Copper Falcon Read online

  “I came to ask my cousin for a squadron of warriors. Nothing more, nothing less.”

  “Poor timing on your part. Most of our forces are up north. Those accursed Red Wing heretics are finally being dealt with. This time Morning Star himself has blessed the dispatch of three thousand warriors under the command of War Chief Makes Three.” She cocked her head slightly. “Perhaps a perfect opportunity for you to see how the land lay prior to a return?”

  “I came only for a squadron. I could care less about—”

  “You were banished for life. A smart man would have paid attention to that fact.”

  “I want a squadron, nothing more.”

  “I almost believe you. But then you could have sent a messenger.”

  “And how many messengers does the Tonka’tzi receive a day asking for warriors? Instead I came to plead with Horned Serpent House, with my kinsman, Green Chunkey. Had he met my request with greater dispatch, we’d already be gone.”

  She watched him through slitted eyes. “Maybe I should just put you in a square as a lesson—”

  “No!” I cried, stepping forward. Panic swelled within me.

  Father’s guards lifted their clubs.

  The Keeper gave me a quick inspection, adding dryly, “Must be your son. He looks like you and has that same impetuosity without a lick of sense.”

  “Leave him be,” Father growled to the warriors. “Flint Knife, hold your tongue.”

  “Ah,” the Keeper said through a smile as she studied me. “The renowned young war chief.” She turned back to Father. “He has managed to carve out enough of a reputation that we’ve heard of him. Supposedly, he’s a ring-tailed terror when it comes to fighting T’so.”

  “Then you do know about our recent troubles?”

  “I keep track of all my divorced husbands … especially the capable ones.”

  Husband? I gaped at the woman. Father had been married to the Keeper?

  I could see the truth of it on his face when he said, “I keep track of my divorced wife, my only divorced wife. She has accumulated quite a list of discarded spouses over the years.”

  The ring of guards looked away uneasily. I cringed at the tone of Father’s voice.

  Keeper Blue Heron, however, sighed wistfully. “Not only are all men built with some unacceptable flaw inherent to their natures, but after a couple of weeks they either begin to irritate me to distraction or simply bore me to tears.”

  “So, now that we’ve established that I’m no threat to anyone but the T’so, can I get back to Horned Serpent Town, collect whatever kind of squadron Green Chunkey has put together, and return to my people?”

  She studied him through shrewd black eyes, fingered her chin, then gave a faint shake of the head. “I’m sorry, old friend, but it’s just not that simple.” To the squadron first, she said, “Bring him. The Tonka’tzi will see him tomorrow after other business is conducted.”

  The first bowed and touched his forehead in obeisance. The Keeper led the way up the long steps to her high palace atop its earthen pyramid. The squad—surrounding Father—fell in behind.

  I started forward, only to have two warriors block my way, eyes hard, war clubs purposefully gripped.

  “That’s my father,” I explained.

  “So? Try to pass? You’ll go up there, all right, bound and gagged to share his fate, whatever it is.”

  “Then … what do I do?”

  With a tilt of the head, one of the warriors—a Deer Clan man by his tattoos—indicated the Great Plaza. “You’re Four Winds. There’s a Four Winds Clan house just over there.”

  I backed slowly away, considering.

  If there was anything to learn, it would be in the clan house. And Father apparently wasn’t going anywhere until tomorrow.

  But by Piasa’s swinging balls, how much worse could this get?

  *****

  With nothing else to do, my heart plagued by worry, I wandered, trying not to look like a lost duckling paddling in deep water, with who knew what kind of danger lurking beneath the roiled surface.

  Shrills and whistles went up from the stickball game over in the Great Plaza as the winning side exploded in celebration. People who’d placed wagers collected their winnings. As the sun slanted through the late-afternoon clouds, my empty stomach began to chafe. The smells from the food booths were hard to resist.

  They would feed me at the Four Winds Clan house later, so to still the pangs I stepped away from the food vendors, passed beneath the mighty Morning Star’s majestic mound, and stopped short. On the southern edge of the eastern plaza stood a series of wooden squares, most bearing the sagging bodies of unfortunate men and women who had managed to irritate the Morning Star or his subordinates.

  The wretches hung in open squares of poles just large enough to fit a human being, wrists bound to the upper corners, ankles tied at the bottom so their bodies formed an X. Usually naked, the unfortunates were abused with fire or hot coals and beatings, given painful cuts at best, or slowly skinned alive at worst. Urinated on or otherwise fouled, the captives were generally made as miserable as possible. Death could come quickly and mercifully, or, with the proper feeding and liquids, could take days.

  Sick to my stomach, I rubbed a nervous hand over my face.

  Father could hang here tomorrow night!

  “Sent a quiver through you, did it, Four Winds?” a bluff voice asked.

  I took me a moment to recognize the man from the canoe landing. “Seven Skulls, right?”

  “Seven Skull Shield.” He stepped to my side, chewing on a long loaf of lotus-root bread, his thoughtful eyes on the miserable captives. “Power apparently didn’t favor them, eh?”

  “Perhaps not,” I managed through my tight throat.

  He glanced at me sidelong. “So … how is your visit from Yellow Wing Town?”

  “Copper Falcon Town.” Any arrogance I had once had about my home seemed to have leaked away. “Cahokia is … not what I expected.”

  “Well, for a bit of Trade I can change your fortunes. Ask what you will, good Four Winds. A gut-bursting meal? A challenging game of dice? Some fine memento to take home with you?” His eyebrows rose. “Ah, I know! Strapping young man that you are, how about something the likes of which you’ve never experienced?”

  “And what would that be?”

  He bent his head toward mine. “A professional woman. And by that I don’t mean some passive bed warmer. I’m talking about a woman who has dedicated her life to learning a man’s secrets, using her sheath like a gripping—”

  “Pus and blood, no,” I told him with scowl. “I’ve no interest in a woman, let alone one that—”

  “Ah, I see. I can direct you to young men who will make you—”

  “Nor am I a two-spirit.”

  “Then what could I do for you?” He made a face. “Short of finding you a bed companion in a charnel house, that is?”

  “Spirit me and my father out of Cahokia?” I asked desperately.

  “For a price,” he replied nonchalantly.

  I stopped short, staring at him in amazement. Could he really do that? “What kind of price?”

  He gave me a narrow-eyed inspection, noting my pack with its chunkey lance protruding. “A wondrous piece of worked copper, an immaculately carved shell cup, a packet of cacao? Maybe a Tunica-made spoonbill-feather cloak? Perhaps a Muskogean ceremonial jar? A bale of Taino tobacco?”

  “That’s a high chief’s ransom!”

  “Indeed, it is.” He indicated the square, where the nearest wretch was panting in pain, a patchwork of burns on his skin, his chest flayed to raw meat. I think the captive was male, but his genitals had been completely burned away.

  Seven Skull Shield gestured with his bread. “That’s the fate of anyone who might get caught helping you spirit a high chief out of Cahokia. And that kind of risk, Four Winds, doesn’t come cheap.”

  *****

  As evening fell I made my way to the Four Winds Clan house where it stood ov
erlooking the western plaza and the Avenue of the Sun. This one was busy, bustling with men, women, and some children; I’d never felt so lonely and unsure of myself as I stopped in the doorway. Who were all these people?

  Unnerved by what I’d seen in the squares and worried sick, I had to remind myself that I was a Copper Falcon war chief. Summoning all of my courage, I stepped inside the room full of strangers and announced myself.

  In Horned Serpent Town, Green Chunkey had informed the clan house of our arrival. Here a clansman, apparently the man who oversaw the place, made me recite my lineage to prove my tattoos were real. The notion that anyone would fake a clan tattoo had never occurred to me. But a great many things in Cahokia would defy the comprehension of an ordinary man.

  I was directed to a sleeping bench and loaned a blanket. Supper consisted of cornbread seasoned with blueberries, a thick turkey stew containing coontie root, mushrooms, hazelnuts, walnuts, and spiced with bee plant. I washed it down with mint tea.

  A scarred man with a maimed left arm seated himself on the cane matting next to me. He was older, in his mid-forties. Distinctive facial tattoos marked him as Four Winds Clan. He wore only a threadbare hunting shirt, rope-belted at the waist, but the war club he laid at his side was old and hard-used. The dark stuff caked around the inset stone blade had to be long-dried blood and brains.

  He glanced curiously at me as I sopped up stew with a piece of cornbread, and asked, “Not from here?”

  “Copper Falcon Town down on the Tenasee.”

  He turned his attention back to the fire, nodded, and narrowed his eyes. “Colony. Uh-huh, I guessed it. On the Tenasee? Whereabouts?”

  “Just east of the great bend at the upper rapids.”

  “Tough country, I hear. Some barbarians?”

  “The T’so. We came for warriors.”

  “Just warriors?” He grinned, exposing missing teeth. “That’s a bit optimistic, isn’t it? Given the fighting up north? Just show up and ask the Tonka’tzi to give you warriors? Or did you think you’d go all the way to the Morning Star? Maybe whip him at a game of chunkey and demand an army?”

  He didn’t sound hostile or sarcastic, just amused, so I answered politely. “We made our request of our kinsman High Chief Green Chunkey. We’re Horned Serpent House. Father didn’t want anything to do with Morning Star House.” I knotted a fist in frustration. “And now it’s all a tangled mess!”

  “My lineage is allied with Evening Star House,” he told me. “I’ve been honored with the name Bear Heart Tenkiller. Served as squadron second. Was in line for first.” He indicated his ruined arm. “Red Wings up north did this to me. By the time I healed up, too many places ached.” He made a harsh hawking in his throat and swallowed. “Problem with Cahokia? You never know what the intrigue is. Which House is trying to cut another’s throat.”

  He made a gesture as he laid his wooden plate to the side. “Horned Serpent House must be about to try something devious.”

  “Devious how?”

  “How would I know? You just been down there. You’re Green Chunkey’s kin. Surely they gave you some kind of hint.”

  I frowned at the fire, thinking over everything I’d heard at Horned Serpent Town. In the end I had to shake my head. “I honestly have no idea. We just came for a squadron. In three moons we could break the T’so, push them back across the divide. Then the Muskogee down in Split Sky City would have to deal with them.”

  “Then why are you here instead of down at Horned Serpent Town wheedling a squadron out of Green Chunkey?”

  “The Keeper sent warriors after my father. He’s up in her palace. The Tonka’tzi wants to see him tomorrow.”

  Bear Heart reached around to scratch his lower back. “Came back when he wasn’t supposed to, huh? He wasn’t thinking vendetta, was he? You know, some payback while he was here? A way to get even?”

  “Father? Payback?” I considered it, then shook my head. “It hurt him when he was exiled. Always bothered him. How could it not? But he made a life for himself, built Copper Falcon Town, and … and I guess, proved himself.”

  Which was a revelation to me. I’d never looked at Father quite that way. “He’s a man of honor,” I added. “He wouldn’t have come back were that not the case. His duty, no matter the cost, is to find a way to beat back the T’so so we’re not whittled away in the end and overrun some night.”

  Bear Heart nodded in agreement. “You know why they kicked him out in the first place?”

  “Something about a woman.” I hesitated. “He was married to the Keeper at the time, can you imagine?”

  Bear Heart frowned and cocked his head. “The Keeper, you say? Wait, I think I remember something about that. Was that the trouble over Lady White Pot?”

  “Huh?” The way I started, I might have been stung by a scorpion. “The Great Sky’s wife? Impossible.” Then I narrowed my eyes. “How would you know, even if it was?”

  From below an appraising eyebrow he gave me a wary glance. “Not much happens in the Keeper’s life, or the Tonka’tzi’s, that isn’t whispered from lip to lip. They are the lords of Cahokia, and believe me, nothing happens without someone knowing.”

  “But Lady White Pot? She’s the mother of the Tonka’tzi’s children, of Chunkey Boy in whom the Morning Star was reincarnated. Her daughter, Lady Night Shadow Star, will either be the next Tonka’tzi or the next Four Winds Clan matron.”

  “Maybe your father and Lady White Pot have been keeping in touch over the years? Maybe he figured on taking her with him when he leaves with that squadron?” He shrugged. “It would be a way to get even with the Keeper.”

  “That’s so foolish I’d swear you were head-struck, Bear Heart. Here’s how preoccupied Father was with the Keeper. Until today, I never even knew he’d been married to her.” I paused. “And it was only last night that I knew he’d even had a wife in Cahokia. And the only thing he said he resented was some copper falcon that she’d kept.”

  “The one hung behind her dais in her palace?”

  “How would I know?”

  Bear Heart studied me through veiled eyes.

  “Seems there’s a lot about your father that you don’t know.”

  *****

  Most of the night I tossed and turned, obsessing about Father’s plight and the sort of night he was having. I fretted over what was going through the minds of Five Wings, Fast Call, and the rest of our warriors in Horned Serpent Town. By now they had to be half frantic with worry, wondering what to do. And Sixkills and Cut Hand, whose mouths had gotten us into this fix? I promised them mayhem.

  When I wasn’t wrestling with those concerns, Bear Heart’s revelation that my father had been involved with White Pot—out of all the women on earth—left me dumbstruck. She was sort of godlike in the way Old-Woman-Who-Never-Dies, or Corn Woman, or some storied heroine from the Beginning Times was.

  Which shouldn’t be that hard to swallow since I’d heard from the Keeper’s own lips that my father had been her husband. She was the Tonka’tzi’s sister, after all, and would have been in constant contact with White Pot.

  And Father had said he met the love of his life through his wife, who I now knew was the Keeper.

  How do I believe any of this?

  Dawn was coming. Pulling my borrowed blanket back, I rolled it and stuffed it under the bench. I wanted to be ready, keeping an eye on the Keeper’s palace, in case Father appeared.

  I rose silently, shouldered my pack, and padded for the door. It surprised me when I glanced at the bench where Bear Heart had been sleeping, only to find him gone. It was hard to believe he’d risen earlier than I, let alone that in my sleepless state I hadn’t heard him.

  I stepped out into the cool air, used the latrine, and then crossed the Avenue of the Sun to the western plaza. Dawn was still a gray haze in the eastern sky as I walked to the chunkey courts. These were Four Winds courts, for the exclusive use of the clan.

  In the dim light I laid my pack to the side, withdrew my red granite
chunkey stone and lance, and walked slowly down the length of the court. The packed clay felt perfect, with no slants or dips, level as the surface of a calm pond. I’d never played on such a well-groomed court.

  In the graying light I could see the Keeper’s palace with its two guards at the base of the stairs. The palace itself was a steep-roofed gray shadow. I’d be able to spot anyone coming or going.

  Walking back to the start, I swung my stone, limbering my arm. Taking my position, I hefted my lance in my left hand, checking its balance. Then I charged forward. Four paces, and my arm swung back. I bowled the stone, the release perfect as the disk touched down on the clay.

  Two strides and I’d shifted my lance to the right hand, whipped my arm back, and cast. I could barely see its flight in the dim light, but chunkey wasn’t about seeing with your eyes; it was knowing where the stone would stop well in advance of the moment it slowed and pitched onto its side.

  Walking down, I found my lance jabbed into the clay no more than a forearm’s length from the stone.

  When I collected my pieces and walked back, someone was standing at the head of the court. I could barely make out the lance and stone he held. The white apron, however, stood out in the gloom, and something dark was wrapped across his chest like a binding.

  “Good cast,” he greeted, and I was surprised by the contralto melody in his voice. Some youth up early to practice his skill before the adults arrived?

  “Thank you.”

  “Play to twenty?”

  “Sure. What will you play for?”

  I could barely see a smile in the gloom. “Your stone?”

  That surprised me. Chunkey stones were highly prized, often took over a year to grind into perfect disks with just the right balance and fit for a player’s hand. My red granite piece, my most prized possession, had been Traded down the Tenasee from the mountains.

  “Are you sure?” I countered, uneasy over the prospect of depriving a mere boy of his stone.

  “Oh, very. I’ll play white.”

  “I’m happy with the red.” And I was. Red denoted the Power of chaos, war, creativity, procreation, strife. White was the Power of peace, wisdom, harmony, and reflection. Hardly where my mood and concerns were centered.