by Mike Blakely
The Northern Raiders, it seemed, had planned their attack well, waiting until the long line of people was half in and half out of the canyon before loosing their arrows. But the party of Raiders did not seem large, or else the entire band of Burnt Meat People might have been pinned down and slaughtered. Even in his lack of experience, Shadow surmised that the attacking force was nothing more than a small hunting party that had stumbled upon the True Humans and planned a quick ambush, hoping to get away with some scalps, or maybe a horse.
Remembering what his uncle had said, Shadow reached for the knife dropped by the Raider his mother was now preparing for an eternity of agony in the Shadow Land. The knife was made of iron, a thing Shadow had seen only once before on an arrow point for which his father had traded a horse among the Raccoon-Eyed People of the plains. He grabbed this knife of iron and scaled the canyon wall to the place where the enemy warrior had fallen with Black Horn’s arrow in his head.
Here, on the canyon rim, the boy could see everything. The warrior with the arrow in his head was still, but breathing, his eyes closed, instead of open in the death stare. The brown pony below had died, and Shadow’s mother had stopped beating the corpse of the enemy to wail her song of mourning and pull at her hair over the body of old Wounded Bear. Shadow’s baby sister, Mouse, was still staring at him silently, the dog pulling her cradle board standing obediently, panting, the whites of his eyes showing as they rolled suspiciously in his head.
Some warriors of the Burnt Meat People were attempting to climb out of the canyon, but so many people were blocking the narrow trail that the men could not make their way to the top. The few young warriors who had been walking near the end of the moving band were now gathering on the high ground above the chasm for an attack, but none owned a horse.
Some distance away to the north, the Raider who had been hit in the jaw by Black Horn’s axe was being carried away by four other Raiders, and it seemed to Shadow that these five were all that were left of the ambush party.
Black Horn was across the chasm from Shadow, mounted, his bow in one hand, his lance in the other. He had dropped his reins, for his pony had been trained to react to pressure from the rider’s knees. The boy knew his uncle would not wait for the young warriors on foot, but would gallop after the Northern Raiders and kill as many as he could before falling. Black Horn was a warrior who boasted often that he would die young in battle.
Now a powerful war cry pierced the sounds of moaning and crying in the canyon, and Black Horn’s mount raised red dust. The enemy Raiders, not so far away that Shadow could not see them individually, laid their wounded companion down, formed a line, and prepared their bows and arrows. To Shadow’s surprise, even the warrior who had been wounded in the face with the axe pulled himself to his knees and reached for an arrow from his quiver.
The enemy warriors had been foolish to ambush a party so much larger than their own, Shadow thought. They would be ridden down by Black Horn, who could keep them busy until his friends could arrive and finish them. Shadow could see that the Raiders had no horses. He glanced again at the warrior with the arrow stuck in his head, lying still at his feet. He gripped the iron knife tighter as he looked back across the chasm to see his uncle do battle with the horrible Northern Raiders.
When Black Horn got just inside arrow range, he veered to the left, and Shadow knew his uncle was going to circle the Raiders before dismounting to fight. He started in the east and bore south, then west, the way Father Sun circled Mother Earth. The circle, once closed, would make his medicine powerful.
The Raiders had arrows notched to bowstrings, but only watched Black Horn ride, preferring to wait for a closer shot. Their only hope was to kill him and run before the other Burnt Meat warriors arrived on foot.
The curtain of dust closed around the enemy warriors, and Black Horn paused to raise his lance and scream. Now he would dismount, Shadow thought, and charge the enemy single-handedly with the lance. That he should watch this fight filled him with more excitement than he had ever known, and the skin all over his body seemed to soak in the chilling cry that Black Horn sent rattling across the high ground. If only his father were here, that Shadow might see him go to battle as well! His grandfather and his pony were dead, and the boy of nine winters hungered for vengeance older than his own days upon the earth.
The war cry trailed away on a breeze that had sprung from the cold highlands, and now Shadow saw something he would remember as long as he lived. His uncle, seized by some new medicine, rode his horse into battle. This was not the way of his elders. The True Humans had always fought with their own feet on the ground, but Black Horn was part of the horse now, and the horse part of him, and Shadow could hardly believe how courageously he rode among the five Raiders.
Through the body of Black Horn, the spear magically took on the power of the pony. When he thrust it forward, underhanded, it went like a kingfisher plunging into the water, and its flint tip hit the same warrior who had been struck in the jaw by Black Horn’s axe, driving all the way through the man and sticking in the ground behind him.
The Northern Raiders, stunned by this mounted attack, let Black Horn ride past them untouched. Now he turned and prepared to attack them with nothing but the white flint knife he had once taken from the dead body of a Crow enemy. This was glorious, for Black Horn still carried his bow and arrows, but chose to fight the enemy attackers hand to hand, for they had dishonored him by raiding the party he led. The Northern Raiders, seemingly charmed by the powers of the horse warrior, still did not send their arrows. They had expected Black Horn to dismount, Shadow thought, and the horse magic was confusing them.
What happened next seemed like something from a bad vision. Black Horn drove his pony among the enemies again, and one of the raiders reached for the reins as another raised a stick—a very long and very straight stick—putting one broad end of this stick against his shoulder. A flash of orange light like a hundred flint sparks pushed a black cloud from the stick the way a man would blow tobacco smoke from his mouth, but quicker, darker, and with more evil power than any man could muster.
Black Horn rolled backward off his war pony, and as he hit the ground, a clap of thunder came from out of nowhere, for Shadow did not yet understand that the terrible Fire Stick possessed its own thunder.
Everything seemed to hang in silence for a moment, and the warriors coming to help Black Horn lost their courage and stopping running. Shadow’s heart sank into the fear of all unknown evil as he watched. His grip loosened around the handle of the iron knife and he watched helplessly as one of the Raiders rushed to finish his uncle.
But Black Horn’s courage was legend, and he fought flat on his back, even in the shadow of the warrior carrying the powerful Fire Stick. A Raider descended on him with a scalping knife, but Black Horn slashed with his own knife of white flint, and the enemy warrior had to catch his own entrails as they bulged from the wound.
The young warriors of the Burnt Meat People took courage and charged again as the Raider with the Fire Stick tried to make medicine with it, going through many strange incantations. Arrows were beginning to fall among the enemy warriors, and they threw their wounded and dead over Black Horn’s captured horse to flee, leaving Black Horn on the ground. The Noomah braves pursued them afoot until the Fire Stick warrior put the evil thing against his shoulder and made it smoke and rumble again.
It killed no one this time, but it caused the earth to blow red dust into the air very near the place where Shadow stood watching. This power frightened the boy, yet he gathered from the way the Raiders were running that the Fire Stick medicine was not all-powerful. Once used, it took some time to conjure again. Still, it caused him to fear, and his fear turned to anger as he heard the wails of mourning for this horrible day. He did not know whether his uncle was dead or yet alive, only that he had failed to rise from the ground, and this made Shadow angrier still.
The iron knife was in his hand, and he used all his weight to make it plunge into the body of the fall
en Raider beside him. The body jerked as the blade cut deep, and the boy sprang away, afraid the warrior with the arrow stuck in his head might still be able to fight.
He thought it better to finish this invader with a rock, and he turned to find one large enough to crush a skull.
4
The medicine woman, Broken Bones, had been summoned, but had refused to come. Black Horn knew it would have been useless anyway. The evil power of the Fire Stick was greater than the old crone’s magic. Broken Bones was better off with the way she had chosen, for this world had gone bad.
From where he lay in the shadow of Red Canyon’s wall, Black Horn could see the old sorceress now, high above, in the fading sunlight. She stood over the crevice on the canyon rim into which the people were lowering the body of Wounded Bear, wrapped in a good buffalo robe with his pogamoggan and bound tightly in rawhide.
The old man had died well, swinging his war club. It was a lucky thing for an old blind man to die in battle. Black Horn felt lucky, too, for he would soon die of his battle wounds while still in his prime and never have to suffer the disgraces of old age. He would never be relegated to making bows and arrows and telling stories in winter lodges.
Yet, he worried about this wound in his belly from the Fire Stick. Would it torment him in the Land of Shadows with this same incredible pain? He had not allowed himself to be killed in the hands of his enemies, and so he should not have to worry about such a thing, but the Fire Stick was new, and its power was yet unknown.
Only his wife, Looks Away, had stayed near him, risking whatever horror the wound of the Fire Stick might still hold. Its evil magic had shot all the way through him, making a small hole where it had entered and a very large ugly wound where it had left. He had not seen the large wound on his back, of course, but he had listened to the young warriors talk fearfully about it as they carried him back to the canyon.
But this wound did not frighten Looks Away, and she had stayed with him. She had made a good wife, and he loved her. It was Looks Away who had taught him much of what he knew about horses. He had captured her on a raid against the Yutas. He had found her so pretty that he protected her from the other warriors and treated her with kindness. The Yutas had more horses than the True Humans, and Looks Away, after Black Horn made her good and took her as his wife, told him much about ways to train and handle ponies. And she told him strange tales of trading parties carrying captured Noomah children away to the south and returning with horses. She had been told that men with iron shirts, pale skin, and faces covered with hair would trade horses for slaves.
Now Black Horn waited for this good woman to bring water, for he was thirsty. He lay alone on a buffalo robe that felt sticky with his own blood, until Shadow came near him. He raised his chin to greet the boy, too weak to lift an arm.
“Ahpoo,” the boy said. “They took your horse.”
“Your father will follow them to get it back.”
Shadow smiled. “I saw many things today that I will remember when I am a warrior like you. I saw you ride into battle.”
Black Horn held back his smile. What had possessed him to fight astride his horse? The boy was right, strong medicine had moved him to greatness. “You were brave today, nephew. You did not run and scream like a child. But you must not seek our enemies until you have found your medicine in your vision.”
“I know, Ahpoo.”
The wailing from the top of the red bluffs became frenzied. Black Horn looked up to see the warriors throwing the rawhide lines down into the crevice, on top of the body of Wounded Bear. Broken Bones began to shriek like her coyote ancestors. She held a knife with which she cut her hair off close to her scalp. She began to slash her old arms, and her shrieking made Black Horn’s ears hurt, even from this far away on the canyon floor.
She slashed through the front of her old deerskin dress, drawing thin blood from her sagging breasts. She was on her knees, facing the crevice where Wounded Bear had been lowered. Her back was to the warriors who had lowered the old man, and she was trilling a song of death that had come from her old nation, the Wolf People, with whom she had lived before Wounded Bear captured her and made her good. Her song ended, her head bowed, and she tossed the knife aside for someone else to use. Her arms dangled motionless at her side.
From the canyon floor, Black Horn watched as two warriors drew their bows. They looked odd in the evening light, colored by strange powers. Their arrows struck so close together that their points must have met in the old woman’s heart. She tumbled silently into the crevice with Wounded Bear, and the shadow of the faraway mountains chilled the canyon rim.
Shadow looked at his uncle.
“She goes with him,” the dying warrior said.
Shadow nodded. Never again would he speak his grandparents’ names: Wounded Bear. Broken Bones. Even the thought of them upon his tongue filled him with a dread of unknown ghost things. There had once been a band of True Humans called the Snake Lodge People. They had changed this name to Crawling-on-the-Ground-Lodge People after one of their warriors, called Snake Man, had died. Shadow had been made to understand things like this, for to speak the names of the dead was to call upon terrible magic from other strange worlds.
“They were a burden to your father,” Black Horn added. He saw Looks Away coming with a buffalo bladder used to hold water. She also had a piece of fur and a feather. “Go now, Shadow. Go wait for your father to return. He will hear the songs of mourning from the camp, and he will want to know right away that you and your mother are well.” Black Horn managed to smile at his nephew before the boy turned away from him for the last time.
Looks Away knelt beside Black Horn and carefully poured the water into his mouth. He could not drink much.
“I brought this eagle feather to protect you from evil,” Looks Away said, weaving the feather into the thin braided scalp lock falling from the top of his head. “And the fur of a weasel, also.”
Black Horn sighed with relief, confident now that his step into the Shadow Land would take away the pain of the Fire Stick. He would hunt and eat in the Shadow Land. Hunt and eat.
“Looks Away, hear me. Is my brother near?”
“Shaggy Hump is coming. A runner has seen the dust from his horses in the sky.”
“Good.” Black Horn paused to find more breath. “You will go to my brother tonight.”
“I go with you, my husband. I go to the Shadow Land.” She pointed toward the bluff, now black in shadows, where Broken Bones had followed her old husband.
“No. Hear me. You will go to Shaggy Hump’s lodge tonight, while River Woman mourns under the moon.”
Looks Away bowed her head. “When I went to Shaggy Hump’s lodge before—the time River Woman was in the lodge for unclean women—she found out that you had sent me to your brother’s lodge and was very angry at me, though I was only doing what you told me to do.”
Black Horn would have chuckled, except that he knew it would cause too much pain. “Were you not angry at River Woman when my brother sent her to sleep in my lodge while he was away hunting sheep? It is the way for brothers to share their wives. It is the way for wives to be angry about it at first. But it is a good way, for now you will go to live with a new husband who is no stranger to you. Shaggy Hump and River Woman will remember this day as the day many burdens were lifted from them. Now there are no old ones for them to feed, and so there will be more to eat for their children, Shadow and Mouse. In the days behind us, River Woman worked hard with all the many skins Shaggy Hump brought for her to make into robes. In the days ahead she will have the help of another wife. It will please her in time.”
Looks Away put her face to the ground, and held Black Horn’s hand with both of her own. “I do not want to be Shaggy Hump’s wife. I want to go with you to the Shadow Land.”
“The spirits do not care what you want. I have seen this day in dreams. This is the day you go to my brother’s lodge. You will serve and please my brother, and you will take special care with Sh
adow, and teach him well the ways of the True Humans. He was born on the day the spirits sent First Horse. His medicine will be strong, but he must be taught to use it well. He must be shown how not to offend the spirits.”
Looks Away remained bowed before Black Horn, silent.
“Do you hear, woman?”
She raised her head and looked into his eyes. “Yes, my husband.”
“You will do one more thing. You will teach Shadow the language of the Yutas. The Yutas have many more horses than the True Humans. Shadow may trade with them in times of truce, or steal from them in time of war. A knowledge of their language will serve him well. Do you hear your husband, woman?”
“Yes, I hear. I will teach him.”
Black Horn’s mouth smiled, but the smile turned to a grimace as a wave of pain twisted his insides. He waited for it to pass, then said, “You are a good wife, Looks Away.”
5
Shaggy Hump sat upon his horse on the rim of Red Canyon. He had read the story of the battle in the stains of blood upon the ground. Now his brother, Black Horn, was wedged in a crevice near Wounded Bear and Broken Bones, sitting upright in his bound buffalo robe, waiting to see the sun rise in the Shadow Land. Shaggy Hump could still remember his brother’s dying words:
“My brother, I have failed. I scouted ahead for the enemy, but I should have looked a second time, for the Northern Raiders crept to the canyon rim after I first scouted there. This pain of the Fire Stick is meant to punish me. Beware of the Fire Stick, my brother. It has bad medicine.”
He had slipped into the World of Dreams, then into the World of Spirits, the Land of Shadows.
Now the Burnt Meat People were moving south again, away from invasion by more Northern Raiders, who were sure to come. Shaggy Hump and his hunters had returned with two butchered buffalo cows to a camp in the grips of insensible sorrow. There were no reasons to stay here longer, and many reasons to leave.
Beside him, his son, Shadow, straddled the horse his grandfather had been shot from the day before. “Look long at this place, my son. This is the place of your birth.” Shaggy Hump pointed down to the canyon floor. “The birthing lodge was there when First Horse made a sacred circle around it, and then you were born. Remember this place well, because we will never return here. This place has gone bad for us, like many places we have left before. We must give this place to the ghosts, or they will follow and haunt us in terrible dreams when the moon rises.”