Miska laid his hand on the boy’s shoulder. “I believe you. Now come on. Let’s get them doing something other than killing each other.” He pushed the younger Wolf on ahead of him, into the camp.
Wolves and Bears, the boys were dancing, not to mean anything or make anything happen but just to dance, their bodies flowing darkly shining in circles around the fire. Ekkatsay glanced at Miska, sitting beside him on the ground, wondering what was going on here.
They had crossed the deer meadows in two days and seen no sign of any Turtles. Yet now the men in both bands, especially the young men, were excited and ready to fight anything. He thought of Taksa and his heart chilled. He could see Miska favored Taksa, believed his fat tongue and his sleek look, and, maybe, wanted someone else to lead Ekkatsay’s village, someone who had not defied him.
The dancers sang and stamped their feet and two of the boys pounded on a log with sticks and the steady throb flooded over him, lifting him up on its swell; his heart beat with their hearts, he wanted to fight also, whoever that was in the pass.
He shook himself, fighting off Miska’s spell. He had to be careful, he thought Miska was only waiting for the chance to kill him and put Taksa in his place.
He wondered briefly if he might kill Miska instead, leap on him now and strike him down with his own club.
The sachem moved suddenly, and Ekkatsay jerked, half-rising, and then falling down on his hams again, tense as a cocked arm. But Miska only glanced up at him, had not seen into his thoughts. The paint had worn off Miska’s face and he looked younger, like an untopped boy, easy to think since he wore his hair long and shaggy in the ugly fashion of the Wolves.
Ekkatsay said, stiffly, “What do you intend to do tomorrow?”
Miska said nothing. He held a little pouch in his hands, and looked down at it. Ekkatsay felt the unanswered question hanging between them, and stiffened up with insult. He thought what Miska had in his hands was a pouch of smoking herb, but then Miska held something out to him, not smoke.
“Look at this.”
Ekkatsay made a sound in his chest, surprised. He took the small cool stone from Miska’s palm. Too smooth even for stone. He held it in the light of the fire. The glisten reminded him of sunlight on water. At first he didn’t even recognize the object itself, but then he saw it was supposed to look like a head, a man’s head, very strange and not real, with a long arched nose and a drooping mouth, and the hair all drawn up in a huge topknot.
“That’s a Bear knot,” he said, and put his free hand up to his own head. “I don’t think this is Bear work, though. That’s some kind of demon.”
He let Miska take it from him, although he wanted it. The cool smooth touch lingered on his fingertips long after Miska had taken it back.
“No,” Miska said. “This comes from far away to the west.” His voice was soft, barely audible under the pounding and stamping and the shouts of the men, and Ekkatsay tipped closer to him. Miska’s fist closed over the little head. “It’s not a demon. It’s a man, there are men who look like this.”
Ekkatsay was awkwardly tilted toward him; the sachem’s soft voice gripped him, and when it stopped, he looked into Miska’s face and saw him shut his eyes and lower his head. Something rushed into his mind, then, some hope, he saw Miska smaller, weaker, only a man, after all. Then the sachem opened his eyes, and stared at him, and said, “I have sent someone to bring me word of them, where they are now, how close they are. If I can strike at them, I mean to. When I decide, I will call, and you will come, with all your fighters.”
Ekkatsay straightened up, away from him, annoyed. He reminded himself that Miska had not beaten the Bears, as he had other villages, and now the Bear village on the bluff was a stronghold against him. But Ekkatsay was not in his village now, was out here in the forest, and the thunderous drumming kept him from thinking well. He grunted something not yes or no, and turned his face toward the dancers.
It came to him that Miska would not be telling him this if he planned to kill him. At once he thought Miska might speak so to lull him, before he killed him. His mind twisted and lurched, unsteady. His fingertips still held the cool smooth luster of the little head. He stared into the fire, afraid to sleep.
From the dark behind him, up toward the pass, there came the long quavering howl of a wolf.
Hasei was afraid of the night; he had heard enough stories of the Bad Twin to be wary of the moon and the darkness, and he knew that the night air was poisonous. The steady croaking of frogs sounded everywhere, a deafening clatter. He curled back deeper into the space under the uprooted tree, angry at Miska for sending them out here.
Miska had given them enough daylight that Hasei had been able to get far up onto the slope below the pass, where he could watch the way down and see anybody creeping on the camp. As soon as the sun had set he found this shelter, a downed tree at the edge of a little clearing, just below the approach to the pass. Now he crawled in out of the way of the rising moon. He was already used to the yelling of the frogs, and he wanted to sleep, but his body was too wakeful, and being angry at Miska he thought of what he might say to him. Then he realized that the frogs’ voices were dying away, not everywhere, but up above him on the slope. Down from the height, someone was coming toward him in the dark.
He lifted his head, his ears straining, catching the small crunch of leaves, the startled warning call of an owl almost over his head. He got quietly out from under the log, leaving his bow and war club behind, and crouched in the shadowy moonlight by the uprooted end. Feeling along the ground around him, he found a rock, which he pried out of the mossy dirt.
Out there the other man was creeping along again, circling the clearing. The glare of the moon washed everything into black and white shapes. Hasei, crouched down behind the cover of the wild tangle of roots, saw the stooped figure sidle along the edge of the open ground, and cocking his arm back he threw the rock.
He missed his aim, the rock crashing into the brush, but the other man bounded into the air like a spooked deer and plunged away into the trees. Hasei dashed after him, trying to follow his course through the dark, zigzagging through the first spindling birches at the edge of the woods.
In the deep darkness of the forest he stopped, one hand on the rough bark of a maple trunk. The other man had stopped running, or at least was making no noise doing it; there was no sound anywhere but the drift of the wind in the branches overhead, and farther off the jugging of the frogs. Hasei leaned against the maple, feeling the darkness pack itself tighter around him, muffling and smothering; he fought off his sense of panic. Then, somewhere very close, he heard a twig snap.
He went stiff, his breath stopped. He thought he smelled sweat. His skin tingled all over. He leaned his whole body against the tree trunk, letting it protect him, and then almost within reach he saw the other man, stooped, cautious, making his way back toward the clearing.
Hasei leapt on him. The other man went down under his weight, twisting under him. Hasei flailed away at the writhing body, trying to pin it down, to strike a good blow, but the other man was slithering away from him. He saw the vague shape leap upright, and he grabbed around him for some weapon, a branch, a stone, but then the other man was running again, this time going uphill, and stopping for nothing, careless of how much noise he made.
Hasei stayed where he was. He thought that man would not come back this way again, not before daybreak anyway. The dark closed in around him again, tangible as fog, filling his eyes and nostrils and mouth. His skin was shrinking from the cold and the dark and he wanted to get in somewhere safe.
Off to his left and downhill a little, there rose the wobbling yell of a wolf. He stopped, put his hands to his mouth, and howled back, to tell the others where he was, and went quickly back to his shelter and his weapons, to wait until the sun rose.
Ekkatsay lay still, but not asleep, wondering how he had lost control of this. Taksa had never been more than an annoyance before Miska showed up; among the Bears the older pe
ople of course paid no heed to anything a boy said or did. Now half the village was following him.
That wasn’t it, Ekkatsay knew. He thought he had never had any control over what was happening, that moving the village up onto the hill had made him think he was safe, and so he had not been careful. And Miska like the wind blowing had found the chink in his wall. Bear and Wolf, man and boy, they were all following Miska.
Lying on the ground with the stars over him, wondering where that wind would blow him in the fight to come, he shivered in a strange eagerness, to have it happen, to get it done. To see what happened.
If they failed, anyway, it would be Miska’s fault. If Miska failed, Taksa would come creeping to his uncle’s feet to beg forgiveness. If Taksa even survived. If Ekkatsay survived. He had not fought in years, since he was a boy, like Taksa, chafing under his uncle’s hand. The thing went around and around in his head like the eddy in a stream, never stopping, going nowhere. Ekkatsay shut his eyes, trying to sleep.
C H A P T E R E I G H T
Ekkatsay slept fitfully, and in the morning he jolted awake. For an instant he was merely glad to find himself still alive. The sky was pale but the sun had not risen. He got up from the ground and went around arousing the other Bears, made them take their weapons up, and got his spear. He wanted to be ready to move, when Miska called him.
Miska was already awake, he saw, getting his own fighters up, drawing them close around the dead campfires. Ekkatsay took his people there also, and Taksa, so they were all standing there together when the first long fingers of the sun reached up over the hill to the east.
Miska went around them all, speaking names, nodding to others, even Bears—Taksa he spoke to, and Taksa smiled sleekly under the stroke of Miska’s voice.
Then Miska came to Ekkatsay. Paint streaked his face like the mask of a wolf and the Bear headman could make out nothing of his expression.
“We will go first, but not straight. We go around. Follow me, I know the way.” He spoke loudly enough that all the others could hear him, even over their low talk. “Lopi will stay here with his band, and make noise, and dance, until the height of the sun.” He turned his head, looking around, to see Lopi. The Bears, Ekkatsay saw, were still chattering, like birds or women, Taksa on the strut among them pretending to give orders, but the Wolves stood utterly quiet, watching Miska. “Then Lopi will bring his band up into the pass and start the fight.”
“Ahhh,” Lopi cried, and leapt into the air, his knees flexing. All the men gave up a huge shout.
Miska turned and started off, with no more talking than that. Ekkatsay followed, determined not to fall behind him—to keep Miska always under his eyes. They went across the clearing—not directly up toward the pass, but in another direction, as if they were leaving. As soon as they got under the cover of the trees, Miska turned hard to his left, and they began to climb.
Ekkatsay followed close behind him. Miska was following a narrow little trail that wound up through stands of maple and oak, where rocks poked up through mats and drifts of old leaves. Ekkatsay’s spear was awkward to carry, got in his way, snagged in the close dense forest. He glanced back once to see where Taksa was, and saw the other Bears all filing after him and Miska, a snake of men winding back down the brushy slope. He faced forward again, his stomach rolling. Every step he took now was harder, going uphill, going into trouble. He pushed on after Miska, itching to get on with it.
Before the dawn even broke Hasei left his shelter and climbed on up the hillside, not following the easy way to the pass, which the fighters up there could keep under their eyes, but struggling up through the rocks and broken ground on the flank of the hill. Just below the crest of the ridge, where the ground broke into a long narrow ledge, Yoto his brother joined him, and then the other six men, scratched and bloody from fighting their way through the brush.
Nobody said anything. Everybody had brought some cold meat from the day before and they ate it and passed a gourd of water around. Birch trees grew thick on the sheltered ledge and the night air still clung here and there in little fogs on the ground. Hasei stood looking up at the ridge of the hill, which seemed to arch up over him; behind the brushy summit the sky was turning blue. Off well to the right, beyond clumps of pine trees, the broken rock jutted up into the sky, so he knew the pass was just below it, about even with this ledge.
He glanced at the other men; he was remembering what Miska had said, that they should try to get above the pass. His gaze rose to the broken rocky slope before them, rising straight up, tangled in poison bushes and brambles. Maybe they could find a way up there. He waved to the others to follow him, and started off.
Miska was quick and sure-footed and the way was hard, through thickets where the only path was a narrow track like a tunnel through dense twigs, the branches whipping and slapping their faces as they passed, the ground rocky underfoot. Ekkatsay rushed over the rocks and crashed through the brush, Miska always just disappearing ahead of him.
They climbed up and up. The path itself disappeared and they were fighting through chest-high brush, poisonbush and vines. They came to the foot of a sheer wall of stone, the seamed cracked face of the hill. At once Miska began to scale it, climbing fourfooted up a vertical crease in the cracked jumbled cliff. Ekkatsay held back a moment, looking up at the climb, while the other men gathered panting and sweating around him; then he cut a thong from his shirt, and hung his spear on his back, and began to scramble up after Miska—he would die, he thought, before he let Miska do more than he did.
The other men came after him. He rose from rock to rock, moving fast, watching Miska’s feet above him. His breath began to burn and his arms hurt, his fingertips sore and raw from the stone. He hauled himself out on a ledge of the rock face, up into the open air. Ahead, Miska was jogging off across a narrow rocky flat toward a thick stand of trees, dark green against the blazing blue sky.
Ekkatsay flung himself after him. The trees were thinner here, older, shrouding the hillside, trunks erupting up out of the rocky ground like tongues of the earth; a hare darted suddenly out of the way, Ekkatsay catching just a flash of gray-brown flank and white tail, the suspended leap like an instant’s flight, before he was deep into the trees.
There was no path, the ground beneath the heavy boughs of leaves was broken under the crust of tree droppings. Picking his way along Ekkatsay lost sight of Miska and rushed on past the last of the big maples and out onto a sudden treeless ridge of rock, and Miska directly in front of him was waving wildly at him to get down.
He sank onto his hams. Crouching over, the Wolf sachem slipped back past him, back toward the men coming after them. Ekkatsay shuffled forward toward the peak of the ridge, staying down out of the sky, until sheltering by a rocky spur he could look out.
Astonished, he saw that they had come out on top of the great rocky crag that stood above the pass. The steep brushy ridge on the other side faced him; between, he could see the whole of the enemy camp. Below him, at the foot of the rock, the stumped lightning-blackened branches of the tree spread like a bad web, a litter of camp gear visible on the ground beneath. Out farther on the flat ground, in the hollow of the pass, a lot of people were moving around, rushing here and there, and then as he watched they all reached where they were rushing to, the sides of the pass, and disappeared into the rocks.
Ekkatsay didn’t have to look into the sky to tell where the sun was; he could see his own shadow, huddled as close under him as it could get. From somewhere below the pass, now, he heard the first faint breath of a yell. Lopi and the boy Wolves were rushing up into the pass, and down there, the Turtles were ready for them.
He took his spear off his back, and tested the blade with his thumb; his belly rolled, he felt sick to his stomach. A quick look at the rock behind him showed him men appearing out of the trees, where Miska was gathering them—most of the Bears were still coming up the hill, the last of them would not be here for a while yet. Miska brought the handful who had kept up with him and
Ekkatsay, led them on hands and knees up to the edge of the rock.
Miska crawled up next to Ekkatsay, said nothing, laid his hand on the Bear headman’s shoulder, and pointed off to the right. Ekkatsay blinked, wondering what he was looking at. He saw no place to go. Along the face of the rock there ran a narrow steep sloping ledge, but it was certainly no trail for people. The thin high yelling of the attacking boys grew louder. Ekkatsay could see them now, the leaders anyway, running headlong up the wide much-used path into the broad cleft of the pass. Among the rocks, the men lurking in ambush raised their bows, with arrows set. For a moment, stiff under Miska’s hand, Ekkatsay thought, He has led us into a slaughter. We shall see them all dead in a moment. He clutched his spear; but he could hit nothing from this distance.
Lopi, first of all the boys, ran screaming into the saddle of the pass. The archers in the rocks stood up, their bows drawn. Ekkatsay held his breath, he thought to see the wild Wolf-boys die, and then, above them all on the sheer slope on the far side of the pass, up where nobody could possibly be, eight other bowmen suddenly popped up out of the brush.
As the archers in the pass below them flexed their bows to mow down the onrushing boys, these on the height drew their own bows, and shot a volley down into the ambushers. At the same time, Miska bounded suddenly to his feet, and waved his arm, and grabbing Ekkatsay by the arm, he plunged over the rim of the ridge and down the long precipitous ledge.
As he ran he let out a howl that brought every hair on Ekkatsay’s body up on end. Helpless in Miska’s tow he rushed down the tiny ledge for a few desperate steps, and then bounded free, jumping like the hare into moments of flight above the slippery rock, Miska just ahead of him, going straight down. Their passage broke loose a stream of small rocks that clattered down along with them onto the gentler slope at the foot of the hill. Hurtling after Miska, Ekkatsay raised his own roar into the air, a Bear’s deep-lunged bellow. Across the pass, the ambush had broken, the men scurrying and crouching away from the arrows pelting down on them. Lopi and the screeching young Wolves streamed into the pass, and Ekkatsay and Miska and the Bears were rushing down from the height, and in the flat of the pass the Turtles were jerking around, open-mouthed, confused, trapped inside a suddenly closing fist.
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