by Mike Blakely
Now Looks Away came darting from the brush nearby. Above her head she wielded a war axe, and her eyes were round and cold as snowflakes. Her lips curled back and she screamed as the warrior got the spear from River Woman.
Horseback was four leaps away. The enemy warrior twirled the shaft of the lance in his hand. River Woman was falling back as the enemy lunged and stabbed her below one breast. The bestial scream of Looks Away caught in her throat as her axe broke through the skull of the enemy warrior and Horseback’s club knocked his brains onto the grass.
The young warrior jumped from the bay, who staggered, bleeding and heaving. He ran back to his mother, but Looks Away was already upon her. Looks Away screamed a denial of the wound that stained River Woman’s deer skin dress with blood. Then suddenly, strangely, the Two Rivers casually took up the conversation they had dropped when the battle started.
It seemed to Horseback that this fight was a trifling thing to the Two Rivers. To him it was everything glorious and horrible, for his mother lay wounded on one hand, and he had counted his first strokes against an enemy war party on the other hand—and counted them well. Now he prayed that his medicine had not gone bad and caused his mother to get hurt. He feared he may have stepped upon the track of a deer, or eaten a morsel of food a deer might have taken, or offended his powerful spirit guardians in some other foolish way.
When he fell beside his mother, he found her covering her wound with a hand and trying to sit upright. She looked at Horseback, saying, “My son, you are wounded?”
“Only my leg, Mother. Lie back and rest.”
River Woman did lie back, grimacing against the pain of her wound. “Did you see Looks Away, my son? She killed a warrior of the people she was born among to protect me. You must credit her with the first stroke, and take the second for yourself, for her axe struck before your pogamoggan.”
“Mother, I cannot count a stroke on that warrior. It was your lance that touched him first. You must count the first stroke. Looks Away will count the second.”
River Woman smiled. “Yes, my son. You are honest. Looks Away came to defend me only a moment before you did.” She let her eyes meet those of the woman her husband had taken as a second wife, and she said, “Now Looks Away is truly my sister.”
The victory cry rose again, and Horseback glanced back to see his friends dragging the Fire Stick warrior, Kill Feathers, still alive, from the village of seven lodges. Some beat him with their bows and others kicked him all over, but they would not kill him. Horseback himself had won that honor. He might kill the captive himself, or present him to any woman in camp who had lost a husband or son in battle with the Yutas, letting her decide how quickly or slowly the enemy warrior might die.
As he was thinking about this, a strange thing happened. Looks Away turned from the scene of the battle won and ran. She ran until the timber stole her shadow.
18
The day of his first battle was not the day for his mother to die. River Woman lay sleeping in the shade of the timber as the old puhakut, Spirit Talker, made prayers over her and wove magic around her. Looks Away had come back from the timber to stay with River Woman during the heat of the day, fanning her with an eagle’s wing to keep her cool and drive flies away from her wound. Shaggy Hump went away up the river to pray.
The younger warriors gathered in the shade of the timber to talk about the battle. Echo-of-the-Wolf took the protective cover from his sacred shield to show where it had swallowed the evil power of the Fire Stick. Though the shield had saved him, the Fire Stick had broken his arm, which he now carried strapped in a willow splint and bound with wet rawhide.
Horseback marveled at the neat round hole punched in the face of the shield. He summoned his protective medicine and stuck his finger into the hole, jerking it out at first, then probing deeper. He could feel through the first layer of hardened buffalo hide into the fur packed tight between it and the back layer of hide. He forced his finger deeper into the hole until his finger touched something that moved. He jerked his hand back.
“What is it?” asked Whip, who was watching over Horseback’s shoulder.
Horseback set his jaw. “I will find out.” He probed into Echo’s punctured shield again and touched the unknown thing. “It moves,” he said. “It is like a stone against the back piece of hide that protects our brother, Echo.”
Echo took the shield from the younger warrior and bravely felt for the thing himself. Jerking his knife from its sheath with a flourish, he bored into the rear layer of rawhide from the back of the shield until he could push a misshapen hunk of dark gray unknown matter from the hole. It landed on the ground with a thump and lay there like something dead. The warriors surrounded it.
Finally, Horseback picked it up. It felt heavy for its size, and he knew by the way it had almost penetrated the sacred shield that it was powerful. “This is the thing that kills,” he said.
“Where are the things captured from the Fire Stick warrior?” Echo demanded.
The trappings of the enemy prisoner were laid out on a robe for study. There was the Fire Stick itself, which was passed around among all the warriors once Echo and Horseback had proven that they could handle it without incurring any evil. The only familiar thing about it was the small flint stone growing out of one side of it. Some of the men tried to put the thing to their shoulders the way they had seen Kill Feathers hold it, but it would render neither noise nor smoke. Trotter did worry it long enough to make a spark jump from the piece of flint, whereupon he dropped it on the robe, shaking his hands as if to fling the evil power from his fingertips.
Examining the rest of the captured paraphernalia, the warriors found a deerskin pouch filled with small round balls, dark gray and heavy like the misshapen thing cut from Echo’s shield. They noticed that these heavy little balls just fit in the hole at the killing end of the Fire Stick. In this same pouch, they found strange hairless patches of tanned hide, very thin, perhaps from a rabbit skin.
The oddest thing among the possessions of the captured enemy was the buffalo horn. The hollow of its broad end was enclosed by rawhide that had been strapped on wet and allowed to shrink and dry hard. The point of the horn had been cut off flat, and the flat place now had a smooth wooden peg sticking out of it.
At length, Echo called on his courage and pulled this peg out. A dark, evil-looking powder poured from the narrow end of the horn. It burned the nostrils of those who smelled it. Thinking of his own sacred powder of ground deer horn, Horseback took a pinch of this black powder to a smoldering cook fire nearby and threw it onto the coals. The quick burst of flame that engulfed the powder made him leap back in momentary fear.
“Young brother,” Echo said to Horseback, “your pogamoggan counted the first stroke on the Fire Stick warrior with three kill feathers. This Fire Stick belongs to you.” He presented the piece to Horseback, affecting much ceremony.
“It is true,” Horseback said, taking the heavy killing tool. He looked across the clearing and saw Looks Away and Spirit Talker bending over his wounded mother. “It is also true that my father and mother will celebrate my first strokes with a giveaway dance when my mother has healed. My medicine has become so strong after our battle that I do not fear giving away all my possessions, for I know my guardian spirits will provide for me. So, I am going to give this Fire Stick away now. Trotter, my friend, you have fought well on this day. I give this Fire Stick to you.”
Trotter looked up from the powder-filled buffalo horn he had been studying, the surprise plain on his face. He took the Fire Stick Horseback offered. “I will master its magic and make it good. My brother, I now return to you the puha you loaned to me in the sight of our spirit-sister, the Moon, last night. It is very powerful and fills my paunch with crawling things. Now I will find my own puha and make it strong in my heart.”
Horseback looked at Whip. “My friend, do you wish to return the power I loaned to you? You used it well today.”
Whip snorted. “I borrowed nothing fro
m you, Horseback. I have my own power.” He turned and walked away from the group of astonished warriors.
Just then, a cry of agony rose from the tree fine, not far away, followed by a cackle of childish laughter. The warriors turned to look at the captured Fire Stick warrior, Kill Feathers. He had been tied all day to an overhanging tree limb, his hands bound behind his back and hoisted up painfully high. His head had been struck hard by Horseback’s club, and he could not stay awake, but sleeping made his weight wrench his shoulders joints and made pain shoot through his chest, making his day one of agony.
The clutch of children gathered around him had been jabbing him with arrows. One had touched Kill Feathers with the end of a stick he had held in a fire, causing him to cry out.
It was the duty of all True Humans to seek revenge against any enemy warrior who tried to kill a Noomah brave, and especially one who attacked a Noomah village full of mothers and babies. Kill Feathers knew he had risked such vengeance in coming here to make war, and now his suffering was just beginning. The boy jabbed the hot coal into the small of Kill Feather’s back, making him cry out again.
Kill Feathers suddenly yelled something in the Yuta tongue, lifting his head to reveal a face covered with blood.
“What did he say?” Trotter asked Horseback, knowing that Horseback had learned much of the enemy language from Looks Away.
“He said, ‘I howl at this mockery. You send your children to torture me. Bring someone fierce.’”
Echo made a rare chuckle. “He is still acting brave. Wait until he begs to die. Horseback, it is your duty to decide what must be done with this captured enemy. Perhaps your mother will heal quickly enough to kill him very slowly. Let the wound in your leg and the pain it brings you help you decide his fate.”
Horseback swallowed some bad shadow pressing up from his chest. “My father has taught me not to decide these things. I will listen for the voices of the spirits to tell me what I must do with the captive.”
The warriors seemed to hum their approval of the words spoken by Horseback. Trotter had been studying the wound on Horseback’s leg, and now poked it with his finger, making his friend flinch.
“It grows very red,” Trotter said.
“My father’s wife, Looks Away, will heal it,” he replied. “She will pack it with grass and smear bear fat on it. She knows many ways to heal.”
“I think it will make a fine scar,” Trotter said.
“A flint knife raises an uglier scar than an iron knife like the one the enemy stuck you with,” Echo said. “But that scar is better than none at all.”
“You can make some girl tattoo the scar,” Trotter suggested, his brow raising where he had plucked all the hair from over his eyes.
“No,” Horseback said, wondering about Teal for the first time since the battle, and whether or not he might find her in the dark somewhere tonight. “I will not flaunt the loneliness of a single scar.”
* * *
That evening, at sunset, River Woman woke. Her chest was so racked with pain that she could only whisper, and Looks Away had to place her ear over River Woman’s mouth to hear her speak.
“She wants to know why she cannot hear a great scalp dance.” Looks Away said.
And so the lodges were brought out of hiding and set up in a sacred circle. Five enemy scalps were placed on spare lodge poles set in the ground. The old men began to cajole the young unmarried women, saying, “Now these young warriors have protected you! You know how to reward them!”
Hearing the crier tell that his mother had woken, Horseback trotted to her place in the timber to see her. He found that she had gone back to sleep. Shaggy Hump was there, with Spirit Talker.
“My son, your mother is strong. Spirit Talker is letting her borrow much magic.”
“How long will she rest?”
“Only the spirits know. Why do you wonder such things?”
Horseback sat on the ground beside his father. “What must I do with the Yuta?”
“He is your captive. I cannot say what you must do. Listen for the shadow-voices.”
“Perhaps he will die there, tied to that tree.”
Shaggy Hump said nothing.
Spirit Talker had been sitting near River Woman’s head, slumped over as if asleep. Suddenly, the old man lurched and began chanting without opening his eyes.
“Before she went back to sleep your mother told me that we must have a giveaway dance tonight to celebrate your first battle strokes counted. Your medicine was strong today. We must give away everything to show the spirits our faith and keep our medicine strong.”
“Must we give my mother’s lodge away? She may need it if a storm comes.”
“We give away everything,” Shaggy Hump said, sternly. “Our puha will provide anything we need.”
They sat without talking, listening to Spirit Talker’s chant and River Woman’s shallow breathing.
“You must go to my second wife,” Shaggy Hump said. “Your wound looks bad. You should have Looks Away heal it.”
Horseback rose, glad to have something to do other than watch his mother lie in pain. “Yes, Father. Where has she gone?”
“She went up the bank of the river. She worries about her sister.”
Horseback limped up the bank of the river, stopping only briefly to look at his wounded bay horse, tied at a quiet place in a draw. The bay’s head hung low and his eyes looked dull and watery. He had been thrown down, and the arrow head cut out of his rump as many warriors held his legs and head to keep him from thrashing. Now he was still able to stand, and this was a good sign to Horseback, though the warrior also noticed that the knife wound between the stallion’s ribs oozed a bloody fluid. He hoped the bay would live, for the pony had proven useful in battle on this day.
Reaching the top of the river bank, Horseback swept his eyes across the sage, growing dim now in the twilight. He searched for a long moment before he located a human form moving away beyond the horses. Looks Away was far from camp, heading over a rise, stopping briefly against the sky before she disappeared behind the hill.
Curious, Horseback ran to the ponies and caught one that his father had trained not to run away when approached. He didn’t have his war bridle with him, so he took off his loin skins. He threw the skins over the back of the pony for a pad, and tied one end of his belt to the lower jaw of the pony, so he could make the pony stop. This pony knew how to turn in response to leg pressure, so Horseback did not need two reins. Mounted, he overtook Looks Away quickly and called her by name.
“I am going away,” she said, without stopping in her brisk walk.
“Where?”
“I do not know.”
“Why?”
“Because of the warrior you have captured. I cannot bear to see him tortured and killed.”
Walking the horse beside her, Horseback thought for the first time how it must feel for Looks Away to see a warrior of her own blood suffer at the hands of her adoptive people. “His fate is my decision. I will make him die quickly in the morning sunlight with my arrow. I will not let him be strangled or killed at night. That way, his spirit will fly to the Shadow Land.”
“His name is Bad Camper,” Looks Away said. Her eyes looked up to Horseback, full of tears. “He is my brother.”
19
None of the Corn People, nor the Burnt Meat People, could remember such a giveaway dance. First, Shaggy Hump presented his weapons to young warriors who had fought well against the invaders. He gave his best horses to leading warriors like Echo. He gave his older, easier-to-handle horses to aging men so their wives could more easily move their lodges. He gave the small lodge in which he had kept his weapons to a young warrior of the Corn People who had just taken a wife and yet had no lodge. He gave the large lodge of ten poles and twelve skins to Spirit Talker, so that the old puhakut might tell stories on long winter days and pass the pipe among many warriors. He gave Looks Away’s small lodge to a poor crippled girl of the Corn People whom no one would take as a
wife. He gave his seven spare lodge poles to families who had mended old broken and rotting poles with rawhide. He gave his water bags to hunters he had seen ride or walk farther than others to bring home meat.
He gathered the young wives and tossed the cooking vessels and utensils of River Woman and Looks Away among them, letting them scramble for them, providing fine entertainment. Then he gathered all the young horsebacks and tossed pad saddles and bridles and cords of twisted rawhide or yucca fibers among them. This amused the women, seeing the warriors kick and push one another to get at items they wanted, even pulling on two ends of the same rope, like two dogs fighting over a length of gut.
Then Shaggy Hump started giving away all the food his wives had prepared to the poorest and hungriest of the True Humans. Meat, marrow, berries, and seeds; pemmican stuffed into sections of scrubbed intestine. Yampa roots in parfleche bags. Tallow stored in paunches. Buffalo tongues and cactus fruits dried and enriched under the sacred gaze of Father Sun.
He gave away everything—paint, flint, rawhide, tanned deerskin, sinew for making bowstrings—everything but the clothes he wore and his sacred shield, for the shield would have burdened some taker with powerful magic.
Horseback had little to give, but he added his warhorse and its trappings, his weapons, and the good robe he slept on. He kept only his shield and the quiver embraced by deer antlers with the feather inside from the bird of the south. Then, he gave his moccasins to a barefoot old man who would not last as long as the moccasins themselves. Shaggy Hump was moved by this gift, and also gave away his moccasins and the leggings he wore, leaving himself and his son with only their loin skins, their feathers, their shields, and their quivers.
A scalp dance began, and women’s voices trilled. Old men told stories of bygone battle strokes. Cook fires were stoked and feasting began. Shaggy Hump was given a piece of meat, but before he would eat it, he held it to the dark night sky and cut off a chunk to bury in the ground in homage to the spirits. The enemy scalps dried and stiffened in the breeze, high on poles surrounding the dancing ground.