The People of the Black Sun Read Free

war…”
    She studied her village, Yellowtail Village, thirty paces away. It was the smaller sister village of Bur Oak Village. Numerous charred holes gaped in the three concentric rings of palisades that encircled the village. All three longhouses had sustained damage. Roofs had burned through, flaming bark walls had toppled to the ground in smoking heaps. For the night, her villagers had torn down the intact bark walls that separated their interior chambers and tried to fill the gaps in the exterior longhouse walls. Firelight streamed around the mismatched squares. The central plaza bonfire blazed, flickering over the dark shapes of dozens of people who tended the dead, laid out in rows. Oddly, the feet were all even, the toes pointing upward like short stubby posts. It would have been foolish to waste the warm space inside the crowded houses on them. Their afterlife souls were not in their bodies, but roaming around the village in the form of glistening soul lights, eating the dregs in the cooking pots, trying to speak with their loved ones. Jigonsaseh’s own daughter, Tutelo, would be there tending the bodies, probably working through the night, despite the fact that her own husband had been killed yesterday afternoon, and grief must have swallowed her world.
    Jigonsaseh let out a slow breath. As it condensed in the icy air, Wind Woman gently swirled it into firelit spirals. Tomorrow, the bodies would be prepared. The strongest souls would be Requickened in living bodies, their confusion and agony ended. They would live again. Then, ten days from now, the main burial feast would be held. When completed, the souls that had not been Requickened could be on their way to the Path of Souls in the sky, and the bridge that led to the Land of the Dead beyond.
    I must see Chief Cord.
    She shoved away from the palisade and headed for the closest ladder, where she climbed down, and tiredly walked toward the wooden plank gates.
    The guard, short and burly, swung them open. “Matron Jigonsaseh, you should not be out alone. Shall I assign you guards?”
    â€œI appreciate your concern, but it’s not necessary. Return to your duties.” Her hand, however, instinctively dropped to CorpseEye where he rested in her belt.
    â€œAs you wish, Matron.”
    The gates swung closed behind her without another word.
    She walked eastward across the battlefield, weaving through the corpses, and down the long littered slope toward the Flint People’s camp. Dropped bows, water bags, weapons belts torn free by desperate hands, and severed body parts lay tumbled across the ground. All around her, people with torches wandered through the blowing smoke, searching faces, clothing, jewelry, trying to recognize bodies. Their expressions were haunted. The shock was just setting in, turning their hands shaky.
    Jigonsaseh rubbed her burning eyes.
    Before war cries had split the day, it had been a splendid clean morning, filled with the laughter of children dashing across the plaza, and the happy barking of dogs. It was hard to believe that their world had been obliterated in such a short time.
    She marched out of the killing field and straight for the sentries who ringed Chief Cord’s camp. Any other chief would have placed his camp in the middle of his warriors, where he’d be better protected, but Cord had been a war chief for most of his life. He preferred to have his back against a small moonlit pond. The water glittered and cast reflections over the faces of the five people seated on logs around his fire. On the far side of the circle, she could see him clearly. Tall and muscular, he had a long pointed nose and piercing brown eyes. He’d seen forty-one summers pass. A black roach of hair ran down the middle of his shaved head. Turtle shell carvings decorated his black cape. The snake tattoos on his cheeks seemed to coil and strike as he spoke.
    â€œHalt!” one of the sentries shouted at her. “Identify