“The Black Feathers! Wake up, Piyanah. The Black Feathers have crossed the pass!”
Still dazed with sleep, I found myself running with Gorgi down the steep path. Instead of a solitary figure by the watch-fire, the leaping flames showed my father wearing the feathered headdress, and round him gathered the Braves, to make before the Totem the dedication of arrows. On the fringe of the crowd I saw Raki, with the squaws who had not yet joined the others in the cave.
My father raised his right hand and the clamour of tongues was stilled. To the Totem he spoke, and the hearts of his people were open to listen:
“Messenger of the Great Hunters, in whose memory we live; at thy feet we set these our arrows, that they may fly in truth against thy enemies. Though we are but as a drop in a great river, we, the Men of the Two Trees, are of the morning against the darkness, and in the name of the people on the other side of the water we fight against the children of the Carrion Crow.
“If we die in thy name, may we deserve the right to enter the Happy Hunting-Grounds; and if we triumph in thy name, may the trees rejoice that we live among them, and the river rejoice that our canoes belong to their waters, and may the animals rejoice that in our country we have not betrayed them.
“May our courage and our endurance prove worthy of the Totem thou hast set amongst us. May our arrows have the vision of thy eagles, and the strength of our sinews be as the Great White Deer which only the chosen of thy sun has ever seen.
“Into thy care I commit my people, and I, Na-ka-chek, speak not only in the name of my Braves, for under your protection I place also the women, and the children, and the Naked Foreheads, declaring them to be my equals; so in the name of the Mother of my Sons, I ask that they, too, shall gain entry in honour to thy Country.”
Then did the Wearers of the Scarlet, and the Brown Feathers, and all of us who would fight in the protection of our people, come forward to kneel before the Totem, holding in our outstretched hands the arrows, feathered in scarlet and yellow, which can be used only against humans who have been declared the enemy of the tribe.
Then did we kneel before Na-ka-chek, who made with his fingers upon our foreheads the tribal mark, the two interlaced blue triangles in the yellow circle, men and women under the sun, though except by Raki and me this meaning had been forgotten. And on the forehead of Raki and our thirty women he made this sign also.
Then I watched Raki take the path to the hills: and with him there were women who were young and proud; and women who were frightened; and women, with blankets drawn over their heads to protect them from demons, who shuffled along, dark as the shadows of sleeping bats. I watched them go into the woods beyond the firelight.
With Gorgi and Tekeeni, I climbed to our vantage-point on the cliff overlooking the encampment. We had been forbidden to talk, and thoughts began to race through my mind. “I must forget that I also am a squaw. Gorgi and Tekeeni are excited…to them the Black Feathers are a new quarry. They are right; Piyanah has sometimes wept in her heart at the death of a stag, but Black Feathers have not the nobility of animals, so she can watch her arrows drink their blood, and laugh and shout in exultation. Black Feathers are not real people, they are a legend, born of fear and shadows, who keep alive the curse of the Separation. Their squaws hate them and their children fear them: think of their squaws, Piyanah, whom your arrows will set free.
“I never thought I should have to fight without Raki beside me…we never really believed in the Black Feathers. Will Raki find the way to our little valley? Are the corncobs still there, waiting for us to pick them up? We were not afraid of crossing the water when we were eleven…we must not be afraid now. I can’t be afraid, or I shouldn’t have been able to eat of the ‘feast of the preparation’ without feeling sick. There is salt before battle, as much as you can eat…blood will taste salt too. My skin glistens with bear’s grease…difficult for an enemy to grip in a wrestling hold, and if I am wounded, the grease will enter my blood so I shall gain the strength of a bear instead of weakening. I am glad that Pekoo remembered me, for the Lord of the Grizzlies will take me under his protection. An arrow will be hot as fire. …Raki and I used to think it would feel like a hornet. I would rather feel an arrow than a tomahawk. If they take my scalp, I hope that I’m dead first. But I’m not going to be dead, because Raki and I are going to lead a new tribe, and this battle will be only a story we tell by the watch-fire when we are old.”
I could feel Gorgi and Tekeeni tense beside me as we lay on the narrow ledge: the Scarlet Feather had put two fresh logs on the fire, the signal that the Black Feathers were sliding towards us through the woods with the stealth of vipers.
The circle of cliffs was taut with bows. A shadow moved down by the river, and I felt Gorgi notch his arrow to the string, though we were not to loose our bows until the enemy began to retreat towards the opening in the rocks on the east of the encampment. The man by the watch-fire seemed absorbed in his smoke.
The shadows moved closer. They were surrounding the the Squaws’ Tepees. The pool of darkness below the Great Tepee altered its shape…now there were men as well as rocks in the intensity of darkness. Now we should know if Na-kachek had been right when he said that the Black Feathers were obedient to their tradition and always surrounded the tepees before they attacked.
The man by the watch-fire threw on another log…the Black Feathers had surrounded the encampment. The Scarlet Feather knew that the three hundred pairs of eyes were watching him; he might well be the first victim, alone and defenceless; yet he had not moved, the smoke from his pipe was calm and unhurried, as though he were indeed an Elder, pausing in a story often told.
Suddenly he leapt to his feet and gave our war cry. The encampment was no longer in darkness, for the ring of fires we had prepared sprang into life…our fires, not the pyres of tepees for which the Black Feathers had waited.
In the sudden glare I saw the enemies: their bodies glistening with oil, their ribs outlined with charcoal so that they looked like skeletons from the Underworld. I saw the Scarlet Feather die, but before his body fell across the fire four of the enemy had died by his tomahawk. I saw Dorrok strip off a man’s scalp like the pelt from a beaver: he held it above his head, then laughed and threw it into an empty cooking-pot before plunging after another enemy.
I learned that death can be grotesque, and a man run though his head lolls down his back. I heard that even a Scarlet Feather can scream when a arrow quivers from the socket of his eye. I heard Gorgi sobbing with excitement, and my hands were so slippery with sweat that I was afraid I might not be able to restrain my arrow from its leap.
The fires blazed higher. I could see my father in a press of fighting men. Quarters were too close for arrows, and I could hear the thud of tomahawks and clubs. I saw the skull of a Brown Feather split open and the white mess of brains slide down his shoulder before he fell. I could smell the hot, sweet stench of blood even through the smoke. Our fires were spreading and tongues of flame licked up one of the smaller tepees.
A wounded man was crawling up the slope towards me, trying to find the sanctuary of darkness. I was going to help him, but Gorgi pulled me back and I saw the black feather in his forehead-thong. He was coughing, a hard, dry cough like a sick animal; his body curved forward as though he were trying to retch. Fire suddenly ran up a pine tree and I saw the haft of a broken arrow sticking out below his shoulder blade: the light was so bright that I could even see the colour of the blood bubbling from his mouth. The coughing went on and on: I could hear it even above the noise of battle.
There were many of our dead before the few Black Feathers who still survived started to try to withdraw into the woods.
“Now!” shouted Gorgi. “Now! The first to pass that rock is mine.”
I heard the sting of his bow, and a Black Feather threw up his hands and fell forward.
“Got him!” said Gorgi. “The second is yours, Piyanah. …There! He is trying to hide in that shadow.”
I held that man’s life between my finger and thumb as though he were an ant. I could see the muscles of his back moving as he fumbled for an arrow. Killing a Black Feather is less than killing an ant. I felt the life go out of my bow, and saw the ant stagger and spin round…then try to crawl away. With my third arrow I killed him…the hunter does not let a wounded animal escape. It is beautiful to kill a Black Feather! At last I knew the meaning of a hunter, there was no pity such as had spoiled the killing of a deer. The blood of an enemy is hot and red and beautiful, and by it the brave grow strong!
“I am going to take his scalp,” I said, and stood upright on the ledge.
“No, Piyanah, we are to stay here,” said Tekeeni.
“I’m going to take his scalp, and get another for Raki.”
I leapt down the steep slope, and Gorgi and Tekeeni followed me. The Black Feathers were trying to escape, otherwise I think we should never have been able to reach the place where I had seen my enemy fall. I caught him by the hair and pulled back his head, ready to slit his throat if his eyes moved. His jaw lolled open and his eyes were empty as white stones. It is more difficult to take a scalp than to skin a beaver. …I cut too deep and tore away half his ear. The bone of the skull was white and clean with only a single streak of blood.
“They’re gone,” said Gorgi. “He must have been the last of them. He was a brave man, Piyanah, to have been the last to run.”
“He’s not a man,” I said passionately. “He’s less than an animal…do you think I would take a man’s scalp?”
But I knew I lied. This coarse, strong hair was more than the scalp of a Black Feather, more than the sign that I could enter the ranks of the Young Braves. He was all the men who had jeered at me, all the men whom the squaws feared when they were taken into the woods after the Choosing. He was my father and my grandfather; he was the Elders without wisdom, and the Scarlet Feathers who had never known the loneliness of squaws. I must get another scalp for Raki. …
“We must follow them. Look! Dorrok and the Brown Feathers are following them…none of them must escape!”
“But we must obey Dorrok’s orders,” said Gorgi. “He told us that we were to stay on the ledge and watch the eastern cleft.”
“You needn’t come with me…if you’re afraid. You needn’t come with me if you don’t want to join my tribe…you can make your own tribe, where there are no squaws to lead you into danger!”
But they were obedient to Dorrok, and I was too proud to turn back when I realized they had not followed me. It was very dark, and the scalp tied to my belt was sodden and smelt of blood. The trees were black as crows and stood watching me. A clot of blood fell out of the scalp and I felt it crawl down my leg like a slug. I wanted to throw the scalp away, or bury it under a stone so heavy that I couldn’t remember it even if I tried. But I knotted it more tightly to my belt, to remind myself that I was now a Young Brave. I should have to stay in the woods until daylight and then tell Gorgi that I had searched for a Black Feather to kill as I had promised.
I heard a sudden movement and swung round. The Black Feather must have lost his weapons for he caught me in a wrestling hold…it was one that Raki had taught me, so I was able to break free. He had a strong rancid smell: there was no moon and I could only see him as a dark shape against the darker trees. I dared not run for he would know I was a woman. …
I drew my knife, but he must have heard me for in the next hold he twisted it from my hand and I heard it clatter against a stone. I tore his ear, that sudden twist of Gorgi’s, and felt it strip from his head. He tried to bite through the big vein in my neck, but I twisted my head and his teeth sank into my shoulder until they grated against the bone. If only he would kill me before he realized I was a woman!
He tripped me, and I felt his knee pressing up under my ribs and then his hands thrusting towards my throat…breaking my grip on his wrists…and I knew I could not answer the death hold. Blood roared in my ears as though I had dived too deep…I was going to die and he would take my scalp. Would I still be mutilated on the other side of the water…would Raki recognize me in our little valley…would he grow old and I have to wait so many years for him?
Suddenly the terrible pain in my chest slackened, and I heard the Black Feather cry out. His head was being bent backwards across a knee behind his shoulders…thumbs, strong beautiful thumbs I loved, were driving into his eyes. His hands suddenly released their hold on my throat and I rolled clear. I heard his neck snap: as Raki’s hands bent it backwards over Raki’s knee.
And I was no longer Piyanah the Brave, I was a girl, crying because I had been frightened and now was so very happy. And Raki was saying that he was never going to let me fight any more battles. Then he picked me up, and carried me further into the woods.