Tagay kept the smile on his face, but inside his stomach flipped again. He was glad he’d already vomited up the soup they’d forced upon him an hour before. He would not want to increase the odds by vomiting again now.
He looked behind him. A faint light shone in the east. The swollen moon was bathed red.
As if washed with blood, he thought. Someone is about to die.
There was a shifting from his clan, a murmur. Tagay saw four torches moving to the centre of the field. A man walked beneath them wearing full wampum, bearing a pipe in one hand and a carved staff in the other. The drums, which had kept up a steady pulse, stopped.
‘Tangled.’ Sada rose. ‘So. It begins.’
‘People of the Deer.’ The Chief ’s strong voice, honed by the rigours of speech-making in council, carried easily to every part of the field. ‘It is a day I never thought I would see, when all of the Tahontaenrat were gathered together beside the lodgepost of our Gods. This is something to praise, when village gathers with village like this, clan from afar merges with clan nearby, families, long separated, re-unite. This is a thing of joy to me.’
There was a universal shout then, the communal cry, ‘Haauu’. When it died away, Tangled continued. ‘But it is also one of sadness. Because we do not gather for celebration, we draw around our hearths because of danger. Many of our people have been killed, many lodges burned. We have been driven out of the hunting grounds, here and here, here and here.’ He raised his staff, pointing to the four winds. ‘These are matters we will discuss, today in a great council. But first we are called here to witness the battle of the Twins, Taviscaran and Iouskaha. They fought in the beginning of our times when the earth was a flat plain of nothing. The blood they shed formed many of the things of our world. I do not think this strange that now, in this time of greatest danger, the Twins are called to fight again.’
Once more there was the cry, ‘Haauu’, stronger than before. Tangled let it reverberate around the field and die away, then spoke again.
‘We know what these two have said. One of them lies in the deepest part of their soul. One of them dies today to prove the other truthful. But this is not the Game, when clan gives knocks to clan and one side or the other rejoice. Let no one think it is and let no blood feud make us fight ourselves. There will be fighting enough for our people in the days to come. Remember that this is not a Wolf fighting a Bear. This is the fight of the Twins. Let them decide.’
Tangled’s voice soared to a high note and he raised his staff. ‘Haauu’ came the cry, louder and longer than before. When it died away, the drums began again and Tangled moved back to his position with all the other chiefs.
Sada went to Tagay. ‘Kneel,’ he commanded. Tagay knelt and Sada moved behind him. He felt his cousin tying a moosehair band around his brow.
‘It is my own, the one I wear to war,’ Sada said. ‘Many enemies have looked at it and died. I think this Wolf will be the next.’
Tagay rose. His legs felt suddenly strong, as if the band around his head was raising him up somehow. ‘Bring me my father’s club,’ he said.
It had been hidden in a bear skin, safe from eyes that would carry the information back to Black Snake. An ordinary club had been exposed to sight. The members of his clan all felt that Tagay’s opponent would be surprised, as they had been, by the choice of weapon.
Tagay swung it, felt its good balance. Sada took the younger man’s finger, pressed it against the cutting edge under the hawk’s head. No trace of dullness, of rust now. It had been well-honed and cut him instantly. Startled, Tagay sucked the blood from his finger.
‘Better you draw blood first than him.’ Sada smiled.
They moved out onto the field to the murmuring of the crowd, many surprised by the young man near naked in his breech cloth, wearing only a guard on his fighting arm, carrying the smallest of shields in the other; surprised also by the slender weapon in his hand. The other Bear members had come with him to the edge, but only Sada was allowed further. He limped beside Tagay, using a stick. They halted twenty paces before their posts.
The murmurings doubled, the drums increased their throbbing pulse, when the Wolf ranks parted and Black Snake strode forth. He had always been a big man but the full slat armour he wore made him appear like a giant. It covered him, from the cedar bark helmet, to the shins swathed in single slats. He walked steadily forward then stopped the same distance before his ranks as Tagay was before his. As he walked, he swung his war club. It was, as predicted, a huge single piece of carved ironwood. Tagay could see the heavy ball end.
He felt his heart pounding, was sure that all could hear it as clearly as he could. If Sada did, he gave no indication.
‘Listen to me, Tagay,’ he whispered, making a show of checking the forearm straps. ‘His armour is good, but it is weak here and here.’ He touched Tagay swiftly at the armpit and knee. ‘Also, it is heavy and he was never the fastest beast in the forest to begin with. So keep moving around him, make him chase you. Do not stand and trade blows, for he will kill you quick. No one cares if you look brave. We only care that you win.’
The drum beats that had built and built as they walked forward now stopped suddenly as Tangled stepped forward, holding his staff out by the end as if dividing the field in two.
‘One more thing. I know this may not seem the best time to talk of my prowess at the Game. But you remember how I scored that final ball that gave the Bear clan its great victory?’
Tagay, whose eyes had been fixed and glazed ahead of him, now looked down. ‘What? What are you saying?’
‘The final ball! I feinted high and went low. And I beat Black Snake on the outside. Remember that!’
With those words, Sada turned and walked back to the ranks of the Bear.
Tagay stood, uncertain that his feet would move if he commanded them. To steady himself, he swept his eyes around, taking in the entire extent of his tribe. As his eyes reached the huge oak tree, he saw a shape up on the branch.
‘Anne!’ he murmured. ‘White Cedar.’
Raising his club toward her, he slowly lowered the tip to the ground. Then he began to walk down the field.
She watched the weapon swept down, raised her hand to return the salute. She didn’t know whether he’d seen it, but she kept waving anyway as he began to march toward his opponent. From her vantage point, looking down, it seemed like a small boy was approaching some giant striding from the pages of a myth. Tagay looked frail, all too human with the vulnerability that implied. The figure that marched toward him was alien, implacable, monstrous.
She had never been religious, unlike her brother. But she knew Gianni believed, fervently, passionately. So she pulled his little cross from her pouch, raised it before her, trying to release some of the prayers he had poured into it, held like breath somewhere in those shining planes. Half-forgotten sentences came from a world so far away. Yet she didn’t care. For Tagay needed all the help he could get.
‘Mater Dei, Memento Mei.’
Mother of God, Remember me. Remember him!
The hardest thing was resisting the urge to rush forward. Walking seemed a difficult action to control; in running there would be less time to think. Still, they were approaching each other fast enough. Tagay could soon hear the man’s steady breath. It reminded him to take one of his own. Then he heard the first of the man’s words.
‘Little Bear.’ The emphasis was on the first word, the tone derisive. ‘Child! Come to the Wolf. Come and be suckled.’
Twenty paces, ten. At five, Black Snake stopped, so Tagay did as well.
‘Little Bear.’ The voice was low now, the words meant only for him. ‘You will die knowing your woman will lie beneath me, and then beneath every Wolf, before we kill her. You will die knowing your aunt will be murdered, your clan destroyed, your people enslaved. You will die knowing that you failed to save them. And that knowledge will haunt you for ever in the Village of the Dead.’
And then the man whom Sada had said was s
low proved he wasn’t.
It was the sound of the club that Tagay reacted to, not the blur of slatted wood that ran at him. It whirred through the air, as if it already shattered bodies on its journey. He turned, just, and the wind of the passing almost bruised him at side of head, at shoulder and hip. A cry came from around the field as he lurched sideways.
Black Snake had put so much into the first blow that he followed the heavy club down, embedding its head in the soft earth. Yet it took only a moment to jerk it out and bending, he swept it upwards diagonally off the ground, the blow aimed at the knee. Tagay thrust his shield out, angled, as he remembered his teachers telling him to do years before with the buckler. But the angle wasn’t enough, the club caught him hard, splintering wood, sending him reeling again. Black Snake was up and following in a heart beat.
You are faster, Sada had said. The words came to him now and he moved, ran from the man approaching him. He was faster.
Black Snake halted. ‘Coward!’ he bellowed, shaking his club before him. ‘You dare not stand and fight. It was how your father fought, I have heard, how he died – with an arrow in his back, running from the foe.’
Until that moment, Tagay had only thought about how to avoid the next blow, how to keep away from his opponent. Now, with a vision of a man he’d never met, and that man’s war club in his hand, his mind came clear. When Black Snake rushed at him again, he still ran. But there was less distance, the gap small enough, luring Black Snake to chase.
The club descended. This time Tagay stopped, ducked into the blow, raising his own club. The blow landed, but glanced off Tagay’s forearm guard. It hurt but not enough to stop him lunging after his opponent’s back, stabbing with the wooden point. It was nothing, for it was not a killing part of the weapon and it caught Black Snake harmlessly on his shoulder armour. But it was the first attack he had made, and the crowd greeted it with a shout.
Black Snake laughed. ‘The flies are buzzing here today,’ he said.
Tagay, who had moved again just out of an arm’s reach laughed back. ‘They are waiting to lay their eggs in your wounds, Tawane. Or is it your smell that draws them?’
He did not think such a jest would sting – or perhaps it was the defiance – but it caused the tattooed face to cloud. He ran forward again, the club whirring like bees around a hive, cutting the air as if air was solid. Tagay retreated but didn’t run, dodging blows, deflecting some on shield and arm guard. But for every blow that fell, he returned a thrust back, always with the point, always high, near the neck, at the under arm, stabbing the cedar, till the hawk beak began to splay and splinter.
The noise had built in the crowd, shouts and groans issuing from either end, from each side, according to the nearness of the blows, the giver or the taker.
On each strike, Black Snake grunted, a huge exhalation. He was breathing heavily while Tagay’s breaths came lighter.
Maybe, he thought, maybe I can do this.
It was the flicker of confidence that nearly betrayed him. He had outdistanced Black Snake again, but his lunge at the neck took him off balance. The tattooed warrior saw it, stepped in, the war club rising in a great arc from behind him. Tagay was too far forward, too late to dodge. He raised his shield and the ironwood fell hard into its middle, shattering it.
Everyone saw. Anne leaned forward, witnessing one doom, anticipating in it her own. Sada started forward with a curse. Wolves howled in triumph; neutrals looked for the decision of their Gods.
It felt like his arm was as broken as his shield. He managed to scramble away, as another blow plunged into the ground by his head. But the mud caused Black Snake’s foot to slip and Tagay rolled onto one knee, shook away the remnants of his shattered shield. The two men, both breathing heavily, faced each other again.
‘The Bear … has lost … a paw.’ Black Snake gestured to the arm already swelling. ‘Kneel before me … one blow … and all your hurts will be over.’
He came forward again, his own shield raised high to fend off what he knew would be Tagay’s last and most desperate attack. And, lunging from his crouch, Tagay’s point did indeed rise up, aiming, so it seemed, for the blue snake that held the warrior’s left eye in its fanged mouth. Black Snake’s shield rose even higher over his forward foot, to counter, to deflect. The club was lowered to the ground poised to bring over the killing blow.
But Tagay’s weapon did not hold true to its course. Instead, as he rose from the ground he pivoted on his front foot, throwing his battered left arm out and around, using it to spin him. His father’s weapon he dropped down and, for the first time, he used not the point, but the blade. Falling, his eyes fixed on the target, just before his back reached the ground, Tagay thrust the hawk’s head between the front and rear guards of the slat armour of the lower leg. He landed, using the full force of his fall and a cocked wrist to rip the blade outwards, severing the flesh and tendons behind the knee.
He kept rolling, his face sliding into the wet earth, hearing but not seeing the club once more thud into the ground behind him, hearing but not seeing the crowd because of the mud lodged in his eyes. He rolled up, spat, wiped a hand. His vision cleared.
It was Black Snake who was on one knee now, trying to force himself up. But the leg wouldn’t work and he kept sinking down. Then he used the club like a crutch raising himself onto one foot.
All sounds disappeared for Tagay. The crowd gone, grunts and insults gone, even the tide of blood that had pounded so in his ears receded to nothing. The only thing he heard, because it wasn’t a sound but a memory, were the words of Sada, telling him where the two weaknesses in his opponent’s armour lay. And having found the one, Tagay stepped forward now to seek the other.
Tagay ran around the raised shield. Black Snake lifted the club from the ground but in doing so his slashed leg collapsed. As he fell, Tagay found what he was looking for. With a wide blow, he drove the blade between two more plates of armour, burying its length in the muscle that joins shoulder and arm.
Then sound returned in a rush, the rush of people running onto the field, screams of triumph, of shock. A smaller circle formed around the two combatants. Black Snake lay on his back, one leg twisted, blood seeping through the slats of his armour, pooling in the mud. Tagay sank to the ground, but was pulled to his feet immediately by Sada. His cousin’s placid face, which so rarely showed any emotion, was cracked with wonder now, with joy.
‘Feint high, take him low, take him on the outside.’ The man laughed. ‘Good advice, eh?’
He was one of the few to display any passion. Most seemed to think that what Tagay had done was normal, everyday. Like the tall, thin elder who pushed his way through to them, nodded at Tagay once, before turning to Sada.
‘My grandson will come to your lodge and collect the beaver skins.’
He turned and walked away, barely glancing at Black Snake.
Sada was doing his best to look small.
Tagay finally found his eyes. ‘You bet against me, Sada?’
The smaller man looked embarrassed for a moment, then shrugged. ‘That man makes the finest beaver cloaks in the village,’ he said. ‘I thought one of them would keep me warmer next winter than my memory of you.’
Tagay laughed. It felt a strange sensation, wonderful and new. He looked above the crowd to the oak tree. The branch was empty.
Are you coming to me, White Cedar? he thought. Then a gap opened in the crowd and Tangled appeared, followed by the other chiefs. The space widened to accommodate them.
She was trying to reach him. When he’d fallen that last time, she’d known he was finished. She did not see his crippling blow struck home, because she’d looked down to the silver cross on the branch before her.
It is over, she’d thought, all over.
At the great shout, she’d forced her eyes up again, to testify to a brave man dying, as she had watched her father die only two months before. It was the least and all she could do. And she’d looked up just in time to see the miracle –
the monstrous warrior on his knees, Tagay up and moving in again, Black Snake falling to another cut. She’d snatched up the cross, replaced it beside the hand in the pouch, dropped from the branches of the oak as if she was stepping down one stair.
It was while she was running toward the gathering crowd, looking left and right to seek some gap to bring her to him, that she saw what at first appeared to be a mere bundle of deer skin abandoned on the ground. She looked away, back to her desire. Then something stopped her, perhaps the sparkle of torchlight reflecting in the elaborate pattern of beads on a dress.
Gaka was lying on her side. When Anne reached her, turned her, she saw that the old woman’s face was distorted, turning a blueish shade. Her left arm was clamped rigidly to her side, while her right flopped and banged into the ground, scrabbling in the dirt as if seeking a hand-hold on the earth. The eyes were rolled back under half-opened lids.
She was getting no air! Her jaw was locked so, grabbing the grey-haired head into her lap, Anne forced the mouth open. Gaka had swallowed her tongue. Anne reached in. It was fortunate that Gaka had lost most of her teeth, because the jaw bit down on her fingers. She grabbed the tongue, pulled it back up. Looking around desperately, she saw a small stick on the ground nearby, grabbed it, laid it on top of the tongue, let the mouth close around it.
‘Do-ne!’ The boy had stayed at the base of the tree during the fight. Now he hobbled up, his eyes wide as he looked at the writhing body.
‘Stay with her. Try to keep this in her mouth. I will get help.’
She had to reach Tagay. The crowd was still forming up ahead. She reached the rear of it, began to push her way through.
‘The Twins have made their judgement, Tawane,’ Tangled said. ‘Do you abide by it?’
‘I do.’ Black Snake grimaced as he pulled himself up from the ground into a sitting position. The blood that had flowed down his back onto the ground now ran from his chest, bubbling between the cedar slats, staining them a deeper red. ‘It is as the Little Bear has told you. The Tattooed people gather their allies from all over the world. The sunrise after the full moon will see them here, burning your lodges down. It is the end for the Tahontaenrat.’