Goose stayed in the midst of the crowd, prowling back and forth within the open space at its heart like a captive jaguar patrolling its cage. Every so often she would call out, although her voice was lower and her words more measured than the other women’s. She seemed almost subdued in comparison, as though her anger, having burned more intensely than the others’, was already starting to exhaust itself. Only once did she appear to give way to the hysteria that surrounded her: when a shrill voice near the back of the crowd suddenly cried out: ‘There’s one! Look, over there!’
We all stopped. I could not turn without dropping my corner of Star’s mat but I could twist my head around, as did the other three men. It was hard to see exactly what was happening through the press of bodies behind us but at least two of the women had broken away, bearing torches, and were running back towards whatever it was one of them had seen. A moment later somebody pushed past me: it was Goose, racing to join in the pursuit, skirts flying, torch waving and spitting sparks, voice raised as she strove to make herself heard over the other women’s screams.
The cries diminished with distance. A strange stillness descended over those of us who remained, as heads were turned and necks craned in an effort to follow the drama unfolding behind us. I could not see what the women were chasing. Then they vanished around a corner.
There was a brief pause. I turned to look at Handy, Spotted Eagle and Flower Gatherer. All four of us were frowning in puzzlement, as we tried to work out what had happened, and whom the women had seen: a sorcerer, a warrior, or some poor innocent engaged on business of his own, who had just happened to find himself in the wrong place at the wrong time. Around us, female voices began muttering and growling.
‘We’d better put her down for a moment,’ Handy said. ‘We don’t know what’s going on.’
‘I’m not sure I want to,’ I replied as I lowered my corner of the mat. ‘Whatever it is, it won’t be pretty!’
There came a shout from somewhere out of sight, followed by a high-pitched, quivering cry: a triumphant sound, which was rapidly picked up and amplified by the crowd until the air seemed saturated by unearthly shrieks. I cringed, and with both hands now free I clapped them over my ears. The cries told me that the hunters, Goose and her followers, had caught something, and I shuddered at the thought of what they might be capable of in their fury.
There was a disturbance in the crowd and then Star’s sister was beside me. Her face was flushed and the torchlight made the beads of sweat on her forehead gleam.
‘Here!’ she cried, and threw something at my feet.
Handy, the other two men and I looked at it with a mixture of wonder and slowly gathering shock.
‘We chased him over a wall. He just about made it, but one of the girls caught hold of this.’
‘I nearly pulled him back, but the cloth tore first.’ The other woman was panting, forcing the words out between deep gasps. ‘Lucky for him!’
The thing on the ground in front of me was a scrap of cloth: carmine-coloured, with a strip of orange along its hemmed edge and part of an emblem that had been destroyed when it was torn. It was a design I knew: the wind jewel.
The cloth had been torn from a cloak. The cloak had been of the kind awarded to a three-captive warrior.
‘Red Macaw,’ Handy spat. ‘He won’t give up, will he?’
10
‘I think there were two of them,’ Goose said.
‘I thought so too.’ The woman who claimed to have caught the man and torn his cloak looked over her shoulder with her teeth bared in a feral expression. She was young with large, dark eyes and might have been pretty on any other night. ‘There was definitely something else out there.’
‘“Something”?’ Spotted Eagle echoed weakly. He looked around at the other men, his eyes wide with terror. ‘What did she mean, “something”?’
There was no hint of fear in the young woman’s voice when she replied, but only rage as she spat the words out. ‘I don’t know what I saw. Something moving. Not a man, it was too tall. Too big and slow to be an animal, though. And no face – I didn’t see a face. Whatever it was it was up to no good, I’m sure of that.’
‘Not a man, and not an animal either.’ I repeated, suppressing a shudder. ‘You think it was a demon?’
‘Or a sorcerer: a man with two souls, in the form he cloaks himself in at night.’ The young woman’s words brought a gasp from her hearers. Everyone feared the creatures of the night: owls, raccoons, badgers, all were dreaded as portents of death for anyone who came across them. Worse, some of these animals were thought to be not what they seemed, but sorcerers: men and women endowed with a second soul that enabled them to change themselves into animals and go abroad in the darkness to work mischief. Such mischief, I realised, might well include stealing a dead woman’s forearm to use as a charm.
‘It was a sorcerer,’ Goose put in firmly. ‘They were lying in wait for us. Look, we’re practically at the crossroads.’
I looked around me, peering between the women in an effort to make out
