Falcon Warrior (The Swordswoman Book 3) Read online

  Only the priests spoke. Even Wamblee was silent as he reached the summit of the pyramid and took his place in a huge armed chair, surmounted with the carved figure of a falcon and with falcon feathers arrayed all around. He sat there in silence as the priests continued their chanting around the table. Melcorka started: it was not a table: it was an altar.

  Somebody coughed. The sound echoed around the packed square as if it was a roll of drums. Immediately all the guards turned inward, searching for the culprit. There was a surge of movement within the audience, leaving one man standing terribly alone amidst a circle of accusing faces.

  Four guards closed on him, grim- faced and clubs upraised. The man did not protest, merely closed his eyes as they dragged him through the crowd to the central path and crashed their clubs on him, again and again until he was a bloody paste on the ground. Leaving his broken body, the guards returned to their posts and the priests continued with their ceremony. Birds landed to peck at the still warm body; nobody moved. Nobody objected; fear, acceptance or agreement kept them rigidly in place.

  The priests continued with their ceremony, chanting, raising their hands to the rising sun and spreading their arms to include the entire crowd. They stopped abruptly and the musicians took centre stage, circling around the slope-sided altar. They moved slowly, raising their legs high and shaking them so the sound of the rattles dominated the square. After four circuits they began to beat their drums in a persistent rhythm that entered Melcorka's head, thrumming around her mind with its monotonous, insistent beat. She found herself nodding to the rhythm as one of the musicians played his whistle. The high notes rose skyward, imitating the sound of a falcon.

  Melcorka realised that everybody in the audience was humming. The low drone rose and fell in time with the music, and then rose higher and higher, speeding up as the dancers increased their pace and the volume of their words. The sound was hypnotic, spreading around the city and reaching even to the pyramid where the Lakotas stood. They also began to hum with their throats vibrating to the insistent sound.

  The musicians stepped into the background, with only the humming and drumming continuing, slow and sombre, as the chiefs of the Kahows and the Hunoigs were brought forward. The crowd continued with its drone, although Melcorka detected an air of desperation in the tone.

  The first chief was led forward. He came quietly but with a look of despair on his face as he was lifted high and placed face up on the table. Despite her horror, Melcorka watched in sick fascination as the priests surrounded the naked man. Cutting through his bonds, they spread-eagled him on the narrow table with one priest holding each limb. The fifth lifted a small, leaf-bladed flint knife so the crowd could see it and slowly, carefully, pushed it into low into the chief's belly, deep enough to penetrate the skin but not deep enough to cause serious damage. The chief writhed in silent agony as the priest very slowly ripped the knife upward to his throat, then peeled back his skin so the internal organs were on display.

  Only then did the priest dig deeper, cutting out the heart and lifting it, still pumping, above his head. Slow blood dripped through the priest's fingers to land on the body of the chief. The drone of the crowd was high-pitched now, with undertones of panic. The priest handed the heart to Wamblee, who lifted it and thrust it into his mouth so the chief's blood dribbled down his chin and onto his clothes.

  'Oh sweet Jesus in heaven,' Melcorka said as Wamblee chewed mightily, swallowed and bit off another chunk of warm human heart.

  With the chief now dead, the priests tossed his body down the stairs. It rolled slowly, one bloody step at a time. Before it reached half way a cluster of huge birds had descended, beaks probing, and the second chief was lifted and splayed on the table top.

  'Time to go,' Melcorka said, 'when everybody's attention is on the sacrifice.'

  'Now you have seen some of the evil,' Chumani said, 'will you fulfil the prophecy, Eyota?'

  Still shocked by what she had seen, Melcorka nodded. 'I will do my best,' she said. She felt the approval of that insistent voice within her that she knew was Eyota, even as that other woman's eyes strayed over Akecheta's body.

  Chapter Sixteen

  A sudden storm had swept across the city, screaming from the great prairie to the west to batter at the palisades and lift thatch from the crowded roof-tops. Men and women had sheltered from the fury, while the slaves in the compound cowered without shelter of compassion. Some had died and their bodies had been left to rot among their less fortunate companions. Nobody cared in that place where hope was a stranger.

  Chaytan used the distraction provided by the weather to return to Cahokia, bringing Melcorka and a chosen few in his train.

  'The veterans are in charge now' Chaytan said. 'They are going to pick their wives; it is their time.'

  'I am more interested in the Citadel Guard,' Melcorka watched as the veterans lined up outside the Guard's barracks. They were laughing, nudging each other, obviously in high spirits. 'How will they react to these men stealing their women?'

  'They have no choice,' Chumani spoke for her father. 'Wamblee has given the order and they must obey. The Guards are sworn to obedience from boyhood; Wamblee is their god as well as their king.'

  Melcorka nodded. 'I would like to watch these trained warriors allow their women to be taken away so easily.'

  'It is true, Eyota,' Chumani said.

  The Veterans filed into the barracks. Melcorka heard laughter and shouting, a scream or two and more laughter. After a few moments, the first of the Veterans emerged with a struggling young woman in each hand. Another followed, then another, each with a woman grasped by the hand or wriggling and kicking under his arm.

  'Don't the Citadel Guards object?' Melcorka tried to imagine what would happen if some group of Picts or Scots tried to rob another of their women. There would be mass slaughter.

  The Citadel Guards did object. They followed the Veterans out of the barracks, shouting loudly and waving their hands. The Veterans looked back over their shoulders.

  'It's our right,' they said. 'If you live to be Veterans, you will do the same.'

  The last of the Veterans had a weeping young girl balanced over his right shoulder. He turned around. 'If you don't like the system, complain to Wamblee. I'm sure he will listen.' He laughed, held his girl even tighter and walked slowly away.

  Melcorka raised her eyebrows to Chumani. 'That was interesting,' she lowered her voice. 'I do not like to see women used as commodities as if we were not every bit as valuable as men.'

  Chumani nodded slowly. 'If I were you, Eyota, I would hope to change that.'

  Chapter Seventeen

  'Wamblee has a formidable military force,' Melcorka had donned Eyota's head-band to add force to her words. 'His bodyguard, Citadel Guard and Wall Guard alone will be difficult to defeat even without the hundreds or perhaps thousands of ordinary warriors he commands.'

  'We already know this, Eyota,' Chaytan said.

  'We need something special if we are to overcome him. Something that Wamblee and his warriors do not expect or have never met before.'

  Chaytan shook his head. 'We have only ourselves and the scattered tribes who have not yet submitted fully to Wamblee's will.'

  Melcorka nodded. 'We may have more than that. I would like to find the warriors who were captured at the same time as me,' Melcorka said. 'I would like the men who were on the great dragon-ship, Sea Serpent.'

  'They are held inside the walls of the Citadel,' Chaytan said. 'It will not be easy getting to them.'

  'It will be worthwhile,' Melcorka said. 'They are mighty warriors; they will fight the Citadel Guard or the Wall Guard without fear.'

  'Without fear?' Chumani repeated. 'We all have fear.'

  'The best of the Norsemen do not know fear,' Melcorka said. 'They believe that the span of their life was written before they were born and nothing they do will change that. If it is their time to die, they will die. If they are destined to live, then they shall live.'

&
nbsp; Chaytan considered for a moment. 'Such a belief would benefit a warrior in battle,' he said. 'We'll take you to these Norsemen.'

  Sheltered by torrential rain, they moved that night.

  'Only three of us,' Chaytan said. 'You, me and Akecheta.'

  'It seems a very small number of men to dare the citadel of Wamblee.' Melcorka said.

  'If I bring more we might be noticed,' Chaytan decided. He refused permission for Chumani to accompany them; Melcorka guessed that he thought it too dangerous. She wished she had Defender with her. And Bradan.

  Wishing solves nothing, her mother had taught her. Only deeds matter. Do: don't wish.

  Threading through the now familiar streets of Cahokia, they reached the defending stockade of the citadel at the darkest point of the night. Rain wept from the walls, causing deep puddles on the ground outside and descending down the slope of the mound like waterfalls.

  'At least the weather may persuade the Wall Guards to keep under shelter.' Melcorka said.

  'Can you climb?' Akecheta asked.

  In response, Melcorka lifted herself to the first tiny handhold in the earth wall and hauled upwards. After the ice cliffs of the chasm in Greenland, this wall was simple. She reached the top far well ahead of Akecheta, with Chaytan labouring in the rear.

  As Melcorka had thought, the Wall Guards were not keen on the rain and had found shelter in an angle of the wall. It was easy to avoid them and drop down to the interior of the citadel. Now, in this forbidden quarter of the city, Melcorka looked around. With the head-band in place, she had an insight to the route and had no difficulty in finding her way through the passageways between the houses.

  'I can hear them,' she said, smiling. There was no disguising the distinctive roar of the Norse as they sang their songs of drinking, women, and raiding, praising Odin and Thor through their deeds of bloodshed and slaughter.

  'Even when they are prisoners they can sing,' Melcorka moved toward the long house from which all the noise emanated. The outer door was not guarded but was sealed with a heavy bar of wood.

  'Wait!' Chaytan's hand was heavy on her shoulder. 'This is not where prisoners are held.'

  'It's all right. I know these people.' Melcorka shook off Chaytan's hand. She trotted ahead, listened at the door of the house for a few moments and then eased it open. The noise inside did not decrease. Sitting with their backs to the stone walls, the Norse were laughing, passing around drinking horns and swapping tales and jokes. Melcorka smiled at the rough, familiar faces, a reminder of home in this land of contrasts and cruelty. She looked for Erik but he was not there; neither was Frakkok so presumably the Dhegians had removed the leaders from the rest. That was a sound practice when taking prisoners.

  'Odin!' Arne suddenly shouted and the others laughed, raised their faces and echoed the word.

  'Odin!'

  'Hello!' Melcorka shouted through the noise. 'It's me!' She stepped in with Chaytan and Akecheta close behind her.

  One by one the Norsemen turned to face her, some looking astonished, others amused. She knew them all from the young hothead Arne to Sigurd who was always smiling, Gunnar of the bad jokes, Knut who could never see a woman without making a comment and Vidar who boasted of the kills he had never made.

  'What in Odin's name are you doing here?' Arne sounded surprised. 'We thought you were dead.'

  'Not yet,' Melcorka said. 'We've come to rescue you.' She indicated Chaytan and Akecheta who stood at her back eyeing these strange bearded men from the north. She took another couple of steps inside the building. Chaytan closed the door.

  'Rescue us?' Gunnar repeated the words. 'She's come to rescue us, by Odin! And she's brought along a couple to naked Skraeling savages to help!' His laughter echoed around the room, with the other Norse joining in.

  'Rescue us from what, Alban?' Vidar asked. 'Do you think we need to be rescued by an Alban woman and a pair of Skraelings?'

  They laughed again, just as the door of the house re-opened and a group of people pushed in. The first was one of Wamblee's bodyguards, with his shoulders nearly taking up the whole width of the doorway. The second was Erik, fully armed with sword and axe and behind ducked the massive bulk of Wamblee, arm in arm with Frakkok. Both were laughing and Frakkok had Defender slung across her back. The sight made Melcorka feel physically sick.

  As soon as they saw Frakkok and Erik the Norse raised a cheer, chanting 'Odin! Odin!'

  'Oh sweet Jesus,' Melcorka breathed. 'You were right, Chaytan. This is no prison. The Norsemen have joined the Dhegians!'

  'Get out! Follow me!' Rather than wait to discuss matters, Chaytan led them in a wild charge that took the incomers by surprise. Despite the bodyguard's bulk, Chaytan knocked him backward and the others piled through the door, with Akecheta taking the opportunity to land a shrewd blow with his club on Erik.

  'That's the Scottish woman!' Melcorka heard Frakkok's shout as she pushed the staggering Erik out of the way and followed Akecheta into the teeming rain of the night.

  'This way,' Akecheta grabbed her shoulder and pushed her in front of him. 'The Wall Guards will be out in force now.'

  Akecheta was correct. All along the wall, heads and shoulders of the guards were seen walking, patrolling, and peering both inside and outside the Citadel.

  'You two go that way,' Chaytan said. 'I'll divert the guards.'

  'No,' Akecheta said. 'You are the chief. You're too valuable.'

  It was the first time Melcorka had heard Chaytan called the chief. 'I'm the stranger here,' she said. 'I caused this. I'll cause the diversion.'

  'You are Eyota,' Akecheta said. 'You are our only hope.' Without saying more he ran to the wall, shouting a challenge. The first spear missed him by a fraction. The second grazed his side and then he was on the parapet, advancing on the Wall Guard with his club, roaring a war cry.

  'This way,' Chaytan pushed Melcorka to a different section of the wall. The Wall Guards patrolled above them, throwing spears and shields held ready.

  'We can help Akecheta,' Melcorka said. 'We can't leave him here!'

  'He is already a dead man,' Chaytan spoke quietly. 'Don't let his sacrifice be in vain.'

  The furthest distant of the Wall Guards was looking toward the noise when Chaytan arrived at his feet. He only had time to lift his spear before Chaytan's club crashed onto his knee. His loud yell was cut short as Chaytan hauled him to the ground and crushed his skull. 'This way, Eyota.' He vaulted onto the wall, over the other side and rolled on the terrace below, with Melcorka following without thought. They ran through Cahokia, careless of the noise they made, and when a warrior attempted to challenge them Chaytan killed him without compulsion.

  'Stay with me, Eyota,' he said. 'We need you more than ever now.'

  Melcorka looked back, thinking of Akecheta. He had been a brave man.

  Chapter Eighteen

  'It was not your fault,' Chumani said. 'You are not to blame for the actions of others. These Norse warriors have joined Wamblee. Well, they are men, not gods and add only a small number to his forces.'

  'We can't forget the prophecy,' Chaytan said. 'The prophecy says that you will return with a band of brave warriors and deliver us from a great evil.'

  Melcorka looked around. They were in a small thatched lodge, with a fire smoking in the centre and the people, men, and women, grouped all around. 'That prophecy may well be proved correct,' she said. 'I have returned as Eyota, and I will have a band of brave warriors around me.'

  'Where will these warriors come from?' Chaytan asked. 'Will you dream them out of the air? Form them from the ground? Make them from grass perhaps?'

  The Lakota laughed at Chaytan's images.

  'I have no need to do such things,' Melcorka said. 'I already have a band of brave warriors who will lead the united tribes against Wamblee and his army.'

  'The Norse have turned against you,' Chumani said patiently. 'You cannot rely on them, Eyota.'

  'I have better men and better friends than the Norse,' Melcorka s
aid. She felt the power of the head-band adding force to her words, making her more loquacious, helping her persuade these people. 'I have the Lakota.'

  There was a sudden silence. She waited until everybody had digested her words. 'The Lakota are every bit as strong as the Norse; they are every bit as brave; they are as skilled in war and this is their land. They belong in this land. This land is your land!'

  There were nods of agreement to that. Melcorka was not sure if it was as herself or as Eyota that she felt the strong attachment of the Lakota to the land, to nature and to the world all around them, but it was definite. It was not definable but there was a connection that was beyond the physical, extending to the spiritual and to the very soul of these people. Melcorka started; perhaps they were correct and their ancestors did inhabit the spirit world; in that case Bearnas would be with them, guiding her along whether she wished it or not.

  Oh, God, I wish that Bradan was here!

  'The Lakota shall take Eyota – me - to meet the leaders of the tribes,' Melcorka was standing as she addressed the gathering. She heard the power of her voice and knew it was not her own voice. Eyota was using her as a vessel to talk to these good people. Eyota had indeed returned.

  'Take me to the tribal chiefs,' Melcorka said, 'and we shall raise all the manpower of these great prairies and the forests as far as the Great Lakes themselves.' She heard the words tumble from her mouth. She raised her arms. 'We shall cleanse this great evil from the land and bring peace again to the Mississippi and all the lands on either side, across forests and prairies, over mountains and rivers from sea to sea.'

  'Eyota is back!' The words passed from mouth to mouth.

  'Eyota,' Chumani said. 'May I come with you?'

  'People die when they come with me,' Melcorka said. 'Bearnas, Bradan, Akecheta. They were all good people.' She smiled at Chumani. 'You are a good person, Chumani. I have no wish for you to die.'