Lightning Shell--A People of Cahokia Novel Read online

  “Unlikely,” Rising Flame told him in that monotonous voice that was driving him half-insane. “Look at her. Willow Blossom didn’t fight. Her clothing isn’t disheveled; the shawl is still draped around her shoulders. Look at her hands. No sign she scratched at anyone, or even put up a fight. She didn’t think that whoever killed her was a threat. Which, if you ask me, excludes Blue Heron, Seven Skull Shield, her old husband Robin Feather, and even your random robber that she might have walked in on.”

  Spotted Wrist felt his heart begin to pound. “Are you forgetting whose side you’re on?”

  The way she held his gaze wasn’t reassuring. “My side is all about winning, Keeper. For the moment, your squadrons control the city. But this thing is still a long way from decided. Lady Columella has all of Evening Star House’s squadrons called up. They’re in defensive positions atop the bluffs on the other side of the river.”

  “Not for long.” Spotted Wrist gave her a knowing grin. “Another couple of days, and I’ll have bartered for enough big Trade canoes to paddle my squadrons across. Some upriver, some down. Columella will have to split her forces, following along the bank in hopes her squadrons can be in position in time to stop my landing. You know the western shore, tree-lined, cut by ravines where creeks empty into the Father Water. No way they can defend the entire western bank. In the end, I’m going to flank her.”

  “You talk as if this deed is already done,” she replied, leaning her head back as she stared past the occasional buzzing fly at the roof poles and ceiling.

  “I’m the Hero of the North,” he told her easily. “Compared to the hard nut of Red Wing Town and the Upper River, Matron Columella’s Evening Star House is like a soft plum. Rich, juicy, and easy to squash.”

  “Then I hope you don’t choke on the hard pit.” Her expression remained stoic, the tattooed stars on her cheeks barely visible in the dim light. She seemed unconcerned at the flies all around her. “You had better be right”—with her toe, she indicated Willow Blossom’s dead body—“because your competence in political matters has me concerned.”

  “What’s to concern you?” He slitted his eyes, the old call to battle coming to a boil around his heart. “Within the week, Evening Star Town will be mine. The tonka’tzi, old Wind, is my prisoner, which paralyzes the Morning Star House. Blue Heron is dead, and her allies in River House are in hiding. North Star House and Horned Serpent House are allied for the first time in a decade. I’ve got Cahokia by the balls.”

  “Really?” A faint smile bent her lips. “Aren’t you forgetting something? Got the Morning Star by the balls, too, have you?”

  “The living god?” Spotted Wrist shrugged it away. “What does he care? He’s up there, sitting in his palace, bedding gullible young women and enjoying his feasts while embassies from half the world shower him with gifts and fawn at his feet. As long as we keep a lid on the city, keep the peace, and don’t rile his enjoyment of godhood, what does he care?”

  The frown deepened on Rising Flame’s forehead. “It’s always been said: ‘The Morning Star plays a deep game.’ You have to ask, why has he been silent? Not a single summons. Why did he allow us to go as far as we have? What’s his stake in this latest shuffling of the Houses? What does he want?”

  “I already told you: feasts, women, adulation, and luxury. He’s a reincarnated god. The only thing he’s complained about are those copper plates stolen from that Koroa embassy, and he replaced them with better pieces. With time, he’ll forget about them, too.”

  “Something’s not right,” Rising Flame insisted, her gaze now fixed on the dead woman on the floor. “I’m missing a critical piece. And it’s not just the Koroa copper.”

  Two

  What a stunning vista. From an outcropping of granite bedrock that cleared the trees, the warrior once known as Fire Cat Twelvekiller, war chief of the Red Wing Clan, looked back to where thickly forested valleys converged. He stood on a height, just up from where the trail crossed a gap in the mountains. He could see where the valleys met three days’ hard march to the south. The town of Joara was situated down there in that haze-filled basin. Not that he could make out the mounds, temple, and palace given the trees and distance. But he knew where Joara was: There, where the ridges tapered into the bottoms and the drainages met.

  Off to the east—like a rumpled blanket—the forest-covered uplands faded against the misty blue horizon. This was mountain country carpeted by oak, maple, hickory, gum, and conifers. And though he had traveled the trails along the rivers and stared up at the peaks, Fire Cat had never seen the terrain from such an elevation. He gazed out on the thickly treed mountains, their upper slopes broken by rounded outcrops of pale granite and occasional cracked sandstone and shale. Dotted here and there with darker stands of pointed red spruce and the occasional pine and cedar, the muted greens were a stark contrast to the deep blue of the sky, with its cottony patches of luminous white cloud.

  Born at Red Wing Town, in the upper reaches of the Father Water, Fire Cat had never stood at the top of a mountain. Hadn’t even seen one until his travel up the Tenasee valley in pursuit of Night Shadow Star. From his outcrop, however, he could see the top of the world—still higher above him—and longed for the chance to climb to that lonesome tor. From there he would stare out across the entirety of the known universe.

  He would have. But for Night Shadow Star and his chafing worry.

  Even here, seeing the world as did Hunga Ahuito, the great two-headed eagle that lived at the top of the Sky World. Fire Cat’s stomach churned in indecision.

  So, had he made the right choice? Was this really the way Walking Smoke’s party of warriors had brought Night Shadow Star? He had made a desperate gamble based on the statement of an old toothless woman in Joara who had told him, “The Lightning Witch, the one you call Walking Smoke, said he’d get Chief Fire Light a pardon in Cahokia. Wanted to get there fast. Took that woman with him.”

  She referred to High Chief Fire Light of the Morning Star House, exiled from Cahokia, brother to the new Four Winds Clan Matron, Rising Flame. Chief Fire Light had been given the “honor” of helping to settle the distant colony in Cofitachequi. Settle: a euphemism for exile. In this case, Fire Light had been punished for stirring up political trouble in Cahokia.

  “Poor fool,” Fire Cat murmured.

  Walking Smoke would as soon cut the Cahokian chief’s throat, attempt to scry the future in the man’s spilled guts, and then eat his liver for supper. The chief and his warriors were only a means to carry Walking Smoke and the captive Night Shadow Star back to Cahokia posthaste.

  But was this the right trail? Or were they back there? Headed west from Joara over the pass to the Wide Fast River and then down to the Tenasee? If so, Fire Cat, Winder, and Blood Talon should have encountered them on the way, seen evidence of their passing.

  This had to be the right direction.

  At the sound of moccasin-clad feet, Fire Cat shot a glance over his shoulder to see the burly Trader, Winder, step out from the tree-shadowed forest depths and onto the hard stone. The man was muscular, with a grizzled face that looked like it had gotten in the way of too many fast-moving fists. The big Trader wore a plain brown hunting shirt, belted at the waist; a pack hung over his broad shoulders by a single strap. Winder’s hair was up in a simple bun, pinned with a wooden skewer. The tattoos on the man’s cheeks were so blurred and splotchy as to be unrecognizable when it came to clan or people.

  Which was just how Winder liked it.

  “What have you found?” Fire Cat asked.

  “We’ve got them,” Winder told him with a grin. “Blood Talon found the place where they camped. Looks like eighteen men and one woman, and she was tied to a beech sapling for the night. Marks in the grass show where two litters were set. Blood Talon says from the feel of the ashes in the fire, they were here two nights ago.”

  Fire Cat’s heart skipped. “Two days. That’s not so much to make up. We might be able to catch them before they make the headwa
ters of the Tenasee.”

  “Might.” Winder stepped up beside him, staring off to the south and east. “You can almost see all the way to the Salt Water from here. Almost.”

  “I would have liked to have seen that.” Fire Cat gestured at the forested heights with their rounded peaks and the outcrops of weathered gray rock visible on the steep slopes. “It’s enough to see mountains.”

  Winder absently pressed at the scabbed lump on the side of his head where one of Fire Light’s warriors had whacked him with a tree branch. His sidelong gaze evaluative, he fixed his black eyes on Fire Cat. “You’re a puzzle, War Chief.”

  “I’m not a war chief.”

  “You’re not a bound man, either.”

  “I am.” With a tip of his head, Fire Cat indicated the trees behind him. “Squadron First Blood Talon, back there, saw to that. He was in charge of one of Spotted Wrist’s squadrons when they took Red Wing Town, murdered my children, enslaved my wives, and sent my mother and sisters with me to Cahokia to die in the squares.”

  “And after all that, you saved his life?” Winder’s interest heightened.

  Fire Cat concentrated on fixing the spectacular vista in his memory. To the day he died, he wanted to remember the beauty, the incredible tumble of mountains, ridges, green valleys, and the infinity of distant horizons fading into the sky.

  “Power’s a funny thing, Trader, and we’re caught in the middle of it.”

  Winder stopped fiddling with the wound on the side of his head. “You don’t need to tell me. You killed Night Shadow Star’s husband, Makes Three, when the Morning Star sent him to destroy you. You’re finally captured, given to Night Shadow Star so she can torture you to death, but you end up her slave. She crosses half the world to kill her brother, Walking Smoke, and he ends up hauling her back to Cahokia. Meanwhile the man Keeper Spotted Wrist sends to bring Night Shadow Star back to Cahokia, so the Keeper can marry her, is your blood enemy, but ends up being rescued by you. And we’re still chasing Night Shadow Star? Is that a complex story, or what?”

  Fire Cat watched an eagle soar over the trees below. “Tell me that Power doesn’t use us for its own entertainment.”

  Winder’s slight smile sobered. “She loves you, you know. Loves you in a way I’ve never known a woman to love a man. There is something epic about all this, a story for the ages.”

  “Assuming we can catch up with Walking Smoke and free my lady,” Fire Cat rejoined. “Walking Smoke’s Power comes from the Sky World. Night Shadow Star’s Power is Piasa’s. She belongs to the lord of the Underworld. Let’s not forget, if this mysterious wound the old woman in Joara was talking about heals, Walking Smoke wants to rape his sister. Something about a twisted ritual that will make him the most Powerful man alive.”

  “Granted, Walking Smoke’s a witch, and an evil wretch, but do you believe that bit about being the most Powerful man alive?”

  Fire Cat shrugged. “He thinks that somehow the incestuous rape of his sister will allow him to kill Morning Star and take control of Cahokia.”

  “Epic, I tell you.” Winder let his gaze search the hazy blue distance.

  At the sound of feet, Fire Cat turned, glanced back at the trail as Blood Talon, dressed in a smudged smilax-fiber shirt, appeared from under the trees. “We’ve found them!” he cried, stepping onto the rock.

  Most of Blood Talon’s burns were healed into shiny pink scars; the man’s thick black hair was tied in a simple bun, and he’d dispensed with the traditional Cahokian warrior’s beaded forelock in the effort to look like a Trader. As if the balanced warrior’s carriage could ever be discarded.

  “Two days,” Fire Cat said. “Winder already told me.”

  “They are making good time.” Blood Talon hesitated, taking in the view. Cahokia born and bred, he, too, had never laid eyes on such a sight. Now he sucked in an awed breath. “Never thought I’d see the likes of this.”

  Winder slapped the man on the back. “Remember it. From here it’s downhill all the way to the mouth of the Mother Water. You’ll not see the equal of this again.”

  Fire Cat resisted the urge to take one last look as he trotted into the shadow of the mighty oaks, many with lightning-riven scars running down their bark.

  Lightning. The thought sent a chill down his spine. Walking Smoke had taken lightning as his Spirit Power. Word was it had marked the left side of the witch’s face, explaining why he wore his notorious whelk-shell mask.

  Fire Cat could well believe it. He might be a heretic when it came to Morning Star and the whole crazy hoax surrounding his reincarnation. But Fire Cat had been there the day Night Shadow Star had dragged Walking Smoke’s body down into the Father Water’s murky depths. Fire Cat was perched in the canoe when the Thunderbirds blasted bolts of lightning all around, sundering the mighty river and whisking Walking Smoke away from certain death.

  “Lady,” he whispered under his breath as his feet shuffled across the leaf mat and he ducked around the vines winding their way to the upper story, “I’m coming. As fast as I can.”

  At their small camp, he slung the sack holding his weapons, armor, and chunkey gear over one shoulder, and, with Winder’s help, lifted the ornately carved box of Trade. Then, with Blood Talon in the lead, they took the trail that led down to the valley beyond.

  Three

  The late-afternoon sun burned in the west like a white-hot orb. It cast shadows from the high palaces, the clan and society houses, and the charnel structure atop the Evening Star House burial mound. The temple to Old-Woman-Who-Never-Dies blocked the light and cast a dark shadow over the recorders’ society house where it stood next to the round surveyors’ society buildings. Interspersed among them all, and crowding the plaza, were the orderly camps of Evening Star House’s military squadrons.

  Beyond them lay the warehouses, the palaces, the society and charnel houses belonging to the various Earth clans. Mixed in were assorted peak-roofed temples before the town gave way to farmsteads with their domiciles, granaries, chiefs’ palaces, tall society poles, stickball and chunkey courts. All of it stretching away to the west. Countless thousands of people, all under her dominion.

  Pacing slowly, Matron Columella walked along the edge of the high bluff overlooking the Father Water. She couldn’t see the expanse of city that extended westward. Her view was blocked by the tall mounds and buildings that surrounded Evening Star Town’s great plaza. What she did have was a view of the Father Water, the mighty river that partially transected Cahokia, separating Evening Star Town from River City Mounds on the eastern shore. Beyond that—a half day’s travel down the Avenue of the Sun—lay central Cahokia, with its great plaza dominated by the Morning Star’s mound and temple. And a long day’s travel beyond that, the Moon Mounds. All were part of the city. All seeming to hold their breath as events played out between her, Matron Rising Flame, and Clan Keeper Spotted Wrist.

  Where it overlooked the river’s west bank, Evening Star Town stood atop a high bluff, well above flood stage. At the base of the slope, the great river washed against the exposed shore. The water ran low, murky, swirling and sucking; this being midsummer. And the reports were that not much rain had fallen in the plains to the west, or in the forests up north. As a result, a lot of the sloping and sandy shore was exposed.

  A fact that worried her as she walked beside the dwarf known as Flat Stone Pipe. The top of the little man’s head barely reached her hip. People believed that Spirit Power manifested in dwarfs, and Flat Stone Pipe was one of the most remarkable men Columella had ever known. He was trained as an engineer, and his skill when it came to the complex art of mound construction was well known. More than that: along with being her lover over the years, and having sired several of Columella’s children, Flat Stone Pipe ran a network of informants that spanned the city.

  Now, he, too, was staring down at the low water, and remarked, “I’d say that’s plenty of beach to land a squadron or two of Spotted Wrist’s warriors.”

  Columella chewed on her
lip as she lifted her gaze across the river and studied the canoe landing just below the thick-packed cluster of ramadas, warehouses, craft shops, granaries, and temples that was River City Mounds. In the middle of the clutter, atop the old levee, were the soaring roofs of the River House palace, its tall bald cypress world tree pole, and the steep-pitched roofs of the various River House temples and clan houses. They surrounded the elongated plaza with its famous chunkey courts. A haze of smoke, like a thin pall, rose from the city.

  More to her annoyance, however, were the lines of large Trade and war canoes that had been pulled up on the canoe landing. The mismatched craft rested on charcoal-stained sand with their sterns lapped by waves. Nearly a hundred of them. Most commandeered by the three squadron firsts whose commands were camped in orderly lines just beyond the canoes and among the ramadas and stalls belonging to the river Traders. The place resembled a hive, packed with warriors who lounged around desultory fires and made life miserable for the river Traders seeking to land their goods.

  “Three squadrons,” Columella mused. “All Spotted Wrist’s veterans from the north. Loyal to him. Maybe six hundred blooded warriors.”

  “Against whom we will field more than a thousand,” Flat Stone Pipe told her as he ambled along on his short legs. “It’s almost two to one, but our warriors are only trained. Not battle-hardened veterans. Everything depends upon the ground. Who has the tactical advantage. Were Spotted Wrist’s squadrons to load up and paddle straight across, our people could mass, charge down the bluff, and overwhelm them as they tried to bail out of their canoes.” The dwarf made a face. “My sources tell me he will do no such thing.”

  “Have you heard when he expects to move?”

  “At the rate Spotted Wrist is accumulating war and Trade canoes, he could order an attack as soon as the day after tomorrow. Those three squadrons are smack in the middle of the canoe landing, and they’re choking Trade. Essentially commerce is stopped, and I’ve heard of Traders camping up and down the river, waiting for the bunch of them to clear out.