The Broken Land (25 page)

“Don’t you want me to trust you? I have to know something about you before I can do that. Was this woman a warrior? Her name is Baji, isn’t that right?”

The fish had started to drip fat into the flames; it sizzled and spat. The delicious scent of roasting trout rose. Sky Messenger slowly lowered himself to sit cross-legged on the ground. “If you know her name, you must know many things about her. What else have you heard?”

She made an airy gesture with her hand. “I know she is an enemy warrior from the Flint People. You’re always comparing me to her, aren’t you? She’s supposed to be a great warrior. I’ll bet she walked with the silence of a wolf. I’ll bet she never spoke too loudly, or used her paddle improperly on the river, or—”

“No, she didn’t. You’re right,” he said bluntly. “She was perfect in every way. She …” His face changed suddenly, softening, as though a memory had just caught him off guard. He shook his head as though angry with himself. “Taya, she is out of my life forever. I’ll never see her again. You are going to be my wife. Why does it matter?”

Gitchi rose and trotted over to flop down beside Sky Messenger. As he propped his gray muzzle on his paws, his gaze went back and forth between them. The wolf seemed to have a preternatural ability to know the worst possible moment to intrude upon their conversations. Though, it occurred to her, Sky Messenger must think they were the best possible moments. When he reached over to scratch Gitchi’s head, it gave him the opportunity to change the subject.

“I know you’re frightened and don’t wish to be here, Taya. There’s a Dawnland village not far from here, a safe place. I know the village Healer, and the deputy war chief, Auma. Would you like me to take you there while I continue on? You’ll be warm and well fed. I’ll return for you as soon as I’m done.”

Like a fish out of water, her mouth opened, then closed, struggling for breath. “The Dawnland People are our enemies! I don’t want to go to any of their villages? Are you mad?”

His mouth quirked. “As far as I can tell? Almost certainly.”

“That is
not
amusing.”

She had seriously considered the possibility that his afterlife soul was out wandering the forest. He lurched upright in their bedding almost every night and stared out at the darkness as though he was searching for something, or someone, maybe even counting the eyes of the evil Spirits that had them surrounded. The prospect that he was mad? Not amusing in the slightest.

“I know what your clan says about me, Taya. They call me a fool. Try to understand, only a mad fool would accept the path I am on. I—”

“Then why don’t you give it up?”

“Because madness is what is required.” He spread his arms. “Look around you. What sane man would believe peace is possible?”

Sensing an opening, she leaned toward him and pressed her lips to his. Startled, he just sat there for a few instants; then he kissed her back, but there was no emotion in it. She might have been kissing a brother.

When she leaned away, she looked up at him somberly. “Why don’t you ever hold me? Do you hate me so much?”

His smile faded. He heaved what sounded like an exasperated sigh and wrapped his arms around her. She propped her chin on his shoulder and watched the snow fall across the river. He held her like that until the skin on the fish started to peel and brown.

Finally, he pulled away. “Let’s eat. You’ll feel better.”

He rose and walked around the fire. As he slid two fish from their sticks and into her bowl, Gitchi wagged his tail and licked his lips in anticipation. Sky Messenger handed Taya’s bowl to her.

She took it and immediately pulled off small strips of white flesh and ate it. It stayed down.

Sky Messenger filled his bowl and set it aside. Then he removed the skewers from the last two fish and rolled them in the snow to cool them before calling, “Gitchi, come on.”

The old wolf got up, shook off his coat, and trotted forward wagging his tail. He grabbed one of the fish and chewed it up. The second, he swallowed whole, though it took three tries to gulp it down.

Sky Messenger picked up his bowl and returned to sit beside Taya.

The phrases
mad fool
and
madness is what is required
kept circling around in her thoughts. The more she thought about them, the more ridiculous they sounded. “Can’t you at least try to be sane?”

His hand, holding a piece of fish, stopped halfway to his mouth. He turned to look at her. His high cheekbones and slender nose caught snowflakes that melted and ran down his face like tears. “No.”

Annoyed, she looked away. Across the fire, Gitchi’s yellow eyes were fixed upon her, as though watching to see if, at last, she understood.

Taya said, “I hate that wolf. He always looks at me like I’m the one who’s the fool.”

Sky Messenger paused, seemed to think about it, then went on eating as though she hadn’t spoken at all.

Twenty-six

H
iyawento clutched his white arrow in both hands and walked across the Bur Oak plaza behind Koracoo. Two guards flanked him, their eyes roving the mass of refugees who’d started to knot up to watch him pass. None of them knew who he was, thank the Spirits. To them, he appeared to be a man of the Standing Stone nation, which made the white arrow he carried all the more interesting. They whispered behind their hands and pointed, but no one made a hostile move toward him. Behind them, along the palisade, dead bodies were stacked like firewood, awaiting burial. The fever must be taking a great toll. Snow had collected on the gaunt faces, filling in the hollow cheeks and sunken eyes. In the growing darkness they seemed somehow unreal.

“Now, listen to me,” Koracoo said when they stood beneath the porch of the Deer Clan longhouse. “To the matrons you are less than dirt, something to be scraped off their moccasins. They won’t even meet with you in the council house. High Matron Kittle and two clan matrons have agreed to sit at the same fire with you. Three refused. That’s the best you’re going to get. You will do well to speak as little as necessary, and listen as much as possible.”

“What about Chief Bur Oak?”

“He won’t be there. Be happy you’re still alive. The chief was not in favor of that.”

He nodded. “I understand. Once again, I owe you more than I can ever repay.”

Koracoo walked forward, pulled aside the entry curtain, and ordered, “Sit on the mat across the fire from our high matron.”

She remained standing outside with the two guards while Hiyawento ducked beneath the curtain and into the firelit warmth of the Deer longhouse. It was smaller than the longhouses in the Hills nation, stretching only five hundred or so hands long. Around twenty fires burned down the central aisle, and he could make out firelit faces watching him. Many were ill. Coughs and moans laced the air. He walked sunwise around the fire and seated himself on the empty floor mat between two elderly women. The woman to his left looked to have seen around forty-five summers. Short black-streaked gray hair fell around her gaunt face. The white wolf tracks on her blue cape marked her as the matron of the Wolf Clan in Bur Oak village. The woman to his right was Hawk clan. Interconnected red spirals encircled the top of her white cape. She was much older, perhaps sixty summers, with white hair and a deeply wrinkled face. He must know them. He’d grown up among the Standing Stone People, but he didn’t recognize them.

He focused across the fire on High Matron Kittle. Despite her extraordinary beauty, her gaze was like a burning stick thrust in his vitals.

She opened her hand to the Hawk Clan matron. “This is Matron Sihata and”—her hand shifted to the matron of the Wolf Clan—“this is Matron Dehot. You, however, are dead to your people. You have no name here. If we refer to you at all, it will be as the ‘nameless one.’ Is that perfectly clear?”

“Yes, High Matron.”

Kittle lifted her perfect chin and stared down her straight nose at him. “Deliver your message.”

He placed the white arrow on the mat before him and braced himself. “The Ruling Council of the Hills nation would like to know if the Ruling Council of the Standing Stone People is prepared to have all of its villages destroyed. As Sedge Marsh Village was.”

First, Kittle’s large dark eyes blazed like sunlit jet; then her mouth contorted into a killing rage. She sprang to her feet with her breast heaving and shouted, “You can tell High Matron Tila and Chief Atotarho that if they ever threaten us again, we’ll—”

In a very quiet voice, Matron Sihata broke in. “If it pleases the High Matron, I would ask a question.”

Kittle clamped her jaw and glared. “Of course.” She grudgingly sat back down.

Matron Sihata smoothed the red spirals on her cape for a few moments, clearly letting emotions settle, before she asked, “Why you? Why did they send you?”

Hiyawento tilted his head, reluctant to explain, but answered, “Because I was born among your people.”

“Then they believed they were sending us one of our own, a man who might make it into our villages before we realized who and what he was?”

“Yes.”

Kittle leaned back carelessly and gave him a cold smile. Her beautiful face was inscrutable, but there was a diabolical gleam in her eyes, as though something amused her greatly. “What a tragedy. They consider you to be one of our people, and we consider you to be dead. It seems you have no nation, Nameless One. How does a man live without a nation?”

He blushed as humiliation coursed through him, and prepared to say something, to tell her that his family was his nation, and it was none of her … But he stopped himself. Koracoo had told him to speak as little as necessary. He held his tongue and stared straight across the fire at her with no emotion whatsoever on his face. At least, he hoped the dim firelight hid his flush.

Matron Dehot softly said, “We sent Sedge Marsh Village baskets of freshly picked ears of corn. We didn’t even shuck them first, though we could have used the husks for our own purposes, to make sacred masks, to weave into mats, to burn in our fires. You should tell the Ruling Council that the charity of the Standing Stone nation is not reserved strictly for our own people. If the hungry come to us, as both Sedge Marsh Village and White Dog Village recently did, we will feed them, no matter their nation. No matter our own needs. The Standing Stone People, especially Yellowtail Village, has fed more than a few of your war parties returning from attacks on the Flint People.”

Hiyawento said, “And we are grateful, Matron. That is one of the reasons we have a sort of undeclared truce between us. Our warriors do not wish to attack you.”

“Well, isn’t that gracious of them?” Matron Kittle said in a mocking voice. “We can all sleep easier knowing that when they come to kill us, as their Ruling Council threatens, at least the Hills warriors will feel badly about cutting up our children and feeding them to their dogs.”

Kittle’s tone was like salt rubbed into an open wound. Hiyawento slowly asked, “Will you stop trying to make alliances with Hills villages?”

Kittle looked as if she was enjoying herself, and when she spoke there was odious ring to her voice. “No. We will not.”

Matron Sihata’s white head tottered on her neck. “This council has, many times, discussed the possible ramifications of feeding our enemies. It is our sovereign right to make alliances whenever and with whomever we please. Would the Hills Ruling Council wish us to tell them how to conduct their political affairs?”

Hiyawento didn’t respond. They all knew the answer was a hearty no, and he was getting the feeling that his hold on life was becoming more tenuous with every breath. He just nodded and picked up his white arrow. “Then if the council has no more use for me—”

“Apparently,
no one
has any use for you,” Kittle said with suave brutality. “Get out of our country as fast as you can.”

He rose to his feet, bowed deeply, and ducked beneath the door curtain. Koracoo stood a few paces away, speaking with four warriors. Beyond them, light snow fell upon the roofs of the hastily constructed refugee houses—little more than lean-tos cramped against the palisade.

“Speaker?” Hiyawento called.

Koracoo turned and, instantly, she and the guards marched forward, closed ranks around him, and escorted him across the dark plaza.

In a confidential voice, she said, “The balance is precarious now. Tomorrow we will start preparing for a great battle with your people. I pray cooler tempers prevail and no one suggests that we take the fight to the Hills People first, before you can invade our country.”

“Someone will, Speaker. Someone always does.”

Koracoo swung CorpseEye up to rest on her shoulder. “Go home. Tell Tila she is courting disaster.”

“I will.”

She dismissed the guards and walked through the gates at Hiyawento’s side. When they stood beneath the sheltering chestnut branches, she said, “I regret that we will not have a chance to speak more. Tutelo was very much looking forward to that.”

“I was, too. I was hoping to see Tutelo’s children and meet her husband. And I was especially looking forward to hearing about Sky Messenger’s—”