Read an Excerpt
The Wind Warrior
By Vella Munn FORGE BOOKS
Copyright © 1998 Vella Munn
All right reserved. ISBN: 0-312-86446-9
Chapter One
1809, near Point Concepcion, California territory. The wind tasted of morning. From where he crouched in the summer dry grasses, the Chumash warrior Black Wolf pulled clean, already hot air deep into his lungs and gave thanks to Sun Spirit for not deserting the land that had seen his birth and would, he prayed, once again belong to the People.
The distant sound of coyotes reached his ears, causing his nose to flare and his spine to stiffen. Xuxaw - coyote - cries meant many things, pleasure at a successful hunt, a male calling his mate to his side, aimless chatter.
And sometimes coyotes brought messages of death.
Every sense and muscle on the alert, Black Wolf took in his surroundings to assure himself that he shared the rise with no other humans. Then, teeth clenched against the pain in his side, he ran until his breath became labored. Stopping, he pressed his fingers against the discolored flesh that hid his broken ribs.
"Thank you, Wolf Spirit, for gifting me with strength," he whispered. "Thank you, God of the Moon, for putting magic in the shaman's hands so that I may continue my journey."
His prayer finished, he allowed himself a small smile. His wound had forced him to spend too many days waiting for strength to return, but now he could run again. If his spear had gone as deep as he believed it had, the hated leatherjacket who'd injured him would never again force himself on a Chumash woman. His only regret was that the man had lived.
Feeling a feathery tickle at the back of his ankle, he glanced down at a small, pale spider trying to climb over him. Instead of flicking the creature away, he waited for it to finish its journey and took its acceptance of his presence as proof that this was where he needed to be if the Chumash, his people, were to survive.
During his first venture out following his injury, a grizzly had stared at him with only a few hundred feet separating them, neither charging nor running away. In the massive beast's small, dark eyes, he'd read curiosity and courage but not anger; they were two creatures with the same heart, touched by the same soul. Black Wolf had asked that the grizzly's strength enter him.
Not sure whether the beast had been a true grizzly or a changing-shaman was, in part, why he was on this slight hill overlooking the horse and wagon trail that led to the mission the Spanish called La Purisima Concepcion de Maria Santisima. Today he walked with a grizzly's heart beating in his chest; no matter what happened by the time the sun ended its journey, he would not fear for his life.
As light melted the last of the shadows, he took in every nuance of his surroundings. According to the brave who'd been watching the mission, the wounded leatherjacket had been carried south to the Santa Barbara Presidio, accompanied by the leatherjackets' leader.
That left three leatherjackets at the mission, but Black Wolf knew it was only a matter of time before others, and their killing weapons, arrived.
Picking up his spear from where he'd laid it on the ground beside him, Black Wolf gripped it so tightly that his fingers threatened to cramp, then drove the elk bone tip into the dry earth.
Wolf Spirit! Fill me with your strength. Help me rid my ancestors' land of those who do not belong!
As he pulled his spear free, his gaze settled on the intricate network of scars on the back of his right forearm. He slowly traced the wolf's head outline, his thoughts going back to the day he'd put the fierce profile there with sharpened bone and ashes and belief.
After another prayer, he started toward El Camino Real, the trail the Spanish had made during their seemingly endless travels and came too close to sacred Humqaq where all Indian souls entered and left the earth.
When he reached the trail, he dug with his toes in the dust until he'd obliterated a section of the hated tracks. Ants had built their underground homes on the side, and if no one ever came this way again, eventually grasses would grow up through the ruts and the ants would have back their earth. Rabbits would once again build their homes on this spot. Deer would graze undisturbed, and the children of the Chumash would again play their games of shinny and peon. The spirits of the dead would be at peace, and he wouldn't need to have Wolf always at his side.
Standing with his head lifted, he turned in a slow circle while breathing in the scents of earth and ripening blackberries, dust, and what of the sea reached this far inland. He concentrated so intently that his heart pounded like a drum being beaten by a powerful shaman; still, he heard everything he needed to. The birds had come to life, coating the air with their countless songs. Even the buzzing insects were no match for the birds. High overhead he spotted a xuyaw - hawk. Like him, the hawk circled, but hawk was a hunter, not hunted.
Wolf, hear my prayer. I do not fear death. My life is nothing if my people are safe. But I have a son. If I am not there to show him the way to manhood, he will need you.
Thoughts of the child who had remained behind with his mother softened Black Wolf and for a moment nothing else mattered. For Fox Running, life was discovery and freedom; he didn't yet know what the enemy had stolen from the People.
I make you a promise, my son. When you know to remain silent, I will show you Humqaq and where the deer sleep, teach you to listen for Wolf's howling so Wolf's courage becomes yours. We will stand hand in hand, father and son, and I will prepare you to be a Chumash as my grandfather prepared me.
Would he? Or would he be dead and Fox Running a prisoner inside the too-solid mission walls? Without him, his son would have no one to fight with him against the padres who believed that the Catholic religion was the only way. Without Black Wolf and other Chumash warriors, Fox Running and the rest of the children would never learn how to touch the spirits of their ancestors, take wisdom from the star that didn't move and thus guided night journeys, never learn how the Chumash came into being.
A sound. Distant. Different. Instantly alert, he held his breath. It was a rumbling and yet more than that. Thudding. Groaning. Squeaking. Although he continued to listen for several more minutes, he already knew that wagons and horses or mules were heading his way.
By the time the procession came into view, Black Wolf had returned to the hill overlooking the trail and crouched in the grasses. Dust rose in a steady dark mist around the newcomers, reminding him of the way the endless and ageless sea looked as it ate its way up the shore. There was a rhythm to the sounds, and he might enjoy it if he didn't hate what it represented.
A finely dressed man on a lean, long horse rode at the head of the small group. The newcomer, tall and broad-shouldered, wore a large, plumed, silver helmet which caught the sun's rays and surely made his head sweat. That, like the black boots and silver spurs, tight fitting pants and stiff black jacket decorated with medals and ribbons made Black Wolf ask himself why anyone who lived to fight would burden himself with so many clothes when summer sucked all moisture from the ground?
He might not know much about the ways of what the Spaniards called soldiers but would always be leatherjackets to him, but only a man as full of himself as a buck in rut would dress in such finery for a long, hot trip. Maybe the others wouldn't obey him unless he presented himself as a powerful leader.
There were two wagons filled with belongings and driven by two leatherjackets who looked as if they had been left out in the sun to dry like discarded hide. The mules plodded with their heads down despite the men's attempts to hurry them. Maybe the Spanish were trying to reach La Purisima before the worst of the heat sapped them. If so, they wouldn't make it.
Although he wanted to turn his back on the sight, wanted to face the mountain Seneq and think about nothing except how clean and pure the peaks looked when winter's snow shielded them, Black Wolf forced himself to take in everything.
Not all were men.
The sight of two females compelled him to slip closer. If the leatherjackets had Indian women among them, he had no doubt of what they would be used for. This time he wouldn't stop until he'd spilled every drop of the men's blood; this time he wouldn't allow his anger and outrage to blind him to the need for caution.
No, he soon concluded. The women weren't prisoners. They rode handsome, strong horses adorned with ornate saddles and bridles. The heavier of the two was dressed in layers of black and gray with a dark cloth covering over her head. If the new corporal was uncomfortable in the heat, surely her suffering must be even worse.
Was she being forced to wear that thing? Unlike Chumash women who clothed themselves in short fringed buckskin skirts, this one's long, heavy skirt must touch the ground when she walked.
Continuing his study of her, he took in her bowed back, her hands gripping the reins and folded like those of the padres at prayer. She looked only at the ground as if afraid of her surroundings or so caught within her thoughts that she was unaware of anything else. If her horse hadn't continued to plod along, she would be as motionless as the dead. Despite the little he could see of her, he knew she wasn't young.
The other woman too had on a long skirt, but in a great many ways she was different. This one's loose white blouse left most of her arms bare and exposed her throat and neck. What he could see of her flesh was dark and smooth. She had nothing on her head except for a black mass of hair pulled off her neck and caught in a knot so thick it made him wonder if her hair reached below her waist. Even from here, he could tell she was young, no longer a child but not yet weighed down by life as his wife was.
This one seemed possessed of an endless curiosity about her surroundings because she turned her head first in one direction and then the other, taking in the world with the intensity of a newborn fox. Sometimes she stared down at the ground near her horse's feet; other times, she rose in the saddle and studied the horizon. He was too far away to know what was in her eyes, and yet he sensed she was trying to commit the land to memory.
She would have to do more than that if she intended to live here. She would need deep running strength to hunt and till the land, to draw water out of springs, to survive the hot summer and heavy rains of spring.
Without knowing why it should matter to him, he wondered what would happen to her if he took her into the mountains and forced her to stay there through winter storms. Would she cower where he placed her or die of exposure trying to escape? Would she understand what the wolves and coyotes said when they threw their voices into the air, or would she hate and fear sounds that were as familiar to him as his heart's beating?
What had brought the women here? Would they be followed by more?
Fighting the unwanted thought and accompanying emotion, he took careful note of the five. He had nearly killed one leatherjacket. The man had been carried away, accompanied by his corporal. Now three newcomers were retracing the earlier steps, maybe replacing those who had left. Three when before there had been two?
And Spanish women?
The enemy had passed from directly in front of him and would soon be out of sight. He would wait until there was no risk of being spotted and then follow them so he'd know whether they were heading for La Purisima or continuing north. Much as he wanted to get back to his people, his return would have to wait while he discovered whether the fat corporal had been replaced by someone even more committed to ridding the land of what Fathers Joseph and Patricio called wild Indians.
Wild Indians! No matter how many times he'd heard the padres and leatherjackets call his people that, he didn't understand. Wild was a grizzly, an elk, a deer, a cougar, a wolf. Just because the Chumash - some Chumash - refused to bend their backs to the work ordered by the missionaries and reject Sun and Moon, the spirits that dwell in whirlwinds, Humqaq, didn't mean they were animals.
Motionless, Black Wolf watched as step by dusty step, the plodding group pulled away from him. The prickling at his back caused by the sun briefly distracted him, but he could escape from the heat in a few minutes. For now -
The younger woman swiveled in her saddle and looked behind her. Back straight, she took in her surroundings until she was staring at where he was instead of down at the ground like the others. He knew she couldn't possibly see him because, like Wolf, he had learned how to remain hidden.
It didn't matter. It was time for her to comprehend that she didn't belong here. Feeling strong and fierce, he stood and revealed himself. He held aloft his spear, then aimed it at her. Although she started, her gaze remained locked on him. She neither cried out or motioned to the others.
Not understanding, he returned her study. (Continues...)
Excerpted from The Wind Warrior by Vella Munn Copyright © 1998 by Vella Munn . Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
