Dusty frowned. “What do they want us to do? Dig the thing so they can sell the artifacts? Turn the kiva into their living room? What’s the catch?”
“Quite the contrary, they want to preserve the whole thing. And, if I understand them correctly, they want to make it a community attraction, like a park.”
Dusty scratched his beard. “I’m not sure I like this. It sounds too goody-goody to be real.”
“Let’s at least hear what they have to say, William. From my first conversation, they seem to want to find ways to increase public awareness of archaeological resources and use commercial ventures to preserve them.”
“Yeah. Right. I may start believing in Santa Claus again, too. But it’s your project, Dale.”
“Good I’ll see you tomorrow. Say, around noon?”
“Okay. Then we’ll have to start finding crew. It’s the middle of the fall semester. Diggers are going to be hard to come by.”
“I got a letter from Maureen,”
Dale said mildly, and Dusty’s stomach muscles clenched.
“If we find any human skeletal material, it will have to be analyzed by a specialist. I was thinking—”
“We aren’t going to find any, Dale. I’ll make sure I throw every skull out with the back dirt. See you tomorrow.”
Dusty hung up and stared at the old black rotary telephone. A site on private land? And the developers wanted to pay for archaeological excavation? Now, that was a new twist on an old knot. He knew all too well that in most cases avarice, not altruism, was at the heart of such requests.
He sipped his beer, and Maureen’s face glared from his memory. Hell, even if they found something, it would most likely be an ordinary Anasazi primary burial with a few grave goods. Maureen wouldn’t want to leave her classes for that kind of thing.
“No,” he said to himself. “This is going to be an open and shut test excavation. A couple of square holes to determine if these rich liberal developers have a ‘spiffy’ site, and then Dale and I will backfill and leave.”
He gulped the last of his Guinness and listened to the wind ripping through the trees.
It was the wind, wasn’t it?
Why in God’s name did it sound like laughter?
He reached for the .41 Magnum Smith & Wesson on the table. The cool wooden grips reassured him.
He closed his eyes and rested the pistol on his stomach. He could imagine the disdain in Maureen Cole’s eyes. She was Canadian,
didn’t believe in guns, ghosts,
basiliscos
, or any of the things that scared the hell out of Dusty.
“Maybe”—he yawned—“being a cold-blooded scientist isn’t such a bad thing after all.”
He had just started to doze off when the laughter brought him bolt upright. He looked around the trailer and rubbed a hand over his face.
“Good Lord, what is that?”
Like a magnet, his eyes were drawn to the trailer window and the Bronco sitting outside in the faint golden gleam.
Dusty whispered, “Tomorrow I’ll be rid of you for once and for all, you little son of a bitch.”
“D
O YOU SEE THEM?” CATKIN BREATHED IN BROWSER’S EAR. Browser lifted himself to gaze over the tangled pile of deadfall where they’d taken cover when movement caught his eye. The scent of decaying wood filled his nostrils.
Twenty paces ahead, on the ground between the aspens, things moved. The windblown piles of fallen leaves twitched and then sighed and moaned.
“What are they?” he whispered. “Animals? People hiding in the leaves?”
Catkin shook her head. Sweat beaded her turned-up nose and shone across her wide cheekbones. She was almost too beautiful to be flesh and blood. Her long black braid hung down her back like a shiny serpent. “They don’t move like living creatures, Browser. Perhaps it’s just Wind Baby toying with the leaves.”
“Maybe, but—”
A tiny explosion of leaves whirled into the moonlight and pirouetted away in the wind.
Browser watched them curiously, trying to decide. A leaden cape of exhaustion weighted his shoulders. His thoughts didn’t want to coalesce. All he wanted was to get home to Longtail village. “It is likely just mice scurrying beneath the leaves.”
He started to rise, and she put a hand on his arm to stop him. He glanced down at her slender fingers. Like a war club in his fist, her touch comforted him, made him feel safe. He let out a pent-up breath, and asked, “What do you wish to do?”
Catkin said, “Wait. A few more moments of inspection will not harm anyone.”
Browser eased to the ground again and stared out through the filigree of dark branches. The aspen leaves trembled and winked in the moonlight, their white-barked trunks shining.
Browser frowned at the exposed roots that laddered the ground on the far right of the grove. He leaned closer to Catkin. “Is that a hand?”
The “hand” resembled a bloated white slug against the black roots.
Catkin’s fingers dug into the fallen tree as she pulled herself up for a closer look.
“It might be. I—”
From beneath, the leaves stirred and panted as though a dozen bodies exhaled at once.
Browser shot Catkin a glance and saw her eyes tighten.
“Survivors?” she asked.
Browser shook his head. “I doubt it.”
The Flute Player Believers did not leave survivors wandering the woods. They hunted down every man, woman, and child. Some they enslaved. Others, the sick, the elderly, or those too young to be of use, were slaughtered immediately. Frequently they toyed with captives, forcing a girl to couple with her brother, or a boy to cut out his mother’s living heart. In the name of the Blessed Flute Player, creator of their world, they committed every kind of atrocity.
Browser said, “I’m going closer.”
Catkin’s head jerked around. She examined his face. “You are sure?”
“Can you leave here without finding out what that is?”
She hesitated. “All right. But go slowly.”
Browser eased over the deadfall into the aspen grove. Wind cooled his face as he slid forward on his belly through the frost-encrusted old leaves toward the tiny explosions.
To his right, across the canyon gorge, moonlight painted the meadows and washed the sky like a fine paint made of ground azure and quartz crystals. A glowing wall of Cloud People marched up from the south. He lifted his nose and scented the wind. He could smell snow on Wind Baby’s breath; it gave him a bellyache. By morning, they’d be out in the flats and wading through ankle-deep mud, soaked to the bone.
Browser saw movement to his left and caught sight of Catkin, a flickering ghost slipping between the trees toward the “hand.”
A whistle piped, then the leaves rustled and a low growl rolled through the darkness.
Browser got on his hands and knees and crawled toward the sound. Leaves crunched beneath his palms.
“ … gods.”
He tensed at the word and searched for Catkin in the trees. He didn’t see her.
He murmured, “What is it?”
Catkin’s voice resembled mist rising from warm trees on a cold morning, soft, barely there.
“Don’t … see it?”
Browser dropped to his belly and looked around. Her tone told him that what she saw horrified her, and he’d better prepare himself for the worst.
Which means there’s an enemy war party out there.
But if that were the case, Catkin wouldn’t be speaking at all, would she? He’d fought many battles at her side. In the past, she’d always grown unnaturally silent when she sensed danger.
He saw her. Ahead to his left. Her face flashed as she dodged between two trees.
Browser pulled his war club from his belt and slid forward on his belly.
“Browser … see … ?”
“No. Where?” he whispered, frantic to know what she saw.
“ … must see it! Right there in front …”
Browser’s fist tightened on his club. His throat had gone tight; he could barely swallow.
Right there in front of me? Where? Why can’t I see it?
And why would Catkin risk herself to tell him about it? She knew that every time she spoke, she might be giving away her position to the enemy. A sudden wave of fear flooded him. Gods, if anything happened to her, especially if she died trying to warn him …
He lifted his head.
Faces stared back at him.
They couldn’t be more than ten paces ahead. He hadn’t seen them because, in the moonlight, they shone with the same iridescence as the frosty leaves. Thirty, maybe even forty.
The moans returned, this time more like the squeals of wet leather being wrung out.
Leaves fluttered down over the faces, and he wondered how many
bodies lay beneath the glittering autumn blanket. Though the nights had been cold, the days had been warm. Sunshine melted flesh. In the summer, he had seen a man killed at noon swell to twice his size by sunset.
That’s what the explosions were. Fetid air escaping from rotted muscles and hideously bloated bellies.
Browser longed to slam his club into something.
He got to his feet and walked forward through the moonlit shadows to the killing ground.
He veered wide around the piles of leaves and went directly to the “hand.” It turned out to be someone’s windpipe. The white corrugated tube looked stark against the black roots.
Browser’s nostrils flared. Urine. Human. But not from the dead. The pungent aroma came from the tree trunks. That’s why the bodies had not been torn apart by animals. The enemy warriors had urinated around the killing ground. Wolves did the same thing, marking their territory, warning off scavengers. In a few more days the scent would weaken, and predators would fearlessly trot into the circle to savage the corpses. That meant the bodies had only been here a few days at the most.
Browser turned to the line of decapitated heads. They’d been arranged in four concentric circles. A thin layer of frozen leaves filled the center of the smallest circle. Frozen because someone had sat there for a long time, the heat from his body wetting the leaves, mashing them down. The moisture had frozen solid when the person rose.
He recognized the head at the top of the inner circle. Running Elk, War Chief of Aspen village. It took little effort to identify the elderly man. His long, gray-streaked black hair had been feathered into a halo around his wrinkled face. Browser suspected that the four heads around Running Elk belonged to the other members of his war party. They’d been killed days ago, probably right after they’d left the village.
Browser counted thirty-three heads, but there might be more beneath the piled leaves. Below the heads, five headless bodies lay. Distended hands reached out to the shining night. Legs sprawled hideously.
“Gods, maybe I should believe in Poor Singer’s prophecy.”
Poor Singer had been a great prophet. He’d said that if the Katsinas’ People could not find the First People’s kiva and return to the underworlds to speak with the ancestors, they would destroy themselves in a terrible war that would last more than two hundred sun cycles.
“Catkin?” he called softly. “You may come out. They’re all dead.”
After a time, he looked up, wondering why she hadn’t answered. Perhaps she’d gone further into the forest to scout the area.
He’d taken four steps toward the bodies when a whisper warned him:
“Don’t move. Get down.”
Browser’s eyes widened. He dropped and covered himself with leaves.
Catkin’s voice had come from somewhere close, but higher than his position. Had she climbed a tree to get a better view?
He forced his breathing to slow and listened intently to the sounds of the forest. Through the thin scatter of leaves he could see branches rocking in the breeze. On the far right of his vision, the glistening wall of Cloud People pushed closer, almost over them now. Leaves twitched and the ground seemed to crawl around him. The scent of rot almost gagged him. Lying here amid the dead might shield him; it might also cost him his life. Decaying bodies spawned evil Spirits. They could sneak into a man and consume his flesh in less than a moon. First the slaughtered in the kiva, now this. When he got home, he would have to undergo a ritual cleansing or …
“People,”
Catkin whispered, and Browser saw her.
A human-shaped shadow moved in the branches almost over his head. As she stretched out, her body blended with the limb where she lay.
“How many?” he asked.
“They’re just dark shapes on the trail. Coming toward us.”
Browser took the opportunity to scoop more leaves over his legs and face, and Catkin hissed,
“Be still!”
He went limp.
For twenty heartbeats the leaves sighed and jumped into the air, even more frightening now than earlier. If these were not the warriors who had killed the villagers, the sounds and movement would draw them to look, as they had Catkin and Browser.
A single leaf twirled above Browser, then spun down and landed on his chest, as if to point him out to his enemies.
“If you haven’t already loosed your club, do it now,”
she hissed.
“They’re looking into the canyon.”
He clutched his club over his belly and willed his heartbeat to slow. He could feel their approach, their steps like snowflakes landing on leaves.
As they entered the aspen grove, Thunderbirds flashed down from the clouds and seared their images onto Browser’s souls. Ten warriors stood silhouetted against a brilliant white web. They wore white ritual capes and knee-high white moccasins. Strange clothing. They couldn’t be warriors, could they? Would any warrior be foolish enough to wear white on a moonlit night?
The leader, a tall, heavily muscled man, looked around as though surprised, as if he expected to see someone here. The chert studs on his war club glinted as he cautiously stepped forward to survey the murmuring piles of leaves. He seemed to have no face. Only his eyes gleamed. Which meant that either he wore a mask, or he’d blacked his face with soot.
Browser looked up at Catkin. He couldn’t see her, but knew she would have an arrow nocked in her bow and aimed down at the lead man. If they discovered Browser, she would shoot. In the ensuing chaos, when men dove for cover, Browser would have a chance to run. Catkin would cover him, raining arrows down upon their enemies until her quiver lay empty. He might escape. Then they would climb up and drag Catkin down.
Gods, don’t move. Don’t even breathe!
Lightning flickered and a roar of thunder trembled the world.
Browser raised wild eyes to the sky. As the Cloud People sailed closer, a rumpled black blanket blotted out Sister Moon and the Evening People. If he could just hide until darkness swallowed the light, he might be able to crawl away through the leaves without them hearing or seeing him.
And Father Sun will shine through the night tomorrow, too.
He glanced to his right. The leader of the war party gave a slashed-throat signal, then pointed to the north. Four men split off from the group and headed toward the path Catkin had taken earlier. There must be a deer trail there because they never stumbled, and no twigs cracked beneath their feet. They turned into a line of flashing eyes and teeth.
More warriors stirred the leaves on the southern edge of the grove, three or four paces away. Browser concentrated on their footsteps.
The warriors moved around the circles of decapitated heads, then waded through the piles of leaves toward the dead bodies where Browser hid. He could see them more clearly now, and the sight stunned him. Each wore a wolf mask, exquisitely carved and painted, and black spirals covered their ankle-length white capes.
They walked out of the grove without a word, coalesced into a group again, and headed down the trail that led to Aspen village.
Browser sank back into the leaves and sucked in a deep breath. The relief was like coupling with a woman. A fiery tingle ran through his body.