People of the Thunder (North America's Forgotten Past) Read Online Free

captives up from the canoe landing, past the Old Camp Moiety Mounds, and around the sacred tchkofa, the Council House where the Sky Hand Mos’kogee deliberated and conducted their governmental business. Yes, that had been a
glorious
day.
    And it would only be the beginning!
    He reached out, fingering the wood, remembering Screaming Falcon’s misery and horror as he had hung, right here, in this very wooden square. The young man’s face had looked lopsided from his broken and swollen jaw, and his flesh had been mottled, blistered, brown, and cracked from where split-cane torches had been pressed against his skin.
    “I should have paid better attention to you,” Smoke Shield whispered to the empty wood. “Instead I was too preoccupied with your wife.”
    Pus and rot, what a disappointment. He’d planned the whole White Arrow Town raid around stealing Morning Dew. Once she’d looked at him with the same disdain she’d have given a worm in a fruit. After he’d taken her from Screaming Falcon, burned her town, captured herhigh minko brother, and wrought every other indignity upon her, she’d just surrendered herself to him without a fight.
    What was the point of trying to break a woman who was already compliant?
    “I expected more of you, Morning Dew.” He cast a glance over his shoulder, across the corner of the plaza to where his first wife’s house stood. These days Heron Wing owned Morning Dew. The thought of it rankled. Not so much the loss of his slave, but the way of it.
    He turned back, peering closely at the heavy wood square, seeing the dark patterns where blood had stained the wood.
    Everything changed that night.
    He remembered the fog: thick and clinging, so dense a man could hardly see his hand before his face. All of his irritation had been focused on Morning Dew, on the way she lay under him, as unresponsive to his thrusting manhood as a soggy cloth. And while he was wetting his shaft in Morning Dew, someone was out here in the foggy night, sneaking past the guard to drive a stone sword into Screaming Falcon’s heart and then sever his genitals from his body.
    “War Chief, I wanted to cut them off myself, just for the pleasure of watching your wife’s horrified expression as I handed them to her.” Perhaps that would have spurred some sort of violent reaction out of her. But someone had beaten him to it.
    Who? That single act of murder had robbed the Sky Hand Mos’kogee of revenge on their victims. No claim had been made by any of the subservient Albaamaha. Not so much as a rumor floated among the Traders. What kind of miscreant would commit such a desperate act and then not utilize it as a means of belittling the Sky Hand?
    Smoke Shield ran his finger over the deep pucker of his scar.
    It had to be the Albaamaha.
They still chafed under the humiliation of serving their Mos’kogee masters. He already knew they had tried to betray the White Arrow Town raid to the Chahta. They
had
to be behind the captives’ murders. Anyone else would have bragged about it. Such a triumph would be shouted up and down the trails.
    In an effort to discover the culprits, Smoke Shield had taken Councilor Red Awl and his wife, Lotus Root, captive. In a rude shelter, up above Clay Bank Crossing, he and the warrior Fast Legs had tortured the Albaamo mikko, and learned nothing.
    Then it had all gone wrong. Red Awl and Lotus Root had escaped. He and Fast Legs had found the mikko later, dead of his wounds; but the woman . . . gods, where was she?
    He reached out and placed his hand on the wood, feeling the polish of years. So many bodies had been tied here. “Screaming Falcon?” he asked softly. “Who killed you?”
    If he could only figure that out, he could retaliate. It had to be the Albaamaha! They’d been stewing with revolt for years. He’d caught the Albaamo traitor, Crabapple, who had been sent to warn White Arrow Town. The man had confessed—implicating an old Albaamo named Paunch as the conspirator. So