Read Online Zadayi Red by Caleb Fox - Free Book Online

too heavy, even with Su-Li at condor strength. They had no winding cloth and little meat to spare. Noney had fled from the village with no possessions but the clothes she wore.
    Since Su-Li was checking their back trail, Sunoya started gathering enough stones to give the body a light covering. She picked up rocks as big as she could manage with both hands and started making a mound on top of Noney. It was a terrible job, laying stones directly on her cousin’s body—Sunoya started with the feet and didn’t think about covering her face.
    In a few minutes she sat down to rest beside the sleeping child. Dahzi, the Hungry One, whimpered, and she held and rocked him. She looked across the rocky mountainside andfaced her own situation glumly. She wasn’t strong enough to build a mound high enough to protect Noney properly, and she didn’t have time. Inaj would come soon and find his daughter. He would be furious about her death, incensed at the desecration of her body. She looked at her cousin’s body and felt a shiver of helplessness.
    So she wrapped Dahzi tightly, set him in tall grasses, and went back to carrying what stones she could. As she worked, she got her mind clear about what she truly had to accomplish, only one task, a great one. Save the life of the boy child.
    To get it done, she, Su-Li, Dak, and Mother had to walk to the village of the Soco people and present Dahzi to his father.
    She looked up at the ridge top. They had to cross that ridge and several more ridges on a trail that was steep but easy to see. Then cross the Soco River and walk downstream to the village. Difficult, but she would do it. And receive a small additional blessing—she had spent her girlhood in the Soco village.
    She covered Noney’s bloody belly, glad to get it out of sight. She set stones on her breasts, and another one just below her neck.
    She stood up, panting, partly to get her eyes away from Noney, partly to catch her breath. She saw Su-Li gliding down toward her. She waited for him, arm extended.
    The instant he landed on Sunoya’s shoulder, Su-Li said, Time to get out of here. Inaj and four other men are coming up the trail.
    Sunoya packed Dak, lifted Dahzi into her arms, told Mother to come, and barked at Su-Li, “Do something.”
    He winged his way back down the trail.
    Sunoya took one last look around that awful place. Her eyes lingered on Noney’s young and beautiful face uncovered by rocks, eyes staring at the sun. Sunoya reached down and closed them.
    Then she scooped handfuls of gravel on Noney’s face and ran.

 

    10
     
    I naj’s mind was all rage at his renegade daughter—he refused even to think her name. He’d bet she intended to rendezvous nearby with the bastard who stuck a baby into her belly, the Soco—where else would the girl run?
    So he plunged upward in a huff, paying no attention to his men. Flee to the Socos, his own daughter!
    “Ow!”
    He threw a hand at whatever jabbed at his head. What the hell was that?
    He felt the outside corner of his right eyebrow and his finger came away bloody.
    “Ow!” Left eyebrow!
    Inaj hit at it, and swiveled his head in all directions.
    “Ow!” Now the top of his head.
    His men were chuckling, even his sons Wilu and Zanda.
    Inaj looked straight up and saw a blue jay fluttering in his face. He cuffed at it, and it dodged.
    “What the hell?!”
    The men were laughing out loud now.
    “Shut up! What is this damn thing doing?!”
    The blue jay whirled in midair and dive-bombed him.
    Inaj flailed the head of his spear at it and missed foolishly.
    The bird fastened on his nose with both claws and pecked fast and hard at his forehead.
    Inaj bellowed. Then he remembered he was a warrior and slapped his own nose. He nicked a feather out of the jay’s tail as it squirted off.
    “What in hell?” he shouted.
    The jay landed on the branch of a pine tree and gibed at him. “Shkrr,” it said, “shkrr.”
    “Bastard thinks he can make fun of me?” Inaj hurled his