People of the Longhouse by W. Michael Gear Read Free Book Online Page B

lifted the clumps and set them aside, looking for more.
    “A sandal track.” She tapped it with her finger.
    Gonda moved forward and bent to examine it. “A big man. Heavy. Or perhaps he’d already lifted the girl into his arms when this track was made.”
    “Yes.” Koracoo’s dark brows pinched over her small nose. She scowled at the track for several moments. “Don’t you think it’s odd that he’s wearing sandals? It’s late autumn. He should be wearing moccasins.”
    “Maybe he’s an idiot?”
    “Or maybe sandals are all he has, but …”
    Koracoo tilted her head, and Gonda saw that she was listening again—listening as though their lives depended upon it. He held his breath.
    In a clipped voice, Koracoo said, “Do you hear it?”
    A few paces away, the leaves whispered.
    Gonda braced himself. “Yes.”
    Hope swelled fit to burst his chest. They both straightened, and their eyes focused on the leaves. They fluttered. “You go,” he said. “I’ll cover you with my bow.”
    Koracoo moved forward on cat feet. The leaves continued to flutter as if from shallow rhythmic puffs of air. Breathing? His heart tightened.
    Koracoo crouched down, brushed away leaves, then stopped. In an agonized voice, she said, “Oh, no,” and reached both hands deep into the leaves to pull out a tightly wrapped bundle.
    “What is it?” Gonda rushed forward.
    “It’s a baby.” Koracoo slumped to the ground and cradled the child in her left arm while she frantically pulled the blanket from its face with her right hand.
    Gonda kept glancing up at the forest, his bow still drawn. When he looked down again, a small pale face, framed with black hair, shone within the blanket. The child’s dark eyes were slitted, the lids fluttering as though it was just barely alive. “It’s a miracle that child didn’t freeze to death. The Forest Spirits must have protected it.”
    “If we don’t act quickly, the Forest Spirits’ efforts will have been for naught.”
    Koracoo rested the baby in her lap, jerked her cape over her head,
and pulled open the laces of her war shirt. For a brief moment, he glimpsed her breasts, and it comforted him.
    “What are you doing?” he asked.
    “Warming her.” Koracoo peeled off the child’s soiled sack—revealing that it was a girl—and tossed the sack into the leaves; then she tucked the baby down the front of her war shirt. “Blessed gods, she’s freezing.”
    “Koracoo … we can’t take her with us. You know that, don’t you?”
    “If I stand up, can you slip my cape over my head and tie it beneath the baby?”
    Gonda slung his bow and picked up Koracoo’s cape. “Yes, but—”
    “I’m aware of the problem, Gonda.” Carefully holding the child against her, she got to her feet.
    Gonda slipped her cape over her head and then pulled the ends up and tied them around Koracoo’s waist to form a kind of sling for the baby inside her brown shirt.
    “Tighter,” Koracoo said. “If I have to fight, I want to be able to use my hands to swing my club.”
    Gonda complied, retying the ends as tightly as he could. “If you understand the problem, why are you—?”
    “We have to find the nearest village. Fast. This child needs food and shelter. Her afterlife soul is already out wandering the forest.”
    Gonda peered at the soiled sack. “The red-and-black spirals mark her as one of the People of the Hills, probably Hawk Clan. If that doesn’t slap some sense into you, I don’t know what will.”
    “The nearest Hills village is Atotarho Village.”
    Among the Hills People, when a chief died, his clan matron, in consultation with the other women of the clan, selected the new chief, and he was given the name of the deceased man. The new chief was then “raised up” and the dead chief, thereby, “resuscitated.” If the new chief proved unworthy of his position, he could be “dehorned,” and his name taken away. Villages always took the name of their chief, and Chief Atotarho was no