Читать книгу Anasazi Exile - Eric G. Swedin - Страница 5

PROLOGUE

1241 A.D, WESTERN EUROPE

Hans swung the ax with quick blows, cutting away a strip of bark around the tree. Like the other men, he had removed his grey woolen shirt, folded it neatly, as his grandfather had taught him, and laid it on the grass. He enjoyed the cleansing feeling of sweat pouring down his bare back. Just as he had cut down men on the battlefield, this tree would soon die. The death of the tree would take longer as its sap slowly leaked away, the leaves wilted, and the wood grew dry. Baron Henri had chosen this place, near the river and a large meadow, for a new village. The people of his manor were fertile and the prayers of the priest had kept sickness at bay, so he needed the new village.

Hans loved the baron as only a loyal man can. He had served his baron for his entire life—working his fields, tending his herds, following him into battle. The baron had always treated him well, even blessing Han’s marriage with a gift of two horses. True, the horses were old warhorses and one was almost lame, but they were horses nonetheless.

He moved to the next tree, examined it for a moment to select his cutting place, and began swinging. Six other men from their village sliced at the trees. Two were his brothers, another his brother-in-law, two were cousins, and the youngest was a nephew. Just as he knew everyone in the village, he was related to most of them. Even the baron was a distant relation, a third cousin.

At one time, Hans would have been in charge of this small party, a trusted lieutenant of the baron, but a blow to the head in a battle two summers ago had left Hans with chronic headaches and a sense that he had lost something. He could not even remember the details of the battle and sometimes wondered what had hit him. The haft of a spear? The flat of a sword? A rock? His wife told him that he spoke more slowly and didn’t always make sense. He no longer led men.

The baron had decided that before the new village could be built, he wanted the trees removed and burned into charcoal. Killing the trees this summer would dry them out. Next summer the villagers would fell the trees and place them in a large hole to burn.

A thunderclap shook the air, rustling the leaves of the trees. Hans looked up, puzzled; there were no clouds in the sky.

“Come, come quick!” his younger brother yelled from the meadow.

The cry did not sound like fear, just surprise, even wonder. Hans jogged with the other men out of the trees, taking care to keep the blade of his axe turned towards the ground. He had seen too many accidents to not constantly respect the ability of tools to hurt a man.

His brother pointed to the sky. Hans squinted, surprised to see a thing in the air. He had only ever seen birds in the sky, so this must be a bird—but what a strange bird, all square, with short stubby wings that did not move.

The thing grew larger as it came closer. Much too large to be a bird. Hans felt no shame as he joined the others in running back to the trees and crouching down behind a trunk.

“What is it?” his cousin asked from behind a nearby trunk. His cousin crossed himself, lightly touching his forehead, chest, and both shoulders.

Hans shrugged and looked back to find his fourteen-year-old nephew burrowing into the leaves and detritus of the forest floor, sobbing a prayer. Hans could understand the terror that dominated the youth—his own heart fluttered with the same fear—but six seasons of campaigning had taught him that fear was a tool, to be used, not to be surrendered to.

The bird circled down to the center of the meadow, making a whispering sound no louder than an arrow in flight, hovering just a few feet from the ground. It was big, as big as the great hall of the baron, where a hundred people could squeeze themselves in. The air smelt funny, tickling his nose in an annoying way.

A tongue dropped from the bird to the ground and a naked woman tumbled down it onto the grass. Hans was vaguely aware that his mouth was hanging open like that of an idiot.

The bird lifted up towards the sky, leaving no sound in its wake. His fear rapidly subsiding, Hans ran into the meadow to watch the bird go. It faded into the blue sky faster than it should have, as if turning invisible. This was powerful witchcraft, a magic beyond any that he had ever heard of told by bard or priest.

The men of the village followed Hans as he approached the woman. They fanned out, instinctively avoiding the error of clumping up. If they had to use their axes as weapons, they needed room to swing.

The woman lay sprawled in the thick grass of the meadow. His wife was the only naked woman Hans had ever seen, and what lay before him was the most beautiful creation that he could imagine. Her flawless skin was pale white, and he wondered if she had ever been out under the sun. Had she lived her entire life in the strange bird?

“What do we do with her?” a cousin asked.

“Take her home.”

“No!” shouted his nephew. “She’s a witch. She will curse us. We must destroy her.”

A murmur of agreement swept through the collected men. Hans pressed his fingers to his temple. Another headache was coming on, the kind that left him half-blind and whimpering. He groped for words. “I think that maybe we should ask Baron Henri what to do.”

The woman moaned and opened her eyes. To a man, every villager jumped back.

The voice of his nephew grew ever more shrill. “We don’t have time. She awakens. We must kill her now.”

The youth’s father stepped forward and raised his axe. He screamed to give himself courage and brought the axe down with all his might. The woman rolled to the side, her movement too sluggish to avoid the blade slicing into her side. Red blood stained the grass.

Do witches have red blood? Hans wished he had paid better attention to the stories. One thing was certain: if she had blood, then she could die.

Hans raised his axe and stepped forward, his kinsman joining him. A pang of sadness briefly crested in his consciousness; to destroy something so beautiful must be some sort of sin.

He saw the fear in the woman’s eyes change to determination. She suddenly seemed energized and sprang to her feet. She lashed out with her fist at Hans, catching him in the nose. His face exploded in pain and he dropped his axe as he tumbled backwards. He was dimly aware that she had leapt over him and run for the forest.

The other men cried out in frustration and chased after her.

Struggling to sit up, Hans felt his gushing nose and noticed that it moved underneath his clenched fingers. It was broken.

His kinsmen returned, the youth whining, “The witch got away.”

The Center Place, 236th Year of the Master

The sun had almost reached its highest point in the sky, during this, the longest day of the year. Kartvi lay prostrate on the ground, his nostrils filled with the scent of sand. Three days he had fasted and prayed—his empty stomach craved food, his mouth felt as dry as the sand, and his skin felt hot and brittle. He mumbled the prayer again, searching for the strength from the old gods to do what he must do. Kartvi worshiped the old gods, not the Master.

The old gods lived in the lower world. They had made the animals out of clay, molding them with their hands. The world of darkness had only animals in it until Spider Woman created all the peoples of the Earth out of clay, a man and woman for each tribe, molding them with her own hands, and teaching them their own languages. Then the Two Brothers led the animals and people to this land of desert and sky, the Fourth World, and the People spread across the land, planting corn and making families.

Death also came into the Fourth World and the people knew sorrow. The dead went to a new world, except those that stayed as ghosts, too miserable to find their way to happiness. The people honored the old gods, giving them the worship and honor that was their due; then came the Master.

The Master was a god on Earth, more cunning than any of the old gods, stronger than any man, able to run faster and further than any youth, who saw things in the distance with the eyes of a hawk, and possessed the hearing of a coyote. He was older than the grandparents of the grandparents of any of the People. By his command, the palaces of the canyon had been built, some of them hundreds of rooms large. Few people lived in the palaces. Most of the People lived in huts of sticks and mud and spent their lives laying stone upon stone to build the palaces.

The Master loved to honor Death. He led his own people on raids against the surrounding villages. The slaves he captured worked until their hands and backs were raw and broken, and then they were sacrificed as food. The Master called it man corn. Kartvi had eaten this flesh, ignoring his stomach’s objections at such obscene meat, and prayed that the old gods had not noticed, or that they would welcome him even if they had.

The Master often challenged Death to a personal dance. Even Kartvi had seen the Master cut into his own arms and stretch them out above his head, the blood flowing down his arms and staining the feathers of his cloak. Before the astonished eyes of his worshipers, the wounds closed themselves. No man could do that and no stories of the old gods told of such powers. That is why the people obeyed him, built palaces of stone and roads that ran for days to connect the palaces, and willingly offered themselves up for sacrifice.

The old gods did not ask for sacrifices. The old gods promised a better place for those who died with honor. The Master offered no such salvation—just work—and the opportunity to worship him.

Last winter both of Kartvi’s sisters had been taken to serve the Master. His sisters, the prettiest girls in the entire village, full of life and laughter, had died worshiping the Master. No one knew what had happened to their bones, so his mother had lain down and refused to eat. Her grief drove her into the embrace of Death.

Only Kartvi was left; only he could make it right. He and the old gods.

Finishing his last prayer, he pushed himself up from the ground. He drank water from a pot that his mother had made with her own hands, choking as the fluid stung his parched throat. Fresh squash and dried venison made his last meal.

From beyond the bluff, he heard the call to worship.

Kartvi crawled to the lip of the hill. Below him sprawled the Palace of the Master, with a large plaza beyond. Thousands of people from all the palaces and from the villages in the canyon were assembled in the plaza, dancing and chanting, making the air throb with power, asking the Master to honor them with his presence. Over and over, “Master, Master, Master...” The sound was amplified by several muscular youths working on foot drums, like those traditionally found only in kivas, tapping in time with the words.

The Master had not made his appearance yet. Even though his own village was three days’ walk away, Kartvi had been to two of these celebrations and knew that the Master only emerged when the crowd was completely soaked in sweat from their dancing and their voices grown ragged from the chanting.

Finishing the last of the water, Kartvi pulled on his sandals, slipped a knife into his belt, and picked up two spears. He was the best hunter in his village and had even taken down a buffalo and a cougar. The white streaks of scars along his rib cage reminded him that a trapped cougar is dangerous prey. But today’s quarry was the most dangerous yet.

Picking his way down the hillside, he approached the rear of the palace. The curved wall of the building before him reached up five stories. Normally someone would be around at this time of day, even if just children playing. As he had expected, there was no one nearby. Picking up a log that he had placed behind a bush a month earlier, Kartvi placed it against the wall so that it reached a narrow second-story window.

Juggling his spears, he shimmied up the log, tossed the spears into the room beyond, and wiggled in behind them. The room held baskets of corn. One spear had ripped open a basket, spilling ears of corn onto the rough wooden floor.

Kartvi listened for a moment, finding only silence beneath the throbbing of the chanting. No hanging covered the door to this room. The room beyond it was dark and smelled of old wood smoke. Using the same skill that helped him remember the intricate twists of thousands of game trials, he had memorized the maze of the palace and its hundreds of rooms. Of course, the group of rooms and great kiva that the Master used for his personal quarters were unknown to Kartvi, and to all but the most precious servants. Those servants and the other members of the household were now out among the chanting crowd, leaving the palace empty.

Counting the doorways in other rooms with his hand, Karvi moved deeper into the palace, feeling his way in the dark. Sometimes faint light filtered down from ventilation holes set high in the walls to let out smoke, but that was all. Everyone knew that the Master could see in the dark.

He came to the sixth room and crept inside, where an opening in the wall led to a ladder. He climbed slowly, careful to not bang the hafts of his spears against the ladder. The room above was filled with pottery received as tribute. Kartvi did not need more light to know that these pots were the finest that the people could produce, with the most vivid colors. His mother always had devoted the most lavish care to those pots that she knew would be sent to the palaces.

The Master disdained the use of guards; tales of his ferocious ability to defend himself kept potential assassins away. A completely empty palace on this holy day only showed how powerful he truly was.

Karvi passed through dozens of more rooms, some with only two doorways, others with three or four doors—a trail more obtuse than any animal had ever left—and climbed two ladders, one up and one down, before he finally reached a corridor. The soft stone of the floor was well worn from many sandals. The end of the corridor led outside to a large balcony overlooking the plaza; the bright sunlight caused Kartvi to blink rapidly. The chant thundered in the corridor, as if the sound was being channeled down towards the Master’s chambers.

Moving quickly down the corridor, concerned that his timing might be off, Kartvi stopped a bare dozen paces before its end. The walls here were no longer dressed sandstone, but covered from floor to ceiling with hangings, woven from yucca plants and painted with bright colors. The Master dominated each picture, showing him at repose, at war, slaying his enemies, feasting on them, receiving the worship of the people, taking their daughters as temporary wives to be cast aside and slain.

Removing his sandals, Kartvi concealed them behind a hanging. He then approached the entrance, confident that no one in the blinding sun of the plaza could see into the dark cave-like opening. Two months ago, while bringing an offering from a fresh deer kill to the palace, he had noticed that one of the hangings covered a small alcove.

He slipped into the alcove and stood straight with his head turned to allow the hanging to lay flat against his face, chest, and thighs. He clutched a spear tightly in each hand. The tip of the spear on his right pressed ever so slightly against the hanging, creating a narrow gap to see through, and allowing a sliver of sunlight to touch his face.

He carefully slowed his breathing, summoning the patience of the hunter that he had learned from watching cougars lying in wait for their prey to approach closer. Animals and the gods had taught him well. His eyelids dropped as he waited—totally motionless, completely alert, but almost sleeping. Antelopes in the mountains, normally so skittish, had actually approached him while he waited in this state.

He stilled his thoughts, as if the very dance of his mind could be sensed and give him away. Time passed, slowly or quickly, he could not tell.

The chanting grew weaker as the crowd tired. Suddenly the Master was striding past Kartvi’s hiding place, completely naked, as was his habit at all ceremonies. The god moved with confidence. Kartvi’s eyes widened; then he lunged from behind the hanging with the speed of a striking rattlesnake. Despite Karvi’s stealth, the Master heard him and had started to turn when one spear plunged into the small of the Master’s back, where the sensitive kidneys lay. Any other man would have screamed in great pain and gone rigid from shock. The Master only exhaled a little sigh and continued his turn.

Katvi thrust with his other spear, seeking the spine, and grunted with pleasure as he felt the shock of obsidian meeting bone. The Master fell to the floor and Kartvi paused for a moment as he reached for his knife.

Kartvi watched in astonishment as the Master heaved himself up on his hands and quickly dragged himself down the corridor and out onto the balcony, leaving a trail of sparkling blood, the two spears still protruding from his body. Kartvi sprang after him with a cry of rage.

The chanting turned into a single great gasp as the crowd saw the Master emerge, not in glory, but in the gravest distress.

Kartvi had rehearsed in his mind the many ways that this fight might go and did not hesitate. He plunged the knife into the back of the Master’s neck, breaking the vertebrae and severing the spinal cord, just as his spear had done to the lower back. The Master’s arms and body went limp. The obsidian broke from applying too much pressure, leaving Kartvi with half of his weapon and the rest trapped by the vertebra. Moving quickly, fearing the Master’s proven ability to heal quickly from any wound, Kartvi yanked a spear free and used the head as a blade to saw at the Master’s neck. For a brief moment, he looked into the Master’s eyes, and the look of pure hatred chilled him. He also saw fear in those eyes and it filled Kartvi with the sweetest sensation he had ever felt.

The head came off and Kartvi stood—covered with gore, dripping blood that glistened in the sun—and held the head high by the hair, showing it to the crowd.

“This is the Master and he slew my sisters! I am Kartvi of the Cougar Clan! Know my name and remember me!”

The crowd surged forward. And Kartvi died.