teacher, for each was a protector of the other. And each one was each one’s brother. Though each was of a different clan, they were all bound up in the same quest. The initial words of instruction still hung in his ear. Nokusi had ordained it beyond the miko’s objection. This was their time together, like no other time in their lives. It was the sacred time in which boyhood’s inhibitions were shattered to bring on them the risks of the wider way of men.
It was like that with everything the old warrior had told them before his fire since they began meeting deep in the thicket. They had listened devoutly as he told them the unbreakable laws of the path, and to Otci the word held firm. The warriors at the head of the line and the rear of the line have the important roles, Bear told them. One directs; the other conceals. That is the entire movement: a joined, coordinated stealth through the great, dense thicket.
Nokusi would begin their warriors’ story with his own. If they could follow his path, then they would become warriors in spirit. Otci knew the council believed it. Nokusi told them how as a young man he led his warriors against the English along the Oconee River to the east. Once he led the French captain from Toulouse all the way around the English camp, only to find them gone and a slight wisp of smoke rising from an extinguished fire pit. Yet it was a feat for which he was given a new musket and powder canister. He had trailed the branches as his party advanced into the pine woodland country of the Choctaw west of the Tombigbee, and when he returned, his bow dangled with the hair locks of two victims. He taught making bows from the osage orange tree, arrows from the elm, and how to coat the flint heads with cloth and pitch to flame a stockade wall. He showed them how to cut the hair from the fallen enemy. He used the initiates’ leader and a stick to demonstrate how to cut it quickly and cleanly, and made each one practice on him until they knew it rhythmically.
He taught them other devices of the path: how to crawl though the cane to kill alligator, how to give the deer, turkey, eagle, and wounded bear call to lure them, how to carve out a deer head and wear it, and how to place the deer hide over their backs to crawl up to the banks where Idjo feeds on grass and shoot him. When hunting in the country of the Upper Muskogee or the Lower Muskogee and Seminole, they learned what to look for in trade to bring back to the miko as they bartered goods from their own river area: salt, dried fish, pigeons, and flint. These teachings of the gray-browed warrior stirred Otci. It was as if Bear was giving them the tools of life. The others, too, anticipated every instruction. He taught them that only this would bring them honor. To violate the laws of warriorhood, Otci knew, was to betray the man, and all that the nation kept sacrosanct, and to invite the rebuke of their fathers, along with the shame of their ancestors.
The sun now approached the treetops as he led them over the bluff to a narrow, nearly concealed trail that Pinili pointed out. It led off the main path to the village. It was getting late. They must advance in haste, for the old warrior does not smile upon late arrivals. He signaled them through the brush behind Pinili as the file crept in the hushed, deathly advance. The rhythmic rise and fall of their shoulders make their going one continuous, fluid movement, lunging in unison through the new green. He cautioned the hunter with a tap on the shoulder. He stepped off the trail toward the faint musical flow of a clear pebble-bottomed creek. They crossed the creek to the right side to avoid the spirits of unburied warriors killed in battle that pass along the left side, moving to broader, deeper rivers. It was a matter of reverence. He stepped carefully, skillfully, straining with his back and legs to obscure from any watchful eye their discovery by sight or sound. He crouched in stealth through the wet, yellow-green woodland maze.
Pinili pointed out the juniper grove that stood darkly in the thick cluster of trees before them. As they reached the first juniper tree, his right arm extended and caught the fragrant dripping branch. Looking down, Otci felt a soft moss bed beneath his foot and his tension eased. It would be a quiet path. He passed the branch back with his left hand to Katutci, who took it and gently swung it to Tumchuli, who ducked beneath it, and passing beneath it the line advanced without pause, snaking through the growth. In the teaching of the master, they moved as an animal, a fluid weave among branches and trunks that towered above them, each knowing that one deviant movement or noise could betray all of them. Otci felt secure about this way. Behind them crept Hobayi, trailing the cypress branch that pulled leaves over their footprints, obscuring forever from any woodland mind their brief, invisible journey through the thicket.
Otci peered through the dense growth at a sudden movement. Two raccoons washed in the creek. Without looking back he tapped Katutci on the shoulder and pointed out the black-cowled animals splashing in the water. As the initiates approached, the raccoons remained unbothered, unaware that the human procession was nearing them. Not wishing to startle them or set the birds off from their branches, Otci pointed to Pinili to take them over to the left. Katutci passed, and the rest followed. Only Lojutci paid attention to the animals. He looked over his shoulder at their round, gray-striped bodies with alert little ears shaking with each quick dip of their paws in the water. As he moved past them, he noted well their habits. The living embodiment of his ancestors, his Raccoon clan blood spirited him with the same cunning as these animals.
The line passed so noiselessly that only the softly scratching branch dragged by Hobayi caught their ear. The larger raccoon looked up and met the strange one’s cold eye directly. It stood in its hind legs. The other turned suddenly and saw the line passing through the green. They dashed across the creek, alerting Francis to the noise. Hobayi pushed him on with stiff arm. His hungry, flashing grin beamed at Francis, the light skinned one. There would not be many opportunities like that which would escape his killing arrow. They passed over the edge of the moss bed. Tumchuli whimpered as he stepped on a stick embedded in the soft cushion.
Creeping at a slower pace through the woods, Otci sought to find the large mulberry tree that was his sign. Before it Bear must be sitting, carefully laying the small sticks on the leaping flames of his fire pit. He reached forward and grabbed Pinili’s arm. He turned back around and stood up to where he could see the end of the line. The mulberry was only twenty steps beyond him. He turned to face Hobayi. Both hands at ear level gave them the sign to halt. He swept his arm leftward to swing them out along a line which would converge on the perimeter.
Then from behind came a loud rattle. A menacing low voice growled unseen from the trees, stiffening Otci’s neck in a cold flash. The animal anger then mounted instantly to a shrill, stuttering yelp, then almost musically to a protracted fierce and high-pitched howl. Otci turned in fright, ready to dodge blindly the attacker behind them. Illitci, the killer, solid as an oak in all tense moments, closed his jaw, set his eyes, lowering himself to one knee. Hobithli and Lojutci stood up and looked for a movement in the thick undergrowth. The panic of individual movements broke the order of the procession. Otci searched the trees in trepidation, unable to give a command. The air hung still, broken only by the call of the long-tailed mockingbird high in the branches. The expectancy of a clash coiled up in his legs like the bent spring of a trap, held in tension and set to fall on the prey which would trip it. Among the trees Otci turned quickly, narrowing his eyes to look through the mulberry growth into the clearing. There was no one there. Coldness ran through his temples. He clenched his fist in indecision.
“Look behind the asi bush, Otci,” a heavy voice spoke out of the stillness. “But it’s too late. I would have split your skull when you left the creek.”
They looked at the asi bush with the bright red berries. It rustled, and from it Bear slowly rose, his dark eyes heated to dark gleaming embers. Placing his huge hands on his hips, he glared at the line, moving his assailing eyes from Otci, paled, to the towering Halpada, who stared at his feet, to the pursed-lipped Illitci and Kunip, to Francis and Hobayi, who met his eye stoically.
Bear remained standing at his full height, far taller and more imposing than he had ever been among them. Otci felt his impatience and displeasure heated by their failure to put his teaching to the proper use he expected. The old warrior spoke to them with crisp authority.
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