As Jumping Badger dragged Little Wren into the village, he dropped the packs on the ground, and shouted, “Elk Ivory! Elk Ivory, where are you?”
Wren kicked and slammed her fists into his stomach and legs, but Jumping Badger barely felt it. Euphoria fired his veins. He had beaten the ghosts! He lived, and they had vanished into nothingness! He held tight to the collar of the girl’s shirt.
“Elk Ivory!”
Everyone in the plaza went quiet. The eight captives who sat together twenty paces away, surrounded by ten Walksalong warriors, whispered and shook their heads at the sight of Wren. As if they didn’t know her. But Silver Sparrow and Matron Dust Moon appeared worried, frightened for the girl. Dust Moon sat on the ground with Silver Sparrow’s head in her lap. Fresh blood speckled his wrinkled face and white hair, and soaked his coat. A thick bandage encircled his throat. Jumping Badger gave the old man a smug smile, but Silver Sparrow looked past him, to Little Wren’s face, noting each bruise and
cut, and the curve of Silver Sparrow’s mouth went hard. Dust Moon’s eyes glowed darkly.
Jumping Badger threw back his head, and bellowed, “Elk Ivory, you treacherous … !”
The words died in his throat when Elk Ivory slipped from between two sour gum trees on the hill to Jumping Badger’s left. Tall, her expression cold, she held her bow down at her side, but her arrow remained nocked.
“What is it, War Leader?” she asked with deadly softness.
Jumping Badger shoved Wren to the ground, and stood breathing hard, his fists clenching and unclenching. “Why is this girl free?”
“She escaped during the fight. I did not even realize she was gone, until I—”
“Do not lie to me! You let her go! Do you think me a fool?”
One of Elk Ivory’s brows quirked, and several of the Walksalong warriors laughed.
Jumping Badger swung around, his face twisted in fury. “Who laughed? Who was laughing!”
When no one owned up to it, Jumping Badger glowered at Wren, then backhanded her hard across the mouth.
Wren hit the ground spitting blood. Tears blurred her eyes. She rose on her hands and knees and tried to crawl away, but Jumping Badger kicked her down. Her chin skidded over the dirt, and she started crying.
“Oh, Wren,” Dust Moon whispered.
Jumping Badger’s eyes widened. “Do you know this girl? How long have you known her?”
As if suddenly realizing the implications of calling out to Wren, the woman shook her head. “I don’t know her.”
“But she was with Blue Raven when he sold you the
child? Isn’t that so? That’s what he told me.”
Wren looked at Dust Moon pleadingly, as if terrified the old woman might say the wrong thing.
Jumping Badger grabbed her by the hair, and said, “Do you know Dust Moon and Silver Sparrow?”
“No, I—”
“How long have you known them?”
“I don’t know them!” Little Wren sobbed the words.
Jumping Badger shoved her face into the ground.
“Now, old woman,” he said to Dust Moon. “You will answer me. How long have you known this worthless girl?”
When Dust Moon’s jaw clamped, he stepped toward her, drawing back his hand to wipe that expression from her wrinkled face.
“That is your way, isn’t it, brave War Leader?” Elk Ivory’s voice stopped Jumping Badger in his tracks.
He turned to glare at her.
“Ever since you were a boy,” Elk Ivory said, “you’ve enjoyed hurting the helpless. Women, children, animals. We have all seen it. But when it comes to leading a war party, you often insist on walking in the rear, where you are safe. You are so cowardly you won’t walk after dark unless we make torches to light your way. You refuse to discuss your strategy with any of your warriors. Instead, you talk to a rotting head! You are unfit to be war leader!”
Jumping Badger looked from Elk Ivory to Dust Moon, and then down at Wren. He sensed a strange undercurrent here, one he didn’t understand.
He kicked Wren. “What is it that they know about you, girl, that I do not? Eh? Perhaps Elk Ivory was right in the beginning. Do you remember?” Jumping Badger shouted to his warriors. “How many of you recall when Elk Ivory insisted that Blue Raven had had nothing to
do with the theft of the False Face Child? She claimed that Wren had stolen the boy, and that Blue Raven was merely tracking his niece! Eh? How many of you recall those words?”
Nearly every Walksalong warrior in the village nodded.
“Well,” Jumping Badger said. “Perhaps she was right. Maybe this wretched girl did steal the False Face Child. I want answers!” he shouted. “Was this girl responsible?”
He crouched before Wren, breathing hard, his face awash in firelight, and hissed, “I will have the truth, girl. And you will give it to me.”
“But I—I don’t know anything. I only found Uncle a few days ago, and he—”
Jumping Badger grabbed Wren by the front of her blue shirt and dragged her face up to less than a handbreadth from his. He shouted, “Where is the False Face Child?”
“Please, d-don’t hurt me,” she pleaded, and clutched at his fists. “I swear I don’t know anything!”
“Where is the False Face Child? Did you help him escape? Where is he!”
Jumping Badger shook Wren with all his strength, and she broke down and wept like an infant.
Without taking his blazing eyes from her, he called, “Rides-the-Bear! Shield Maker! Set fire to the lodges. I am going to need light.”
“Yes, War Leader.”
The two men ran to the bonfire north of the village, pulled long branches from the woodpile, and thrust the tips into the flames. When the wood blazed, they trotted to the first lodge, threw up the door curtain, and stuck the fiery brands inside, setting fire to the dry interior walls. They went down the row, setting fire to all seven lodges.
At first the roofs steamed, then smoked, and finally lurid orange tongues leaped through the smoke holes. The lodges burst into fire, and sparks shot across the plaza.
As the flames built to a roar, a gaudy fluorescent halo expanded over the village. It glittered from the fog, and danced on the stark upturned faces of the Sleeping Mist captives.
Jumping Badger stood and yanked Wren to her feet. He shouted, “Tonight, even the Night Walkers will hear this girl’s screams! She will tell me the truth, or I will blind her, and then …” He nodded, and smiled. “Then the real pain will begin. I never heard your uncle beg me to kill him. But you, girl, you will.”
He gripped Wren’s rope-burned wrist and hauled her across the dirt to the base of the staff. The sunken, crusted eye that peered from beneath the canted mask sparkled with evil.
Jumping Badger pulled his knife from his belt, and stood up, smiling at the people who watched him. “Now, witness the wrath of the Walksalong Clan.”
He turned, and sprang for Wren, slamming her shoulders to the ground and pinning them with his massive left arm, while his knife pricked the corner of her eye.
Wren trembled like a dying fawn. “Jumping B-Badger, please. You are my cousin! Don’t—”
“Stop this!” Elk Ivory’s voice rang out. “Leave her alone!”
He swiveled his head, and saw Elk Ivory easing up behind him, her bow leveled at his back. The red chert arrow point shone in the flameglow.
“We do not kill our own people, Jumping Badger,” Elk Ivory said. “All of you—look! Do you wish to see a little girl tortured? A member of your own clan? What have we become that could even think—”
Rides-the-Bears’ war club cut through the mist with the silence of a bird. It struck Elk Ivory in the back of the head, and she crumpled to the ground.
Jumping Badger smiled approvingly at the ugly man., “Good work. We will finish her later. Watch them!” He pointed to Dust Moon and Silver Sparrow.
Silver Sparrow had managed to get to his feet, and stood with his legs braced. Blood flowed over his neck bandage and down his chest. His eyes had a strange savage glitter.
Jumping Badger turned back to Wren. He lifted and turned the black stone blade before her eyes, letting her see its long sharp edges.
“I have heard the pain is terrible,” he whispered to Wren. “The knife slices through the eyeball, and as it twists inside the skull, there are flashes of light, and—”
“I don’t know anything!” Wren screamed. “Please, I tell you, I don’t—”
“Where is the False Face Child?” Jumping Badger shouted. “Where is he? He came into this village. We saw his tracks down on the shore. Where is he!” He pressed the knife into the fold at the top of Wren’s right eye. “Tell me now. Tell me where the False Face Child is, or I’ll—”
“No!” a small terrified voice cried. “Leave Wren alone!”
“Rumbler, no!” Wren sobbed, and fought against Jumping Badger’s arm. “No! Run!”
A bizarre sound echoed across the village, and Jumping Badger went rigid.
Deep-throated, it resembled the low moaning growl of a cougar surprised when its prey suddenly turns to fight. The muscles in Jumping Badger’s arms contracted. He sat up and scanned the faces in the mist.
“What is that?” he demanded to know. He rose to his
feet, clutching his knife tightly. “Who’s making that sound?”
Shrill high-pitched laughter rang through the mist, then a deep inhuman voice said, “I did, big man.”
Gasps and cries rose from the people in the village. Several of his warriors spun around with their bows up.
Jumping Badger turned slowly.
The False Face Child stood on the hill. In the garish firelight, his white cape glittered, and his eyes shone like huge black moons.
Jumping Badger glared at his warriors, shouting, “What are you waiting for? Kill him! He’s the False Face Child!”
Flickers of light danced through the forest, and for a moment, Jumping Badger thought that sparks from the burning lodges had caught in the dry winter grasses.
No. No! Had the ghosts returned?
His warriors spun around, their mouths open, watching the lights.
“Rides-the-Bear!” Jumping Badger yelled. “Shoot the child!”
A streak of light, like a fiery falcon, swooped over Rides-the-Bear’s head, and he hit the ground, shrieking, “What was that? What’s happening?”
Fear congealed like ice in Jumping Badger’s veins. He ripped Elk Ivory’s bow from her unconscious hands, and reached for the arrow that lay on the ground—
Four lights cut through the mist above him, unfurling burning streamers, as if the gods were playing a game of catch with ball lightning.
“What is this?” Jumping Badger cried, gaping at the mist-shrouded sky. “These are not ghosts! What’s happening?”
“You are about to die, big man,” that strange echoing voice said.
He jerked to look at the False Face Child, not quite able to believe the boy could make his voice sound that way. “Boy? Did you say that? Who said that!”
Jumping Badger took a step backward, and bumped into something. He whirled, and the severed head toppled forward, bashing him in the face. The overpowering stench struck him first, then he felt the half-melted flesh clinging to his forehead, and trickling down his temple. He twisted away, and wiped frantically at the putrid slime. The mask had fallen off when the head hit the ground. Bone gleamed on the rotted head where once there had been scalp.
Loud, gleeful laughter. The hideous cackle mixed with the roaring fires, and rose like a shriek inside him.
Jumping Badger cried out, aimed his bow, and shot Lamedeer through the mouth.
I’m so glad you brought me along. I’ve been waiting for this.
“Shut up!” Jumping Badger flung his bow aside, reached for the staff and slammed the head into the ground, shrieking like a madman. “Don’t talk to me! I can’t stand it!”
He gripped the staff, swung it round and round and cast it into the forest, then stumbled to a stop, breathing hard.
His warriors gaped. The captives watched him in shock.
A huge ball of fire danced through the mist over the plaza, as if it had flown very high, and now plunged downward toward them.
Little Wren whimpered, and curled into a ball.
Jumping Badger turned on her. “I’m going to kill you first, girl! Do you hear that, boy? I’m killing the girl first!”
He reached for Wren’s throat, and she screamed.
And another scream shredded the night, hoarse and chilling, as if being torn from a child’s stomach by a stone fish hook.
Jumping Badger turned and saw the dwarf child running as fast his short legs would carry him, dashing across the plaza with his pitiful child’s bow up. The boy’s mangled hands could barely steady the nocked arrow. A horrified cry of determination tore from his throat.
Jumping Badger laughed. “You think you can kill me with that, boy? That arrow is not even long enough to—”
The boy fired.
And from all around the child, rolling fireballs flared, seeming to come from the ends of his hair, his hands, his eyes.
An incoherent cry escaped Jumping Badger’s mouth as, first, the boy’s little arrow struck his chest, then the balls of fire. Like claps of silent lightning, each knocked him back until he collapsed on his knees, his clothes ablaze.
“Put it out!” he shrieked. “I’m on fire, put it out!”
None of his warriors moved.
The boy ran past Jumping Badger, his white cape flying around his malformed legs, threw down his bow, and wrapped his arms around Wren, breathlessly sobbing, “Wren? Wren, are you all right?”
Jumping Badger rolled on the ground to put out the fire, tearing at his clothes … .
“Don’t move!”
The order came from the dark hill where the False Face Child had first appeared.
The fire out, Jumping Badger sprawled on his back, and weakly clutched at the five large arrows, and one small arrow, that pierced his chest.
Warriors began to emerge from the misty shadows,
their faces drawn, bows aimed. Several carried torches.
The Walksalong warriors looked around, assessing their odds, and began to mutter to each other.
“Lower your bows!” a corpulent man with a bloated face ordered as he waddled from the trees. “Do it now! Do you wish to die?”
Jumping Badger felt as if a granite boulder weighted his chest. He couldn’t get air. He blinked wearily as he watched his men drop their bows and lift their hands over their heads. “No …” he rasped.
Breathless, triumphant laughter.
It filled the village, loud and raucous, the insane hilarity of victory.
Jumping Badger’s face contorted.
Mist spun around him, spawning bizarre monstrous creatures three times the height of a man. Thousands … there were thousands! Dancing. Leaping. One face formed clearly. The face of a little boy with glowing ember eyes. It swayed above him. The boy leaned over, his undulant arms made of swirling fog, his mouth a hollow of firelight, and he smiled. Then he reached for Jumping Badger … .
Dust Moon inspected the corpulent man who waddled into the plaza. “Blessed Spirits, that’s Spotted Frog.”
“Yes,” Sparrow said. “Dust, help me to walk.”
She slipped her arm around his waist. “Put your arm over my shoulders.”
As Spotted Frog’s warriors closed in around the plaza, Cornhusk came running from the trees with his arms wide, calling, “Please, everyone be calm. You’re safe! Everything’s all right!”
The Silent Crow warriors collected weapons and searched the Walksalong men.
Gull rose from the circle of captives. Tears filled his eyes. He looked at Spotted Frog, and said, “Where did you come from? We thought we were dead.”
Spotted Frog smiled, and walked forward. “We came from Silent Crow Village, my friend. When we saw the fires here, we feared the worst We’ve been shooting flaming arrows for half a hand of time, to tell you we were coming. Didn’t you see them?”
Gull bowed his head, trying to hide the tears that ran down his cheeks. “Yes.” He nodded. “In the mist, we didn’t know what they were. But … yes. Thank you. We owe you our lives.”
Spotted Frog waved the thanks away, and looked at Rumbler and Little Wren, who sat crying with their arms around each other. He said, “Are those the hero children?”
Gull turned. The lines in his forehead deepened. “The boy is the False Face Child from Paint Rock Village. The girl is from Walksalong Village. We do not know her, but her name is Little Wren.”
Spotted Frog’s face slackened with reverence. He waddled toward them.
Sparrow said, “Let’s join them, Dust.”
They gradually made their way across the plaza.
Cornhusk trotted up to join them. Tall, and lanky, his buffalo coat looked even more mangy than the last time they’d seen him. The silver strands in his black hair shone. He grinned, showing his missing front teeth. “Look!” he said. “I saved you again!”
“Really?” Dust lifted a skeptical brow. “Do we have you to thank for this?”
“Well,” Cornhusk said with mock modesty, “I told Spotted Frog and his village the story, but they are the
ones who decided to mount a war party to help you. I guided them here, though!”
“Then we are in your debt, Cornhusk,” Dust said. “Thank you.”
Cornhusk bowed, and grinned.
Just before they reached the children, a man staggered from the forest. He had a walking stick propped before him, and wore his hair in the cut of the Thornbush Clan, with the sides shaved and a ridge of hair down the middle of his skull. Blood drenched his left leg.
“Don’t shoot!” he called. “I’m unarmed!”
Spotted Frog gestured to two of his warriors. “Let this warrior join the other captives.”
The young men trotted forward, their bows aimed at the man’s chest, and gestured for him to enter the plaza.
He swung his wounded leg forward stiffly, propping his walking stick as he came. When he saw Jumping Badger’s dead body, and Elk Ivory lying on her back, he gritted his teeth, let out a hoarse roar, and began kicking Jumping Badger with all the might he could muster.
Other Walksalong warriors saw him, and walked forward, escorted by Silent Crow guards. They stood around the body, kicking Jumping Badger, spitting upon him, and cursing him.
The sight made Sparrow feel cold to his bones.
Dust pulled him forward, toward the children. They arrived in time to see Spotted Frog kneel beside Rumbler and Little Wren.
In a gentle voice, the patron asked, “Are you both well? Do you need food or water?”
Rumbler rubbed fists in his wet eyes, and studied Spotted Frog for several moments. He murmured, “Are you the man with the silver gorget shaped like a wolf?”
Spotted Frog straightened, and blinked. He pulled the pendant from his cape. It glimmered in the dwindling
firelight. “My great-grandmother gave this to me. How did you know I had—”
“I saw you,” Rumbler said. “In a Dream. You had a hundred Spirit Helpers crowding behind your shoulders.”
Spotted Frog’s warriors glanced at each other, and looked upon their leader with new awe.
Spotted Frog smiled. “Well, I am glad to know that. Thank you.”
Sparrow tightened his hold around Dust Moon’s shoulders, and said, “I can’t tell you how glad we are to see you, Spotted Frog.”
Spotted Frog grunted to his feet, and glanced fondly at them. “For a time, I feared we weren’t going to arrive soon enough. Cornhusk lost the trail.”
The Trader shoved his hands in his coat pockets, and shrugged. “Well, I found it again after we lit torches, Patron. In this mist, no one—”
“At any rate,” Spotted Frog said. “We made it.”
The patron lowered his gaze to Rumbler and Wren, and his brows drew together. “What will happen to the children now? Will you take them?”
Dust tightened her arm around Sparrow’s waist. “Yes,” she answered. “Though I don’t know where we will go. Wren betrayed her people by stealing Rumbler. She can’t go home, and I—”
“I do,” Wren whispered. She got on her knees, and stood up, wincing as if every rib in her body had been broken. “We need to go north.”
Rumbler rose beside her, and tucked his hand into her palm. When he looked at her, his eyes shone like stars.
“Grandmother,” Rumbler said, and glanced uncertainly at the people standing around. “Wren and I, we want to go find my father.”
Wren held his little hand tighter, and nodded. “He
needs to find his father. If he doesn’t go now, he may never have another chance.”
Dust smiled, but uncertainty invaded her chest. She turned around. “Cornhusk, have you ever been to the far northern islands? A place called the Cove Meadows?”
“Why, yes!” Cornhusk said. “I’ve been there once. There isn’t really much there. Why?”
Dust tenderly tucked Sparrow’s blood-spattered hair behind his ears, and gazed up at him with her whole heart in her eyes. She said, “We have a message we want you to carry to a man there, named Bull Killer.”