it, his nocked bow sank into his lap. He heaved a breath and braced his forehead against the cold gray boulder. He needed to save his strength. Surely he could just close his eyes for an instant without …

His breathing instantly fell into deep soothing rhythms. Five heartbeats later, his dead wife knelt before him and smiled.
Lazza, what are you doing here?
He lifted his hand. She took it and kissed his calloused palm, then lovingly rested her cheek upon it.
I know you’re tired, my husband, but you mustn’t sleep. Soon, but not yet.

A moccasined foot lightly kicked him. “Cord? They’re coming.”

Gonda’s voice had been very soft, but Cord woke breathless, rigidly still. “How far away?”

“Two hundred paces up the trail.”

“How long did I sleep?”

“Maybe sixty heartbeats. Not long.”

Cord gripped his bow, shook himself awake, and rose into position. He aimed down at the trail that ran along the base of the boulders.

A short time later, one hundred paces away, just beyond the range of their bows, a circle of dark shapes came into view, melted together, and whines and yips erupted. All around the circle, vague forms slinked through the moonlight.

“I don’t believe it,” Gonda hissed.

In the brightest patch of moonlight a boy of no more than twelve summers appeared. He moved with commingled distrust and daring, cautiously observing the shadows, then walked into the ravine. His nostrils flared and contracted, then flared again, as though he’d caught their scent but wasn’t certain where they were.

Cord studied him. He wore no cape or coat. His ribs stuck out through a threadbare shirt, and his stomach had shrunken up tight against his backbone. His lean face had the desperate alertness of a dog that hasn’t eaten in days.

“He’s starving,” Gonda whispered.

“Don’t get sentimental. He and his clan killed two of my men tonight.”

Gonda’s mouth tightened into a white line. “He looks hungry enough to have swallowed them whole while they were still screaming, moccasins and all.”

“In one case, I think he did.”

“Why would they send a boy?” Gonda whispered. “Do they think we won’t shoot a child?”

“I’m staying my bow, aren’t you? Is anyone else letting fly?”

Gonda gave him a knowing glance. “Good point.”

The boy stared up at the boulders in a strangely wistful way, patiently waiting for something. What? After perhaps one hundred heartbeats, he loped away to rejoin his comrades, and a whimpering, snarling cacophony arose.

Gonda released the tension on his bowstring. “I wish they wouldn’t do that.”

“It does fray a man’s nerves, doesn’t it?”

“What do you think they’re up to?”

Cord squinted at the moonlit trail. “The boy’s telling them where each of us is hidden—at least those he could spot.” He frowned at two warriors who had curled up on the ground, in the manner of sleeping dogs, taking rest when and where they could. Another lazily stretched his arms over his head and yawned. Three, wearing wolf headdresses, were engaged in a ritual he did not understand. They crawled forward on their bellies, ingratiating themselves to a tall warrior. Close by, two more were jealously slinking up and down the trail. The thing that most interested him, however, were the four people sitting together as though in council. Elders?

Cord said, “I see thirteen.”

“But you and I both know there are more out there.”

“Yes, probably working their way into position around us. Do you think the four people sitting in the circle are elders?”