Lightning Shell--A People of Cahokia Novel, page 16
As they paddled, she got the whole story about how close Fire Cat had come to finding her and learned Field Snake’s part in thwarting Fire Cat’s arrival in Joara.
Bluefish finished it. “So Field Snake came trotting into Joara in the middle of the night. Claimed that an entire Cahokian war party was hot and close behind him. That he’d managed to misdirect them onto a supposed shortcut.”
“And you believed him?” she asked, stroking and then steering them into the current’s thread where it ran wide rounding a bend. “You ask me, I’d have called him a loud-mouthed braggart even before he tried to rape me. Makes me want to go back and kill him all over again.”
“Some things didn’t make sense,” Made of Wood agreed as he paddled. “But that was later. Things he talked about. That he couldn’t help himself, had to brag about hitting the Trader in the head with a branch. According to Field Snake, he dashed the man’s brains out.”
“That would have been Winder,” she said thoughtfully. “So, he and Fire Cat were together again. But Blood Talon? I wonder if Field Snake was sure about the name. Blood Talon is working for Lord Spotted Wrist. He was sent to bring me back to Cahokia. He was responsible for Fire Cat’s defeat at Red Wing Town. Tried to kill Fire Cat more than once. It makes no sense that he would be traveling with the Red Wing.”
She paused, considering, as her gaze took in the thick forest that ran down to the river’s banks, the oaks, maples, and sweet gum towering so high that she could barely catch glimpses of the mountains rising beyond. A blue heron took flight as they rounded the bend, the great bird flapping its wings across the flat surface of the water.
“I don’t think there was any war party,” Summer Ice added from where he paddled at the bow. “The way Field Snake bragged, he never mentioned any more than three men. Nothing about ranks of warriors on the trail. No descriptions of their armor, or how many there were. Nothing about their clans, or who gave the orders. Believe me, we all tried to pry what we could out of him. Might have had to fight them, right? So we wanted to know what, and how many, we were up against. He could never quite answer that. And over the course of our travel, the story kept changing. Little details that were inconsistent.”
“Squadron First Blood Talon was in charge of a party of twenty-some warriors. I just can’t imagine how Fire Cat could ally with them. It makes no sense.”
Bluefish said, “Lady, Field Snake always insisted that Fire Cat was in charge. Bragged about how easily he fooled the war leader.”
“War leader?” she echoed. “The Blood Talon I know would never bestow such an honorific on a man he’d made a slave. Perhaps this is another Blood Talon? Someone with the same name?”
“You know as much as we do, Lady,” Made of Wood told her. “We always thought it was Field Snake trying to be more than he was.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Orders from the High Chief. ‘Make no mention of a Cahokian war party in Lady Night Shadow Star’s presence. Don’t let her have any hope of rescue.’”
“Explains why he and my brother were so intent on hiding our trail, on making time from Joara to the river.” She couldn’t help it. She had to look back over her shoulder, wondering if, by chance, she was going to see Fire Cat paddling vigorously in pursuit.
Instead, all she saw was the narrow ribbon of water, the surface gleaming silver in a shaft of sunlight that pierced the clouds.
“What now, Lady?” Made of Wood asked. “We’re on our own. Just the four of us. And we’re far from anywhere that recognizes your authority.”
“First thing?” she told them. “You’re going to have to stop looking like warriors. Nothing we can do about the war shirts, but the beaded forelocks? The warrior’s hair styles, they have to go. We can’t look like Cahokians. We have to become Traders.”
“What have we got to Trade?” Summer Ice asked.
“Have to pick that up as we travel,” she told him. “If I’d been thinking, we’d have kept those mussel shells from supper last night.”
“That would have barely been a sack of shells,” Bluefish muttered. “Almost worthless.”
“Almost,” she agreed. “But worth something. And we’ve got three pearls. Got to start somewhere.”
“Wishing you hadn’t given all that Trade away at Willow Stem Town?” Made of Wood asked.
She shrugged, steered them wide of a submerged snag where the sheen on the surface betrayed its location. “At the time, my only goal was to kill Walking Smoke. Figured your high chief would order my death when I did. Long-term planning wasn’t in the cast of the gaming pieces.”
“Guess we changed that.” Made of Wood stroked deeply with his paddle. “What about these villages we keep passing? If there’s any way to find Trade, it’s going to have to be with the local people.”
“No.” She glanced warily at the thick vegetation back from the riverbank. “These are mostly Mahica, others are related to the Chalakee, some Catawba. All are either suspicious of Cahokians or have bad history with them. With your tattoos and weapons, you don’t look like Traders. I think we’re best served by avoiding the locals until we get south of the Wide Fast.”
As the river curled into a tight bend, a fish weir appeared as nothing more than sticks protruding from the surface and angling into a funnel along the right bank. To miss it, Night Shadow Star steered them closer to the left bank, seeking to pass wide of it.
As they rounded the bend they came upon a series of three canoes, all holding position around the circular fish trap at the bottom of the weir. The half-naked men and a single woman were in the final process of pulling up a net from the bottom of the trap. Fish could be seen straining and flopping, light streaking from their sides as they were hoisted over the gunwale and into the largest of the canoes. When the catch filled the hull, the canoe settled lower in the water.
At that point, the woman looked up, her eyes fixing with Night Shadow Star’s across the roiling water. She pointed, a sharp cry escaping her lips, to be followed by an order in some language Night Shadow Star could only guess at.
The fishermen wheeled, craning their heads. They were dressed only in breechcloths, hair up in a barbarian’s piled curls. One looked to be in his teens, the rest in their twenties and thirties. They didn’t hesitate as they clambered about their canoes, pulling up bows, slinging quivers around their shoulders.
The woman shouted something that sounded like “Achaeeia!” and the two smaller canoes were pushed back from the weir. While some men reached for paddles, others were madly stringing their bows.
The two men in the big canoe also pushed free, bending to their paddles, sending their craft with its cargo of still-flopping fish into rapid flight.
“Greetings!” Night Shadow Star called in Trade pidgin, rising in the rear. “We come under the Power of Trade. We’re just passing through.”
The woman, her face reflecting fear and anger, kept shouting, pointing as her two canoes shot out to intercept Night Shadow Star’s vessel as it rushed down toward them.
“Stop!” Night Shadow Star cried. “We come under the Power of Trade. You hear? Trade!” She dropped her paddle, using her hands to overemphasize the sign-language gesture for Trade.
Even as she did, the man in the first canoe rose high enough to clear the lower stave of his bow and released an arrow that hissed within a hand’s distance of Night Shadow Star’s head.
“That cuts it!” Bluefish cried, dropping his paddle to grab for his own weapons where they lay amidships.
The canoe rocked wildly as the Cahokian warriors scrambled for their bows and quivers; Night Shadow Star fought for balance and kept repeating, “Trade! We Trade!” and signing furiously.
“Pus and rot!” Bluefish cried. He was pulling his bow from its case when an arrow drove deeply into his side. The warrior jerked, his expression stunned, eyes popping wide. Desperately he whirled, mouth opening in disbelief at the sight of the shaft sticking out of his gut.
In the rear, Made of Wood had managed to free his bow, was struggling in the confines of the canoe to string it, almost capsizing the craft in the process.
Up front, another arrow thumped into Bluefish’s body, the warrior now stiffening, a whimper deep in his throat.
“Stop!” Night Shadow Star screamed. “Trade, pus take you! We are Traders!”
In the second canoe, the woman kept shrieking, pointing, her features twisted in rage. The men were bent to the paddles, all but the one in front who, like the man in the first canoe, rose to his knees to loose an arrow. This one cut the air between Bluefish’s and Summer Ice’s heads.
As it did, Made of Wood managed to string his bow, rip an arrow from his quiver, and rise. Taking his time, he ignored the third arrow that drove itself into Bluefish’s cowering body. Made of Wood’s release took the lead archer, driving full into the man’s breast. Perched high as he was, the fisherman slipped sideways, dropped his bow, and clutched the arrow with both hands. Then he collapsed, dragging the canoe and its paddlers into the water.
“Summer Ice!” Made of Wood snapped. “Hold Bluefish! Keep him upright! Use his body for a shield. Lady, point us straight at that last canoe!”
She glimpsed the arrow as it sailed from the oncoming canoe, watched the shaft gleam in the sunlight as it arched and drove into Bluefish’s body. Felt the impact through the hull as Bluefish kicked in response. But Summer Ice had him now, had wrapped his arms around Bluefish’s shoulders, was holding him upright, the body bristling with arrows.
Made of Wood drew, muscles knotting, and released. Like a sun-streaked dart, his shaft flew true; the fletching imparted a spin as the razor-sharp chert war point drove into the archer’s stomach.
The man looked down, dropped his bow to clutch the arrow, and slumped backward. The paddler behind him fumbled to retrieve the man’s bow, wrenched an arrow from beneath the body, and rose to shoot.
Made of Wood had his rhythm now, whipping another arrow from his quiver. He nocked, drew, aimed, and released. The arrow took the second man high and left. Drove through his shoulder so that a hand’s length of point and the fore shaft were visible as the man spun under the impact.
Night Shadow Star, jaws clenched, propelled the canoe toward the fishermen, glaring her disbelief as the furious local woman continued to exhort her men to attack. But with two dying, the last two men in her craft refused, and broke off. The woman was still screaming as the two paddlers struck out for the wooded shoreline.
In the water just ahead, the capsized canoe bobbed, three men kicking and swimming away for all they were worth. As they thrashed toward shore, they cast frightened glances over their shoulders, eyes panicked.
Made of Wood drew, took a bead, picking his target.
“Let them go,” Night Shadow Star told him. “We’ve won.”
“Lady?”
“It is all right, Warrior.” To Summer Ice, “How is Bluefish?”
“Barely breathing, Lady. His gut has gone hard. Bleeding out internally if I’m any judge. He’s got to be seeing the ancestors, knows they’re close.”
“What in seven shades of shit possessed them?” Made of Wood demanded as the local woman’s canoe hit the bank and the living grabbed their dying friends. Together they dragged them up the bank, into the screen of vegetation.
The woman, un-chastened, continued to stand on the shore, water lapping at her feet, her fist raised and shaking as she screamed curses and imprecations their way.
Night Shadow Star considered their situation. “We’re in range of the bank if they decide to shoot from cover. Paddle. Hurry. We need to leave this place behind us. Now!”
Made of Wood dropped his bow for his paddle.
“What of Bluefish?” Summer Ice asked softly. “I can’t feel his heartbeat. He’s no longer breathing.”
“Put him over the side,” Made of Wood said.
Summer Ice jerked his head around. “Are you out of your mind? He’s a Hawk Clan warrior. His ancestors are in the Sky World.”
“Let him go,” Night Shadow Star added in a soothing voice. “My Lord will take care of his soul. I give you my word.”
Night Shadow Star clenched her jaws in response to the horrified look on Summer Ice’s face as he wrestled Bluefish’s dead weight, balanced it on the gunwale, and let his friend slide into the water.
“Paddle now!” Night Shadow Star told them. “We need to be…” She lost the words as they rounded the next bend.
The village was there, perhaps two bowshots back from the bank. She could see the canoe landing, the big canoe with its load of fish hastily pulled up. The fishermen were running full up from the landing, calling out. More shouting came from the forest upriver. The survivors from the woman’s canoe, running to raise the alarm.
“I said, paddle!” Night Shadow Star cried as she raised herself, bending to the task as she drove her paddle deep and sent the canoe shooting forward.
Behind them, Bluefish’s arrow-riddled corpse bobbed low in the current, then vanished amid the swirling eddies.
Twenty-six
They had to rest. No way could Fire Cat escape that single haunting reality. For two days now, he had driven them. Winder was blinking like some day-blind owl. Blood Talon had fallen asleep, his paddle in hand, and was slumped low in the canoe’s hull, Night Shadow Star’s box of Trade supporting the squadron first’s back. Shell Hook’s chin had fallen onto his chest where he sat in the back, and this time the hard nod of his head hadn’t awakened him.
They were passing a fish weir when a canoe broke from the weeds, a warrior rising in the front, a bow held at the ready, an arrow nocked but not drawn.
The man called in a language Fire Cat had never heard. In pidgin he called back, “Traders.” And set his paddle aside to reach for his Trader’s staff.
Behind him, Winder said, “Catawba, given the cut of their hair and tattoos.” Then he, too, lifted his Trader’s staff and called, “What news?”
“Then, you are indeed Traders?” the man asked uncertainly.
“We are,” Shell Hook, having blinked himself awake, called back and added something in what had to be Catawba.
“What’s the news?” Winder asked. “I don’t speak their tongue.”
“Witchery,” Shell Hook translated. “Two nights ago, Six Toes brought a witch and a party of Cahokians to their village. The next morning they found Six Toes dead, his body cut apart, his heart and liver cooked and partially eaten. Most of his skin was flayed. The Cahokians were gone.”
“Walking Smoke,” Fire Cat growled under his breath. In pidgin he asked, “Was there a woman with the witch?”
“No,” the man called back. “But a woman and three Cahokians passed this morning. Being Cahokian, and after what happened to us, we tried to take them. We needed to sacrifice them as appeasement to the ancestors and Power, to cleanse our village of the Cahokian witch’s pollution.”
“Where is she?” Fire Cat demanded, starting to rise.
Winder put a firm hand on his shoulder, forcing him back down and whispering, “Don’t give us away, Red Wing.”
“She is downriver, being pursued,” the man called.
“Hope you catch her,” Winder called back. “We want no part of your troubles. We’ll just paddle on past.”
“Go!” the man called. “But be warned the witch is somewhere downriver.”
“We’ll be careful,” Shell Hook called back. “Thank you for the warning.”
Fire Cat had already replaced his Trader’s staff, was driving his paddle deep, sending them racing ahead.
“How do you want to play this?” Winder asked.
“Let’s just hope she’s still alive,” Fire Cat told him, and gritted his teeth as he poured new strength into his paddle.
Come on, Piasa. You’re not going to let her down now, are you?
They rounded two more bends, the current running wide and close to the bank. The chorus of insects, the birdsong, all grated on Fire Cat’s nerves. As they cleared the second bend, they saw a tree that had fallen in the shallows, its branches and trunk, shorn of leaves, poking down into the murky water. Vs of ripples trailed out like wakes from each of the branches.
The thing bobbing in the tree’s backwater got Fire Cat’s attention. There’s something about a floating body, the way the shoulders and back of the head barely break the surface. The limpid way the corpse bobs in the current. How the arms and legs, unseen and submerged, dangle into the depths. Facedown, the body seemed to waffle in the current, as though one of the feet was caught up in one of the tree’s submerged branches. The man’s hair was up. Looked like a warrior’s bun.
Adding to the unsettling sight was the fletching and shaft that protruded from the corpse’s right shoulder; most of the length had been driven into the dead man’s chest, which indicated the shot had come from close range.
“Do we want to take a look?” Winder asked. “Maybe hope that it’s Walking Smoke?”
“That’s a warrior’s hair bun,” Blood Talon noted. “I’d call it Cahokian.”
Fire Cat hesitated for half a stroke. Then he drove their canoe forward. “Doesn’t matter who it is. Nothing we can do for him now. My Lady is up ahead somewhere.”
The pounding of Fire Cat’s heart felt like a hammer against his breastbone. Fear began to rise, bitter and acidic in his stomach.
Where is Night Shadow Star? Where?
But when he looked down, no weird blue glow paced them down in the depths.
As they rounded the next bend, Fire Cat’s heart skipped. The Catawba onshore had just dragged yet another corpse from the water. Two of them held the dead warrior by the arms, pulling him up the muddy bank. The dead warrior’s head lolled over the man’s breast, a water-logged war shirt draining in streams. The man’s heels made shallow furrows in the black mud, the feet canted to the right. Even as the Catawba paused in their labor, the red stain could be seen spreading on the dead man’s chest as blood drained from a puncture.
