Copper Falcon

by W. Michael Gear

  “Take your warm-up,” I offered, surrendering the course.

  He took his position, and I realized his build, though tall, was slight; the apron seemed to widen his hips and gave him an awkward stance. Really, to be successful, he needed to wear something that fit closer to his skin.

  The youth launched well, sprinting forward, bending, rolling his stone. The lance’s transition was smooth, the cast made with poetic grace. I faced no raw youth—which on reflection should not have been a surprise. This was, after all, a Four Winds Clan court, and we were playing in the literal shadow of the reincarnated Morning Star’s mound. Morning Star, who invented chunkey in the Beginning Times. He had played against the Giants for his dead father’s head and had brought the game to the world of men.

  In the gray light, I could see his lance hit within a pace of where his stone had stopped. He might be a boy, but he was good.

  The light had brightened by the time he returned, the grin still there. His face, I noticed, was a delicate triangle, the eyes large. I wondered what he’d look like when he hit that spurt of growth that turned a boy into a man.

  “For the first point? If you’re ready.” He gestured at the court. “I’ll measure your cast; you measure mine.”

  I nodded, took my place, and cradled my stone. Stilling my thoughts and senses, I took a deep breath, then charged forward. Stopping short of the penalty line I watched my lance arc toward the slowing stone. When we reached my lance the youth measured it with his cord. Knots were tied at equal intervals, allowing precise measurements. He counted twenty-two knots and handed me the cord.

  Returning, he took his place, and cast. Trotting down, we measured his at twenty-four knots. My point. I got to twist a point stick into the ground.

  After that, things turned interesting. He took the next two points, and I began to worry. Taking turns, we set ourselves, charged forward, bowled our stones, and cast. It seemed that we were trading point for point. Despite the hour, a crowd was drawn by the intensity of our match.

  I had just taken my position, balancing my stance, every sense attuned and visualizing the cast I was about to make. Just then a worried voice, cried, “Lady! There you are!”

  My concentration shattered, I turned to see an older woman hurrying across the grass toward us. Two burly warriors followed her. Looking bored, they held war clubs casually in their hands and gave me no more than a dismissive glance.

  Lady?

  In the growing light, I really took a good look at my opponent, at the lines of … yes, her body.

  “You’re a woman?” I blurted stupidly.

  She fixed those large, dark eyes on mine, a wary smile on her lips. “Half of all people are, you know.”

  “But chunkey is a man’s game!”

  “It is thought so.” Her brow furrowed. “Probably because only men seem to play it.”

  “But I—”

  “Lady Night Shadow Star,” the older woman interrupted, “I’ve been looking all over for you. Tonka’tzi Red Warrior requests your presence. A messenger is coming. He carries word about Red Wing Town. Something important, something for the Tonka’tzi’s ears alone!”

  Lady Night Shadow Star? I know I must have been gaping like an idiot, because the woman’s two warriors were laughing at me.

  “You know what this means, don’t you, Field Green? Makes Three has taken the town!” Night Shadow Star cried as she leaped into the air. “I just know it. He’s coming home to me.” Her face lit with such relief and joyous anticipation.

  She turned, tossing her stone to me. “I yield. It’s a fair Trade. Power is sending me my husband back!”

  I barely managed to catch the beautiful white disc before she’d spun and sprinted away like a desperate deer toward her palace where it rose in black silhouette against the rose-tinged dawn.

  The woman, the one called Field Green, gave me a weary smile. “The way that girl loves her husband …? It’s almost unnatural.”

  Then she turned, scurrying after her mistress, at the same time waving the guards ahead with the admonition, “Well, hurry up, will you!”

  *****

  For the next hand of time I lounged around, killing time at the foot of the Keeper’s mound and worrying. I saw the messenger’s party—twenty panting warriors dressed in finery, with feathers bobbing at each hammering impact of their sandal-clad feet, sweaty faces stern, polished wooden shields held before them—when they came down the Avenue of the Sun. In the middle ran the official courier, his pack of beaded message belts riding high on his back, the painted and copper-clad staff of office with its ruffling eagle feathers held before him.

  The people parted like water split by a canoe’s sharp bow. A ripple of curiosity flowed out in a human wake. And then the party was gone, vanishing into the crowds that milled at the base of the Morning Star’s great mound.

  I tossed Lady Night Shadow Star’s beautiful chunkey stone up and deftly caught it, feeling the heft and balance of a perfectly crafted gaming piece. In my part of the world, such a stone would tempt a man to gamble his life on the mere chance he might acquire it. Here, the lady had just tossed it to me, as if in afterthought.

  No matter how this turned out, all I had to do was get this stone home, and I’d be a rich man. The river chiefs would trade a whole season’s harvest for a stone that had once belonged to Lady Night Shadow Star of the Morning Star House at Cahokia!

  “War Chief Flint Knife!” A sharp voice broke my reverie.

  I turned to see Bear Heart Tenkiller, his face grim, eyes hard. At his gesture six warriors surrounded me.

  I shot a wary glance at the men, Earth clans, all of them. They watched me with calculating eyes, war clubs at the ready.

  “Bear Heart? Who are these men? I don’t know what you think you’re doing, but I’m—”

  “You’re summoned to the Keeper’s. Your father has a message for you.”

  As the warriors prodded me forward, I asked, “I don’t understand. Why do you care? You’re Evening Star, you said.”

  His thin lips curled as if hiding a smile. “It never pays to underestimate the Keeper, or the people who work for her.”

  It hit me: He’s one of her spies! Pus and blood, what had I told him last night? Anything that could be considered treasonous or threatening?

  By then we were climbing the long ramp, its wooden stairs shivering under our weight. At the top I touched my forehead respectfully as we passed the Eagle guardian posts, and I was ushered across the veranda and into a palace that made the opulence I’d seen in Green Chunkey’s seem paltry.

  The wall benches were carved magnificence. Above them hung gleaming copper-and-shell reliefs. Colorful fabric hangings were everywhere, as were exquisite carvings of the Spirit Beings, the Four Winds spirals, and an accumulation of war trophies. The floor matting, in the Cahokian style, had been woven in one piece, carried in whole, and laid across the packed clay. A fire crackled in the central hearth. Behind it, on a raised dais, the Keeper was being dressed, her people fitting a beautiful feather headdress to her gray hair.

  She fixed gleaming eyes on mine, as if measuring my souls. A deer felt that same sick realization when it discovered a hunched cougar staring down from a higher ledge.

  Glancing past the servants and slaves, I located Father, seated on a bench on the south side, his wrists bound. Two guards stood over him and now watched my arrival.

  Without hesitation I hurried over to him, heedless of my following escort.

  “Are you all right?”

  “Fine.” He barely hid his sarcasm. “The Keeper’s company can only be described as charming. Somehow I’ve made her late to a meeting at the Tonka’tzi’s Council House. News from the north, I gather.”

  “Get to the point,” Bear Heart interjected before I could respond.

  Father shot him the kind of look he’d give a water moccasin before he smacked it with a club. Then he fixed me with his intent gaze. I could see both strain and indecision in his face as he sai
d, “I have made a deal with the Keeper. As part of our agreement, I need you to return to Horned Serpent Town and collect our warriors. As soon as you have everyone together, return immediately to the canoe. It must be on the river and headed home with our warriors aboard by tomorrow morning. You need to be in Copper Falcon Town within a moon.”

  “A moon? But I don’t—”

  “You don’t need to understand. Given the limited time you have, you’d better be hitting the trail to Horned Serpent Town if you’re going to be on the river by morning.”

  “Father, this—”

  “This is an order from a high chief to his war chief. That is all.” His expression had hardened.

  “I don’t understand,” I muttered in T’so, my sidelong gaze trying to read Bear Heart’s satisfied glint.

  “Do it,” Father insisted in T’so.

  Bear Heart tapped his war club. “We said, no foreign tongue.”

  “My war chief will follow his orders,” Father declared hotly. “He is not some undisciplined barbarian.”

  That was uttered for my benefit, and it stung me to the core. “I’ll follow orders,” I growled. “But what about you?”

  “I’m staying here for a while.” And I heard the lie when he added, “It’s taking longer than I thought to get a squadron together.”

  The way he was looking at me, the desperation he struggled to hide, all sent a shiver of fear through me.

  What’s going on?

  In a voice dripping with resignation, he said, “You have your orders, my son. Go. Give my regards to the people. Be the man I know you can be.”

  For a long moment the silence stretched, my heart torn. Nothing about this was right. The tension in the room hummed like a tight gut string. I wanted to scream, to strike out. But I had an order from my chief. And no choice but to obey it, or disgrace my father, my honor, and my family.

  Trembling with rage and fear, I jabbed my fingers at my forehead in a gesture of respect, shot a seething glare at the grinning Bear Heart, and another promising mayhem at the Keeper, who, now fully dressed and ornamented, watched us like some all-knowing buzzard.

  I stiffened, turned on my heel, and had barely taken a step when an older woman burst in the door. She ran to a spot before the fire, dropped to one knee, and bowed before she cried, “Keeper! I am sent by Field Green. Bad news! The Red Wing heretics in the north have destroyed the Morning Star’s army. The great War Chief Makes Three is dead, his body hung in a square for the heretics to defile. But there’s worse….”

  The people reacted with stunned silence. Even given my previous confusion and turmoil, I had trouble believing what I was hearing: The Morning Star’s army destroyed?

  The Keeper hurried forward to stare down at the kneeling woman. “What is worse?”

  “It’s Lady Night Shadow Star, Keeper. When she heard, she broke down into the most hideous screams and wailing. Field Green barely managed to rip an arrow out of Night Shadow Star’s hands before the lady could plunge it into her own breast. She vows she will not live without her husband, Keeper! You must come! Now!”

  The Keeper didn’t hesitate, barking, “Smooth Pebble! I need my litter. Now!” She pointed at my escort of warriors. “You! Outside. Bear my litter.”

  The warriors bolted like passenger pigeons from a sharp-shinned hawk. I watched the entire household crowd out the door in the Keeper’s wake, the flurry of shouts and confusion building as the servants and staff hovered outside on the veranda.

  “You’d better be going, too,” Bear Heart told me, his expression grim. He, too, seemed torn by the desire to follow the Keeper. “Before you do, however, I want Lady Night Shadow Star’s chunkey stone.”

  “She gifted it to me.”

  “It’s not hers to gift. It belongs to the Morning Star House. Such a piece deserves better than to go south with some renegade traitor’s son.”

  Instinct is a curious thing. His insolent tone, the fact that he’d duped me in the clan house, that Father was lying to me—something triggered my response. I pivoted, put all my weight behind it, and slammed the stone into the side of his head.

  Bear Heart dropped like a fallen oak.

  Even as he sprawled, I ripped the keen chipped-stone blade from his waist and bent to saw at Father’s ropes. As I did, I asked, “What’s this all about?”

  “Cahokian politics. Green Chunkey is getting a little too independent for the Keeper’s comfort. She and the Tonka’tzi are looking for a means of reining him in and bringing him back in line. The deal was that I would claim to be Green Chunkey’s agent, come to make mischief. They would use that admission as a means of pressuring Horned Serpent House into submission. In return, you and our warriors would be allowed to leave in peace, and when Makes Three’s victorious army returned to Cahokia, a squadron would be dispatched to Copper Falcon Town to deal with the T’so.”

  The ropes parted. I helped Father to his feet. “Makes Three isn’t bringing any army home.”

  “And you may have killed one of the Keeper’s most influential spies with that knock to the head.” Father slapped my shoulder as he sprinted for the back of the room.

  “What are you doing? We’ve got to go!”

  “Just a moment.”

  On the wall, to the right of the great Four Winds carving, hung a copper falcon the length of my arm. A master had beaten the metal into a thin sheet, then placed it over a wooden form and used dowels to mold the metal into a three-dimensional image of my family’s spirit helper.

  Father reverently lifted the copper falcon down, then whipped a hemp-fabric shirt off one of the sleeping benches.

  As he charged past me, wrapping the valuable piece to hide its shape, he added, “Some things can’t be relinquished; this is one.”

  At the door we hesitated and looked out. The Keeper’s entire household was crowded at the top of the stairs, staring down at the drama below. No way we were going down the stairs.

  “This way,” Father hissed, sprinting for the north side of the veranda. We ducked out of sight around the corner of the palace. Next thing I knew, we were skipping and sliding down the steep clay-sided mound.

  We’d no more than made the bottom when I heard the shout, “Traitorous vermin!”

  I looked back up to see Bear Heart, his good hand to his bleeding head.

  “I’ll get you, find you, you pus-licking maggots! You’ll die screaming on my squares!” Even as he bellowed, he sagged, disoriented. Almost falling, he braced himself on the palace wall and bent double to throw up.

  “He means it,” Father said grimly. “We’re in real trouble.”

  *****

  We hid in the dim recesses of a dome-shaped sweat lodge, where water was poured on hot stones to create a steam bath. This one served a collection of Panther Clan houses that crowded together in the shadow of a temple dedicated to Old-Woman-Who-Never-Dies.

  Crouched in the gloom, we could hear the cries of disbelief outside. All of Cahokia was in dismay over the news of Makes Three’s defeat in the north. I couldn’t help but think of Night Shadow Star, of the vulnerable expression on her face as she talked about her husband. As I fingered the chunkey stone she’d given me, her smile and excitement replayed between my souls. From the love in her eyes, I could well imagine her trying to kill herself at the news, and my heart ached for her.

  Father sat cross-legged, the beautiful copper falcon propped on his knees as he ran the tip of his finger over the metal. I’d never seen such a reverent look in his eyes, and to my astonishment, I caught the gleam of a tear as it streaked down his cheek.

  “Are you all right?”

  His smile hinted of barely repressed joy. “Great-grandfather traveled north in his youth. Up in the copper lands, on the shores of the great lakes, he dug this metal, cracked the stone away, and bore it here. High Chief Gizi’s best coppersmith did the work, pounded the copper flat, pressed the metal into the shape it now has.”

  Father paused wistfully, then added, “It was my fa
ther’s most valued possession, and upon his death, it became mine. When I was taken and exiled, it was still my property. That she had it ripped from my hands? For that I will never forgive her.”

  I reached out, tracing the smooth metal with a caressing finger. I felt the Power, crackling like rubbed fox fur. I could sense the souls of my grandfathers, who had cared for this piece with such reverence.

  “I am holding the only heritage our family has left. Living all those years without it, it was as if part of my souls were missing. I have longed for this, wished to touch it, to feel the presence of my father, and his father before him. More than anything I want that for you, for your sons.”

  He gave me a weary smile. “This is the reason our town is called Copper Falcon.”

  “We should be moving, Father. Stopping here was a bad idea.”

  “Even if we beat them south to Horned Serpent Town and collect our people, they’ll still have warriors waiting for us by the time we reach the canoe landing and find Sixkills and Cut Hand. We have two legs of the triangle to run. They have one.” He paused. “No, we have to play coyote to their wolf and accomplish our escape through cleverness.”

  At that moment the doorway darkened, and a voice called, “Ah, here you are?”

  Father had already whipped the cloth over his precious copper falcon. I’d almost jumped out of my skin, but had the sense to stuff Night Shadow Star’s chunkey stone into my pack.

  “Seven Skull Shield?” I cried as his muscular form slipped inside and dropped to a crouch.

  “At your service, good Four Winds.” The rascal shrugged his muscular shoulders in a dismissive manner. “Such a day, wouldn’t you say? Chunkey games, news of disaster in the north, Lady Night Shadow Star wailing and keening in grief … and a shocking escape by one of the Keeper’s captives? The whole city is in chaos.”

  “What do you want?” Father demanded, and I could feel him crouch, ready to pounce.

  I held a hand out to stay Father. “How did you find us?”

  “Followed you,” Seven Skull Shield replied as casually as if discussing the weather. “And along the way asked a couple of friends to accompany me. Just in case, you know. I wouldn’t want to underestimate anyone who could blindside Bear Heart. At my last glance, he could barely stand, let alone get a sentence out without throwing up. Quite a knock you gave him.”