Seven Skull Shield had been walking since dawn. Down deep in his chest, just below his beating heart, a knot had pulled tight. Seeing Horn Lance’s litter in front of Wooden Doll’s festered like a cactus thorn.
He shouldn’t have cared who she Traded herself to. That was her business. But to lay with a man who had put a price on Seven Skull Shield’s head? Take his Trade? Gift him with the arts of her body?
“She couldn’t have known,” he growled.
But why, of all women, had Horn Lance gone to her?
“Because she’s the best, fool.”
Which didn’t ease the hurt or loosen the constriction under his heart.
Surprised by the depth of her betrayal, he’d considered “borrowing” a canoe and rowing over to Evening Star Town. Maybe even signing on with a Trader and getting shut of Cahokia altogether. It wouldn’t have been the first time Wooden Doll had driven him to such an extreme. But in the end, he had decided that even if they were after him, it was early in the game. Word wouldn’t have circulated about how much the Itza would Trade in return for his sorry carcass.
And what was he going to do? Just turn tail and run? Go to ground like a panicked mouse? He was the renowned Seven Skull Shield. Romancer of women, crafty thief, and clever raconteur of song and story.
No, two could play hunter, and he had the advantage. When it came to the back ways, who knew the city better? It would take at least a day for word to travel. And in that time, he had plans to make.
That said he followed a beeline straight down the Avenue of the Sun, headed for central Cahokia. He’d have to warn the Keeper that they were after him. But once that was done, he’d take the war right to the Itza and his sneaky Natchez allies.
“Just who do they think they’re dealing with?” he muttered to himself. “Some clanless dolt of a dirt farmer? Some bit of human flotsam that can be discarded like an old pot? This is me! No one kicks me around like some old dog!”
Sometimes, he’d swear, the Spirit World heard him.
A dog’s panicked squeal broke the early-morning stillness, and Seven Skull Shield fixed on the man ahead of him. In the center of the rutted boulevard, a wiry fellow in a dirty loincloth was tugging on a rope with one hand, beating a peculiar-looking dog with a length of wood and cursing.
The dog thrashed, trying to jerk free, growling and snapping at the club as the man cursed and swung. With each impact, the dog shrieked, trying to duck away.
Maybe it was because Seven Skull Shield still ached from the injustice of Wooden Doll’s betrayal, or that he was feeling persecuted. Maybe it was because it had been a peaceful morning up that point. Or it might have been that nothing the dog might have done in the middle of the road could have merited such a beating.
“Hey! How about a little quiet?”
The man continued to whack the dog; the creature strangling on the tight end of the rope. The dog’s eyes were rolling back in its head, the mouth gaping, tongue lolling and bloody. It staggered sideways and collapsed, lungs heaving against the restriction around its neck.
“Mind your own business,” the man growled with a sidelong glance before whacking the half-conscious dog again. “Stupid beast! Make me late?”
Again he clubbed the trembling dog.
When the skinny man raised the club yet again, Seven Skull Shield grabbed it and wrenched it away.
“What the…? Give me that back!
“Stop beating the dog.”
It was something in the man’s eyes: a violent rage that was burning through souls that had somehow grown to be twisted and sick. The dog-beater leaped at Seven Skull Shield. Maybe he was better at beating dogs. Or he’d forgotten the club.
Seven Skull Shield hammered him across the face, breaking his thin nose, peeling skin from the man’s cheeks.
In surprise, the man staggered back, eyes unfocused. He stopped short, clawing for balance. Raising a hand to his face, he cried, “You hit me!”
“How does it feel?” Seven Skull Shield looked the wiry man up and down, seeing no evidence the dog had bitten him. “What did the dog do? Why were you beating it to death?”
The thin man wiped at the blood leaking from his nose, eyes squinting from the sting. “It ran off. Made me late.”
“So beating it was going to make you on time?”
“I was teaching it a lesson! Why did you hit me?”
“Maybe I was teaching you a lesson.”
“Just go away! It’s my dog. I won it! It’s a pack dog. Traded from the far-off Shining Mountains! The people there use them to fight the great silver bears. It’s worth a fortune.”
“It barely looks like it’s more than a puppy!” Seven Skull Shield bent down, yanking the knotted rope loose so the animal could breathe.
As he did, the man pulled his leg back. Tipped off, Seven Skull Shield ducked the kick, coming up under the man’s leg and dumping him flat on his back. Before the fellow could rise, Seven Skull Shield rapped him on the side of the head.
“You don’t learn.” He glanced at the dog, now panting as its eyes started to clear. “And you’re not good enough to deserve a dog. Not even one as ugly as this one is going to be.”
With a flick of the wrist, he slipped the rope off the animal’s neck. The dog, puppy, or whatever it was, struggled to its feet.
“Hey, you piece of two-footed dung! You just let my—”
Seven Skull Shield caught the man square under the chin, the club making a smack-click as it drove his jaws shut. Might have broken some teeth, too. Seven Skull Shield didn’t care.
“Come on, dog,” he called as he reached in his belt pouch for a length of jerky he’d stolen from a drying rack the night before. “Let’s be gone before he comes to and makes me hit him again.”
The puppy sniffed the dried meat suspiciously, then wolfed it down in two snaps of its rather impressive jaws.
Seven Skull Shield turned his steps eastward again, aware that people had ducked out of their houses, drawn by the screams and shouting.
He glanced back, seeing the dog, wobbling, but following along. Well, the beast was free. Like Seven Skull Shield, he could go wherever he willed.
Natchez and Itza be cursed for thinking otherwise.