JANISSARY PROJECT: Book IV
To Have a Heart of Steel
Prologue
The old man stooped through the low door leading into the longhouse. He smiled, watching the children play around the sacred-fire and remembered how his own mother used to bring him here on the cold or rainy days. She would sit and gossip with her many relatives while he and his brothers ran and screamed and raised hell.
Spotting his furs clad body as he arose to his full height, the children whooped and called for him to join them and tell them more about the Wolf of God. Their mothers and aunts hushed them and the men on the far side of the meeting house smiled and put their pipes away.
"O:tsi:Yu, adutsi," they called, The Eagle-Woman hears you, old uncle.
He nodded and smiled, rubbing arthritic hands over the swollen joints of his elbows trying to ease the sting of pain. The children made exclamations of worry.
"It will warm up soon," he said. A wry smile came over his daughter's face. "And probably rain."
He shrugged, folding his frail body into the place reserved for him due to his age and wisdom at the fire. Slowly, painfully, one joint at a time while every one sat in a deepening and respectful silence. The old man closed his eyes and wiped a tear that formed in the sagging left eye. A stroke almost took his life. It rendered him nearly useless to the things he loved, but it gifted him with something infinitely more precious. Now he told his stories to the children, and what is more precious than the smile of a child?
A story came to him. Not a good one, but a story from the deep mists of the People's past. Yet, this is one they needed to hear.
"In these hills between the Little Black River, once known as the Lehigh, the days in the Land of the Plenty-Corn People things are sweet. Time moves slowly, in one lazy, easy day after another and the
shon:gili:i were-beasts are no more." He paused, took his pipe from under the heavy deer skin robe he wore and the woman stretched out her hands for the honor of filling it. He allowed the woman to take it. His hands were so knotted and weak he could no longer do it himself.
She handed it back and he said gravely, "Thank you, daughter," noting it was the daughter of his sister's granddaughter, the Keeper of the Sacred-Fire. It was a very important position in these days of little sun and much cold.
This story was painful to recount. He puffed on his pipe and made an offering to the People of the Sun, and took a deep breath.
"Once, in the Long-Ago times, before the God came and delivered us of the power of the
yan:ki invaders, long before my mother's mother's mother's were born, there was a place of seething and grievous pain. A place so terrible -" He stopped, his eyes warning the mothers that this was one they might not yet want their children to hear, fearing it would give them bad nights.
A few stood and drew away with volubly protesting children out of the Kanonasioni
Wy:O:Ming, the longhouse of the Sacred Wolf.
"A place so terrible," he said in a trembling whisper, "that it destroyed the lives of all whom entered. It was a slave-house, one of so very many that once existed in the land. People were accused of crimes, not against other people, but against the State, for the government owned the very lives of the people." He shook his head in wonder. How could a man commit a crime against something that was only an invention of people? People, not the State, suffered from crime.
"These people were not taken there to make them better men and women, but because the old masters were often cruel, loving to bring pain to those who could not defend themselves. The people who were caged in these places often were worse after being freed than before they went in." He raised his hands and let them fall in a gesture of amazement. "So far as any can tell, that was the primary reason for these places called prisons.
"One young man had been there since his early days, before he was old enough to be taken in marriage by a woman. He was not yet thirty years of age. This man had been loyal to the dark god of the 'Stone, and his years in the place called 'prison' hardened him beyond hope and turned to stone anything resembling love. He resolved that from the time of his being freed he would serve the dark and grow in power. All he desired was vengeance."
Some of the children slipped to the edge of the crowd and crept away. He nodded. This is good, because not everyone is ready to hear the teachings of adulthood at the same time. They would grow, a little slower perhaps, but would be the better for it.
"His name was - No. I will not speak it." He waved away a chorus of groans. "He had been in this house of darkness for nine long years, locked in a small room. It was cold in winter, hot in summer, and never silent, for the building was crowded and the men there were in pain from being caged.
"It was vile. When he first entered men tried to use him as a Woman. And they died for it. Then came time for his release.
"He spat on all men, hated all women, even his own mother." He nodded at the wails of astonishment from the people. "She who loved him so much she refused to believe her son was guilty of anything but being young and vulnerable to the dictates of old man Grey, the
shon:gili. His first night home he took a knife and cut her throat while she slept, then bundled the corpse and threw it in a strip mine for Coyote to play with.
"He drove her 'car' to the Valley of Shadows, to the place he had been arrested. This was one in the afternoon on the thirty-first of October, the Day of the Dead.
"His lips brushed the witch's Stone, kissing it in reverence. He lay his head on its blood-blackened surface and awaited the dark lord. As the sun dropped behind the mountains and cold settled over his stiff body, he raised his head and took the knife out, the one he had used to kill and mutilate his own mother. As the night-sun arose full and red the man slashed through his arm and laughed as the bright scarlet of his own blood spattered over the 'Stone.
"Clouds wreathed the moon, and it looked down from this veil and smiled on its mother, the earth. Down a long beam of watery light rode Owl, his feathers as silent as he was deadly. The young man shuddered, pressing his face to the frozen earth.
"The Owl spoke well of this young man's loyalty and faster than the eye could follow, he raked his claws across the man's chest, marking him with the Sign of the Owl, making him a
shon:gili, a Hunter of the Dark. Wisely, Owl did not bestow on him the ultimate power, to change his shape to that of the
utgo:gili, the dog that is unclean, a werewolf."
Shivers ran across the children's skin. Several rubbed their chests and winced.
"'You will go,' the Owl told him. 'You will Hunt for me.'"
"'Who do I Hunt, Master?' he whispered. 'Do I roam these forests and track the unwary man or woman to feed you with?'
"For a long time, Owl was silent. The man began to tremble and wonder if he had been wise to come.
"'The Wolf Bitch's child yet lives,' the Owl told him, his voice bitter and wrathful. 'You will find the boy and kill him for me. Bring me the corpse of Benny Waya Grey, little one, and I will make you lord of all the Earth.'
Owl faded into the shadows. The new Hunter let a cold smile cross his face. He rubbed his hand over his chest through the slashes and shredded clothing and smeared the blood. He raised his hand and licked the blood from it, his eyes vague and dream-like in his adoration and lust.
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