The Dawn Country by W. Michael Gear Read Free Book Online

they’re busy with Neyaw.”
    “But we need to rest. I can barely walk!” Wado objected.
    Dzadi said, “You’d better be able to run, boy.”
    As they climbed, the war cries grew louder—enough to throw his warriors into short-lived panics where they almost shoved each other off the blocks in their haste to reach the pass.
    When they crested the trail and staggered into the gap, Cord could see the forested hills of Flint country in the distance; unwarranted joy warmed his veins. The trail down the other side of the mountain was a silver slash that cut through a thick sumac-and-hickory forest. Even staggering and half-dead, they could run it in their sleep.
    Behind him, Dzadi cursed and stamped his feet.
    “What’s wrong?” Cord called.
    “We lost another one.”
    “What?”
    “Wado’s gone.”
    Cord leaped down from the high point and searched their back trail with care. Nothing moved. The desolate frozen-hearted wilderness had swallowed all sound, save the ragged breathing of the men beside him.
    Ogwed stared up at Cord. “Do you think they got him?”
    “He might have run off,” Cord replied gently.
    “Or maybe he fainted and they found him. That’s why we didn’t hear a ruckus,” Dzadi said without thinking.
    Horror sparkled in Ogwed’s eyes. “You mean they found him, gagged him, and they’re cutting him to pieces and swallowing his flesh while he watches? That’s it, isn’t it?” The youth’s eyes rolled around in his head, darting this way and that as though he was on the verge of bolting into the blackness.
    Cord said, “Stop wasting breath. We’re going home.”
    He climbed back up and perched on the highest block of stone to survey the country to the west. Lines of tumbled and irregular hills, softened by the winter-gray mat of forest, stretched out before him. There, just beyond those ridges, lay the familiar forests, streams, and fields of home.
    Or what was left of them.
    Feeling hollow and drained, he started down the other side at a shambling trot. He couldn’t feel his legs, though he knew when his moccasins hit the ground: Each step jolted his body. Dzadi and Ogwed struggled along behind him.
    When they rounded a bend, a tiny light flickered. A campfire. Down the western slope of the mountain, perhaps one-half hand of time away. Friend or foe? He’d worry about it later. Right now, they had only one task: to stay on their feet.

Six
    G onda turned when his eleven-summers-old son, Odion, sat up in his moosehide blanket, as though he’d heard something, and tipped his head to listen to the night. The boy was twenty paces away, sitting beside the Flint girl, Baji. They both looked terrified. Odion’s shoulder-length black hair hung around his face in a mass of tangles, and his dark eyes had gone wide. His gaze was riveted on the dense plums and sumacs that created an impenetrable thicket on the northern slope.
    Odion tilted his right ear toward the east, then turned to Gonda. Almost breathlessly, he said, “Father? Do you hear that?”
    Gonda shook his head. Odion pointed up the mountain toward the pass.
    “Are you sure, Son?”
    Odion and Baji nodded in unison.
    Gonda quietly walked around the fire where the other children and the two Hills People warriors, Sindak and Towa, slept rolled in blankets. His former wife, War Chief Koracoo, stood guard there. She obviously hadn’t heard anything either. She stood with her back to him, vigilantly keeping watch on the trail that led up the mountain. Her red leather cape, painted with a blue buffalo, looked black in the faint light. Her legendary war club, CorpseEye, was propped on her shoulder.
    As Gonda approached, she didn’t turn. She knew the sound of his steps better than her own. They had been married for twelve summers—until she’d returned to find their village burned to the ground. Then she’d set what remained of his belongings outside their smoldering longhouse and, according to the ways of the People of the Standing