Raven's Choice Read Free

us are not so weak.” Bear eyed the scout’s lean frame with scorn. He made a fist of one hand and ground it into the palm of the other. Rippling muscles stood out on his neck, shoulders, and arms.
    Instead of being reassured by this display, Raven felt a feather of fear float down her spine. Her future was tied to that man, who was, like his namesake, powerful and irritable and—her gaze fixed on his broad chest as she realized the strangeness of another thought—whose body build somewhat resembled that of a Longhead.
    “They are worn from the hunt,” Bear added. “Our spears and knives are better made. Haven’t you said so yourself?” He stabbed a finger toward the scout. “You of all men should want to go down there.”
    The scout cowered, and though he was trying to control it, his teeth were chattering again. Raven looked back and forth between the two men. There was much to learn about her adoptive band.
    “We ease ourselves halfway down, keeping behind boulders,” Bear told them. “If more bison should come through, we go to the bottom while they’re protecting their kill. If there are no more bison, we will depend on surprise. Wait for my signal.”
    He made eye contact, one by one, with each man. “I won’t do it now—I’ll wait until we safely reach the valley. But I will personally whip anyone who causes a rock slide, and if I am the cause, one of you shall crack the whip.” The men averted their eyes and nodded their assent.
    Raven was aghast at how no one protested that last, unyielding rule. And none of them, other than Leaf, had questioned Bear’s plan for taking the kill. She had always assumed that, within the Fire Cloud tribe, every band behaved much the same. In Raven’s old home band, decisions were reached with much more discussion and argument. She had to admit, however, that there was little time at present for arguing.
    The men took off their parkas and lowered their leather bags and pouches from their shoulders to the ground, keeping only their spears.
    Bear pointed his at Raven like an overly extended finger. “You stay here,” he said.
    She let her eyes slide away from him as if he were something slippery.
    After they had gone over the crest, Raven clambered up to watch, defying Bear’s order. The men were carefully working their way from boulder to boulder. When they were midway down, Bear raised a hand to halt them.
    As everyone waited, a hawk flying overhead screeched its bothered cry, and crows flapped darkly from rock to rock, curious about the activity below. One of the Longheads who’d hidden in the boulders before the kill went again to his unfortunate ambush partner. After leaning in for a closer look, he returned to butchering. The wind picked up, whistling around the outcrop.
    Raven adjusted her fur cape, worked her leggings farther up. She was being careful, but a few pebbles began to roll. She gasped. The small stones stopped moving almost as soon as they’d started, but her heart still pounded at the thought of being whipped by Bear. Her father had done enough of that, with braided leather strips, to last her a lifetime.
    Yarrow was growing in a sandy place nearby, the leaves covered with white, longish hairs. Raven already had enough yarrow, but her hand closed unbidden around several stems. In her fist, the leaves felt like a bristling caterpillar as she crushed them until their weedy odor filled her nostrils. The stronger the plant smelled, the more intense its effects would be.
    She had fought Reed’s fever with the strongest yarrow she could find, mixed with elderberry—it didn’t help. None of her desperate remedies worked. He’d been a stubborn man, and he battled his illness the same way, eating and drinking everything she gave him though he gagged. But his fever had proven more stubborn than the both of them.
    Bear had made light of Reed’s death, and Raven still stung from that. There was no way to avoid him when she was going to live at his