Death Chants (14 page)

"It is life that
displeases you, friend rat. And women are part of that mystery, to be in love and forever die to
be reborn." The old man felt dizzy, not from the wound, but from the overpower­ing memory that
surged within him.

The road became an
old road he once walked in life, a window to his past, and hunter and hunted fled the ruined
pueblo, help­less in the grip of the history, the coming from what had brought them both into
final darkness.

And the old man
became young again and the rat traveled on his shoulder, ancient teeth brushing the soft flesh of
his neck.

Yasheya rode West
into the night.

His back was
straight and strong and his body young and alive with green spring. He and the horse were of the
same strength, (he same burning desires and sense of freedom.

Yasheya topped a
bluff, pulled the horse in and looked down on the village of the enemies of his people.
War-proud, he cast insults down upon the people below. None were there to hear him.

The village lay in
ruins, lodges burned and burning, smolder­ing ash heaps littered with the dead. Yasheya cried out
in dismay. He kicked the horse into a gallop and went plunging down the steep hillside, into the
burned village.

One wished one's
enemies ill, but not total destruction. Y.isheya dismounted in the center of what had once been
the home of a proud people, enemies, true, but brave and worthy enemies.

He stood silent and
disbelieving and surveyed the tragedy. Men, women and children lay scattered around him in
various attitudes of death.

A great death had
stalked here, sudden unforgiving death, nnd Yasheya did not understand.

His own tribe had
never made war on women and children. From that, he knew the killers were not of his
kind.

A small girl in
white buckskin lay half in and half out of the ruined lodge of Sakokimis, the chief. Her hair had
burned away, and under her feet lay the broken water bowl she had been carrying when death
struck.

The wind came down
from the high bluff, pushing the smoke and dust away.

No one had
survived. Everywhere Yasheya looked, was death. Horses and dogs lay scattered amid the other
bodies. Great wounds were there in the still bodies on the ground but his keen eyes saw neither
arrow nor spear.

What had befallen
these people, what special curse of the spirits had visited this place, Yasheya did not
know.

He turned and
looked into the wind as if expecting to find an answer there, but it was just a wind blowing
across the lonely grave of a people.

Then, on the wind,
he thought he heard a cry, a strange ululation, and his hand touched his weapons and a sense of
unease grew in him.

What spirit had
visited this place? Could it still be near? Yasheya moved himself toward an answer.

Arrogant in his own
power, his own sense of himself, Yasheya strode forth to face this evil. He wanted to test
himself against it with the things in him that set him apart from other men. For Yasheya had
great and dark and unspeakable things that were a constant wind at his back.

He let the horse go
free as he strode in the direction of the sound. He heard it again. Strange and high-pitched,
like some animal caught in a trap, like something pent up that should never be caged.

The sound came from
behind huge boulders that littered the bottom of an arroyo.

Yasheya unleashed
his medicine stick, muttering the words of power that made it dance with strange seethings. His
weapons, forged in anger from the great stone bones of the old lizard people, were in his
hand.

He moved like a
ghost, like the shadow of a snake. His feet were deer-sure as he stepped through the broken
boulders and rocks.

Now the sounds were
clearer, coming from just ahead, around that last big boulder.

Unseen, unsensed, a
gray rat thing swayed on his shoulder, like an obscene second head.

Yasheya sprang out
from behind the boulder, to face what he knew not.

His weapons flashed
and almost struck home but at the last second he stayed his hand. For it was only a woman,
bruised and blackened with smoke. A woman heavy with child, in much pain and helpless before him,
or so he thought.

"Why stay your
hand? Kill me and kill two with one blow," said the woman, staring at him without fear. She was
past fear now. She had seen too much, suffered too much to still fear death.

"Who are you? What
happened to your people?"

She held her
swollen belly and did not speak. He seized her arm roughly in the manner of a man forcing his
will upon an enemy.

"Answer
me!"

"I am a
mother-to-be," she said. "Why hurt me again? Just kill me and end my pain."

"I have no cause to
kill you."

The woman looked up
into his eyes, saw things that danced behind them and looked away. "I fear you now. Your eyes are
like shadows cast by birds."

"Enough of this.
Answer me, woman." Yasheya set his medi­cine stick on the ground and slung his old bone weapons
back on his belt.

"I am Minokos, the
woman of Satay, now dead, as dead are my children, Miskos and Kukoskatta, as dead are all my
people."

"What tragedy
befell your people? What spirit or enemy de­scended upon your village?"

"Strange men from
the East. White in skin, with hair of many colors, strangers in our land, perhaps not human,
demons with long black sticks that spat fire and death. With fire and treachery, (hey fell upon
us, and we were like the soft grass melting in a prairie fire."

"I would wish to
see these men or demons." Yasheya looked to the East. "I have heard of these beings. It is said
they were the
first people of the horse.
That they live in great numbers in lands far away, as many faces in the world as blades of grass,
and all white as death. Tales were often told of these strange beings but never have I heard of
them, in our land."

The woman cried out
in pain. Her body heaved and buckled with the contractions of labor.

Tears welled from
her eyes. "My child comes now, comes early, much too early. Leave me here. I would be
alone."

Yasheya looked at
her for the first time as a woman, not seeing the enemy. She was thin for one big with child. And
young, younger than he had first thought. No more than sixteen snows, much too young to have lost
the will to live.

Her face was
blackened with smoke, her hair singed and curled by flame. Even under all that, she had a certain
quiet beauty that might have touched the heart of a man, if he were not a man such as
Yasheya.

She moved her head
and Yasheya saw a cut on her forehead above her left eye. She rolled over on her side, swaying
with the pain of the first contractions. Then he saw that her shoulder was wet with blood, that
there were two ugly wounds there, where something had passed into the flesh and gone completely
through.

Despite himself,
Yasheya felt feelings he thought dead arise in him.

He who had no need
for human companionship, suddenly found things in her face, etched with pain and grief, that he
could not understand.

"I will help
you."

"You are the
enemy."

"Even enemies, I
will help you."

"Go away. I don't
need you."

"Your child needs
me. You are hurt and have no women to help you. You have lost much blood. You will need an
enemy's help."

But the old ways
were strong within her.

"These are woman
things. Go away. It is not right."

"To die being born
is not right either." Yasheya bent beside her, taking her up in his strong arms, finding the
close contact,
the smell of her,
disturbingly meaningful, feeling a tide rising in him never before awakened.

"Relax, little
mother. You are the last of your people and I will help keep you alive by bringing the new little
one into the world. If you will not accept my help for yourself, think of your people, who will
live on in your child, the last of you to walk this earth."

She screamed with
pain, her hand tightening in his. She looked at him, with sudden trust, with the kind of
surrender of which only women in the world of men are capable, and Yasheya, in that moment, lost
himself within her beautiful eyes, lost him­self in a way past all his understanding.

Lost to a power as
great as all the dark things that danced within himself.

The wind blew ash
and sparks into the air around them.

In that lonely
place beside the big death, a child came into being.

And vanished like a
spiderweb ruined by the wind.

Yasheya held the
soft dead little thing in his arms and it be­came, in that instant, his heart.

And he knew a
sorrow that was like a deep blue pool in the darkest of caverns, without light or sounds or
depth. It was a wordless age-old pain, as old as the earth itself.

And the child woman
wept and held out her arms for the burden she would gladly have borne and he handed it to
her.

She put the dead
little one to her breast and tried to make it suckle, for she was blind with love and want and
the vast ache of the First Mother.

And in the most
terrible moment, as the knowledge of what must be done scraped his skin like a fire-hardened
stick, Yasheya came to her and stood above her, raw with the pain of what must be.

Tenderly but
firmly, he took the dead child forcibly away from her, easing its dead cold mouth from her warm
chest.

As gently as he
could, he put it down upon the ground, away from her, onto the cold loveless ground, a great part
of which it had now become, losing its humanness.

And she cursed him
and raged against him, feeling one thing and striking out at another. And even with her fury,
they shared the same broken heart.

And then as the day
died, she slept, exhausted, in his arms, and the weight of her pulled him down forever to the
earth.

In the midst of
that dark night, among the ruins and death, he became her man.

In the morning,
finding herself still alive, the woman became his in spirit but not yet in body. That would come
in time, when the nights grew long and the memories of this time became changed and somehow
different in her woman's heart.

The rat of death
hissed in the dark, hissed in growing impa­tience.

Its lust for blood
was a raging all-consuming darkness.

The rat was burning
to know the savor of his feast to be.

But the light, the
great golden light of what had been, the coming from, yet held back the darkness of the ancient
enemy.

And the history
unfolded, neither rat nor man could stop it.

It did not begin at
the beginning and it did not end at the ending. It went in all directions, both backward and
forward, and it circulated like blood in an undying heart, Yasheya's heart.

Now it was in a
time and place far from here, and Yasheya was the newborn son of a very old woman.

The boy's father
was not human.

He was a thunder
and lightning man. He had great powers and could talk to the wind. Also, by bleeding, from his
eyes, he could make rain.

The old woman gave
birth to Yasheya in the month of the blood-red moon. Yasheya's birth was a cause for much wonder
in the village, for his mother was long past her summer of youth and the frost of old age had
already whitened her hair.

Her back was bent
with a life already lived, crookedly re­shaped for the burial rack, yet she became with child and
it came forth.

The men and women
of the village came to see the strange birth of this child. They looked at the baby and they
shook their heads, for Yasheya was not as a child should be. He was smaller than a baby coyote,
too small to live, so the wisdom of the tribe decreed it.

"He can never grow
up to be a warrior," said the chief of the village. "Such a tiny baby cannot grow to strength. It
will not live to see the first snow."

Yasheya's mother
arose from her blanket with the last of her strength, for she was slowly dying and would not live
to see the end of Yasheya's birthing day. The old woman looked upon those who had come to pity
and she said, "You are fools. My child, Yasheya, so I name him, will be more than just a killer
of men, more than a hunter of deer. He is a gift from the dark house of the wind, from the things
that walk at night. He was given to me by the Night Father."

This made the chief
angry.

"Who, then, is the
father of this child?" asked the chief, and he moved back a step, sensing a demon-caused
thing.

"None may say his
name," said the old woman, and the pain made her face white and the door of the grave opened and
the oncoming night raised its hand of welcome to her.