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

could the mysterious and missing Paunch be behind the ultimate outrage of killing the captives?
    “Where are you, Paunch? Wherever it is, I
will
find you eventually.”
    He narrowed an eye, letting his finger chip some of the caked blood from the square. When he found Paunch, the man
would
talk. Perhaps he even had something to do with Smoke Shield’s Hickory Moiety losing the winter solstice stickball game. He had bet everything on that game—and lost it all. His wealth, clothing, shell, and copper . . . even Morning Dew.
    He shot a narrow glance back at his wife’s house across the plaza. How had she known to bet against him? In collusion with the Albaamaha? No, that was ridiculous. Heron Wing was much too influential in Panther Clan politics. She’d just bet against him because she knew it would irritate him. Gods, why had he ever married that woman?
    “Forget it,” he told himself. “Taking her as a wife was your first great triumph. Your attention now must be on breaking the Albaamaha.”
    He took a deep breath, turning from the empty square. He would have his revenge. And somewhere, up in the north, his most trusted warrior, Fast Legs, was even now running the missing Lotus Root to ground. Fast Legs would already have disposed of Red Awl’s body. When the woman was dead—and the stolen weapons she’d taken from Smoke Shield returned—then and only then would Smoke Shield begin to wreak havoc on the Albaamaha.
    Fast Legs, what is taking you so long?

Two
    For two days a freezing drizzle had fallen, coating trees, logs, and the leaf mat with a thin layer of ice. The forest was silent, squirrels, jays, and other creatures waiting it out in warm nests.
    Only I am foolish enough to be out here shivering.
Fast Legs Mankiller knotted his muscles, seeking to warm himself against the pervading cold. The good news for him was that the weather kept the Albaamaha inside their bent-pole houses. Individuals only ventured out in search of firewood, then hurried back to their snug houses and warm fires.
    From the time he was a boy, Fast Legs had always stood out from the rest of his kinsmen. He’d been large for his age, and always the fastest, strongest, and most skilled at stickball, hunting, and use of the bow. And when he had become a blooded warrior—adding the honorific of Mankiller to his name—no one was as steadfast in battle, or as relentless on the war trail. Ropy muscle corded on his body, and he’d had his face tattooed with wedges like arrow points. Despite Fast Legs having fewer than thirty winters under his belt, the high minko himself had presented him with four of the honorary little white arrows to stick through his hair. More than even the war chief had been granted.
    As he lay in the ice-clad forest, he wore only a hunter’s shirt with a muskrat-hide cape over his shoulders.Muddy war moccasins clad his stone-cold feet. The staves on his bow gleamed under a rime of ice. Nevertheless he lay still as a log, peering out at the Albaamaha village where he knew the escaped Lotus Root hid. A distasteful business, this.
    Images still haunted him. He would always remember the expression on Red Awl’s face as he weighted the dead Albaamo councilor’s body and sank it in a backwater swamp. To hide the body, Fast Legs had chosen an abandoned loop of the Black Warrior River, a place where few fishermen went. Using lumps of sandstone he had weighted the body and eased it over the side of his canoe. The eerie thing was how the man’s eyes—shrunken and gray with death—seemed to reanimate as the water swirled over his face.
    Fast Legs had stared into the corpse’s eyes as the body slowly sank. The effect had been as if the dead man was promising some terrible justice. A fear unlike anything Fast Legs had known was born in his belly.
    As he lay in the frozen forest, a shiver that wasn’t just the cold ran down Fast Legs’ spine.
I was under orders from my war chief.
But he had never really believed that