“Her tree has taken her. It is time for us to go and leave her to it,” Jodoli announced.

And we did.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

TIDINGS

When we finally reached Lisana’s old lodge, Soldier’s Boy ate like a starved dog. He spoke not a word to the feeders who had awaited him there, keeping the food ready and the lodge fire burning. He left Olikea to deal with them, went to bed and slept for most of a day. He woke late in the night, got up to piss and drink some water, and then went right back to bed. The second time he awoke, it was daylight and his feeders were astir. They spoke softly to one another as they worked. He thought it might be late afternoon. He lay as still as a fox that has gone to earth and hopes to escape the hounds. He kept his eyes closed and listened to the sounds of the lodge around him, but gave no sign to anyone that he was awake. Every muscle and joint in his body ached. His back was a column of pain.

He did not move at all and breathed as slowly as if he were still sleeping. The bed was warm. His belly was still digesting. He turned his face into the pillow, his special pillow. It was stuffed with down but also contained sachets of cedar bark, dried forest flowers, and leaves. It smelled, I suddenly realized, like Lisana. He lay in her bed, in her lodge, breathing the fragrances that reminded him of her. He was trying to pretend that the sounds he heard were made by her as she moved about the lodge.

“Pretend as much as you like,” I said derisively. “She is gone, dead for all these many years. And you cannot reach her.”

My words shredded his dream of her. He could not regain it. He still did not move.

“Did Dasie’s death teach you nothing?” he thought at me. “When I die, they will take me to a tree. I will become one with the forest of ancients. And once again, Lisana and I will walk side by side.”

I laughed at him. “After all the ways you have failed, do you think the Specks will still honor you with a tree? You are a fool. You are as big a failure to your people as I was to mine. Look at the wreckage strewn behind you. Dasie is dead. Of the handsome young warriors who bravely followed you off to battle, a third did not return. And many of those who did come back are injured and demoralized. Likari has been taken for the dance and Olikea has lost her spirit. Kinrove sees you as his enemy, Jodoli as his incompetent rival for power. The fort at Gettys still stands and you have raised the hatred of the Gernians against the Specks to a boiling point. You have not only failed to improve things, you have made them worse. Next spring, when we return to the forests on the other side of the mountains, there will be no fur traders, but only soldiers waiting to kill you. No trade goods, Soldier’s Boy. No honey, no bright beads, no woven fabric. No tobacco. None for the People to smoke, and none for them to carry to the Trading Place. The long guns will point at the Specks, and all they will trade you are iron bullets for your lives.”

“Silence!” he hissed and struck at me. I made myself small and avoided the blow. I was getting better at dodging his attacks. Like a mosquito, I buzzed and sang in his ears, only to vanish when he angrily slapped the side of his head.

From my silent concealment, I watched in satisfaction. I had shredded his dream of Lisana and left him only cold reality to consider. I’d seeded his thoughts with all his failures. His stillness became a morose silence. For the first time since the raid on Gettys, he had stillness and time to think. He could no longer hide from his musings. Time and silence gave him nothing else to think about.

He reviewed the night of the battle over and over. He considered what he had done wrong, the situations he had failed to plan for, the instructions he had not given to his troops. Whenever I could impinge on his thoughts, I pushed my own memories at him: the sentry falling, his throat sliced. The wounded Specks squirming and crying out on the snowy earth after the ambush, and how he had ridden away. The soldiers who had died as they tried to escape the flaming barracks, slaughtered like cattle in a chute. I slid my thought across his like a knife blade across skin. “It was a cowardly way to kill soldiers. They had no chance to fight at all.”

He shouldered my thoughts aside. His tone was mocking as he said, “Do you still think war is a game, with rules and limits? No. War is killing the enemy. It wasn’t about a ‘fair fight’ or any of your strange ideas of honor and glory. Honor and glory! War is blood and death. It was about killing as many Gernians as we could and losing as few of our own as we could. It was about destroying a nest of vermin. Don’t try to make me feel guilty over exterminating the intruders. If you want to saw on my nerves, think instead about how I failed my troops. Chide me for what I should have done to save the warriors of the People. Rebuke me that the walls of Gettys still stand, not that fewer long guns would peer over the palisade at us.”