The warm night air had a muggy feel. The humming of a thousand mosquitoes added to the heavy atmosphere. Clouds had moved in from the south, their bellies reflecting a dirty orange from Cahokia’s thousands of cook fires.
Seven Skull Shield glanced up, hearing the chitter of bats ducking and darting through the swarm of mosquitoes that hovered in a column over his head. Bats loved Cahokia. The high-thatch roofs were a haven for the creatures, and the city bred pesky bat food in hoards: flies, moths, mosquitoes, and every other sort of insect a hungry bat might crave.
Seven Skull Shield scratched under his belt. Too bad Hunga Ahuito hadn’t created a predator for lice and fleas as well as for mosquitoes. The warrens of packed humanity not only hosted such crawling discomforts, but the dirt farmers were often riddled with intestinal parasites. On occasion he’d seen them crap out more worms than feces in their open latrines.
“Come on, concentrate,” he muttered under his breath as he slipped along the plastered wall of the Four Winds Men’s House. The building fronted the eastern side of the Great Plaza, about midway between the Morning Star’s palace and Rides-the-Lightning’s twin mounds. Normally it served Four Winds warriors when they congregated and conducted their rituals. It was here that the most sacred Four Winds War Medicine was normally kept. Seven Skull Shield had seen it paraded on special occasions. The sacred bundle consisted of a box large enough to be worn as a pack. Fantastically carved and inlaid, the box contained the sacred Power items that gave the Four Winds Clan victory in combat.
For the time being, Morning Star had ordered the Four Winds warriors to remove all of their accoutrements and sacred objects and “loan” the building to the Itza lord and his Natchez escort.
To say that the Four Winds warriors had been displeased with the forced relocation of their social center would be a mild understatement. But who in their right mind argued with a god incarnate?
Seven Skull Shield wondered if it wasn’t the living god’s way of putting the warriors in their place, given their recent strutting and increased influence in the wake of Red Wing Town’s bloodless defeat.
Seven Skull Shield glanced up at the Morning Star’s high palace. The feast had to be in full swing given the amount of firelight reflecting from the World Tree pole and the palace front. Over the chirring of crickets, the faint voices calling in the distance, and barking dogs that served as Cahokia’s nightly background noise, he could hear the revelry.
Seven Skull Shield peered around the corner of the Men’s House. War totems overlooked the empty avenue that lined the plaza. Ivory Billed Woodpecker, Panther, Falcon, and Snapping Turtle were equally spaced, each looking fierce as they guarded the Men’s House.
Ah, and there, crouched by the door, was the lone guard.
Seven Skull Shield rubbed his jaw thoughtfully. One man, just as he’d figured. The rest of the Natchez warriors were either up in the palace courtyard or arrayed at the bottom of the great staircase awaiting the eventual descent of their lords.
The single guard had no doubt been left as a precaution in the event any of the Four Winds warriors might have missed hearing that their society house had been loaned out. After all, absolutely no one would have the temerity to slip into such a place uninvited. Not under the Morning Star’s very nose. It would be unthinkable!
Seven Skull Shield batted at the mosquitoes, grinned, and stepped around the corner, a long-necked bottle in his hand.
“Greetings, Natchez lord,” he called.
The man leaped to his feet, shaking himself, and presenting his war club as if in the vain attempt to look alert. He barked out a challenge in the Natchez tongue that Seven Skull Shield thought sounded like something a sick turkey would cluck.
“Here,” he said in Trade pidgin and offered the bottle. “My master sent this. You understand ‘master’? Gift?”
The Natchez stared at the bottle Seven Skull Shield held in his hand, muttering something incomprehensible.
“Gift,” Seven Skull Shield repeated, and made the hand sign universally employed by Traders up and down the river.
“Ah!” The Natchez guard nodded, repeating some word in Natchez, then mimicking “Gift” in a tortured accent.
“Blueberry and raspberry juice,” Seven Skull Shield told him. “Good! Welcome to Cahokia.”
The Natchez lowered his war club, took the bottle, and sniffed. In the darkness Seven Skull Shield could barely make out the man’s smile before he lifted it to his lips and sipped. Nodding, he took an even deeper draft.
“Yes, you just drink that and enjoy,” Seven Skull Shield told him as he bowed at the waist and walked off.
If Smooth Pebble had measured the proportions correctly, there was just enough datura juice in the syrupy mix to have the man nodding off to sleep in no time.