The Rage Page 9

  “We will help you,” she said, trying to sound confident.

  They traveled through pine barrens that day, moving as fast as they could. Trib’s leg hurt, but she told herself she could rest when they got to the New Murian camp. Around mid-day, the boy uttered an exclamation and stopped.

  “What’s the matter?” Trib asked, afraid that he had seen something else.

  The storyteller smiled briefly. “Peyewik has never smelled the ocean before.”

  Sure enough, Trib could taste the tang of saltwater in the air. She hadn’t noticed until her attention was drawn to it.

  “You have?” she asked the storyteller.

  “My village is not far. A day’s journey to the north and east.”

  By early afternoon gray clouds had covered the sun and a light rain was falling. The boy paused again, this time raising his hands to the sky as if to catch the raindrops before they hit the earth.

  “Surely he’s seen rain before,” Trib grinned, but the storyteller only frowned in reply.

  A few minutes later the sky grew darker, thunder rolled, and the rain became a downpour. The boy grabbed at the storyteller’s hand and spoke in an agitated voice.

  “What is it?” Trib shouted over the rumble of thunder.

  The storyteller didn’t answer. He had stopped in his tracks and was staring straight ahead. A flash of lightning revealed a landscape of tree stumps stretching before them.

  “He said the spirits are weeping,” the storyteller said finally. “No one thanked the trees for their sacrifice. They were just…taken.”

  He turned to face Trib slowly and the look in his eyes made her cringe. There was no hope in them, only a growing fear. A sudden thought burst into her head. Run! Take the boy and run as far away from here as you can!

  She opened her mouth to say it out loud, but there was another flash of lightning, and she saw that they were surrounded by brown-cloaked figures with drawn swords.

  “By the Goddess! I’m one of you!” she shouted, afraid that in the poor light and her animal skin clothing the New Murians wouldn’t recognize her.

  The weapons didn’t falter. She spun around, trying to find the leader of the group.

  “Tribulation,” someone said, “we thought you were dead.” The speaker’s face was hidden in the shadow of her hood. “Who are these strangers?”

  Trib recognized the voice. It belonged to a master warrior named Jezebel, who had been left behind on the bay when the mapmaking expedition set out.

  “They’re Natives whose village isn’t far from here,” Trib explained. “Puritanics are attacking them and they need our help. We need to see whoever’s in charge of the camp.”

  “That would be the Scath herself.”

  “The Scath’s here?” Trib’s gut wrenched.

  “Aye. Aoifa and her priestesses as well. Got here not too long after we found the remains of your expedition and brought them back for burial. Aoifa performed the rite herself.”

  There was a beat of silence and Trib knew what was coming.

  “How is it that you alone survived?” Master Jezebel asked.

  Trib realized she had been waiting for this question since she’d first regained consciousness in the marsh three weeks ago. There was no good answer.

  “I reckon Aoifa and the Scath will want to be the first to know the answer to that,” she replied.

  After a moment Master Jezebel lowered her sword. She gave an order, and the company closed in around Trib and the Natives. “I’ll take you and your allies to Aoifa and the Scath directly,” she said in a hard voice.

  They didn’t have far to go before the beginnings of a massive timber palisade loomed over them, and Trib understood what had happened to the trees. Someone had been working fast. There hadn’t been anything but tents when Trib left with the mapmakers. There were two high mounds of earth just outside the wall. Burial mounds. They hadn’t been there before either. Trib felt grief rising as she thought of Cuss and the other warriors. She had to be strong when she went before the Scath, so she pushed the grief back down.

  The hooded warriors led them through a newly constructed gate. It was twice as high as the huts in the Native village and required five men to open it. The gatekeepers were farmhands from New Murias. They stood bare-headed and cloak-less in the rain, their faces blank until someone shouted at them and they moved to close the gate behind the warriors and the travelers. Trib wondered why she had never noticed before that there was something strange and vacant about them. She glanced at the storyteller and the boy, hoping they hadn’t noticed the men, but the boy was looking right at them. She saw his eyes fill with panic as they pushed the gate shut. Trib couldn’t blame him. After so many weeks out in the open she felt penned in, trapped by the high walls even though they were incomplete. She couldn’t imagine what it must feel like to the two Natives.

  “It’s all right,” she tried to reassure Peyewik. “These are my people. They’re going to help you…”

  The boy made a strangled sound and pitched forward, his eyelids fluttering. She caught him before he landed in the mud. She looked around for the storyteller to help her. He was standing nearby, but when she called his name, he didn’t move. His golden eyes were vacant and staring, just like the farmhands’.

  “What in Dess’s name...?” she cried.

  “They are overwhelmed,” said a cool voice.

  Trib’s head snapped up, and she found herself looking into the moon-pale face and ice-blue eyes of Aoifa, the head priestess of New Murias.

  ark wings enfolded Peyewik. He could see nothing, but he could feel a softness like feathers all around him and hear a soothing lullaby that filled his mind. All is well, the lullaby claimed. Do not worry, just sleep…But Peyewik did not want to sleep. He knew that all was not well, and he struggled against the soft darkness. It became suffocating, and he began to understand the singer’s true intent. The lullaby faltered and ended with an angry caw.

  Peyewik sat up, instantly awake. He looked around for Crow Woman, but she wasn’t there. He was lying on a straw pallet in the center of a cramped, airless room. The only light came from a small lamp beside the pallet. He could see the shape of a body slumped in the corner.

  “Kwineechka?” he said softly.

  The storyteller groaned and leaned forward into the light. Peyewik barely recognized his clay-like features and dull eyes. He looked like the men who had opened the massive gate to the Fighting Women’s camp.

  He crawled to the storyteller’s side. “What has happened to you?”

  The storyteller couldn’t answer.

  Peyewik put his hands on either side of Kwineechka’s face and instantly the lullaby filled his mind again. He dropped his hands, stricken.

  “The Crow Woman has trapped your spirit with her song. I do not know how to help you,” he said.

  “Little…brother…” Kwineechka gasped. Peyewik saw the flicker of recognition in his eyes and knew the storyteller was trying to fight the song. Desperate to help, he replaced his hands on Kwineechka’s face. The lullaby flooded in again and he resisted it with all his might.

  No! he shouted in his mind. Do not listen! He could feel Kwineechka’s spirit struggling, feeble against the overwhelming softness and darkness. The song is a lie. Think of something true. Peyewik began to sing out loud, a song of home. He sang about the rush and splash of the river, the gentle roar of the wind in the pine trees, and the chittering of insects in tall grass. He sang about the People—laughing children, hunters giving thanks over a fallen deer, women talking and singing as they wove mats. The lullaby grew fainter and fainter as the sounds and images of home filled Kwineechka’s mind.

  Peyewik dropped his hands and looked anxiously into Kwineechka’s face. The storyteller blinked and his eyes focused on Peyewik. He was free.

  “What happened to me?” he asked. “I could not think or move…”

  “It was Crow Woman’s song, the one I saw her use in my dream. She sang it to us, and it made us l
ike the men at the gate, it gave her power over our spirits.”

  “Why did she sing it to us? We are not her enemies. She does not need power over us.”

  Peyewik didn’t know what to say.

  The storyteller’s face went suddenly dark with anger. “Where is Flame Hair?”

  Peyewik had wondered this himself. “I do not know,” he whispered sadly.

  “What is this place?” The storyteller picked up the lamp and began exploring the room. It was made of wooden planks, walls, floor, and ceiling. It was more like a box than a house. Every surface was extremely hard. Peyewik felt bruised every time he moved, and suffocating with every breath.

  “There are no spirits here,” he realized. “They cannot get in.”

  “It is a dead place,” Kwineechka agreed. The lamp light fell across the hinges of a door set into one wall. He grasped the latch in the center of the door and pulled. When nothing happened he set his shoulder against the door and pushed.

  “It does not open,” he said through clenched teeth. “We are prisoners.”

  Peyewik felt the airless, spiritless space closing in on him. He felt drained and hopeless.

  “Flame Hair lied to us!” the storyteller shouted suddenly. “I told the People that the Fighting Women could not help us. They are greedy. They use their magical strength to take what is not theirs to take—even the spirits of trees and people. You cannot tell me this is not Snakebrother’s doing. If the Pure Men don’t destroy the People, the Fighting Women will!”

  oifa spoke again. “Your companions will be well cared for.”

  Trib blinked and looked around. The storyteller and the boy were gone. She didn’t remember seeing them go, or who had taken them. “But we need…”

  “Come with me,” the priestess cut her off. She turned, her black cloak flapping like dark wings in the rain.

  Trib followed her with a strange feeling of detachment. There was a blanket wrapped around her shoulders, but she didn’t know how it had gotten there. She didn’t recognize the camp they were moving through. Split log barracks for the warriors were under construction. A few thatch-roofed cabins for priestesses were already completed. The skeleton of a barn showed through the fog. It was no longer a makeshift camp but the beginnings of a fort. The New Murians were here to stay.

  There weren’t many people moving about in the wet darkness, but each brown-cloaked figure she passed seemed like a ghost to Trib. She couldn’t help searching for familiar faces, only to be reminded again and again that her friends were all dead.

  Aoifa led her to a large cabin. The door opened and a young priestess stood aside to let them enter. As Aoifa crossed the threshold a large black crow swept out of the night and landed on her shoulder. “There you are,” the head priestess cooed to the bird.

  Trib followed her into the cabin and immediately wanted to be outside again. The walls were too solid, the air thick and stale. The smell of smoke and old cooking and unwashed bodies turned her stomach.

  “Tea,” Aoifa said.

  The young priestess turned to the fireplace and hung a kettle over the flames. Aoifa lifted the bird from her shoulder and set it on a jutting hearth stone. The bird squawked and shook the rain off its feathers.

  “Sit and warm yourself,” Aoifa pointed Trib to a delicately carved chair by the fire.

  Trib hesitated. Her muddy animal skins would ruin the fancy cushion.

  “Sit,” the priestess commanded.

  Trib obeyed awkwardly, her palms sweating. This wasn’t what she had expected. She had assumed she would see the Scath first. Aside from her Rage initiation she had only seen Aoifa from a distance performing rites on Feast Days. Up close, the priestess was ageless and flawless. Her hair was as sleek and black as the crow’s wet feathers, and her face was like carved white stone. Her eyes were twin blue fires that never seemed to flicker or blink, and Trib could not meet their gaze.

  Just then the younger priestess turned from the fire with two pewter mugs in her hands. Trib saw her face clearly for the first time and gave a start. She had been on the map-making expedition. Trib hadn’t been the only survivor. But the young priestess gave her no sign of recognition in return, making Trib wonder if she was mistaken.

  “That will be all for the night, Morrigan,” Aoifa said.

  “Goddess bless you,” the younger priestess murmured. She bowed once and left the cabin.

  “You look like you’ve seen a ghost,” Aoifa observed.

  “I…I thought that priestess was killed in the ambush. But I must be wrong…”

  “Haunted by the spirits of your fallen comrades, perhaps?”

  Trib nodded, still avoiding the high priestess’s gaze.

  “You’re not wrong. My apprentice Morrigan was on the expedition. Like you, she survived, though she bears the scars. Unlike you, however, it took her only a few days to find her way home.” She paused expectantly.

  Trib didn’t know where to begin. “Where’s the Scath?” she asked in a small voice. She wanted the old warrior present when she tried to explain herself.

  “My sister is out hunting Puritanics,” Aoifa said. “She would want you to speak freely with me.”

  “Then I’ll ask you for forgiveness,” Trib said miserably. “For dishonoring you and my Fellow warriors.”

  “On the contrary. You have done well.”

  Trib thought she heard wrong. “I should’ve died with them...”

  “Yes, according to my sister’s code of honor, you should have. But I do not speak of the ambush,” Aoifa said. “You have done well by bringing the Natives to me.”

  “The Natives?” Trib had momentarily forgotten the storyteller and the boy.

  “I had intended to seek them out myself, frighten them with stories of the Puritanics’ cruelty and offer my protection. Instead, you have saved me the trouble.”

  “Peyewik and Kwineechka—the Natives—came with me to ask you and the Scath for help. Their people took me in after the ambush, healed my wounds. Now their village is under attack by Puritanics. They’re peaceful folk with no way of defending themselves. I promised them we could help.”

  Trib rubbed her sweating palms on her thighs, knowing it had been above her place to make such a promise.

  “Independent thought and action are generally undesirable in a warrior, but you have done me a great service.”

  “I have?” Trib’s thoughts felt very slow and cumbersome.

  “Tell me, did the Puritanics attack their village before or after the Natives took you in?”

  “After.”

  “Wonderful,” Aoifa said.

  Trib was beyond confused now. “Begging your pardon, but they killed an innocent boy and are set to attack again any time now. How is that wonderful?”

  Aoifa gave her a cold smile. “I shall explain. The Puritanics came south to form an alliance with the Natives, just as they have done in the north. My hope was to get here before they did and form my own alliance first. By taking you in, the Natives did all the work for me. The Puritanics will have assumed the Natives are in league with us and therefore enemies. Originally the Natives might have had a choice as to whom they sided with, but you eliminated that possibility and altered circumstances in our favor.”

  “I didn’t mean to!” Trib protested, horrified by the idea that the Puritanic attacks really had been her fault. If it was true, then the storyteller had been right to blame her for bringing Snakebrother to the village.

  “Of course you didn’t. Warriors rarely make good strategists off the battlefield. Not much for subtlety and nuance. I realize you lucked into it, but I will reward you all the same.”

  “Does the Scath think I’ve done good?”

  “She’ll come around eventually. What I’m trying to do here is beyond her warrior’s ken.”

  The back of Trib’s neck was tingling. Something was wrong, but she didn’t know what yet.

  “Before the ambush…” she paused, uncertain of herself.

  “Speak up, gi
rl,” Aoifa said.

  “They said the priestesses were making a map. Why?”

  “The Rage has given us the advantage until now, but the Puritanics have been growing stronger in the north through alliances with the Natives and other settlements. They also have powerful supporters in the Old World who are sending them weapons and supplies that we New Murians cannot get our hands on. The scales may be tipped back in their favor unless I can establish a port of trade here and intercept all merchant and supply ships sailing between the Old World and the settlements in the north.”

  “What about the Natives here in the south?” Trib asked, her sense of danger growing.

  “What about them? I have already said I intend to form an alliance with them. We will protect them from the Puritanics.”

  “They’ll be able to live as they always have?” She thought of the tree stumps and the speed with which the fort was being built, before any thought was given to how it might affect the Natives. Kwineechka had said his village wasn’t far.

  “As long as they don’t interfere with my new fortress and trade routes, they can do whatever they wish.”

  Trib felt some relief, but the priestess wasn’t done.

  “If, however, they refuse my offer of an alliance, I let the Puritanics have their way with them, and then I have my way with the Puritanics.” She gave Trib another cheerless smile.

  Finally Trib understood. Aoifa wasn’t at all concerned for the Native’s well-being. She only cared about making sure they didn’t interfere with her plans.

  “That ain’t right,” Trib said quietly. She wished the Scath were present. The warrior would know what was right and honorable.

  The priestess went very still, her blue eyes fixed on Trib’s face. Suddenly the hearth seemed less warm, less bright.

  “Right? You speak of right?”

  Her voice was so cold Trib shivered.

  “Was it right that my sisters and I were forced from our home in the Old World for worshipping in the old ways, and cast out onto the street where there was nothing for us save whoring? Was it right that the Puritanics promised us freedom and plenty if we sailed on their cursed “brideship” to this New World, only to make us live like slaves once we got here? Was it right that the Puritanics hanged my youngest sister simply for singing some of the old songs to the other women of the brideship, so that the Goddess might give us strength in our troubles? Tell me, Tribulation, does any of this sound right to you?”