Star Path--People of Cahokia

by W. Michael Gear

  And then the man had turned on his heel, sat atop his dais, and had eaten dinner while he and his warriors shared jokes, sent taunts Seven Skull Shield’s way, and watched him squirm uncomfortably on the short tether that bound his wrists behind him.

  Food was offered twice a day, one of Spotted Wrist’s slaves reaching past the bars with a horn spoon full of stew or extending bits of bread just far enough that Seven Skull Shield could grab them with his teeth.

  Nights were agonizing. The tether allowed Seven Skull Shield just enough room so he could perch on his knees, back wedged in the corner of the cage.

  During the day, the warriors, who were constantly passing through, did their best to humiliate him, spitting on him, poking at his exposed genitals with sharp or burning sticks, or dousing him with water. Spotted Wrist had precluded the tossing of anything that smelled bad or was too foul.

  Willow Blossom arrived on the third night, escorted into the great room just after nightfall. She barely cast Seven Skull Shield a glance as she shared pleasantries with Spotted Wrist, enjoyed a wonderful supper, and let the Keeper lead her into his personal quarters.

  Seven Skull Shield winced, could imagine with perfect clarity what the Hero of the North was enjoying.

  How could I have been so blind?

  His cramped posture hurt even more than usual. Unable to sleep, his scattered thoughts were interrupted by the occasional faint squeal of delight coming from Spotted Wrist’s personal quarters. The warriors sleeping on the surrounding benches would chuckle softly, and then turn over.

  He finally slept.

  Seemed like Seven Skull Shield had barely closed his eyes when a loud clatter started him awake. He jumped, pulling his strained arms painfully behind him. His legs had gone to sleep and wouldn’t hold him.

  Blinking his bleary vision clear, he fixed on Willow Blossom as she ran a stick along the bars, the clattering loud in the room. She was staring down at him, that old familiar gleam of excitement in her eyes.

  “Have a good night?” he rasped hoarsely.

  “He’s not the best I’ve ever had, but I can make do.” She paused. “He has wonderful things.”

  “What did he give you?”

  “For you? A nice house just a little to the east. Close to the Grand Plaza. It belonged to one of the Panther Clan nobles who backed Slender Fox and Wolverine when they were going to take Morning Star’s mound with warriors last fall. Oh, and he gave me a couple of boxes of Night Shadow Star’s things that I liked. Enough to see me through for a while.”

  “Those aren’t his to give.”

  “And Lady Night Shadow Star isn’t here to object.” Willow Blossom studied her fingernails thoughtfully.

  “Did you care nothing for me?” His heart skipped, waiting for her answer.

  “You’re a man. No different from any of the rest of them.”

  “Got news for you, Spotted Wrist’s a man, too.”

  She smiled, her face shifting into the excited and animated glow he’d fallen in love with. Her lips bent into their familiar soft hint of anticipation. Her eyes seemed to expand, to sparkle just for him. “He is, isn’t he?”

  At her loving expression, he felt a leap of relief. “If you really care for me, I need you to do something for me. I just need you to—”

  “You can rot, thief.” And just as quickly the look of joy and anticipation vanished, replaced by a blank emptiness. “You humiliated him. He’s not going to forget.”

  “But I love you. I’d do anything—”

  “Men are so easy. Just give them a smile”—the loving, enchanted look was back, warm love reflected from her eyes—“and they’re like potter’s clay in my fingers.”

  The look of blank emptiness was back again. “Hope it’s quick for you.”

  She turned to leave.

  “You’re telling me I didn’t mean anything to you? I was just a convenience?”

  She shot a look over her shoulder. “Never had a man send sparks through my sheath the way you did. But a person can’t make a life out of that.” A pause. “After last night, I think I’ll be back on occasion. Don’t bother to act like we’re old friends, all right?”

  And then she was out the door.

  Fifty

  The island was a long ridge of stony ground, tree-covered where angular bedrock didn’t protrude from the soil. It stuck up from the middle of the Tenasee like the elongated back of a snapping turtle. Roiling floodwaters, muddy brown in color, bearing floating yellow foam, sticks, and debris broke at the island’s upstream point and rolled down the sides in rippling currents.

  Fire Cat’s log had grounded at the tip, twisted along the rocky bottom, and spun away along the river’s southern channel. In that time, Fire Cat had grabbed his bag, picked his way through the accumulated driftwood that was still piling up on the rocks, and slogged his way ashore.

  Cold and shivering, wet to the bone, he’d stared glumly around as rain hammered on his head, ran down his face, and streams of muddy water drained from his long shirt. Then he’d upended his war bag and poured the river out. No sense in trying to deal with his bow, arrows, armor, or chunkey lance.

  The first thing was to find some kind of shelter.

  A bolt of lightning cracked over his head, so close the bang almost made him jump out of his skin. But then he’d been terrified of the Thunderbirds ever since they’d blasted four lightning bolts around him that day up on the Father Water.

  Old sun-bleached driftwood, laced and woven through the brush, gave him some idea of where high water had crested in the past. Taking his time, he studied the river, searching to see if any survivors from the war canoe were bobbing in the water. Perhaps headed his way. That was when his eye spotted the fish trap. The pointed end now stuck up from the water. He clambered over a mat of interwoven branches, twigs, and what looked like old roots to the trap. Woven from willow staves, tied to a float, it had washed loose in the flood and landed here. And, best of all, a good-sized catfish was desperately thrashing in the wide end as Fire Cat tried to pull it free from the tangle.

  Ultimately, he had to break it apart, grab the fish, and sling it up onto the bank. Clambering his precarious way over the debris, he pulled out his war club, brained the fish, and strung it on his bow string—the sinew cord being much too wet to serve any other purpose for the moment.

  His war club in hand lest he encounter any Cahokian survivors, Fire Cat found a trail leading to higher ground and followed it up the island’s spine.

  He remembered the island. They’d paddled along its length that very morning. What looked like a fisherman’s hut had been perched on one of the high points on the downstream end. Toward that, he made his way. All the time wary, searching the rain-battered leaves, looking for any sign of Blood Talon’s men. Not that he thought there was much chance that any had made it this far, but it just wouldn’t do to stumble upon a couple of them who’d somehow managed to avoid drowning.

  As the shivers racked his body, he wondered if he could even fight them, cold as he was, almost stumbling and brain fogged. Just walking took all his concentration. Thank the Spirits for Uncle, who’d trained him to take the cold. Had taught him to reach down inside and find that hidden reserve.

  Two whitetail deer broke cover as he wound through a patch of brush and young oak and hickory. The deer crashed their way through the wet vegetation, stopped at the river, hooked back, and circled behind him. Good to know, if he ever dried out, got his bow string back in working condition.

  The storm continued to rage, rain falling endlessly. Thunder boomed and roared. Teeth chattering so hard his vision blurred, shivering so hard he could barely walk, it was all he could do to keep from tripping over his own feet. Maybe he’d been colder, sometime, probably up in one of the northern winters. Thick as his thoughts were, he just couldn’t remember. And that was back then. This was now.

  In the end, Fire Cat located the hut, stumbled his way inside, and let his eyes adjust to the gloom. Water pattered fro
m a leak in the roof, but it looked mostly sound. Barely two paces across, it wasn’t roomy. He identified what appeared to be drying racks stacked against one wall. A brownware ceramic jar with a lid stood in the rear behind a firepit. To Fire Cat’s delight it contained a small fire bow, dowel, and starter stick as well as kindling.

  With a distinct sensation of guilt, he broke the drying racks apart. Struggled to control his shivering muscles, and somehow managed to assemble the fire bow, fit the dowel into the starter stick, and began sawing back and forth. As the first tendrils of smoke rose, the shakes made it almost impossible to nudge the tinder into place. Took him five tries, but finally he was able to coax a flame.

  Bit by bit, he added tinder, then a couple of twigs he found back in the corners. Discovered some old leaves that had blown in and wedged against the wall. Those he fed to the mix. And finally, a couple of the smaller lengths from the broken drying racks.

  Sighing, he extended his hands to the crackling flames. Pulling his shirt over his head, he stepped outside to wring the water from it, decided it was raining so hard it wet the fabric as fast as he squeezed the water out. He compromised by crouching in the doorway and twisting the garment. Using three of the thickest lengths of the old racks, he made a tipi of the poles and draped his shirt over the fire to dry.

  He lost any track of time, numb, shivering, feeding bits and pieces of the broken racks into the fire. As his brain began to work again, he used the sharp edge of his copper-bitted war club to cut the catfish apart, hung small pieces over the fire to cook, and wolfed them down as they browned.

  Lightning continued to flash. Thunder rolled endlessly down the valley, and on occasion a bolt would hammer the sky just overhead with enough force to shake the hut.

  He hoped that Night Shadow Star wasn’t as miserable as he was. Winder should have found her some sort of shelter by now. Given the number of camps, villages, and towns they’d passed to this point, nothing had indicated that they were close to the end of habitation on the Tenasee River. Surely, they’d come to some place where they could get in out of the rain, Trade for a warm meal and a dry place to lay out their beds.

  “Not that I trust that two-footed weasel, Winder,” Fire Cat told the flames. “But Blood Talon and his little band of warriors won’t be dogging Night Shadow Star’s trail.”

  That had worked out a whole lot better than Fire Cat had anticipated. All he’d hoped to do was slow them down. Buy some time. The idea that he’d destroyed the lot of them was just beginning to filter through his cold-numbed head. He’d either had a hand in, or watched, the drowning of the entire party.

  “Piasa? Were you down there in the depths, tugging them down, one by one?”

  As if in response, the Thunderbirds unleashed a maelstrom of lightning that flashed white light through the hut door. Immediately it was followed by a fierce crackling and banging of thunder, as if the mighty Sky beasts were hammering at the very fabric of existence.

  Fire Cat smiled in weary triumph.

  Odd how the circle of events went around. He’d just killed warriors who had sacked Red Wing Town. Men who had murdered his children, uncle, so many of his kin. Among the men were those who had raped his wives, violated his little daughters. Some might have been among the ones who had carried him, bound and struggling, to be tossed in the canoe that had taken him, his mother, and sisters to captivity in Cahokia.

  They had chased him to this far-off stretch of distant southern river, only to leave their corpses in Piasa’s watery realm. The place to which they had consigned Fire Cat’s children and relatives. Different river, same Underworld.

  What kind of symmetry was that?

  He plucked another piece of fish from where it roasted above the fire, let it cool to just bearable, and chewed the tasty meat. Hot food had an amazing ability to restore the body and souls.

  “But I still have a problem,” he told the leaping flames. “I’ve solved the problem of Blood Talon and his warriors, but Night Shadow Star is alone with that slippery Winder. Now they’re headed upriver in a fast canoe, and I’m stuck on an island, in the middle of a flood, with a swamp on either side. Every day that passes while I’m stuck here, they’re traveling farther upriver. Stretching the distance between us.”

  And that, he realized, was the terrible cost he’d paid to save her from Blood Talon.

  Another bolt of lightning shot blinding light through the hut, the crack of thunder deafening, as if the Thunderbirds were laughing.

  Fifty-one

  Standing in water up to his thighs, rain pattering down from the forest overhead, Blood Talon stared into the snake’s eyes. Of course he knew about water moccasins. He’d seen plenty in his day. Most had been brought to Cahokia in baskets, paraded around by Traders, especially down at the canoe landing where just about any kind of creature was exhibited, ranging from white foxes trapped in the distant icy north to a spotted jaguar hide from the far tropical south.

  Because Blood Talon knew about the reptiles didn’t mean he enjoyed being eyeball-to-eyeball with them. Worse, unlike the snakes he was familiar with, water moccasins were unpredictable. Strike at them with a stick, and the things were just as apt to viciously attack as to flee.

  This one was dangling from a branch at head height. Its tongue kept flicking in and out of its mouth. The beady little eyes communicated malicious menace.

  “I wish you no harm,” Blood Talon told the snake, backing slowly away. He wished desperately for his war club. Instead he had only a broken hickory branch about the length of his arm for protection. Even then it made a poor club, being crooked, poorly balanced. It did end in a wicked point that he could use to spear things if they got close enough.

  The snake, in this instance, appeared willing to let him go.

  Blood Talon sloshed his way backward, then circled wide.

  He hated this Spirit-cursed swamp. Floodplain, really. But the Tenasee was over its banks, leaving Blood Talon to flounder around in water up to his balls with only a hickory branch to fend off the drifting flotsam of old leaves, sticks, and forest litter clotted with yellow-brown foam.

  And still the storm raged; torrents of rain hammered the forest canopy high overhead. The water then wended its way down to him falling in drops the size of small acorns, and in places actual streams. He’d never seen anything like it. Never imagined anything like it.

  In every direction, all he could see was an endless expanse of thick tree boles—forest giants that rose into an impenetrable mass that blocked the light. Vines, many as thick as a man’s leg, wound up their trunks to disappear into the canopy. Dead saplings—spidery in the dim storm-grayed light—added to the dreary effect.

  How in the name of the Morning Star did I ever come to this?

  The image, however, remained frozen in his mind. It played over and over in his head: the closing raft of driftwood, the rain-savaged surface of the river, slick wood gleaming, hazed by a mist of bursting raindrops … and a man’s head emerging from the water. He’d appeared like a mythical river creature, water sluicing off his hair and face, mouth opening to gasp for air. The eyes had been closed, at least until a hand emerged from the depths to scrub his face clear. Then the eyes had opened, black, penetrating.

  Blood Talon had frozen, disbelieving. Tried to understand what, or who, the man in the water might have been. Struggled with the impossibility of place. Then glanced at the closing raft of tangled driftwood.

  As his warriors rushed to the side of the canoe to fend off the threat, the man in the water had ripped the paddle out of Split Limb’s hands. Tossed it away. And as the canoe tipped, Blood Talon couldn’t believe his eyes. The man had climbed up on the gunwale, leaned out, and rolled the canoe on its side.

  In that last heartbeat, Blood Talon’s gaze had fixed on the man’s face, on the Red Wing tattoos on those wet cheeks. He’d glimpsed the burning triumph in those hot black eyes, seen victory, a sort of exultation.

  Less than a heartbeat later, Blood Talon had been
in the water, thrashing, clawing, and sinking. Water had rushed into his nose, bubbles gurgling around his ears, the cold shock hitting his entire body.

  Despite the panic, he’d held his breath, fought his way to the surface. In the melee of screams and thrashing limbs, he’d been kicked free of the mass of entwined men. Got an arm around a floating piece of debris. The current had whipped it around, pulled it free of the mass of floating timber and trash. He’d been whisked to one side. Glanced back. Saw the sleek side of the war canoe tattooed by rain. Caught the image of the Red Wing thrusting one of Blood Talon’s warriors deep down into the water.

  Then there was nothing but the backsplash from rain on the water’s surface. And the cold eating into his flesh. The feeling of absolute unreality that he had just seen the impossible.

  One moment they had been closing on their prey, ready to bring the long hunt to its end. The next, he was alone, adrift and terrified, trying to get his souls around the shocking reality that he was going to die.

  He didn’t. His small raft of branches and litter might have been a leaf, tossed and played with as it was by the current. And in the end, as the cold sapped Blood Talon’s fear-paralyzed body, the river had washed over its banks, carried him ashore. There, in a tangle of brush, he’d found footing.

  Looking back at the river, it had been to see the head of the island they’d passed that morning; it split the water downstream like some fantasy vessel belonging to the Beginning Time Spirits. Rain, lightning, the crashing of thunder, and the angry river, swelling, rain-lashed, muddy, and full of floating debris.

  The body that floated past was Nutcracker’s. Facedown. Arms out. Slowly spinning in the current. Identifiable only because of the decorations on his war shirt.

  The war canoe had been carried to the opposite side of the river and disappeared around the far channel.