The Broken Land by W. Michael Gear Read Free Book Online Page A

to tones of voice or the slightest shift of posture. There was not much she missed. That’s why, may my daughters and granddaughters forgive me, she will make a truly great high matron of the People of the Hills.
    He touched her cheek. “If you need help while I am away, you can go to Sindak. You know that, don’t you?”
    “He is my father’s war chief, Hiyawento.” She reached up, took his hand, and pressed it to her lips for a long moment before answering, “But, yes, I know I can trust him. I have trusted him since I was ten summers.”
     
     
    M any hands of time later, lying awake listening to the wind shiver the bones of the longhouse, memories taunted Hiyawento. They were not the thoughts of daylight, but the nagging images that come only in the dead of night and will not leave a man in peace. Jumbled, events out of order, he heard the distant chaos of screams and shouts, glimpsed the old woman’s wrinkled face, and found himself lying hurt in a long-ago meadow so afraid he couldn’t stop shivering. Snowflakes fell from the moonlit sky and perched upon the bare branches like fallen stars. The black bulk of the evil warrior Dakion loomed over him like Grandfather Bear standing on his hind legs. As the man lifted his war club to crush Hiyawento’s skull, a hoarse shriek broke from the lips of Hiyawento’s best friend, Odion, barely eleven summers. Then Odion stepped into the space below Dakion’s uplifted arms, and the stiletto flashed in his hands. Odion repeatedly plunged it into the man’s chest, belly, arms, anything he could reach.
    He saved me.
    An odd silence descended over the memory. Dakion’s cries drifted slowly away in icy puffs. Odion’s wavering scream faded like a dancing slip of foxfire.
    Why had the sound died? Was it because he could no longer bear those voices? Or because he had relived this moment so many times that the shrieks had disfigured his souls? Like thick scars they wormed through his entire life. He could trace them with his hands; he didn’t need to hear them.
    In the drifting mist behind his eyes, the huge man-shaped blackness continued to writhe, heaving its bulk sideways to avoid the stiletto, trying to throw off the small boy on top of him, the boy who would not give up until the blackness stopped moving.
    Though Hiyawento knew he lay in a warm longhouse surrounded by people who loved and respected him, he could not help but relive the terror of that final instant.
    After an eternity, his gaze drifted over the few things arrayed in baskets lining the northern partition wall. They did not own much—no one did—but these simple things were precious to Zateri: a mussel shell bracelet that had belonged to her mother, an oddly shaped pot he’d brought her from his last battle walk against the People of the Mountain, a handful of quartz crystals that shone like shattered stars. Though deeply asleep, Zateri had one hand twined in the sleeve of his shirt, as though she couldn’t bear to have him move too far away from her. The chill of her fingers penetrated the hide and cooled his arm. Gently, so as not to wake her, he drew the bearskin up over her hand to keep it warm.
    His movements must have awakened his eight-summers-old daughter. Kahn-Tineta rolled to her back and yawned a wide deep yawn that revealed her missing front teeth. She blinked around the longhouse. When her gaze finally turned to him and she found him smiling at her, she slipped from her bedding hides and tiptoed across the floor to crawl beneath the bearskin beside him.
    “Why aren’t you asleep, my daughter?” He put his arm around her and kissed the top of her tangled hair.
    She nuzzled her cheek against his shoulder. “I woke and saw you staring at Mother. You looked like you needed someone to hold you.” She slipped her small arm over his chest and hugged him hard.
    As though all the horrors he’d been reliving were nothing more than shreds of mist in bright sun, they evaporated. He stroked