Coming of the Storm: Book One of Contact: The Battle for America (3) - Softcover

Gear, W. Michael; O'Neal Gear, Kathleen

4.24

879 ratings by Goodreads

9781439153918: Coming of the Storm: Book One of Contact: The Battle for America (3)

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1439153914 ISBN 13: 9781439153918

Publisher: Pocket Books, 2010

View all copies of this ISBN edition:

Discover the first in the epic trilogy by New York Times bestselling authors W. Michael Gear and Kathleen O'Neal Gear (Sun Born, Morning River), which vividly recounts the devastating clash of cultures that occurs when Native Americans and Europeans make first contact.

The pale, bearded newcomers who call themselves “Kristianos” fascinate Black Shell, an exiled Chickasaw trader, and not even the counsel of Pearl Hand, the beautiful, extraordinary woman who has consented to be his mate, can dissuade him from interacting with them. Only after a firsthand lesson in Kristiano brutality does Black Shell fully comprehend the dangers these invaders pose to his people’s way of life.

While his first instinct is to run far from the then, Black Shell has been called to a greater destiny by the Spirit Being known as Horned Serpent. With Pearl Hand by his side, Black Shell must find a way to unite the disparate tribes and settlements of his native land and overcome the merciless armies of the man called Hernando de Soto.

Using archeological data, ethnographic records, and historical journals, the authors bring to vivid life the beliefs, technologies, and daily experiences of lost American civilizations.

"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.

About the Author:

W. Michael Gear and Kathleen O’Neal Gear are the New York Times bestselling authors of Coming of the Storm, Fire the Sky, and A Searing Wind in the Contact: Battle for America series, as well as more than fifty international bestsellers. In addition to writing both fiction and nonfiction together and separately, the Gears operate an anthropological research company, Wind River Archaeological Consultants, and raise buffalo on their ranch in northern Wyoming. Visit their informative website and read their blog at Gear-Gear.com.

One

I am Black Shell, of the Chief Clan, of the Hickory Moiety, of the Chicaza Nation. But then, truth be told, ten long years have passed since I ventured out from my people. You see, in their eyes I am akeohoosa. It means "dead and lost" in the Mos'kogee tongue. A more precise term would be "outcast." When I was driven from my country long ago, I thought it a divinely bitter irony. The notion of being akeohoosa would have killed a lesser man. At least, that's what I tell myself. It has killed others, generally from despair, loneliness, and guilt.

My people, the Chicaza, have fostered the myth that they are somehow superior, that they hold themselves to a higher standard. Such notions have served them well. By cultivating a code of honor, piety, and nobility, they have had fewer scruples about conquest or manufacturing a reason for war over some perceived slight or insult.

Only when I was finally an outsider did I gain any understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of such a system. You see, most other nations don't like the Chicaza. They think we're rather prickly and arrogant prudes. At the same time, people fear us because the only thing the Chicaza do better than preening, slapping each other on the back, and lying about our innate superiority, is make war. No one takes warfare with the Chicaza lightly.

That curious mixture of awe and dislike has served me well during my years as an akeohoosa. I'm not fond of my people, either.

That fateful day when all the trouble started, I heard the voice of Horned Serpent. It was that terrible Spirit Being -- the great winged snake who flies up into the summer sky -- who told me to run from my first battle. My clan called me a liar when I insisted that Horned Serpent spoke to me. Since the day I was banished, anger has run along my veins like hot liquid. It has spurred me in my wanderings.

What does an exile do? If he's of the Chicaza's Chief Clan -- as I am -- he trades and gambles. The things I trade consist of luxury goods: pieces of precious copper; polished white shell; buffalo wool, medicine herbs and Spirit plants; brightly colored feathers, and unusual carvings or artwork.

As to gambling, I have a facility for games like stickball, chunkey, or akbatle. In addition to those skills, much of my life has been dedicated to mastering the bow. Warriors -- no matter what their nation -- are a proud lot and more than willing to wager just about anything on their ability to drive an arrow through the mouth of a narrow-necked jar at twenty paces. Their temptation really rises when the challenger is a rootless foreign braggart like me.

I travel with five pack dogs. A trader's dogs must be large, sturdy, and sure-footed. Over the years dogs have come and gone, but the ones I traveled south with were among the best I'd ever owned.

My favorite -- and most beloved -- was Fetch. He was more than just a dog, having a partly human soul. He kept my spirits up when things turned miserable. His greatest joy in life came from retrieving thrown sticks, hide balls, or even rocks. He'd been with me for eight long summers, and a better companion you will not find.

Skipper, another of my dogs, was named for his curious sideways gait, his butt traveling a hand's width to the right of his front as he trotted. He was light brown with short hair and an oddly blue left eye.

Bark, well, his name says it all. At command, he'd stay silent, mostly, but if one of the other dogs stole something from him, he'd just plop on his rear and bark his fool head off in indignation. He was charcoal black, with a thick head decorated by old scars. Bark had another talent: When it came to a dog fight, he was terror unleashed.

Squirm? He liked to wiggle out of his packs and had made a study of how to do it without me noticing. I swore he had extra joints in his legs and spine. His long hair was dark brown and sleek, serving to accent the white blaze on his face and the milky bib on his chest.

Gnaw no longer lived up to his name, but as a puppy, several times he almost ended up as stew after chewing off sections of pack leather. He was the fastest and strongest of my dogs. Consequently he carried the heaviest pack. I thought of him as a huge gray monster of a dog -- the image only sullied by the cute white tip on his tail.

For several years my path had taken me south, away from the civilized lands of the Mos'kogee and the other great nations. It led me to the Apalachee, who first conjured my curiosity about the bearded and pale sea peoples. While at Apalachee, I visited the place they call Aute. There I saw with my own eyes the bleached skulls of great and terrifying animals larger than elk. Upon these are said to ride the mysterious hair-faced men from the sea.

Eleven winters past, the invaders -- calling themselves Kristianos -- arrived from the south under the leadership of their chief, Narvaez. The Apalachee had nothing but disdain for the Kristianos, having watched them struggle through the coastal swamps and tidal flats, sick and starving in a land of plenty. In the end the Kristianos built rafts, ate their great beasts, and floated down to the gulf. After that, they simply vanished into the sea.

I had walked among their curious constructions at Aute, and saw the great wooden crosses they hung in the trees. I viewed with awe the mysterious metal left behind, and held pieces of their cloth. I wondered at the remarkable, many-colored beads they had traded off during their stay. My curiosity grew with each new discovery.

The mikko -- as the Apalachee call their high chief -- is named Cafakke, or Great Soil. He has a Kristiano skull in his palace at the capital city of Anhaica. I've held it, studied the narrow bones of the face and nose, and wondered at the man whose souls once resided inside that fragile bone. It was then I decided to follow out the source of the legend. For -- fool that I was -- I anticipated making a fortune in trade if only I could obtain a sample of their goods. The great chiefs in the north would barter fabulous wealth for such exotic oddities.

I need not bore you with the story of my route down through the Timucua lands, my time trading among the Uzachile towns, or the trouble I had with the holata, or chief, at Ocale town. In a sense this story begins one late afternoon when I approached White Bird Lake town. For those who have never traveled that way, it is a land of pine forests, occasional hardwoods, and palmettos. Open areas -- sometimes cleared by wildfires -- are lush in grass and the soils are sandy enough for the cornfields to produce. Settlements tend to be inland from either coast, away from the threat of storms, though occasional great tempests do flatten areas of forest as they roar across the peninsula from one body of water to another.

The peninsular people are warlike, as ready to fight with their cousins a half day's walk away as with the Calusa and Tequesta to the south or the Uzita to the west. Most of their towns are built around one or two low mounds that serve as supports for the chief's house, charnel house, or perhaps a temple. A log fortification is usually thrown up on an earthen embankment around the town's perimeter -- just enough to allow the defenders to shoot between the gaps.

When I say the people are warlike, it's not like among the great nations of the north, where trained armies are unleashed by a slighted minko over some perceived insult. Instead these villages and towns are in a state of constant intermittent raiding.

At times, however, some war chief -- called a paracusi in the Southern Timucua tongue -- will manage to defeat enough of his neighbors to create a loose sort of nation relying on tribute from conquered towns. Such chieftainships -- if you can even call them that -- are fragile, easily sundered, and generally in a constant state of flux. They rise and fall based upon the charisma and cunning of individual leaders.

Such was the case with a fellow by the name of Irriparacoxi, a newly risen leader among the mostly disorganized Southern Timucua villages.

When a man is made chief in these lands, he takes the name of the town where he rules. Thus, a man might be named Red Hawk, but he will be called Holata Ahocalaquen, or Chief Ahocalaquen, from the moment he is confirmed. I thought it was confusing, but that was how the Timucua did things.

Irriparacoxi, which would translate as something like "high war councilor and combat chief," had subjugated most of the towns south of Ocale territory and north of the Calusa and Tequesta. Controlling such a large block of land, he was happily earning tribute from his subject towns and -- more important as far as I was concerned -- very taken with himself. Like the puffer fish of the seas, petty chiefs can blow themselves up beyond their true importance and greatness.

Remember, I was born and raised Chicaza. I know all about created self-importance.

That day I was walking at the head of my pack dogs, my trader's staff in hand. The trail was wide, well-trodden, with palmettos, pines, and oaks on either side. Spring was in full flower, the air almost muggy. An afternoon sun was squatting in the western sky -- the southeastern breeze perfectly scented with honeysuckle, gallberry, phlox, and firebush, all in bloom. The very air seemed to buzz and vibrate with the hum of insects.

Overhead, flocks of herons were winging north, their trilling hoots floating down over the land. Mockingbirds called in lilting voices from the brush. I could see an osprey circling over a marsh off to the west. I took a deep breath, and the damp musk of vegetation and rich soil filled my nostrils.

The pack dogs heard her first, pricking their ears, tails rising as they inspected the brush off to the side. Then low growls broke out as the woman raised her head from where she used a sharpened clamshell to cut palmetto fronds.

At my hand sign, the dogs went quiet, panting as they watched the woman. Squirm tried, as usual, to shake his way out of his pack. ...

"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.