Lamedeer’s silver-streaked black hair fell around his square-jawed face as he leaned forward to warm his hands before the fire. The patriarch of Paint Rock Village sat on a log across from him, his wrinkled face dour. The old man hadn’t said a word in over a finger of time. Lamedeer longed to rise and go about his duties as war leader, but the clan patron had called him here, and he had to stay until dismissed. Red Pipe’s gaunt face looked shriveled. The few gray hairs left on his freckled scalp clustered around his ears. He wore a beautifully tanned buffalo cape, the fur turned inward where it rested warmly against his skin. Starbursts of blue and yellow porcupine quills encircled his collar.
“So,” Red Pipe finally murmured. “What do we do? Wait and see? Or burden our sister villages by asking for their help?”
“These rumors have been flying for half a moon, Patron. Yet we are still safe, our village prosperous.” Red Pipe’s wrinkled lips sank inward over his toothless gums. He nodded, and went silent again, thinking.
Eight small bark-covered lodges nestled at the edge of
the trees to Lamedeer’s left. Curls of blue smoke rose from the rounded roofs, twined through the dark oak branches and drifted into the late afternoon sky. Lamedeer could not see Grandfather Day Maker, but knew he must be sitting on the western horizon. The heavens had a bronze sheen. Most of the villagers had retreated inside their lodges to cook supper, leaving Lamedeer and Red Pipe alone in the plaza.
“You are not frightened?” Red Pipe asked.
Lamedeer fiddled with a twig that had dropped by the side of the firepit, twirling it in his fingers. His twenty-eight winters had given him a face as wrinkled and rough as an eroded cliff’s. He could feel those lines deepening. “No.”
“Why is that, War Leader? I would expect you to be the most cautious of all.”
“Ordinarily, yes. But Cornhusk is a liar. He exaggerates to add drama to his stories.”
“And to make himself appear more knowledgeable than he is. I know this.” Red Pipe stared for a long moment into the wavering flames. His eyes had an odd opaque sheen. “What I do not know, is how we can ignore his warning. Will you be able to sleep at night if we do not call out for help to our sister villages?”
Lamedeer tossed the twig into the fire. “Patron, do you recall the Deep Water Village battle ten winters ago? It happened because of lies spread by a Trader. I’m sure the man thought he was just enlivening conversation, but his words resulted in fifty deaths. Villagers are suspicious of each other these days. It doesn’t take much to build a fire in our hearts. A Trader has only to mention that a Bear Nation village hates us, or that their warriors are making new weapons, and that they were seen in the forest nearby. We send out search parties looking for battle, and in an instant of uncertainty, somebody shoots an
arrow.” Lamedeer spread his hands. “Then we are lost.”
“Yes,” Red Pipe agreed. “All of these things are true.”
“I do not trust Traders, Patron. It is just my way, but I tend to think they are all spies.”
Firelight flickered over the old man’s scalp as he leaned forward. “But you did not answer my question, War Leader. Less than five hands of time ago, Cornhusk reported that he’d seen Jumping Badger in the forest with at least eighty warriors. He said the war party seemed to be moving our way. Will you be able to sleep at night if we do not ask for help from our sister villages?”
“If we do ask them to send warriors, and there is no attack, will they send them next time, when we really need help? When we have reliable information and know for certain that we are in danger?”
Red Pipe hesitated. “I do not know.”
“Would you, Patron? If you had sent warriors to Earth Thunderer Village, leaving your own village vulnerable for nights, and your warriors returned saying nothing had happened, what would you do the next time Earth Thunderer Village requested your help?”
Red Pipe ran his tongue over his sunken lips. “It would depend, but most likely, I would decline.”
“That is why we should wait, Patron. Until we know more.”
“Perhaps you are right. I suspect Cornhusk. spread these same rumors to the other Turtle Nation villages, and none of them have asked us for our help. At least not yet. I …”
He paused when Briar-of-the-Lake, the village holy woman, came down the trail from the forest with a load of wood in her arms. She wore a white doeskin cape, and her long hair looked startlingly black against that background. Tiny, frailly built, she had a green tree tattooed
on her forehead. He and she had been raised for a few winters in the same lodge. His mother and her father had both died when they were very young. After the death of Lamedeer’s mother, his father had remarried, taking Briar’s mother, Evening Star, as his wife.
Lamedeer could see Briar’s lips moving, but couldn’t hear her words. Her son, Rumbler, walked in a swinging gait at her side. On his heels, his black dog, Stonecoat, trotted with his tongue out. Rumbler’s round face had an unearthly sheen, like moonlight off water. Though he’d seen nine winters, he stood only the height of a boy in his fourth winter. Thick black hair hung to his chin. Their people called him the False Face Child because after his birth they had been terrified he might be a Forest Spirit, like his father. The Disowned, as the boy’s father was known, often disguised himself in human form. They’d actually cast Rumbler and his mother out of the clan for a short time.
“Yes,” Red Pipe said, his gaze on the boy. “Jumping Badger would have to be very foolish to attack us.”
Lamedeer studied Rumbler. The dwarf child had made Paint Rock the most feared village in the Turtle Nation. A person had only to look into the boy’s eyes to understand why. Power lived and breathed in those bottomless black wells.
Lamedeer said, “Jumping Badger must know that the False Face Child would foresee his coming, and warn us.”
“If I were Jumping Badger, I would be terrified that the False Face Child would call out to his father, and the whole forest would rally against me and annihilate my war party.”
From the time Rumbler had been readmitted to the clan at the age of two winters, the elders had pampered and coddled him, treating him like an adult. They asked for
Rumbler’s opinion before making any major clan decisions, and spent a great deal of time teaching the boy about plants and animals, telling him the old stories over and over, and showing him how to draw Power from the earth and sky. The Turtle Nation had many stories about great dwarfs and their miraculous deeds. Most of those dwarfs had risked their lives to save their people. Rumbler knew that the Paint Rock elders expected no less of him.
“Besides,” Lamedeer added, “Cornhusk made no sense. If Jumping Badger were planning to attack us, why bring eighty warriors? He could overwhelm us with fifty. Our village is small. We have forty-two warriors when everyone is healthy, and no one is away hunting, or fishing. Why would Jumping Badger pull eighty warriors away from Walksalong Village for us?”
Red Pipe seemed to be pondering this. After several moments, he said, “It does seem unlikely. Taking so many warriors would leave his village, Walksalong village, almost defenseless.”
“Yes, Patron.”
Red Pipe reached down, took a piece of wood from the woodpile to his left, and placed it on the fire. Sparks crackled and spat. Golden glitters lifted into the sky. “I have spoken many times with old Starflower, one of the Walksalong matrons. She is too smart to do this.”
Lamedeer folded his arms around his knees, relieved that he would not have to send runners to nearby villages begging for help. Such begging embarrassed him, but more than that, he did not wish to use up favors before they truly needed them. Certainly not on the words of a notorious Trader like Cornhusk.
“Good day to you,” Briar said with a smile. Her youth and beauty always touched Lamedeer’s heart. Her long black hair shimmered in the wavering light of the flames.
“Good day, my sister,” Lamedeer said. “I see you have been out gathering wood. I hope you collected some for my fire, too. I have been engaged all day long with these silly rumors—”
Red Pipe interrupted, asking Rumbler, “How are you, my child?”
Rumbler’s black eyes seemed to expand. He stepped forward like a cat after prey, his moccasins silent. “What is it you wish to ask me, Patron?”
Red Pipe hesitated, then said, “We have heard some frightening news this day. We were wondering if you have Dreamed anything. Perhaps about an attack?”
Rumbler did not seem to breathe. After several moments, his head turned and his gaze fixed on his mother’s lodge. His dog, Stonecoat, dropped to his belly at Rumbler’s feet, whining softly.
Rumbler whispered, “Look.”
Red Pipe’s faded old eyes narrowed. He followed the boy’s gaze.
Briar dumped her load of wood, and brushed at the duff coating the front of her white cape. “What is it, Rumbler? What do you—”
“Who is he?”
Stonecoat barked.
Lamedeer, pulse pounding, rose to his feet and rested his hand on the deerbone stiletto tied to his belt. “Who?”
“That boy,” Rumbler said, almost too low to hear. “That little boy.”
Lamedeer stepped away from the fire, and circled around behind Red Pipe, guarding the old man’s back. “I see no one.” He looked questioningly at Red Pipe.
The patron shook his head. “Nor do I.”
Briar frowned and touched her son’s hair. “Rumbler, where is the boy?”
Rumbler just stared at nothing.
Red Pipe’s wrinkled lips worked. “Where does the boy come from, Rumbler? Is he one of the blessed ancestors? Or a Forest Spirit?”
Rumbler slowly lifted a foot and put it down a step closer to his mother’s lodge. “He says you mustn’t send runners, Patron. There will be no attack.”
Relief and fear mixed in Lamedeer’s chest. He and Red Pipe turned in unison to peer at each other. Briar studied their expressions.
“Who did you think would be attacking us?” Briar asked.
Lamedeer started to answer, but Rumbler let out a small dreadful, “No!”
Stonecoat yipped and jumped up to put his paws on Rumbler’s chest, peering intently into the dwarf boy’s wide eyes.
Rumbler did not even seem to see the dog. He stood like a carved wooden statue, his short arms and legs rigid, as if bracing for a hurricane. He whispered, “Why?,” and seemed to be listening to someone they could not hear.
Lamedeer gazed at the empty space between two lodges. Not even a breath of wind stirred the dead winter grasses.
“Rumbler?” Briar knelt beside her son. “What’s happening? Tell me.”
“Oh, Mother!” he wept. “They’re coming for us. It’s us they want!”
“Who? Who wants us?” she asked in panic.
Lamedeer’s guts suddenly went runny. The boy had inhuman eyes, blacker than black, and old, as if the souls that inhabited that small malformed body had lived for more centuries than Lamedeer could conceive. He clenched his fists to nerve himself, and said, “Who’s coming for us, Rumbler? Jumping Badger?”
Rumbler’s tears ran in silent streams down his round face. “No. No, it’s Grandfather Day Maker’s children. They’re hunting us.”
“What? Grandfather Day Maker’s children?” Lamedeer gazed at the western horizon. The drifting clouds had turned pink. “Why would the sun …”
Rumbler ran away, across the plaza, and ducked beneath the leather door curtain of his mother’s lodge. Stonecoat dutifully trotted after him.
Red Pipe gripped Briar by the arm, and said, “Find out what he meant, cousin. We must know.”
“Yes, I—I will.” Briar left Lamedeer and Red Pipe alone in the cold windy plaza.
The wrinkles around Red Pipe’s eyes deepened. “What do you make of that?”
Lamedeer shook his head. “I cannot say. The boy often sees and hears things we do not. It may have been a message only for him, or Briar, and have nothing to do with us.”
The leather curtain of Briar’s lodge swung as she ducked inside, revealing glimpses of her and her son, the colored baskets on the walls, a pot lit by the glowing embers in the firepit. Rumbler had his back to the door. A strange sound, like the keening of distant wolves, rode the wind.
Silver Sparrow stumbled down the slope through an ancient grove of sycamores, heading for the blue-gray coils of smoke that rose from the valley below, and trailed across the darkening evening sky. Sparrow started to run, his moccasins slipping on the damp leaves.
Within a hand of time, he saw the gigantic oaks that
overhung Paint Rock Village. As he ran the well-worn trail toward the plaza, the fragrance of roasting beaver filled the air. He could almost taste the sweet, fatty meat. His starved belly whined. He had not eaten in five nights.
“Blessed Ancestors, give me the strength to keep going. Just a little farther.”
The trail seemed to go on forever, winding around rocks and fallen timbers. Owl eyes blinked at him from the treetops, and he heard a faint hoo—hooo.
Panic warmed Sparrow’s veins. They might be owl calls. Probably, they were. But they could also be warriors signaling each other in the darkness.
He had been a warrior once, many winters ago. He knew the tricks men used to stay in contact while sneaking up on their victims.
As night deepened, more and more Cloud Giants gathered overhead, blotting out the white feathered lodges of the ancestors in the Up-Above-World. Sparrow had the feeling they had come just to watch him, to see if he had the courage to race into a doomed village, a village where they disdained him and his Dreams, and tell the people what he’d seen.
He almost tripped over the guard. The burly man sat on the low hill overlooking the village, his back propped against the thick trunk of an oak. When he saw Sparrow, he let out a cry, and leaped to his feet with his bow drawn.
“Wait! Don’t shoot! I am Silver Sparrow of Earth Thunderer Village. I have run for two nights to speak with War Leader Lamedeer.”
The man lowered the bow slightly and squinted at Sparrow, as if trying to discern his features in the dwindling light. “Come forward. Show yourself.”
Sparrow walked toward the man. He appeared to have seen around thirty-five winters. A braided leather headband
held his shoulder-length black hair held in place, and he stood a head shorter than Sparrow.
“I am Calling Hawk,” the man said, introducing himself. “What business does the famed madman of Earth Thunderer Village have with War Leader Lamedeer?”
“My words are for Lamedeer. I must see him. Now.”
Calling Hawk released the tension on the bowstring, but he did not remove his arrow. “You should have sent a runner ahead, to let Lamedeer know you would be coming.”
“Why?” he asked, his voice shaking. “Don’t tell me he’s gone. He can’t be gone! I must—”
“I did not say that. He’s here. But he hates to be disturbed when he’s asleep. Not only that, I have orders never to let you set foot in this village. Red Pipe hasn’t forgotten the time you told him he was going to contract a terrible disease. He wandered through blizzards for three weeks in fear that he might give the disease to the rest of the village. The whole time he was gone, he never even had a sniffle.”
Sparrow had been a new Dreamer at the time, and not yet adept at interpreting the curious images that plagued him. He said, “Lamedeer is asleep? It’s barely past sunset.”
“The war leader will be taking my place at midnight, as he did last night. He needs his rest.” Calling Hawk slung his bow and slipped his arrow back into the quiver over his shoulder. “Tell me what news you bring, and I will decide if it is important enough to wake him.”
Sparrow contemplated asking to see one of the village elders, but figured Calling Hawk would view that request with even more suspicion. He said, “Tell Lamedeer that I Dreamed his death. Paint Rock Village is going to be attacked. I saw it—”
Calling Hawk laughed, actually threw back his head
and roared. The sound echoed through the stillness.
Sparrow mustered the courage to say, “That amuses you?”
“No.” Calling Hawk shook his head, chuckling. “No, it’s just that the False Face Child recently told us we were not going to be attacked. He said that Paint Rock Village is as safe as a child in its mother’s womb. But do not fear.” He held up a hand. “I will deliver your message. Lamedeer will want to hear it. A little merriment is better than sleep, eh? But you stay here.” He added, “Understand?”
“Of course.”
Calling Hawk marched across the village, and Sparrow sank down in the spot the short warrior had vacated at the base of the tree.
“Oh, gods,” he whispered to himself. “Rumbler Dreamed Paint Rock was safe …” He leaned back and vented a deep exhausted breath. “I’m not wrong again, am I?”
“Lamedeer?”
Lamedeer roused at the sound of Calling Hawk’s voice. He rolled to his side and braced himself on one elbow. The embers in his fire pit threw a bloody light over his lodge, gleaming in the empty eye sockets of the skulls that hung from his roof. Trophies taken in war, he’d polished them until they shone like slate mirrors. He called, “Enter.”
Calling Hawk ducked his head beneath the door curtain. “Forgive me for waking you, but I thought you’d want to hear this.”
Lamedeer yawned. “It had better be important. What is it?”
“Old Silver Sparrow just ran into the village. I swear he looks like an outcast. His clothes are filthy, his white hair is all tangled and filled with leaves. He—”
“What does he want?”
“He said to tell you that Paint Rock Village is about to be attacked and you’re going to die.” Calling Hawk chuckled.
Lamedeer smiled. “Did you ask him if he got this news from Cornhusk?”
“He said he’d Dreamed it, and run for two nights to tell you.”
Lamedeer shook his head. Silver Sparrow’s reputation for spouting nonsense ranged far and wide. “Tell the old man that the False Face Child says our village is safe. We—”
“I did tell him. He looked a little ill at the news.”
Lamedeer shoved his hides down around his waist, and sat up. “But he wanted you to tell me his Dream anyway?”
“Yes.”
“What do you make of it? Did he tell you anything that would make you believe the False Face Child might have been mistaken?”
Calling Hawk shifted. “No. I mean, I’m sure he’s just an old fool. Everyone says so. But I must admit I’ve been wondering about the False Face Child’s vision. Did he ever explain the Spirit Boy’s words about Grandfather Day Maker’s children hunting us?”
Lamedeer heaved a breath. His thoughts didn’t seem to want to congeal. “Rumbler told his mother that the message was for his ears alone. That we did not need to concern ourselves with it.”
Calling Hawk considered that for a while, then the
smile returned to his face. “I knew it was nothing. Shall I drive Silver Sparrow away?”
“Yes. Perhaps you should also suggest that he go home and see if Earth Thunderer Village is still there, eh?”
Calling Hawk laughed. Sparrow’s former wife, Dust Moon, the matron of the Earth Thunderer Village, took every opportunity to evade the madman, moving her village anytime he was away. Rumor had it that once she’d even managed it while Sparrow slept.
Lamedeer lay back down and pillowed his head on his arm. “Be quick about it, Calling Hawk. We do not want Red Pipe to discover Silver Sparrow has been here, or we will all face the consequences. Every time Red Pipe hears that Sparrow is nearby, he sleeps with his bow, and hatchet.”
“I’m going,” Calling Hawk said and let the curtain drop.
Lamedeer lay back down, and listened to Calling Hawk’s steps growing fainter. He closed his eyes … .
Four hands of time later, Lamedeer woke.
Utter darkness filled the lodge. He gazed up at the smoke hole in the roof, but couldn’t see any of the Night Walker’s feathered lodges. Cloud Giants must have swallowed them.
Lamedeer pulled on his heaviest cape and moccasins, and reached for his bow and quiver.
When he ducked outside, the night air stung his lungs. As his eyes adjusted, he could make out the small rounded shapes of the lodges. Paint Rock Village lay quiet and peaceful. A few sparks escaped through smoke
holes and winked in the cold breeze. Lamedeer shivered as he walked across the frozen plaza.
Wind Mother whimpered through the towering oaks, and tousled his graying black hair around his face. Cold leeching from the ground ate into his moccasins. Though snow had not yet started to fall, he could smell it in the air.
He quietly passed Briar’s lodge, and continued up the trail.
He’d slept fitfully, spending much of his time with old ghosts. The dead had come to twine their icy bodies around his like mating snakes. Lamedeer had never had the gift of Dream guessing, though many among his clan did. A person could recite his worst, most complicated nightmare to Red Pipe, for instance, and in less than thirty heartbeats he would have deciphered the meaning, and told the person what he had to do to appease the Spirits.
Tomorrow. I’ll go to Red Pipe. Perhaps he can help me understand the images.
Before he reached the trunk of the old oak, he could see that Calling Hawk was not there. Yet every warrior in the village knew it meant death to leave his post without authorization.
Angry, Lamedeer started up the trail, his moccasins crunching the frozen leaves. He halted when he noticed a strange shadow clinging to a sycamore trunk. Against the white bark, the shadow looked vaguely human. Lamedeer stepped closer. A man stood there, his head bowed as if in shame.
“Calling Hawk?” Lamedeer said. “What are you doing out here? I should carve you alive!”
The man said nothing, and Lamedeer lifted his bow, nocked an arrow, and eased forward until, in the dim light spilling through the clouds, he could see the arrow
that pinioned Calling Hawk’s body to the tree. A stone ax had been used to split his skull. Blood had soaked his cape and pants. The coppery tang clawed at the back of Lamedeer’s throat.
Lamedeer stumbled backward.
Warriors oozed from the trees like ghosts. In shock, Lamedeer watched. No. This can’t be happening. The False Face Child said we were safe. He told us not to send runners. He—
He shouted, “Awaken! Everyone! Get up. Hurry! We must—”
War cries split the night, and dogs scrambled from lodges, barking, racing out to meet the intruders. Red Pipe staggered from his lodge, his wrinkled mouth agape as he ran. A woman warrior shot him in the back, knocking the old man facedown in the dirt. Everywhere, people flooded from their lodges and raced across the plaza. Mothers clutched infants to their breasts. Men threw themselves at the intruders. Old people and children scurried for cover.
Deafening cries rose. They climbed Lamedeer’s spine like a lightning bolt. He charged into the chaos, shooting his bow wildly.
People shrieked and fell all around Lamedeer. He saw two men duck out of Briar’s lodge. One carried Rumbler in his arms. Briar’s shrieks of “No! No, please!” pierced the din. There had to be a hundred warriors! They couldn’t fight this many! A tiny dagger of flame flared in his heart and built to an insane blaze.
Lamedeer screamed hoarsely, “Follow me! Don’t try to fight! Follow me before we are all killed!”
Elk Ivory lowered her bow. A half a hand of time had passed since they’d first entered the plaza. In the glare of the burning lodges, she could see there would be no more fighting this night. Bodies scattered the ground, mouths gaping in silent cries. A tall, muscular woman with shoulder-length black hair, she had seen thirty-eight winters … but she had never witnessed anything like this. What the men did to the dead sickened her. She straightened to her full height, and sucked a breath in through her broad flat nose. Smoke and the odor of burning flesh filled the firelit darkness.
Jumping Badger stalked up the trail toward her, his beaver-hide coat covered with blood, his long black braid tangled and matted with gore. He’d slung his bow and quiver over his right shoulder. At the age of twenty-four winters, he was one of the youngest war leaders in the history of the Walksalong Clan. A handsome man, he had finely chiseled features and dark eerie eyes.
As he passed by her, Elk Ivory gripped his arm, and stared at him. “You ordered the men to rape the dead? To cut unborn children from their mothers’ wombs? Why?”
He leaned closer to her, hissing in her face, “Because I wished it.”
He shook off her hand. In the lurid gleam, his eyes shone. “Stay here. Watch over the men until they have finished carrying out my orders, then bring them.”
She clutched her bow hard, knowing she could not refuse. “Bring them where, War Leader?”
“We will make camp up this trail—”
“To the north? But our war canoes are to the east, on the shore of Leafing Lake.”
“We are not going home. Tomorrow, at dawn, we will start tracking down the survivors. I want Lamedeer.”
“We have no orders to track down survivors!” Elk
Ivory objected. “The matrons told you to—”
“Do not argue with me, old woman!” he shouted, and his voice rang above the roaring fires. The dreadful laughter of the men ceased. Heads lifted across the plaza. Jumping Badger pointed at Elk Ivory with his fist. “Just obey my orders. Or you will suffer the consequences.” He opened his fist to the bloody plaza, and a small cruel smile curled his lips.
He turned and walked away up the trail. Firelit shadows fluttered around him.
Elk Ivory glared at his back until he vanished over the crest of the hill, then she let out the breath she’d been holding, and fought to quell her anger.
Gods, she wished Blue Raven were here. He could stop this. He would stop this.
She bowed her head and shook it.
If only he had remained a warrior.
But he hadn’t. He had become the village Headman. She still found that fact strange. As a boy, he’d longed to be a great warrior, to marry and have many children … as she had.
He’d done none of those things—though he’d been a good warrior for a few winters.
Her thoughts drifted to the warm days of her youth, to lazy afternoons of love on the soft newborn grass near Walksalong Village. The thrill of his eyes upon her had been intoxicating. Blessed Spirits, she had loved Blue Raven with all her strength.
A raucous laugh went up from the plaza.
Elk Ivory’s eyes narrowed as she watched a man fling a dead baby into the darkness.
She folded her arms tightly across her breasts, and braced her feet. Her thoughts turned bitter as hate filled her up inside. Hatred for Jumping Badger.
Soon, she would not be able to obey him, despite his position as war leader.
When that moment came, she would have to kill him.
Mossybill threw out his blankets beneath the same blackened, lightning-riven hickory where Skullcap sat, his eyes fixed on the False Face Child. Skullcap had unbraided his hair and the waves framed his narrow face, accentuating the size of his bulbous nose. The young warrior looked stunned, as if he’d been struck in the head with a tree limb.
Mossybill massaged his aching kidney, then stretched out on his blankets. Just after they’d run out of Paint Rock Village, a snarling, barking dog had leaped for Mossybill’s throat. He’d turned quickly, but the dog had crashed into his back, and knocked him flat. Fortunately he’d been able to draw his knife, and kill it before it really hurt anyone, but he’d been peeing blood all day.
Irritably, Mossybill said, “Skullcap, what are you looking at? He’s just a boy. Nothing more. If he were as powerful as his people claimed, would we have been able to capture him? Eh? Think of that.” Mossybill laughed.
Skullcap didn’t even blink. Deep wrinkles etched his young forehead, and his dark eyes took on a frightening look.
Mossybill dug around in his pack for a length of venison jerky.
They could not risk lighting a fire in case survivors of the Paint Rock slaughter had followed them, and the jerky made him long all the more to be home in Walks-along Village with his family. As she did after every raid, his wife, Loon, would cook him a feast, and drape their
best hides around his triumphant shoulders. His proud children would crowd around him, asking him a hundred questions about the battle.
He bit into the jerky, and chewed hard to work some juice into the dried meat. “Skullcap?” he repeated in irritation. “What’s wrong with you? You’ve been staring at that boy for—”
Skullcap’s eyes widened. “Don’t you see it?”
Mossybill lowered his jerky. “What? I don’t see anything.”
The False Face Child lay curled on his side five paces away, his feet drawn up behind his back, his hands tied to them. By morning he’d be in agonizing pain, but it couldn’t be helped. Jumping Badger had given strict orders that they were to take no chances that the boy might escape. The child had not made a single sound in two days.
Skullcap swallowed hard. “There’s … something … in his eyes. It’s alive. I swear it, Mossybill. Look! Sometimes it flashes!”
“Flashes?”
“Yes! Look!”
Mossybill made a disgusted sound, and ripped off another bite of jerky. From Mossybill’s angle, the boy’s face was in complete shadow. He couldn’t see his eyes at all. “You’ve lost your wits. Try to get some sleep. You need it.”
Skullcap eased down into his blankets, but his gaze remained on the False Face Child.
As though the boy knew it, he lifted his head. A smile turned his boyish lips. “I’m going to kill you,” he said. “Soon.”
Skullcap jerked his blankets over his head and curled into a tight ball on the ground.
Mossybill sharply ordered, “Don’t try to frighten us,
boy! We are two of the greatest warriors of the Walksalong Clan. If we wish, we can carve out your liver and eat it for breakfast!”
Soft childish laughter echoed through the stillness.
Skullcap whimpered, and the sound enraged Mossybill.
He rose, tramped over to the boy, and viciously jerked on the child’s ropes until they cut into his wrists and legs. The boy didn’t utter a sound, but Mossybill saw him squeeze his eyes closed in pain. Mossybill grinned as he twisted and secured the ropes in their new position.
“There,” he whispered in the boy’s ear, “learn the price of offending the Walksalong Clan. By morning, you won’t be able to use your arms or legs.”
Mossybill strode back toward the charred hickory. He started to roll up in his blankets, but a strange sound made him go still. A deep-throated sound, like an animal’s growl, a wolf about to attack …
“You will die first, big man,” the inhuman voice said. “Writhing in agony.”
Mossybill lunged to his feet, breathing hard, and looked around.
“Who said that?” he shouted into the darkness. His gaze searched the forest and cloudy sky, then landed on the dwarf child. “Boy? Boy, can you change your voice like that?”
A bare whisper of wind rustled the trees. Branches sawed back and forth.
“Skullcap? Did you hear that voice?”
Skullcap’s blankets shook violently in response.
Mossybill backed to his blankets and sat down, then drew his quiver close. As he braced his bow on his drawn-up knees, the False Face Child lifted his head. Teeth glinted in the darkness.
Mossybill’s fingernails dug into the polished wood of
his bow. “Lie down, boy, before I come over there and knock you down.”
The boy gave Mossybill a smile that chilled him to the bones.
“When we get to Walksalong Village,” Mossybill said, “we’ll beat that arrogance out of you, boy.”
But as he rolled up in his blankets, Mossybill pulled his bow very close.