Fifty-two

For two days rain fell in sheets; lightning blasted the long and forested ridges on either side of the Tenasee River valley. Funnel clouds hovered over the land, dropping to tear through timber like it was kindling. The Powers of the Sky World unleashed their full fury.

One of the great black oak trees behind Black Clay Bank village was sundered in two, half of the forest giant falling to crush one of the huts, killing four men, five women, and seven children who huddled inside.

By day Night Shadow Star alternately watched the flood-swollen river and then the Trade trail that led down the northern bank and back toward the narrow channel where Fire Cat had disappeared in his attempt to deal with Blood Talon’s pursuing canoe.

With the coming of full darkness, she would retreat to the house: a bent-pole frame structure, bark-sided, with a thick thatch roof. Mostly dry inside, it sheltered two families, and was warmed by a smoke-spewing fire that gnawed slowly through the wet wood it was fed.

When she rolled out in her mostly dried blankets it was to remember that look on Fire Cat’s face as he slipped over the side and into the river. A calm confidence laced with desperation. Not for him, but for her. His insistence that she not follow him. That she trust him to complete this one last mission. That he would either catch up or meet her in Cofitachequi.

She’d watched him swim to the tangle of floating driftwood, latch onto the log. She had scrambled to her knees to peer back at the raft as the current whipped it toward the Cahokian war canoe.

After that the details blurred. She’d seen the Cahokians scramble toward one side, watched them fending off something hidden by the rain. Then she’d barely made out the melee as the canoe rolled onto its side.

Despite her pleas, the Albaamaha had doggedly continued to paddle upriver. Only Winder’s hard hand clasping her upper arm had stayed her from leaping over the side and swimming in pursuit. She had ached to ride that current down, to discover for herself if Fire Cat lived.

“Don’t do it, Lady.” Winder had sounded so sure of himself. “He said he’d catch up. He will.”

“You don’t understand! That’s Fire Cat! What if he—”

“You go after him, you’ll undo everything he’s done! You understand that?” He’d glared into her eyes. “Do you trust that man, or not?”

Numbly, she’d nodded, sank down to stare over the stern as the rain pounded them. The rest of that journey remained blurred in her memory. Just an endless jumble of shivering cold, pounding rain, and disbelief that Fire Cat was gone. She had kept her gaze on the river, the rain, and the distance. Shiver she might, but her imagination kept conjuring Fire Cat. That each bobble of the current, each bit of twirling flotsam or bobbing bit of wood, had to be Fire Cat, swimming strongly in pursuit.

They’d carried her up from the canoe, her flesh as senseless and inert as the clay for which the village had been named. She dully remembered sitting in the doorway, a warm fire at her back, watching the flooding river, knowing that Fire Cat would appear.

That had been two long days ago. Now she made her way back to the hut, wrung out her wet hair, and shook off her cape before entering the low doorway.

The smell of hominy boiling, roasting squirrel, and acorn bread sent pangs through her empty stomach.

“Lady,” Winder greeted her where he sat in the visitors’ place just inside the door; their Koasati hosts were seated in their places just behind the fire. “If he landed on the other side of the river, it will take him a time to catch up. And the lowlands will be flooded. Don’t lose hope.”

She ducked in, settled herself in her place opposite him by the door, and extended her hands to the fire. “He wouldn’t have drowned. He’s Red Wing. Raised on the river. He told me how he used to dive, how his uncle insisted he be able to swim across the river by the time he was seven. It would have taken more than Blood Talon to drown him.”

Winder gave her that emotionless look she’d grown used to. The one he adopted when he wanted to remain completely neutral.

“Storm’s going to break in the morning. I know you want to wait, to go in search of him, but I need you to think this through. Yes, your man Two Coups is back there. But so are any surviving warriors. And you can bet that this Blood Talon you talk about isn’t going to give up. If you choose to wait here, I will not stand in their way when they take you prisoner. I’m not hired to do so.”

She took a deep breath. “No, you’re not.”

“You heard your warrior. He said to continue, that he would catch up. There is no telling what he’s going to have to do to avoid those selfsame surviving warriors. Maybe loop wide of the river. He may already be on his way to Cofitachequi, and you’ll be here, waiting, while he travels on.”

That was indeed a possibility.

Winder continued. “I don’t know what your goal is once you reach Cofitachequi, but for you to have traveled this far, being the kind of Trader you are, it must be an important mission. Do you want to simply abandon it? Sit here in Black Clay Bank village, waiting? If so, for how long? A couple of moons? A year? What if Two Coups never comes? If the worst happened and Blood Talon’s warriors killed him that day in the river, what then?”

She clenched her teeth, eyes going out to the growing darkness and the roiling flood beyond.

“Cofitachequi,” Piasa whispered.

“Is he alive?” she asked the air around her.

“He lives for Cofitachequi.”

“How do I know you’re telling the truth?”

“Our new bargain. Your brother for Fire Cat.”

Night Shadow Star stiffened. Realized what the Underwater Panther had done. “He was in the river, your domain.”

The Spirit Beast hissed his amusement. Two words formed in the air around her. “The price.”

For daring to consummate her love for Fire Cat?

She closed her eyes, heart pounding in her chest. Her master had just been biding his time, letting her fall ever deeper into her love, knowing that when the beast took him away from her, she’d be totally at Piasa’s command.

“So,” she mused, “the only way to get him back is to finish what I started?”

She could imagine Piasa’s gleaming eyes, the feral smile, a half snarl that bent the beast’s cougar-shaped muzzle.

“We go as soon as it’s safe to travel the river,” she told Winder. “And the faster we get to Cofitachequi, the better.”

“And Two Coups?”

“He will find us there.”

As if the Trader had heard Piasa himself, a contented smile, almost triumphant, seemed to animate the man’s square face.

“In the morning, Lady,” Winder told her. “Now, get a good night’s sleep. We can make the downriver end of the Suck and Rage by tomorrow night if we’re on the river by first light.”

As she laid out her bedding, she pleaded, Fire Cat, tell me I’m doing the right thing.

Because if she got to Cofitachequi, killed Walking Smoke, and her Spirit master didn’t produce Fire Cat? Well, should that be the case, her lord had better prepare for war.