The Rage Read online

  Things had been hard since the council. Although the elders had agreed on what to do, many of the villagers, including Chingwe and his parents, were uncomfortable with the presence of Flame Hair. What Chingwe didn’t know, because he no longer spoke to Peyewik, was that Peyewik didn’t want Flame Hair in the village any more than he did. Peyewik had taken to sleeping in trees in good weather rather than sleep in the same house with her. She continued to stink despite Muhkrentharne’s attempts to disinfect her. He had even burned her filthy clothes, but the house still smelled. Muhkrentharne never complained though Peyewik had noticed that he spent more time in the garden when he wasn’t tending to her.

  Peyewik listened to the wind swish through the branches of the fir. The tree swayed soothingly, and eventually his chest no longer felt so tight and cold. He sang a little prayer of thanks to the spirit of the fir and climbed down. He walked along the edge of the forest, looking for a sassafras shrub. He had told Muhkrentharne about the coldness in his chest, and his grandfather decided he still had some water in his lungs. The sassafras was meant to dry up the water, and cure the coldness.

  Peyewik found the shrub and took a pinch of tobacco from a pouch around his neck. He sprinkled it at the base of the plant and sang another prayer of thanks before digging out a few roots. Deep down, he knew that the coldness wasn’t water in his lungs. It was Sky Eye’s spirit clinging to him.

  Wishing the sweet smelling roots really could cure him, Peyewik started for home. When he came to the garden, he paused to make sure Chingwe and the other boys weren’t still hanging around. They were gone, but as he drew close to Muhkrentharne’s house, Flame Hair came lurching around the corner and barred his way.

  Peyewik froze, dropping the sassafras. He hadn’t realized she could get around so easily yet. In the light of day she was grotesque, her scars livid against her glaringly white skin, her orange hair matted like ropes of poison ivy. She came close, dropped her hands onto his shoulders, and suddenly he was on the ground looking up into her awful face. She grimaced at him, and he squeezed his eyes shut in anticipation of the next blow. When nothing happened Peyewik opened his eyes and saw that Flame Hair was offering him a hand. He hesitated before taking it, then allowed her to pull him to his feet. Once he was upright again, she grasped his right arm with her right arm, and set her right foot against his. Peyewik had time to recognize the wrestling stance before he landed on the ground a second time.

  The fall didn’t hurt. Flame Hair was knocking him down gently, though Peyewik couldn’t imagine why. He wondered if she was delirious again, if he should run for Muhkrentharne. Flame Hair hauled him to his feet and stepped back to catch her breath. She was sweating, and her legs were shaking, but she didn’t seem delirious or threatening. Peyewik turned to go, but she grunted and resumed the wrestling stance. She was taller than Peyewik, taller even than Chingwe. Earlier, Chingwe had used his greater strength and reach to win the match. But Flame Hair hadn’t seemed to exert any force at all when she knocked Peyewik over. It was as if she simply willed him off his feet.

  Peyewik’s curiosity got the better of him. He replaced his right foot against hers and took her arm. This time she went through the movement very slowly, showing him how she leaned into him with her knees, then shifted her weight onto her back foot. She didn’t use her upper body until the very last second and then only for a quick shove to complete the unbalancing.

  Peyewik picked himself up yet again, and Flame Hair showed him how to lock his knees in place and then pull her forward.

  Peyewik blinked in surprise. Flame Hair was on the ground. He had knocked over the man-killer! She had landed lightly enough, but he could see that the fall hurt her injured leg. He was afraid she would be angry, but she gave him the grimace that he now understood to be a smile. He relaxed and realized how good it felt to knock Flame Hair down. She was, after all, the cause of all his problems. If she hadn’t come to the village, Chingwe would still be his friend, and the villagers would not be whispering about him as much. He wanted to knock her down again. And then go knock down Chingwe and the other boys and any villager who looked at him funny. The thought made him smile, and he was a little too enthusiastic when Flame Hair gave him another chance to push her off balance. She hit the ground hard, and he saw her green eyes flash. He jumped back, ready to run. But Flame Hair broke into an undeniable grin and held out her hand. When she was on her feet she clapped him on the back, still grinning. He had impressed her.

  Peyewik wasn’t sure it was such a good thing to impress the man-killer, but at the same time, he felt better than he had in a long while. And Flame Hair, with her odd grin and clumsy movements, didn’t look like a man-killer at the moment. In fact, as Peyewik looked at her, he felt the sudden presence of her spirit animal. It was something lithe and joyful, untouched by darkness or shadow. It was gone again before he could figure out what it was, as though it was shy of being seen.

  For a moment Peyewik was too surprised to move. He hadn’t thought about Flame Hair or any of the Pale Ones having spirit animals. They were too strange and separate. Or so he had thought.

  “Peyewik!”

  Peyewik, still in awe of his discovery, looked up to see his grandfather coming towards him.

  “The chief asks for Flame Hair,” Muhkrentharne said. “She must come now.”

  Peyewik turned to Flame Hair and saw that her face had gone hard and intimidating again. The playful spirit animal was long gone.

  “Why does the chief want her?” he asked.

  “One who speaks her language has come from the Away People. We must speak with Flame Hair now.”

  rib was so surprised to hear English being spoken that she didn’t immediately understand what the Native had said to her.

  “You will answer questions?” the Native repeated. “I will translate.”

  Trib stood before three men, as she leaned on a makeshift crutch. The men were seated on a platform against one wall of a large hut. The translator, a young man with long, black hair and strangely colored eyes, sat on one side of the platform. On the other side was the old man. And in the center sat a powerful-looking man introduced by the translator as the chief of the village. This was his hut. It was much bigger than the old man’s, but it still seemed rough and unimpressive to Trib. The chief himself, however, had an entirely different effect on her. The Scath had drilled it into her apprentices never to back down in front of a man. One show of weakness and the bastards would stomp all over you, she’d said. But Trib had looked away from the chief’s unwavering gaze almost immediately. There was no challenge or aggression in his black eyes, just an attention that made her feel as if the flesh had been stripped from her bones, and there was nowhere left to hide.

  So she looked at the old man instead. She could see neither welcome nor hostility in his face, but she was used to that. His hands had been gentle on her wounds, and his balms had eased her pain. But she knew better than to let this lull her into a sense of safety and calm. She had been taught to be on her guard at all times, and the truth was that she didn’t know how the old man actually felt about her, or what the other Natives’ intentions towards her might be.

  “Depends on the question,” she answered the translator warily.

  To her dismay she felt a flutter in her stomach as she looked at him. He was long-limbed and lean, and his hair hung loose down his back like a girl’s. Adding to the effect were loops of colored beads in his ears and a thick fringe of lashes around gold-colored eyes. He had the kind of prettiness some of the apprentice warriors liked in a man. Trib didn’t know what to do with attractive young men. They made her nervous and distracted her from her duties, so she left them to Cuss. She was sure Cuss would’ve fancied the translator. His meager clothing didn’t leave much to the imagination—he was naked from the waist up. Cuss wouldn’t have minded at all, but it made Trib blush, defeating her efforts to appear strong and aloof.

  The translator looked back at her impassively.

  “You
are from the north?” he asked.

  “Aye,” Trib replied, wondering how much she should tell him. She wished for the thousandth time that the Scath were there. Answering questions was beyond her training. She decided that since the Natives had treated her well enough so far, she might as well tell them the truth. It wasn’t as though these unarmed primitives could ever pose a threat to the New Murians, no matter what she told them.

  “I’m from the settlement of New Murias, a week’s travel to the north,” she said. “Sailed down here along the coast a month past, maybe more.”

  “Why did you come here?”

  Trib thought back to the black-robed figures standing at the edge of the marsh.

  “No good reason I can see,” she muttered to herself. More loudly, she said, “To make a map.”

  The chief looked concerned at this.

  “How many more of you are there?” the translator asked.

  Trib had to think. The map-making expedition was dead. She tried to remember how many people had been left on the bay with the ship.

  “I reckon twenty or so.”

  “They are mankillers, like you?” the translator asked.

  It took Trib a moment to figure out what he meant. “You’re asking about warriors? No, only five or six of them. The rest are priestesses and manservants.”

  She expected to be asked to explain what priestesses and manservants were, but the translator had another question in mind.

  “Your women fight alongside your men?”

  Trib snorted. “No. Only women are allowed to be warriors where I come from. Men ain’t trustworthy enough to carry weapons.”

  The next question came out sounding like an accusation.

  “You kill one of your own?” he asked.

  “One of my own...?” Trib was confused.

  “The man by the river.”

  Trib’s vision went red around the edges.

  “Puritanics ain’t my own,” she spat.

  She was still too weak to bring on a full Rage, but the flickers of red let her know that some of her strength was returning.

  “Puritanics are liars, wife-beaters, and child-killers,” she said. She pointed at the old man. “You need proof, ask your grandson. The Puritanic you’re asking about, he was drowning that boy, and I stopped him.”

  To Trib’s surprise, the old man spoke up.

  “Muhkrentharne thanks you for saving his grandson,” the translator told her.

  “Aye, well, I thank him for saving me,” Trib said gruffly, unaccustomed to politeness.

  The old man nodded once in acknowledgment.

  “These Pure Men are your enemies?” the translator asked, keeping the questioning on track. “How many of them are there?”

  “There’s more up north. But down here there can’t be more than ten, after the one I killed at the river and the ones killed during the ambush.”

  “What do your people want from us?”

  Trib stared at the pretty young man, bemused.

  “We don’t want anything from you,” she said. “We didn’t even know you were here.”

  She wondered what he thought his backwards people could have that the New Murians would want.

  “And the Pure Men?”

  “I reckon they’re only here because of us, followed us down here to do us harm any way they can,” Trib said wearily.

  She was getting tired of the conversation. Talking was for priestesses, not warriors. And her legs had started to tremble with fatigue, worn out by her grappling lesson with the boy. She had been offered a seat on the ground when she entered the hut but she had refused it, thinking she would be more impressive on her feet.

  Trib looked up then, straight into the translator’s eyes. They shone gold in the dim light of the hut and in them she saw an odd mixture of distaste and fascination. It was almost as disconcerting as the chief’s gaze, and it made her legs tremble even harder. Finally, the translator turned back to the chief and her legs grew a little more solid beneath her. She cursed under her breath at the treachery of her own body.

  After a brief consultation the chief spoke, and Trib could hear the authority in his voice even though she couldn’t understand his words.

  “You will carry a message from Chief Okahoki to your people, the Pale Ones,” the translator said. “You will tell them this is the home of the People for many generations. It is protected by Manito. Snakebrother and his violence cannot come here. You must go and tell your people never to return here.”

  Trib didn’t know what it all meant, but she bristled anyway. The Natives were unarmed and powerless. They had no right to make demands, especially when they couldn’t even tell the difference between a New Murian and a Puritanic. She was sore and tired, and her mind felt muddled. She wished the Scath were there to tell her what to do. All she wanted was to get back to her people, warn them about the Puritanics, and hunt down the men who killed her friends. She forced herself to think. The chief had asked her to deliver a message, nothing more. She could do that, and it might even help her get on her way faster.

  “If you can point me in the direction of the bay, where my people are waiting, I’ll deliver your message.” She still had no idea where she was and could only assume that the bay was a large enough landmark that the Natives would know it.

  The translator looked at her like she was an idiot and nodded.

  “Then I’ll leave today,” Trib said.

  The old man spoke then.

  “Muhkrentharne says you are still weak,” the translator explained. “You must rest before you go. Sleep tonight, leave in the morning.”

  “I ain’t weak!” Trib blustered, just before her wounded leg gave out and she dropped onto one knee.

  The translator looked down at her, his dark brows arched gracefully over golden eyes filled with sparks of mocking laughter.

  “Dess damn it!” Trib cursed her body out loud this time as her stomach did a traitorous somersault. She had to admit that the old man was right. She needed to rest. “Fine,” she grumbled. “I’ll leave at first light tomorrow.”

  eyewik was awakened by cries of alarm and fear.

  Muhkrentharne was already out of his bed. “Stay here!” he commanded before rushing from the house.

  Peyewik slipped out of bed and tried to run after Muhkrentharne, but came up against Flame Hair in the darkness. She grabbed him by the shoulders and shook him, shouting in her ugly language.

  Somehow Peyewik knew exactly what she wanted. Without thinking, he knelt down and pulled a bundle out from under Muhkrentharne’s bed. The edge of the longknife gleamed in the light of the banked fire. Flame Hair snatched the weapon greedily and ran from the house with a blood-chilling shriek. The sound reminded Peyewik of what he’d seen Flame Hair do to Sky Eyes and he suddenly gasped in horror at the thought of the demon he’d set loose in the village.

  Just then Muhkrentharne returned, bringing with him the smell of smoke. “More Pale Ones have come,” he said. “They have set fire to some of the houses on the eastern side of the village.”

  “I gave Flame Hair her longknife,” Peyewik whispered. “I did not think about what she might do...”

  “I saw her,” Muhkrentharne said, “She is like a monster, but she is not harming the People, only the attackers. Even though she is injured, she fights with the strength of many men. It is a terrible thing to see.”

  Peyewik shivered.

  His grandfather began pulling dried plants down from the rafters. “Some of the People will need medicine.”

  When he’d gathered enough supplies he said, “Stay here, Little One. I will come back as soon as I can.”

  Peyewik stood in the dark and listened to the sounds of chaos outside. His chest felt tight and his body cold. He thought of Sky Eyes and felt the angry spirit clinging to him. Suddenly Peyewik understood that the Pale Ones had come to the village in search of revenge for their dead friend. Fear rushed through him, but he was frozen to the spot. All he could do was shiver and
imagine the terrible things that were happening outside.

  He didn’t know how long he stood this way before Muhkrentharne reappeared. The old man’s eyes were bloodshot and his face was smudged with smoke, but he was whole and safe and his hands were full of freshly picked herbs.

  “The Pale Ones are gone,” Muhkrentharne told him. “Flame Hair killed some, the others ran.”

  He set about crushing the herbs with his wooden mortar. Their astringent smell filled the house, and Peyewik blinked as if waking up. There was no more shouting. He could hear birdsong. A sliver of light showed under the doorflap. Morning had come. He wanted to tell Muhkrentharne about Sky Eyes’ spirit, how it must have brought the Pale Ones to the village, but his tongue felt cold and slow.

  Muhkrentharne put the crushed herbs into a basket along with some soft skins cut into bandages. “Take these to Old Woman Menukan,” he said. “She is tending the wounded in the Ceremony House.”

  Peyewik took the basket but hesitated at the door, afraid of what he would find outside.

  “I cannot go with you,” Muhkrentharne said gently. “The Chief has called the elders together.”

  Peyewik finally found his voice. “Was anyone killed?”

  Muhkrentharne put an herb-scented hand against his cheek. “Manito protected us from Snakebrother last night. None of the People were killed.”

  Relief swept through Peyewik.

  “Some lost their homes and others were hurt, so you must go. They need the medicine you bring.”

  Peyewik did as he was told. Outside, the fires still smoldered, filling the village with an acrid haze. People were clearing away the debris of ruined houses and hauling saplings from the forest. They were already rebuilding, but everything looked different, strange and alien. The village’s appearance had finally caught up with how Peyewik had been feeling about it for weeks. For a moment he was disoriented and didn’t know which way to go. Then a stiff breeze cleared the smoke and he could see the Ceremony House, undamaged, at the center of the village. As he started towards it, he saw a flicker of movement in the corner of his eye. He turned, thinking he’d seen a large, dark cat prowling the tree-line, but there was nothing.