Free Copper Falcon by W. Michael Gear

AD 1050, on the river that would one day be called the Mississippi …
    The way he stood tall in the war canoe’s bow, he might have been a conquering hero. The world knew him as Red Mask, high chief of Copper Falcon Town, a lineage elder of the Four Winds Clan. I called him Father.
    His cardinal-feather cloak was thrown back over his shoulders and ruffled in the breeze. Sunlight glinted on the copper pin that held his gray-streaked hair in a tight warrior’s bun atop his head. The flat planes of his tattooed face accented his hawkish nose. His wide mouth now fixed itself in anticipation as the canoe raced across the wide Father Water.
    My father was beloved by our people and feared by our enemies. His mere entry into the Council House back home brought smiles to lips, a sparkle to the eyes of those in attendance.
    To me, however, my father remained a perplexing enigma full of contradictions: a man of well-kept secrets, anger, festering resentment, indomitable courage, and that rarest of traits: a charisma that brought men and women flocking to his various causes.
    Not even our recent military defeats at the hands of the T’so barbarians had dimmed that luster. Just the opposite. The council had voted to send Father back to Cahokia after all these years. His mission? To persuade his cousin, High Chief Green Chunkey of the Horned Serpent House, to send a squadron of warriors to bolster the defense of Copper Falcon Town against continued T’so depredations. Just a quick in-and-out, all done without alerting the rulers of Cahokia that we were there.
    I was a bit hazy about why the last was so important. It had been many years since my father’s banishment. He had left Cahokia having barely turned twenty, my age, and was now into his fifties. After so many years, the Morning Star—the reincarnated god who ruled Cahokia—shouldn’t have cared. We sent tribute to the living god every year. Nor did we care what went on among Cahokia’s ruling Houses. Our concern was finding a way to deal with the T’so.
    For me, despite the risks, the trip was a dream turned real. All of my life I had listened to talk of magical Cahokia. The center of the world, Cahokia was fabled to be the greatest city on earth. I’d seen the wistful look in Father’s eyes, heard the longing in his voice when he spoke of it.
    He never discussed why he’d been exiled, or why he’d been given the task of establishing Copper Falcon Town in the distant and hostile lands of the T’so barbarians. Those were some of his most perplexing secrets. On the few occasions when I’d twisted up the courage to ask, his eyes had narrowed to slits, and the muscles in his wide jaw had knotted: Father’s signs that further discussion was forbidden.
    Closed-mouthed my father might have been. But I knew leaving Cahokia had cost him something terrible in dreams, pain, and soul. The staggering sense of loss was always there, hidden just far enough below the surface that its faint reflection lay in his dark eyes, in the shadow of his wistful smile.
    Possessed by anticipation and worry, I bent my back to the paddle, calling cadence to our twenty warriors. Pointed paddles drove deep into the murky river, propelling us forward with water slapping at the bow.
    Nothing had prepared me for Cahokia’s packed canoe landing. Behind us, the high western bluffs were dominated by Evening Star City, a sprawling conglomeration of tall temples, spirit poles, and palaces like I’d never dreamed of. Before us on the river’s eastern bank were hundreds of beached vessels and countless ramadas and stands thronging with busy people. Rising from the levee behind them—dense with high-peaked thatch-roofed buildings for as far as the eye could see—lay River Mounds City. Our warriors muttered in disbelief. I just gaped in foolish amazement.
    But not Father. He maintained his stance, his cardinal-feather cloak billowing, his old, scarred war club hung crossways in his hands as the canoe raced