The Broken Land by W. Michael Gear Page B

forgotten by their people. But she didn’t have to say it. Sindak had seen the old woman’s dead body after Zateri, Baji, and Odion had killed her.
    Snow and darkness. Bone stilettos slinging blood. A dripping ax.
    She flinched and momentarily closed her eyes. When she opened them, she found Sindak staring at her sympathetically.
    “Forgive me. I wouldn’t have made you remember if I didn’t need to know.”
    “Why? What’s going on?”
    Sindak continued rubbing Little Boy’s ears while he thought. The dog tilted his head in pleasure. “You’ve heard nothing about him as an adult? Not where he might live? What he’s doing?”
    She shook her head. “No.”
    “I may have.”
    She folded her arms beneath her cape, protecting her heart. “Do I wish to know?”
    Sindak frowned and blinked at the fire several times, as though considering what he should or should not say. “If I’m right, you will, but I’m not going to tell you anything until I’m sure. Except to say that it has to do with Ohsinoh.”
    “He’s allied himself with the Bluebird Witch?”
    “I promise I’ll answer that question when I’m sure.”
    He leaned forward, kissed her lightly on the forehead, and left the longhouse as silently as he’d come.

Ten
    Sky Messenger
     
     
    S outh of Yellowtail Village the predawn forest rests as though under some terrible enchantment. I stop on the crest of the trail to survey the rolling hills. Sunrise is at least one hand of time away. The sky is so blue it’s almost black.
    My people rarely make war at night, but the scent of burning bark rides the breeze, and ash continually sifts down from the high branches, turning my black hair and cape a powdery gray. Gitchi shakes often to rid himself of the annoyance.
    In the distance, I see Sedge Marsh Village, though I can’t make out what happened to it. This is a Hills People village.
    “Tell me it’s still there,” I murmur to myself, and Gitchi looks up. “They were our friends when I left.”
    For seven days now, I’ve been marching through burned villages and empty country. Trees have often been felled to block the trails into the village, or perhaps to close the trails behind those who fled. It’s clear that someone wanted these paths closed.
    My progress down the hill becomes a torment. The larger rock slides force me to scramble over them on my hands and knees, and the trip is agonizing for Gitchi’s aching joints. He groans behind me. When at last we make it down to the trail again, the sky is a little brighter. Pale blue lights the forest floor and streams through the branches. Where it strikes the ground, steam rises into the air. The lack of people frightens me. I have seen no dead bodies. No injured. No orphaned children hiding in the trees. Yet every village I know is gone.
    I stop just outside Sedge Marsh Village and study the charred palisade. This has been a wet autumn. Nothing burns easily, but the upright logs here have burned through at regular intervals, indicating that someone had the time to set fires purposefully, turning the palisade into a sieve impossible to defend.
    “Easy now,” I whisper to Gitchi, who’s started to growl every time Elder Sister Gaha—the soft wind—whistles through the blackened husks of longhouses. It unnerves me, too, sounding so much like weeping that I keep spinning around, expecting to see someone following us.
    My searching gaze finds only heaps of smoldering bark that, not so long ago, were walls and roofs.
    For days I’ve deliberately avoided entering such villages, fearing lurking enemy warriors, but not today. Cautiously, I duck through one of the holes in the palisade and proceed across the ash-coated plaza. All that remains of the eight longhouses are blackened pole skeletons.
    The air is smoky, difficult to breathe. I look around the destroyed village for any living creature—even the dogs have vanished—then I step inside a house that once stretched over six hundred hands in length.