People of the Morning Star by Kathleen O'Neal Gear & W. Michael Gear

Author:Kathleen O'Neal Gear & W. Michael Gear
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Native American & Aboriginal, Historical, Fiction
ISBN: 9781466832299
Publisher: Tor Books
Published: 2014-05-06T07:00:00+00:00

Thirty-two

Tapping one of the arrows on his left palm, Seven Skull Shield made his way down the busy path—more of a transportation artery actually—that wound through the dense cluster of houses, temples, workshops, storehouses, and ramadas that made up the thriving strip of River City Mounds where it dominated the river’s eastern bank.

The long walk from the Clan Keeper’s had been sobering, and he’d looked at Cahokia with new eyes. He’d always viewed the problem from the other side: How do you stay hidden in Cahokia?

Now, the converse surprised him: How do you find someone who is hiding in Cahokia?

Having left just after his breakfast, and before the dawn had fully broken, he’d been walking through solid city where the mound-studded avenue skirted the southern bank of Marsh Elder Lake. It had taken five hands of time just to reach the main congestion of River Mounds City where the four or five arrow makers maintained their workshops. In the process, he’d been in the constant company of people. An endless stream of on-comers had been headed toward the Great Plaza, most with packs of food, blankets, colorful textiles, bundles of firewood, pack frames heavy with pottery, teams of men carrying bundles of peeled poles. He’d encountered people literally obscured with bales of thatch, occasional nobles atop their shouldered litters, men with haunches of venison or braces of turkeys, young men with loads of dried fish, or whatever the mind could conjure. Sometimes he had to duck to the side as teams of sweating, panting men, stumbled along under the weight of immense logs bound from some major construction. Other times it was to allow for the passage of loads of stone borne inland on litters by muscular two-man teams.

Once again the incredible and ravenous immensity of Cahokia, and the amount of food, material, and fuel it demanded left him amazed. The fact that the city could actually function, that it could meet the needs of tens of thousands, reeked of an impossible miracle.

He just made it to the first workshop when a conch horn sounded, and people scampered out of the way as a squadron of warriors appeared. Duck Clan designs decorated their aprons and shields. They came trotting down the center of the thoroughfare, equipment clattering, feet beating out a rhythmic cadence in the damp sandy swale that served for a road. Their Squadron First was a scarred and burly man, whose entire hide had fallen victim to the copper tattoo needles in his clan’s men’s house.

In the wake of their passage Seven Skull Shield watched men, women, children, and the occasional dog emerge from gaps between buildings, doorways, and wherever they could step aside. Then he slipped into the arrow maker’s.

The workshop was little more than a peaked, thatch roof held up by eight heavy support posts. Mat walls draped a third of the way down from the roof and were tied off on the upright posts. Around the walls, large bundles of green shafts rested on wooden racks to season.

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