The Next Skywatcher: Prequel to The Last Skywatcher Triple Trilogy Series (The Last Skywatcher, Anasazi Historical Thrillers with a Hint of Romance Book 1)

by Jeff Posey

  “No, I didn’t know him. Never spoke to him. But I remember seeing him. I grew up and started a family in Three Waters before it grew into a town.”

  Tuwa remembered Three Waters, where three raging rivers came together, two days’ jog from his home village of the Twins. “I’ve been there with Grandfather,” said Tuwa. He leaned back on a well-used reed mat and stretched his tired legs.

  “I remember a small boy with him,” she said. “That must be you.”

  Tuwa couldn’t believe he’d met a woman who remembered him from his youth. “I’m sorry I do not remember you,” he said.

  “You had no reason to notice me. My husband was a farmer. A good man, he was. But after the Day Star, they forced him work stone on the tallest walls in the canyon. The height frightened him. Six rooms high, with plans for a narrow row of seven rooms atop that. No one had ever built anything that tall before. They took every able man from the northern villages and made them work. I followed him and tried to keep him fed. He would not eat the vile food they provided, so he began to starve. He lasted two summers. Then they sent me here. I miss mountain air.”

  Tuwa asked why they sent her south.

  She shook her head. “It’s like asking a rock why it sits in the desert. They do whatever they want. If you refuse, they do things that people never do to other people, even enemies. You’ve seen their pointed teeth. In the old days, they were more animal than human. Now they’re all animal with no human.”

  “I’ve been gone for three summers.”

  “Since the Day Star That Faded.”

  “Yes.”

  “Nothing has been the same since. They do everything now in a frenzy of madness. You see no men here, do you? They took them all away. Now it’s women and a few elder men and baby boys. In the old days women ran the villages and families, and men behaved themselves. But those Southern animals don’t listen to their women and elders. They do whatever they want, and what they want is too often unspeakable.”

  “Are they strong in number?”

  “We send girls now as messengers. It used to be runner boys, but now it’s only girls. This helper girl of mine who does not speak, she saw what those animals do. Kill and butcher and…. I will not say it. There is good reason for her not to speak.”

  “You mean in villages? Outside the canyon?”

  “Entire villages, from newborns to eldest. And they always choose witnesses to tell the stories.”

  “Why? What do they want?”

  “Everything. The harvest from our crops, meat from our hunters, pots and baskets and firewood and building timbers and able-bodied men to carry stones and young women to….” She shook her head. “These are not men. You kill them, and no human spirit goes to the other side. They have the cold spirits of snakes.”

  Tuwa closed his eyes and tried to imagine the whole region under threat, how people would react. Surely groups of men somewhere would resist. Would fight back. He and his orphans couldn’t be the only ones.

  “Do you know of any men who refuse? Who fight?”

  Haki shook her head slowly. “All who resist die.”

  “How far must Ihu go to get help?”

  The woman tapped the girl at her feet on the head and whispered something to her. The girl ran to their room and returned with a tiny hand loom, and the old woman began testing the threads and working it before she spoke. “They move without pattern that I can see. If they happen to be nearby, they could arrive by first light.”

  Tuwa saw Sowi turn and stare at the old woman, his body ready to spring into action. Even Choovio tensed. They both heard and it put them on sharper edge than they already were.

  “If not,” the old woman continued, “he’ll have to go to the canyon. Young runners can do that in one day. More like two days for a regular patrol. They are not men, but they tire like men. Are lazy like men.”

  “So we have at most three days if Ihu has to go all the way to the canyon,” said Tuwa.

  “If they believe him.”

  “Why wouldn’t they?”

  The old woman swung her marbled eyes to him, aiming their blank gaze over his left shoulder. “A half-patrol killed by children? Orphans? That evil little man, the top warrior, will laugh at Ihu.”

  “Maybe Ihu will lie and say we are giant warriors from far away,” said Tuwa.

  The old woman smiled. “You are wise, young man. That hairless coward may indeed do something like that.”

  Tuwa asked what she recommended they do.

  She began working her loom furiously. Tuwa thought she might try to finish the piece before she spoke. “Send the little ones away,” she said at last. “This village is dead. Everyone is gone but the ones you see here. But there are farming families scattered in all directions. They hide as best they can from the warrior patrols. The few girls we have left in the village know how to find them. They will lead your littlest orphans. Send them with valuables and food enough to share.” She went quiet and sent the smooth loom stick with a thread tied through a hole at one end back and forth, dipping beneath the cross threads, then she packed the loose threads tight with the tapered tip of the stick.

  “What else, Grandmother?”

  “Your older orphans can obviously fight.”

  “Yes. We are used to defending ourselves. The Pochtéca makes us practice.”

  The woman sighed and stopped working her threads. “Archers?”

  “Yes.” Tuwa looked at Sowi, the eldest archer. “Six or seven. With small jungle bows and short arrows. Good for short range and close quarters.”

  “Can they shoot from the roof up there down to this courtyard?” The old woman pointed to the second-story roof behind her.

  Sowi locked eyes with Tuwa and nodded. “Yes,” said Tuwa. Choovio turned to face them.

  “Hide them there with every arrow you have,” said the woman. Of course, Tuwa thought. They had never fought in a village before, only on natural ground. This blind old woman’s mind still worked well.

  “What trade goods do you carry?” asked the woman. “What is the red-hat fool carrying to those black-hearted people in the canyon?”

  Tuwa hesitated. He’d only just met this woman. Should he reveal all? Or hold back? But she made him feel he could trust her, so he took the risk. “The Pochtéca guards his shirt with bells most carefully. And we have feathers of colorful birds, beads of green stone, and rainbow-colored shells from the bitter water that stretches to the horizon.”

  She nodded in thought. “Put it in there,” she pointed to a row of low single-story rooms across the courtyard, “and hide your best close-in fighters there. Are there watchers out on the road?”

  “Yes, Grandmother.”

  She laid back and relaxed as if the effort of thinking and speaking had depleted her. “Get the young ones on their way. And your other people in place. Then we sleep and wait.” She closed her eyes a moment and then raised her head again. “If Ihu runs a patrol hard to get here, they will stop outside town and rest before they attack. They will send archers wide to surround us and drive your sentries into town. They will be hard to stop. Very hard. You must draw them here, into the courtyard. When the close fighting starts, the archers will rush in. That’s when yours must be ready.” She laid her head back and turned her face away from Tuwa.

  He stood and called for Kopavi, Choovio, and Sowi. He asked Kopavi to organize sending away the youngest ones and to distribute her entire supply of arrows to the archers. He asked Sowi to collect and position the archers, and Choovio to gather the trade goods into a single room and place the best club-and-knife fighters there.

  Choovio made a hand sign that meant consider it done and left.

  Sowi and Kopavi jogged to her store of arrows. Tuwa nodded to himself. In a short time, they would be as ready as they could be. He watched Sowi take a large bundle of arrows toward the roof. He used to be afraid the talkative boy would bolt and run. But Sowi’s actions rarely matched his words. When trouble came, he always knuckled into
it.

  Tuwa saw Kopavi begin waking the young ones. He admired how she crafted deadly arrows, and could even shoot faster and better than Sowi, yet she also kept a sense of motherly gentleness about her.

  He found his bowl of soup sitting still full and cold. He raised it to his lips and drank it in three swallows without noticing the flavor. He wiped his mouth and looked at the sleeping old woman.

  “Grandmother,” he whispered. Her eyes fluttered. “More soup?”

  “No,” she said, smacking her lips. She sat up. “It’s not spiced well enough to waste on an old woman.”

  Tuwa smiled and imagined how feisty she must have been as a young woman.

  “I know you are tired, Grandmother, but I must know more about what is going on here. To help my people.” He said it to mean the Pochtécans. But he realized it could also be taken to mean all the people of his homeland.

  The woman sat up straighter. “Fetch me a drink of water and I’ll answer your questions.”

  Tuwa refilled her drinking bowl and she slurped it empty. “Now. You ask. I will answer.”

  “No, Grandmother. We don’t have enough time. Tell me what you think I need to know.”

  “Who are you to say no to the Eldest Woman?” she snapped. Tuwa tensed at having offended her, and said nothing. She moved her hand loom to her lap. Then sighed. “You’re right, Grandson. This is not a time for manners and customs. You listen. I will talk.”

  Tuwa noticed Sowi on the roof above. He quieted the other archers and listened. Choovio had stopped working and stood beside the dying fire, his right ear pointed toward them. In his hands, he held a short bow strung with an arrow. Archery did not come easily to him, and he tried to compensate by often holding a bow and arrow, as if he would acquire the skill to use them from handling the tools.

  The old woman spoke of violent men who arrived at Center Place Canyon from the dying civilizations to the South before and after the Day Star, more than she could count. She told how a man called The Builder convinced the ruling Southern Alliance that large structures, higher than any before, would make the Earth-gods happy and bring ever-greater power to them. Tókotsi, chief of the Alliance, embraced The Builder and gave him the title of High Priest. Hordes of crazy Másaw-worshipping warriors arrived after that and Tókotsi appointed a man named Pók their chief with the directive to induce the local farmers to provide food and labor for The Builder’s projects.

  Tuwa glanced at Sowi when Grandmother said “Pók,” and saw him nodding his head and gesturing his hand in obscene laughter. It sounded similar to the word for dog excrement, Póku. Even Tuwa allowed himself a tight grin.

  Grandmother Haki said it had been the hand of Pók that sacrificed so many during the first full moon after the Day Star, on that awful altar with The Builder as High Priest giving his blessing. After the Day Star faded from the day sky, but still shined bright at night for two more winters, Pók directed Másaw Warriors to terrorize and force more and more men from outer villages to shape and haul stones for the new high-reaching structures of the canyon. Men like Grandmother Haki’s husband. After Grandfather’s death and the collapse of the Northern Alliance, there was little resistance.

  She scanned the plaza with eyes that did not see and worked her mouth as if she sucked a piece of gristle. Tuwa watched the first young orphans begin marching into the night, full burden baskets on their backs, following girl guides from the town. He felt empty inside, a pause before something awful happened. Even though the younger ones would be spared, he worried that a large force of warriors would surprise them at any moment and murder them all. What should he do? He wished The Pochtéca would awaken and be himself and tell them what to do.

  “Man corn,” the old woman spat. Tuwa startled and looked at her, confused. “That’s what they tried to feed us. Your Grandfather was only the first. After him came many, many others. Two from every village and town every day as long as the Day Star showed itself. We cursed it. I still do.” She spat.

  After another drink of water, she explained how the warriors forced the cooks to make man corn to feed the men like her husband who worked even in the dark, to the light sometimes of only stars and the wicked Day Star That Faded. And even more Másaw-worshipping, pointy-toothed warriors arrived from the South, and Pók fed them the same, but they liked it. Even after the Day Star became a Night Star That Faded, they sent out patrols to kill and eat entire villages, mainly those to the north, to force the remaining villages to send more corn and beans and squash and wood.

  “Our high country was…there are few left,” she said in a weak, tired voice. “Only women and old men in hiding, keeping the secrets and wisdom of the old ways. Many villages stand empty. Most of what we had is lost forever.”

  After they’d terrorized all the villages to the north, she said, they started raiding from the ones on the south side of the canyon.

  “This town may be the first, I don’t know. Our top man resisted at first. So they took all the men and the strongest women. Then Ihu came three days ago saying Tókotsi had given this town, called Black Stone because of the color of the rocks from which it was built, to Ráana, Tókotsi’s grandson. He also announced that the red-hat trader was coming.” She breathed audibly for a few moments, her anger deeper than her words. “These people are willing to destroy anything, even as they build those pointless empty stone buildings in the canyon. This will distress you because you know more of it than I. It distresses me because I suspect they meant the long accumulation of knowledge by our people. Two summers ago when the Day Star still shined at night and my sight had not yet left me, I saw a great pile of string smoking and smoldering. Special string, my husband said. Your Grandfather would have known. Pók called them ‘evil sky strings.’”

  Not the string records! Tuwa remembered Grandfather’s long string with knots and different lengths of side fringe that indicated sun and moon cycles and changes in moonrise and moonset, the movements of the wandering stars, the comings and goings of long-haired stars that passed across the sky. Tuwa remembered Grandfather saying the string record of observations through the Twin Giants, where generations of skywatchers measured sky patterns between the two giant columns of rock, went back seventeen generations. He kept it carefully coiled in a sacred jar that Nuva hid beneath stones in the floor.

  “I remember Grandfather’s string record,” whispered Tuwa. “He handled it as if it were the most precious thing in the world.”

  “And so it must have been,” the old woman said. “To Pók and his handlers, they were a threat, something to be destroyed. They must have gathered them from all the northern skywatchers. They burned them on the same altar where our people were….” She stopped, a catch in her throat. “We wanted nothing to do with it. We preferred starving ourselves. My husband was glad when he became too weak to work. I hated seeing him go, but I did not want him to add another stone to their works. Many felt that way. Most of them gone now.”

  She hesitated and shifted her weight. Tuwa looked up and saw Sowi staring along the road to the north where Ihu had escaped. Choovio, too, scanned in all directions, wary of sudden attack.

  “Many others, though,” Grandmother Haki said after she’d settled herself, “mostly from the southern towns and villages, feasted and made merry as if a herd of elk had been killed, not their own brothers and sisters from the north. They ingratiated themselves with the Southern Alliance and The Builder and Pók. He’s the worst. An evil, small man. To be big, he had to bloody his hands. To keep control of those wretched Másaw Warriors, he had to go beyond what even they would do. He reveled in the butchery. He coated himself in blood. Even the blood of your grandfather.” The woman seemed to cower at the mention of Grandfather.

  Tuwa remembered. A small man cavorting about Grandfather, who had been stripped naked, hands tied behind his back, forced to stand on a stone platform on the altar, The Builder in his High Priest garb behind him.

  “I saw,” said Tuwa. The words barely choked out of hi
m.

  “You witnessed? Your Grandfather?”

  “Yes. Choovio, too.”

  The old woman’s breath cut short. “Too many became orphans that day.”

  “Half of these,” Tuwa said, nodding at the Pochtécans. He forgot she could not see.

  “Poor children.”

  Tuwa gathered himself. He hadn’t remembered so clearly for a long time. Perhaps since it had happened. The image burned in him, the High Priest behind Grandfather, and the small man thrusting the knife. Nukpana, Tuwa named him after it happened. Most evil one. Most hated. The deepest corner of his mind coined the name with the first thrust of his knife that day long ago. The last moment of Grandfather’s life. Nukpana. The High Priest’s executioner and chief warrior. The man he now knew as Pók.

  Both men Tuwa had killed, one in the southlands traveling with The Pochtéca, one today, had been Nukpana to him. His sudden burst of anger made him strike with an intensity that frightened him even as it gave him advantage. He had a ferocious first-strike ability possessed by few others. The power of hatred ran deeper than his own soul. He would do anything, go anywhere, for just one swipe of his knife at Nukpana. At this dog excrement called Pók.

  But now he had to force himself to the present, find out how to take care of his people. The itch of the returning warriors bored painfully into his brain. Even if they escaped, where would they go? What would they do? Who might help them?

  “I need to know more, Grandmother.” Tuwa said in a hoarse whisper. “Is there no one left here who will help?”

  The old woman breathed deeply again, her chest wheezing, and she seemed to grow weary with a heavy burden. She laid her head back.

  “Yes, there are some who will still fight them, Grandson. But they are well-hidden, and any power they have is not physical.”

  “How will I find them?”

  “Mostly they will find you.” She paused and breathed, a rattle in her chest. “There is a sign. A secret sign among women. I have never shown a man before.” The old woman paused, as if making a final decision about Tuwa. “Take my hand, my left hand.” Tuwa reached for her hand. “Look at the tips of my fingers, three of them. Is there light enough to see?”