Spiritwalkers: Warrior, Part Two

[aithne]

The weather was warming towards summer, and for the first time in a while they relaxed a little. The smiles returned to Cheveyo's face, and all of their brothers seemed to loosen the tension in their bodies, hunting and riding and training and resting. It rained some, but more often the sky at night was an upended bowl of stars. They heard the song dogs on occasion, but did not see them.

Nascha spent much of her time weaving when she wasn't training or helping with the hunt. Oddly enough, Otaktay took an interest in what she was doing with the weaving, and occasionally watched her for a bit and asked questions. Sometimes, when Nascha got stuck, she would spend some time talking over the problem with Otaktay. That helped, but when she could not figure out a solution, she would ask Cheveyo to call her mother.

She spent time talking with Shadi, never long enough for her but enough time to discuss the weaving, what was going well and what was not. Shadi asked a great many questions about Cheveyo, and Nascha finally brought him along a few times to let her mother talk to her husband.

In the end, Shadi told Nascha that she had done as well in her choice as could be hoped, as well as Shadi might have done given the chance. "Though he's still an Apache," she said, musing.

Nascha laughed at that. "So am I by adoption and marriage," she said.

"True enough, and your heart's gotten as fierce as his," Shadi said. "But your spirit will always be Navajo, Nascha. You know our ways. Remember them."

"Always," Nascha said, her throat full of feelings she couldn't name.

It was a day or so after that conversation that she caught sight of another familiar form in spiritworld. She stopped, considered, and then stepped toward the figure.

Tse turned, his eyes widening. His misty form became abruptly solid-looking. He didn't speak, but there was hope on his face, in how his mouth was set.

Nascha smiled at him. "Tse," she said quietly. "Tse, I'm so sorry."

"So am I," he said, the words coming out of him in a rush. "I've had time now, too..." He trailed off, then straightened his shoulders. "To get used to being here. I've been watching you when I can, Nascha."

"Then you know about Cheveyo," she said.

"I know that you love him," Tse said. "I'm sorry he isn't me, but he is alive. I'm not."

"For the moment," she said, and felt the pressure of pain inside of her as she thought about Adoeete, and about Chogan. "Tse, I don't know how much longer it'll be until I join you here. I think that this fight is going to kill me."

"It's all right," he said. "Live as long as you can. Keep him alive, too." He paused, looked uncertain. "Nascha, I miss you..."

The breath came out of her in a rush. "I was afraid you hated me. The last time we spoke--"

"I was half mad!" he interrupted. "Still not really accepting that I was dead. I've talked a lot with your grandfather since, and I've been watching when I can find you. Yas knew about being a spiritwalker, Nascha. His brother was one. He died before he was a hundred seasons old, but he talked a lot to Yas. Yas was only fifty-seven seasons old when he died."

Nascha was dumbfounded. "Why isn't that story passed down? I never knew."

Tse looked troubled. "Yas's brother died in a battle that took the lives of all of the spiritwalkers of our tribe. You'd think that sort of thing would be spoken of, passed down, learned from. But all of them dying seemed to leave some sort of wound behind, and there were no old spiritwalkers to call the new ones..." He faltered. "It was left to the Apache to finally find new Navajo spiritwalkers. Yas hopes that you and Ahiga will come back, find and train some more spiritwalkers. There's trouble coming. Worse than we have now. Much worse."

She swallowed. "Except that there aren't going to be any more spiritwalkers. We gave that up, to stop the skinwalkers."

He stared at her. Finally, he said, "Will you tell me how it happened?"

So Nascha did. She told him the story until he lost the strength to keep his form, and then continued the story to a gently coalesced ball of mist. While the spiritwalkers stayed in the hills, she returned every day to talk to her mother, and to Tse.

The days lengthened, and the summer solstice was drawing close. "We should go to the arch," Cheveyo told her one evening. They had taken a walk past where the horses were gathered in a makeshift corral that was more to keep creatures that might startle the horses out than it was to keep the horses in. The moon was waxing towards full, and the moonlight made all the shadows soft around the edges.

"Is that a call, or just a feeling?" Nascha asked.

"A feeling," he admitted. "It feels like our time here's getting short."

"It's close by," Nascha told him. "We knew that we couldn't stay here forever."

Cheveyo glanced up at the lopsided moon. "I could hope, and pray," he said. "In the morning?"

"One more night of peace," Nascha said with a smile. She looped an arm around his neck and pulled his mouth down to hers, kissing him. "Let's use it wisely."

In the morning, they left their brothers at the camp and walked through spiritworld to the arch. The pillar had changed again. It was low to the ground, with a shape that suggested an insect, straight back and powerful hind legs, hidden wings under a stone carapace.

Nascha looked at the pillar uneasily. Locust. Locust was a god of hunger and of destruction. It was numberless, and it had never volunteered to help anyone that she could recall in the stories.

"You thinking the same thing I am?" Cheveyo asked quietly.

She glanced at her husband. "That whatever this god gives us, it's going to come with a very high price?"

"Yes, in some manner it will destroy something. More than we wanted."

Nascha's mouth was dry. "I'm not even sure we can refuse a gift of the gods, once given. I suppose we could go see what it wants."

"I think so," he said, taking her hand. They stepped into spiritworld together, and walked forward.

The pillar unfolded, shimmered, and then Locust crouched before them, dusty gray and gold. It turned its head and looked at them with eyes that were a hard brown. Its mouth-parts worked, infinitely more disturbing at this size than its smaller cousins. "Greetings, Locust," Nascha said.

Locust nodded, and somehow that motion made the presence of the god even more skin-crawling. "On the eve of the summer solstice, we will come to the Arapaho camp," it said, its many-jointed mouth working. "We will hide you from their eyes by the numbers we create. You may kill all who stand in your path, their warriors, their skinwalkers. They will fight back, of course, but the chaos we will create will cover a great many deaths. You will not be harmed by us, but they will."

Nascha tried desperately to keep her composure. "And those we do not kill will starve to death, afterwards."

"That band will have to walk many days to find food, many will die." Locust did not seemed to be upset by this, or happy. It was simply how things were.

"I understand," she said. She glanced at Cheveyo, saddened. That was a lot of people who were going to die because their spiritwalkers were skinwalkers.

"Can you not come?" Cheveyo asked.

One clawed back foot lifted from the stone and set down again. "It is in motion, the only thing you can change is how many skinwalkers die that night."

Silently to Cheveyo, she said, "If any of us live, we may be able to help the survivors."

"Our choices are limited, and it is coming no matter what we do. We have seven days to get enough food to save who we can," Cheveyo said. Nascha nodded, and Cheveyo said aloud, "Thank you, Locust."

Locust turned to stone, and Nascha stepped out of spiritworld, feeling as if there was some part of her that was all turned around and upside-down. "Do we go?" Cheveyo asked as he stepped out right beside her.

Nascha breathed out, and her hand went to one of her leather-wrapped braids. Time to be the warrior once more. "I think it's an opening we can't really afford to lose. As much as I hate to say it."

"If we can whittle them down by one or two when they scatter, so much the better," he said. "We are going to need to collect a lot of food someplace safe and lead them to it."

She thought about it. "You know, the Spanish travel with a lot of food."

Cheveyo wrinkled his nose. "They do, it's nasty tasting but edible."

"Well, it's either that, raid another tribe, or do a bison hunt and spend the rest of our time preserving meat." She smiled briefly. "Personally, I'd rather take it from the Spanish. Might discourage them from coming back."

"Sahale will like the Spanish idea," he said.

She stepped close to Cheveyo and slid an arm around his waist. He draped his arm over her shoulders. "Another point in its favor."

"Let's go find a Spanish scouting party, or bit of an army," he said, and kissed her. While she would have loved to have lingered, time was short, and on the way back to camp they explained what was going on and what they were doing.

By this time, a bunch of Spanish soldiers were easy targets. They appeared around them and then men died, bleeding out their lives. Only a few lived long enough to get their guns, and even those did not live long enough to fire a shot. They repeated the scene twice, and in the end had a tidy stockpile of food, enough to get at least a portion of the Arapaho through the next season and maybe the fall. The weapons of the Spanish were also left in the pile--guns, bullets, powder, knives.

And so it came to the afternoon before the shortest night of the year, watching the Arapaho camp from the west. There were more than a hundred Arapaho there now, many women and children. Nascha could hear a wailing child being comforted by a woman singing, the squeal and snort of horses picketed towards the center of the camp. The skinwalkers were there, everywhere they walked greeted like the heroes these people thought they were.

They did not see Adoeete, but Nascha had been watching him in the blanket. He was rarely alone any more; right now, she thought he was probably on his way back to the Apache from here. The Apache camp had moved recently, to be closer to the Arapaho. Nascha and her brothers had painted their faces with their patterns--Zotum's fangs, Otaktay's blood spatters, Pezi's stripes, Sahale's falcon eyes, Hakan's yellow and red flames, Cheveyo's white face with the red line, her own feathers. The painting had been done in grim silence. None of them liked what was about to happen.

All there was to do now was wait.

The first warning was the noise, a low humming from the west. They glanced over their shoulders and saw a dark cloud rolling over the landscape, coming toward them. The noise swiftly grew until it was deafening, as the first of the locusts flew past them.

Cheveyo stood as the sun was swallowed by the cloud, and a river of locusts washed around them. Hidden in the main cloud, they moved into the camp. They saw everything being eaten--food, clothing, the hide walls of the tents, the locusts landing on people and biting them. Horses, dogs, children, adults were screaming, the horses panicking and the people not far behind them.

Nobody was paying attention to the possibility of enemy warriors in their midst, as the people went to grab things only to find they had already been fouled by insects and drop them. People were scattering in all directions, picking up children and running. Skinwalkers came out of the tents, looking around wildly, and silently the spiritwalkers divided up targets between them. "Ituha," Nascha said. "Hakan, with me."

She had seen Ituha retreating, and followed. Hakan and she caught up with him at the center of the cloud; he had just stepped into spiritworld and was slapping at his face, not watching around him. Nascha and Hakan came at him from right angles, Nascha hitting him hard enough to knock him out of spiritworld and back into the cloud of locusts, Hakan following that up with a vicious hatchet to his side.

The locusts landed on and bumped into Nascha, but they did not bite her or her clothing, and her world narrowed down to nothing more than her ally and her opponent. Ituha was seasoned, far more than either Nascha or Hakan, and though both of them fought viciously, he was probably a match for the two of them under any circumstance but this.

But the man's scarred face was twisted in pain and panic, and as they opened up cuts on him and he returned the favor, Nascha saw with horror that the locusts were burrowing into the cuts, eating into him. Eating him alive. Lumps moved under his skin, wriggling.

Nascha was bleeding from numerous cuts, but the locusts ignored her. She and Hakan consulted silently with each other, looking for an opening. They found one, Hakan attacking low. Ituha lost track of Nascha for a moment, exposing his neck to her. Her knife swung, and bit deep.

The locusts followed her knife, and Ituha dropped to the ground, convulsing. Before the cloud of locusts hid him entirely, she saw the despair in his eyes flicker and die, and bloody foam on his lips. Hakan was grinning. "Done," Nascha said, triumphant. "Now, are there any more--"

Chogan's knife slashed across Hakan's throat.

Nascha almost screamed as she felt her connection to Hakan falter and then silence as shock dropped him next to Ituha's body. "As Cheveyo once said, blood for blood," Chogan said, his voice almost swallowed by the roar of the locusts. Without another pause, he swung into the attack.

Nascha was immediately in trouble. Chogan was good, almost as good as Ahiga, and more ruthless. She was on the defensive, Chogan not allowing even the smallest opening, slashing at her with relentlessly controlled motion. Nascha was not exactly at her best at the close.

I need help.

Silently, she cried, "I have Chogan here--he just killed Hakan, he's working on me!" She ducked another blow and received a stinging cut on her shoulder, a blow that had been aimed at her heart. She tumbled out of the way, but stumbled over an unseen obstacle and fell hard to the packed earth. She rolled as Chogan followed her down, and gasped as Otaktay and Zotum appeared in the same heartbeat, Zotum with teeth bared, looking feral. Cheveyo was just behind them now, and Chogan glanced over his shoulder, pulled the wolf skin up over his head, and disappeared into spiritworld.

She scrambled to her feet, seeing that Cheveyo was bleeding from a long gash on his right arm. "Do we follow? Who's left?" she asked.

"We have wounded, so do they," Cheveyo told her.

She took a sharp breath, and flinched as a locust landed briefly on her face. "Withdraw and regroup, then. I'd like to go looking and see where they gather."

He nodded. "Use the blanket, it's safer."

"True. Let's go." Pezi and Sahale arrived as Nascha bent to pick up Hakan's arms, feeling little but a stunned sort of rage. Sahale picked up Hakan's legs, and together they stepped into spiritworld. They had lost only Hakan. "How many of them did we kill?" Nascha asked Cheveyo as they walked a little way away and stepped back into the real, the place they had agreed to meet at if they had gotten separated. The blanket had been left here, and Nascha went to get it.

Cheveyo said, "Ituha, you killed, Kohana was killed by Otaktay. Nashashuk, I let live."

She glanced sharply at him. "Because I called?"

"In part, but Halian showed up right after Zotum left. Nashashuk, I thought I could finish, but Halian came too quickly."

"Ah. So they're down two, we're down one."

"Four of them to six of us." There wasn't the sense of triumph that Nascha almost expected in Cheveyo's voice. The day's work had killed far more than just skinwalkers. It had killed those who were innocent of anything but being deceived, and would probably kill more before the snow flew. "Find where the skinwalkers regrouped, and the rest of the band."

Nascha nodded, feeling suddenly tired, and turned her attention to the blanket. She looked at the camp, seeing that the locusts were beginning to move on. They left naked wickiups, skeletons of tent and human and horse, everything that had once held water hopelessly fouled. The fire at the center of the camp had died, smothered by the bodies of locusts. Anything that could be eaten had been.

The skinwalkers had gone to the great canyon, gathering in a cave. Adoeete was not with them, so it was merely three angry, grieving men, Chogan with his brow drawn and dark. The Arapaho had regrouped north of their former camp, wailing for the dead. They were less than half of their former numbers.

She emerged from the blanket, and let out a long breath. "Safe enough for the moment," she said. "Come here, Cheveyo, let me look at that cut on your arm." The slice was long and had bitten deeply in one place, but he would heal. She washed out the wound and bound it, hoping it would stop bleeding soon.

Both spiritwalkers and skinwalkers settled down for the evening, licking their wounds. The next morning, Nascha and her brothers went looking for materials to build a platform to post Hakan's body to the stars. When they were finished and had hauled Hakan's body up, Nascha stood under the platform, looking up. She didn't weep for Hakan, not yet. It wasn't time.

After, they went to deposit part of the store of food and weapons in the path of the Arapaho, who were now walking east. There were no signs of the skinwalkers; they had abandoned their own tribe. From the broken-hearted murmurs Nascha heard as she passed close by the tribe in spiritworld, they assumed they had all been killed by the locusts, an enemy that could not be fought, only fled from. It was unthinkable that they could have abandoned their own.

When the tribe came across the cache left for them, there were thanks raised to the great spirit for gifts in their trials. They left two more caches, watching over this tribe from spiritworld, making sure that nothing further happened to them, at least for the next few days. They couldn't keep an eye on them longer than that, but they could at least make sure that they didn't come to any more harm for a little while.

Nascha kept an eye on the skinwalkers with the blanket, seeing many silent and furious conversations between them, without a guess as to what they might be planning. And when the crows and vultures had picked Hakan's body clean, when it was time to burn the platform and what remained, then Nascha cried for Hakan.

He'd had a life to go back to, one day. If he hadn't become a spiritwalker, he would have become a shaman like his father. So Nascha grieved not only the man she had known, Hakan who had kept all of his words tightly guarded for fear of letting his rage get the better of him, but the man he might have been one day.

Four skinwalkers. Six active spiritwalkers.

This ends soon.

*****

Nascha woke to find that Cheveyo was not next to her.

She rolled over and sat up, rubbing her eyes. There he was, visible as the sky began to lighten, at the edge of their small camp. She murmured and got up, yawning and pulling on her shoes. It was the day after they had done Hakan's death ceremony.

Cheveyo heard her and turned, holding out one arm. She stepped into his embrace, leaning in to his warm body. Despite the fact it was summer now, the nights were still cold. "One more time to the arch, love," Cheveyo said. "Last time."

Fear slid cold fingers into her belly, but she smiled still, wryly. "After last time, I almost don't want to go."

"I hope it goes better than that." His arm tightened around her.

"Me, too." She turned and kissed him, lingeringly. "Well, let's go."

"Wish we had time for more," he said, but stepped into spiritworld. Nascha was close on his heels.

The arch was close in spiritworld, and when they stepped out before it, they saw that the stone pillar was gone. Nascha frowned. "That's new."

Cheveyo looked as if he couldn't decide whether or not this boded good or ill. "It is. I think someone is there." He inclined his head, and together they stepped into spiritworld.

It was not the spiritworld they were used to. It was somewhere else entirely.

There was nothing, nothing but white. The ground, the sky, even their clothing was a uniform, bleached white, an emptiness that was at the same time the most full place Nascha had ever been. Nascha felt disoriented, as if she were floating in space, and reached out for Cheveyo's hand. "Is anyone here?" she asked, uncertain.

"I am always here."

The voice came from all around them, one great voice emanating from everywhere. Cheveyo's hand tightened on hers. "The spirit of all," she said, breathing out. The full emptiness radiated agreement. "You know why we're here, then."

"I do. We have helped to stop the skinwalkers, and killed so many, but only one more will we help, the last three you kill on your own. It is the way of things, and the people."

Nascha felt small, very small indeed. "The last steps must be our own. I understand," she said. "So how will you help?"

"Knowledge. At sunset tonight, Adoeete will return to the Apache for the last time. Told by Chogan to come to their aid, he will heed the call. He will not want to, and be angry. He will throw his skins in pouch to carry and in frustration toss the pouch from his wickiup." The voice paused. "Do you see?"

"He'll be vulnerable," she said.

"He will not enter spiritworld without the skins. With his skins parted from him, he becomes an easy target to six that appear beside him."

"True," she said, thinking about Adoeete. As much as he had betrayed them, as much as their quarrel was well-deserved on both sides...it seemed a wretched wrong that it had come to this. She bowed her head slightly. "Then the last three, we find and kill on our own."

"The rest is up to you," the great voice agreed.

Cheveyo's hand was almost painfully tight on Nascha's. She looked up, into blinding whiteness. "As it was always meant to be. Thank you."

"Goodbye, spiritwalkers."

Nascha pulled on Cheveyo's hand, and together they stepped from spiritworld. Before them, the arch shimmered slightly and then fell silent, leaving an absence behind them. It feels like the gods have gone from this place, Nascha thought, looking around. It no longer felt sacred. "Well, we know where we need to be," she said.

"And what we have to do. Let's go back," Cheveyo said.

They did, and told the rest what was to happen. Then they waited, watching the sun drift across the sky. They spoke among themselves in short bursts, and as the afternoon wore on, they painted each other's faces.

Just before sunset, they gathered in the Apache camp. They saw Adoeete's wife leave their wickiup, his son trailing in her wake, looking angry. Adoeete's wife held her body stiffly. She looked as if she were trying not to cry.

And then, as the sun touched the horizon, a hide bag soared out of the open flap of the wickiup, to land with a scuffing sound in the dirt, rolling a little before it came to a stop. Nascha breathed in.

Time.

It had been agreed that Nascha would be the one to flicker in, grab the bag, and step back into spiritworld. She did so, and then in response to a word from Cheveyo all of them stepped forward and out.

They were ringing Adoeete in the wickiup, all of them, Cheveyo in front of the flap, Nascha to his right. Adoeete started when he saw them, and then Nascha saw the anger begin to burn in his eyes, bright as fever. He looked at Nascha, and saw her holding his bag. He glowered.

Cheveyo said, "We offer you honor. Step into spiritworld and none will know your betrayal."

"Betrayal," Adoeete said, his voice flat. "You nearly killed the tribe, everything we stand for. You gave me no choice. You could never see what's around you, just what was honorable." His voice had taken on a vicious edge. "Honor doesn't feed children."

"Neither does becoming something like Chogan, Adoeete," Nascha said.

The lean man turned to face her, and she saw the fever in his eyes flaring. "I would have thought you might understand why. But you are lost, just like them. What honor is there in watching a man die, his flesh melt from his bones? You didn't take his life, you tricked it out of him. There is no honor in that."

Nascha shook her head. "The white buffalo calf pipe knows who smokes it. If someone with no evil thoughts had smoked it, it would have done the opposite of harming him. You were too eager to take your prize to those who had no idea what its power was, and never stopped to ask."

"You are without honor too," Adoeete said. "I am sad for you, and your place in the world."

As Adoeete spoke, she saw a flicker of something other than anger on his face. Pity. "At least I do not have to take on the skin of a beast to walk spiritworld without those who reside there tearing me apart," she told him, shaking her head. "I've become what I needed to, done what was asked of me." Nascha paused, frowned. "I'm sorry, Adoeete. I never wanted to come into conflict with you."

Adoeete blinked, and it was as if the fever in him abruptly broke. "And I you." He looked around, seeing the faces of those who had once been his brothers. "My family?"

Cheveyo said, "You will have died in battle with Chogan, a spiritwalker to the end."

"We won't harm them," Nascha added.

The lean man's shoulders bowed, and he nodded. "You win, Cheveyo." He stepped forward, and into spiritworld.

"Follow him," Cheveyo said, and Nascha wasted no time in pushing through the barrier into spiritworld. She saw Adoeete standing, arms spread wide, his eyes closed. Misty forms flashed by her, and Adoeete was surrounded.

He did not cry out, not even when the spirits pulled him apart. Adoeete died silently, in a cloud of blood and mist.

Nascha's eyes were full of tears. "Do we go, or do we stay long enough to explain what's happened?" she asked Cheveyo.

"I think it won't be long until Chogan appears," he said, and glanced over his shoulder. "It is time."

A flicker to their right, and they turned. A wolf, an eagle, and a fox appeared before them. Nascha focused her eyes, saw the real men beneath the animal forms. "Chogan, Halian, and Nashashuk," she said quietly. A long moment of silence passed then, as the spiritwalkers and the skinwalkers looked at each other.

Then the skinwalkers dropped to the real world, and the spiritwalkers followed. Chogan shrugged the wolf skin back from his head and straightened. "It's time, you can sense it too," Chogan said without preamble. "We are three, you are six. We ask what Delsin received."

Death by combat. Nascha's mouth went dry. "If we give him that, they're all going to choose to fight me first," she said to Cheveyo.

Cheveyo gave Chogan a dark look. "No."

The skinwalker's eyes narrowed. "You fear for your woman. Only I will call her, neither of the other two will unless she is last left."

Nascha bristled at that, but she forced words past teeth that wanted only to grit together. "Do I have your word on that?"

His flat gaze flickered over her. "You do."

"I say we take it," she said silently, glancing at Cheveyo.

"I don't want to," he said. "But you have your own mind. I will agree only if the rest do."

Nascha glanced around, at her brothers. "He'll probably call me first, and he'll probably kill me. But I'll try to disable him before I die. I know you don't want to do this, but I think it may be our best chance at killing all of them."

"I know, but I don't want to lose you when I just found you." His voice was low and anguished.

She took a breath. "I know, and I don't want to lose you, either. But we knew our time together might be limited," she reminded him. Then she smiled. "I will do my best to survive him. You do your best, too."

"I will," he said. "So, all of you--do you agree?"

There were murmurs of assent all the way around, Otaktay's low rumble, Pezi's quiet but clear voice, Sahale's focused rage. Zotum looked at Cheveyo, and there was no laughter in his eyes. "She is spiritwalker. She knows what can happen. We don't grow old."

A look of deep sorrow crossed Cheveyo's face, and cold was threading Nascha's spine. He nodded to Chogan. "We agree."

Chogan nodded. "To the great canyon, away from here. You can choose the exact location."

"Nascha, somewhere they haven't been, if you would." Nascha nodded and stepped into spiritworld and away.

She reached the canyon and walked the edge of it for a little while, settling on a place where nobody but deer and wolves had been for some time. It was a good place, flat for some ways away from the canyon's edge, with little vegetation for cover. Where she was standing was about three spiritworld steps away from the rim. "Be sure to return Spider Woman's blanket before the winter comes," she told the rest. "I owe my birth tribe that much. Now, here. This is the place."

A moment later, spiritwalkers and skinwalkers arrived. Nashashuk was the first to walk to the center of the flat place. This was the one that had killed Delsin, a big man with a nose that looked like it had been smashed a few times in his life. He limped heavily; he was not yet recovered from the wounds that Zotum and Cheveyo had given him a few days before.

Nashashuk's eyes lingered on Nascha, but he pointed at last at Sahale. Whether he thought he had a chance against Sahale, Nascha had no idea, but to be sure the light-boned Sahale didn't look nearly as strong as he was. The battle was short; Sahale received a shallow blow across his stomach, but in return Nashashuk was hit in the chest and neck, almost at once, and fell with a bellow that was the last sound he ever made.

Two left.

Halian stepped forward. He cast appraising glances over the spiritwalkers, as if he were choosing which buffalo to cut from a herd. He was a man of middling height, and Nascha remembered the images Cheveyo had given her of how he fought. He was not the fastest of them, but he thought and calculated and never made a wasted move. He paused, now, and pointed at Pezi.

Pezi went out, stepping lightly. His strength, like Nascha's, lay in his speed. It had been enough to let him survive seasons and seasons as a spiritwalker.

It was not enough here.

From the moment the two started moving, it was evident that Pezi was not nearly as good on the close as Halian. The two of them came together in clash, broke apart, came together again. Neither man spoke, or made a sound other than breathing and grunts as blows connected.

Halian stretched out his body in an attack, and Pezi dodged, rolling, coming up behind Halian and swinging his hatchet into the other man's lower back, into the kidney area. It was a mortal wound, from the look of the blood, but Halian was not done yet. He stumbled, went to one knee, and as Pezi straightened Halian came up and around with a knife that had not been in his hand a moment before.

That knife opened Pezi's abdomen, and the spiritwalker's eyes went wide as blood spilled, his insides spilling out. He stopped. Glanced around sightlessly.

Fell to the ground, curled around the wound in his belly, fruitlessly trying to keep his intestines in with bloody hands.

Nascha's hands clenched, her nails digging into her palms, as she felt Pezi's connection to her falter and then die, as blood bubbled out of his mouth. He sighed and was still.

Halian was still standing, and his skin had taken on a gray tinge, the color of shock and approaching death. He raised his hand and pointed at Otaktay, who with silent fury took up his hatchet and dealt Halian a blow that almost cleaved his torso in two. The skinwalker fell with a cracking thud.

One left. Nascha tried to calm her heart, but it was beating so hard that she felt as though her whole body were ringing with it.

Chogan stepped forward, and the fever in his eyes burned bright as ever. There was a smile twisting his lips as he looked at Nascha. He raised one hand and pointed at her.

She swallowed, and stepped forward. Now in the moment, fear fell away. "I love you," she said silently to Cheveyo, bringing out her favorite knife.

"I love you," he told her, his silent voice urgent. "Listen to me."

She took a breath. "I will."

There was a moment before it began when everything was still, the space between heartbeats. Chogan was wielding a dagger, and with a flash drew it across his chest, from under the left breast to under the right. Nascha tried not to bristle; it was a ritual called first cut, meant to dishonor one's opponent by taking first blood away from them. The blood welled up in the cut, and Chogan smiled.

Nascha's eyes narrowed. Do not let him make you angry, she told herself fiercely. He knows it's a weakness. He probably saw the battle with Skah. Her knee twinged at the memory.

And then Chogan was in motion, and so was she.

He did not close with her right away, and when he did she immediately knew he was playing with her. He stalked her, lashing out and opening small cuts in her skin. She made a move to dodge and he anticipated, but instead of hitting her with the knife he cuffed her with his free hand, snorting.

Her pride prickled and she gritted her teeth as she recovered. She could see how Chogan wanted the battle to go. He would play with her until anger overpowered her good sense, and then he would kill her. Not swiftly. He wanted it to be slow and painful, and he wanted Cheveyo to watch.

Nascha took a tight grip on her anger and continued to circle.

Chogan came forward, in a position where it was impossible to tell where he was about to go next. "He will strike left, go under," Cheveyo's voice came, and without thought Nascha obeyed. Anticipating the strike put her in the possession of a small opening as she passed by the skinwalker's unprotected side, and she stabbed, her knife biting deeply. The blow missed the heart-opening but punctured between the two ribs below. Chogan grunted, more in surprise than in pain, and then spat blood.

She jumped away, seeing Chogan's face darken with anger. He came at her now, pressing her. There was no time for fear, only time enough to listen to Cheveyo as he called block points and openings for her, keeping her alive, keeping her up and fighting. Her quickness was her strength, and Chogan was tiring. The wound in his ribs was hurting him, she could tell.

Heartbeats went by.

"Block up, right forearm." "One step right, one back, and roll." "He'll come up with the blade in his left hand, be ready."

Every heartbeat she claimed was a victory.

At least I wore you down. At least my death will mean life for the others.

Chogan surged forward and vanished into spiritworld.

Cheveyo called, "Spiritworld, one right!" Nascha obeyed, pushing into spiritworld, taking a step to the right, and pushing back out.

Her opponent was standing with his back to her, and Nascha's body was committed to the blow before her mind even comprehended the opening. She came in with her knife, aiming for the place where his ribs ended, dropping low to place her body behind the blow. It connected, and she drove the blade upward into Chogan's back.

This time, the blade hit something vital, and Chogan gave a sharp cry that was partly of pain, partly of rage. She released the hilt as he dropped to his knees, freeing the hatchet that always rode at her hip. She stepped around the skinwalker, seeing the man before her, remembering the day when he had stolen everything from her.

Chogan choked. "You should not be able to win. What are you?"

Nascha was already in motion, her weapon moving smoothly. "An Apache," she said, and her hatchet came down.











*****

about two hundred years later


"That's all?"

The boy's mouth was open, and he stared at his grandfather. "That's where it ends? What happened next?"

The older man shrugged slightly. "That's where the weave ends. I assume Nascha wasn't interested in weaving the story of the rest of her and the other spiritwalkers' lives. It was a teaching weave, after all. Once she had put into it everything about what it means to be a spiritwalker, she was done."

"There has to be more," the boy insisted. "What happened after that? Were there other battles?"

Grandfather chuckled. "There are always battles, grandson. The Spanish came back, and the US Army got involved, and things went from bad to worse. There were no more spiritwalkers for a hundred years, and by the time new ones started being born, it was too late. The choice Nascha made did change everything, but not in ways any of them anticipated." He shifted, tightening his grip on his cane. "Many died, and the world changed."

The boy pressed his lips together, pondering. Finally, he asked, "What do you think happened?" He looked down at the weave that was lying spread out on the smooth wood floor in front of them.

"What might have happened...hm." Grandfather smiled. "Well, it might have been that Cheveyo and Nascha took some time to recover, after the last of the skinwalkers died. Maybe they took the time to have a child or three. But I think they remained spiritwalkers until their dying days, and the life of a spiritwalker is battle. They had three tribes to protect, after all, and there were only seven left including Aquene and Ahiga. My guess is the two of them died in battle, probably against odds that only a spiritwalker would take on. Then again, it's not much of a guess. It's how almost all spiritwalkers die."

His grandson turned this over in his mind, thinking about it. "That seems about right," he said.

"Good." Grandfather sat back, and smiled. "Now. Didn't you promise you'd bring in the horses if I told you the rest of the weave?"

The boy took a quick glance out the window and jumped to his feet. Without another word, he ran out of the room, and a moment later the screen door banged shut. "Always in such a rush," Grandfather muttered, and leaned forward to gather up the weave and fold it once again, this copy of a copy of a copy of a blanket made by the first female spiritwalker.

He paused as he felt something like a presence brush by him, and for a moment he could almost see her, a small woman with a fierce presence, her hair bound in braids, a stone-headed hatchet worn easily at her hip and a bow in her hand, her face painted with owl feathers. He almost saw her reach down to touch the weave, a look of concentration on her face.

Then he felt her smile, and brush by him as she turned and moved on.



Here ends Spiritwalkers.