The Broken Land (49 page)

The boy’s jaws worked, but no sound came out. Gonda patted his shoulder again, said, “You fought bravely today. No man could have done better.” He moved on, stepped between two dead bodies, headed for War Chief Deru.

Deru had just stood up thirty paces away. His massive shoulders bristled with old leaves. In profile, his face was dark and still, his caved-in cheek nothing more than an oddly misshapen shadow, a hole in his head. He clutched his war club in a bloody fist.

Warriors slowly moved among the thick brush and piles of boulders, getting to their feet. Their faces had flushed, their eyes gone blank with shock. Lips moved; tears ran down cheeks. Friends covered the dead grass, their arms and legs twisted at impossible angles. For as far as any of them could see … bodies. Hundreds. No, thousands. They filled the valley. Great swaths of blood had turned the snow the shade of fire.

Gonda walked to Deru. They stared at each other. Despite the fact that they faced each other from less than eight hands away, Gonda was having trouble focusing his eyes. He kept blinking, trying to clear them. Over Deru’s shoulder he saw the woman warrior, Wampa, standing with her feet braced, her shaking bow pulled back, guarding four wounded warriors, men with barely the strength to weep and stare up at her with utter devotion in their eyes. She had perhaps been the only thing that had stood between them and death.

From deep inside him, Koracoo’s long-ago voice whispered,
“Like stunning beauty, true bravery has no cause, no reasons or motives. It is an offering, given without a thought.”

Gonda hung his head.

Deru looked at him with a tight expression Gonda had never seen—the expression of a man bleeding to death inside. Deru said nothing, just stared. Gonda felt an eerie turning, like a mortal wound pumping the heart dry. Then he saw Deru was crying. The war chief was crying. Gonda moved closer and said sternly, “We’re not finished. Not yet.”

Deru lightly shook his head. “No, we are not.”

“We need to form up our warriors. We’ll attack the flanks. Pick off as many as we can.”

Deru wiped his face on his sleeve. “How many are well enough to fight?”

Gonda looked around. He counted perhaps thirty warriors on their feet. Thirty. Thirty out of five hundred. The rest … the rest would never fight again. “Enough to hurt them.”

Deru gave him a grim smile, and the gesture made his crushed cheek twitch. He called, “Gather as many dropped arrows as you can. Fill your quivers! We’re heading back into the fight.”

Warriors gave each other empty looks and slowly turned to collect arrows, war clubs, axes. They moved like dead men still on their feet, but just barely.

Gonda said, “What’s your plan?”

Deru squinted at the thousands of Hills warriors rushing toward the villages. Though Atotarho had taken heavy losses, there had to be four thousand warriors still in the fight. Four thousand Gonda could see, which didn’t count whatever the chief had in reserve waiting in the forest to the south. Deru didn’t seem able to speak. He kept shaking his head, swallowing.

Gonda cast a glance at the men and women beginning to crowd around them, waiting for orders. He moved closer to Deru and whispered, “I say we swing around the western edge of the marsh. Come up from the south using the cornfields as cover. Then decide what to do. What do you think, War Chief?”

Deru stared at the marsh for a long time, as though trying to see it in his souls. “Yes. Yes, let’s do that.” He turned to his warriors. “Follow me. We’re going around the marsh!”

He lifted a hand, waved his warriors forward, and took off at a slow trot, heading for the dense stand of cattails wavering through the mist.

Fifty-six

Z
ateri watched the battle with her arms folded tightly beneath her white cape. Each time she shifted, the blue wolf paw prints that encircled the bottom of the cape seemed to be running, trying to escape. She felt sick. The people standing around the fire with her seemed as stunned as she was at the swiftness of their progress. The worst part of the battle remained ahead, however. Laying siege to fortified villages was usually a waste of lives, not that her father cared. All he wanted was to destroy the Standing Stone nation.

As War Chief Sindak re-formed the Hills lines around Yellowtail and Bur Oak Villages, there was a brief respite in the fighting. The shouts and war cries yielded to the low moans of the injured and dying still on the battlefield.

Zateri studied her comrades’ faces. Kwahseti, Gwinodje, Hiyawento, and Chief Canassatego stood quietly, warming their hands before the flames or sipping cups of rosehip tea while they waited for the next assault to begin. Hiyawento’s dark eyes had a glazed look, as though he was seeing through the battle to something far beyond, and she wondered if perhaps he was not living in the past with his daughters. Just behind Zateri’s eyes, their sweet faces were always there, their arms lifted, begging to be held. Their bubbling laughter filled her ears. Hiyawento had always been able to smile Zateri out of her fears, to comfort her. She longed for the feel of her cheek against his broad chest and his strong arms around her. But when she looked at him, she knew this man was not going to smile, or offer comfort, for his own unbearable pain had swallowed his world.

Zateri turned to see her father. He rode upon his litter with a regal tilt to his gray head. Carried by four warriors, the litter jostled and rocked as the men maneuvered it into place three hundred paces from Bur Oak Village. When he slid his crooked body off the litter, his black cape looked stark against the snow. A log bench was immediately constructed so he could sit down. From there, Atotarho would observe the final collapse of his enemies. He must be gloating, laughing. As she watched the chief’s personal guards setting up his war lodge—little more than tented poles covered with deer hides—hatred seeped through Zateri’s grief.

Kwahseti gestured with her chin. “There’s a runner coming.”

The runner slowed thirty paces away and walked the last distance to reach her fire, where he bowed deeply. “Matrons, the chief wishes you to move your forces into position south of the villages. When the cowards try to flee, he wants the leaders captured and held.”

Zateri nodded. “Very well.”

The runner looked around nervously. He’d seen eighteen or nineteen summers. Irregularly chopped-off black hair hung around his narrow face, which made his nose look abnormally long. “There is one other thing, Matron Zateri.”

“Yes?”

He wet his lips. “The chief wishes me to inform you that he has received word that the high matron is walking the Path of Souls.”

The ground seemed to fall away beneath her feet. After her mother’s death, Grandmother had been the only person in the world who’d cared enough to help her heal after Gannajero. She’d nursed Zateri when she’d been sick, taught her everything about clan politics, and held her when her heart had been broken. The loss, along with that of her daughters, seemed to open a gaping black chasm in her souls. She had the uneasy sensation that she was teetering on the edge, about to fall in where she would lose herself in the icy darkness. She said, “When?”

“Four days ago.”

Zateri straightened. “Thank you, warrior. When we return home, I will call the Wolf Clan—”

“That won’t be necessary,” the warrior interrupted as though he knew he had to get it out now, or he never would. “The chief says you should not worry about the succession. The former high matron left instructions that she wished Matron Kelek of the Bear Clan to replace her as high matron. She—”

“What!” Kwahseti lunged forward to stare with her fists clenched. The runner looked like he wanted to crawl under a log. “She would never do that! It’s a betrayal of the other Wolf Clan ohwachiras!”

“Nonetheless, Matrons, the chief has already spoken with Matron Kelek. At this very moment, she is—”

“She had better not be making preparations!” Gwinodje’s voice seethed. Her face had gone livid. “Our clan will not give up rulership so easily, and you can tell that to Chief Atotarho!”

“I understand.” The runner bowed again, turned, and jogged away.

Everyone turned to Zateri. Their expressions were outraged. Gwinodje’s thin girlish body was shaking.

Kwahseti waved a hand. “Zateri, why didn’t you say anything? You know your grandmother wished you to replace her. She said as much at the last meeting of the ohwachiras!”

A sudden frightening sensation rose and pervaded everything, stealthily closing in around her. When it settled into her chest like a frozen stone, she shivered. “He’s been clever, hasn’t he?”

Kwahseti frowned. “What do you mean? He just stole your inheritance. You are the rightful—”

“He’s been planning this all along, and I did not guess it. Perhaps I am not fit to lead anyone.”

“You no longer have the luxury of speculating, Zateri,” Kwahseti said. “Will you or won’t you lead the clan?”

Gwinodje was staring at her, waiting. “You must decide, Zateri. Once you accept, we can begin organizing the ohwachiras and pulling the little clan matrons together.”

Zateri stared out at the battlefield. Grandmother had wanted this. In fact, the False Faces had come to her … Zateri looked down at her white cape, and a flood of certainty rushed through her. “Yes! I accept. If the ohwachiras will have me, I will lead them. Now, what do we do about Atotarho’s order?”

Chief Canassatego’s leathery brown face tensed. He glanced down the hill at Atotarho, sitting hunched over on his log bench, then back at those gathered around the fire. “I, for one, refuse to accept this farce. I will not support a chief who moves without the consensus of the Ruling Council. He consulted no one, not about the high matron’s position, nor about the attack on White Dog Village. Does he think he alone rules this nation?”

Gwinodje added, “I agree. Either the chief follows the will of the people, which is guaranteed by the Ruling Council’s efforts to seek the consensus of the people, or our alliance crumbles.”

Kwahseti stood irresolutely for a moment. Then, bracing herself as though for a fistfight, she said, “Well, what are we going to do about it? We’re in the middle of a battle. We’ve just been given orders.”

“Orders we should refuse to obey.” Hiyawento seemed to have come back to himself. His voice sounded strong, confident. His dark eyes flashed. Though he’d said nothing during the exchange, his indignation was palpable. “Matron Zateri, is it your decision that I lead the Coldspring Village warriors into this fight?”

Zateri watched the mist moving through the valley below. The sky was completely overcast now. Elder Brother Sun’s gleam had all but vanished, leaving the land gray and dim. The temperature was also dropping. The fog seemed to be growing thicker, filling the valley like dove-colored smoke.

“I must consult with Chief Coldspring and the other village clan matrons.”

“As we all should,” Kwahseti said.

“Then let us do so immediately,” Gwinodje urged. “We don’t have much time to get organized. You all know, don’t you? If we do this, Atotarho will label us traitors and turn his forces against us. We had better be ready. In fact we had better—”

A sharp cry rose from down the hill near last summer’s cornfields. Zateri spun to look and saw two of her scouts hauling a young woman up the hill. The woman was struggling against them, fighting, and the warriors seemed to be enjoying themselves, hurting an enemy woman.

Hiyawento’s eyes suddenly flared, and he shouted, “Release her, now!”

The warriors dropped her arms as though they’d turned red-hot and stared at their war chief in confusion. As soon as she was free, the young woman lifted her skirts and ran up the hill like a boy, trying to get to Hiyawento.

“Do you know her?” Zateri asked. She was beautiful, with an oval face, large dark eyes, and … “Blessed gods, that’s High Matron Kittle’s granddaughter, isn’t it? She looks just like her.”

“Yes. And Sky Messenger’s betrothed. Her name is Taya.” Hiyawento ran down the hill to meet her, took her arm, and led her to the fire.

Taya was crying. Tears traced lines through the dust on her face. “I’m sorry, I—I didn’t know how else to get here without being killed. I told the guards I needed to see you, that I knew you.”

Gently, Hiyawento said, “That was the right thing to do. You do know me. Why are you here, Taya?”

She wiped her face with her hands, sniffed her nose, and stiffened her spine. After a few heartbeats, when she’d controlled herself, she said, “The Ruling Council of the Standing Stone nation wishes to make you an offer.”