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dwell and harden and grow. It was a cold and pitiless ire, colored by the blood of his murdered grandfather, drummed to a fervor by the thump of River Woman’s axe upon the body of the beaten Raider. It sickened Shadow’s paunch, but stung his limbs with strength, and he embraced it here in the Red Canyon of his birth, and gave it shelter, and made its medicine his own.
    Black Horn had mounted his horse and struggled past the screaming women and children pouring into the canyon for protection. From below in the canyon, and over the rim above, the sound of battle cries mounted as the warriors of the Burnt Meat People regrouped after the surprise attack and prepared their resistance.
    The Northern Raiders, it seemed, had planned their attack well, waiting until the long line of people was half in and half out of the canyon before loosing their arrows. But the party of Raiders did not seem large, or else the entire band of Burnt Meat People might have been pinned down and slaughtered. Even in his lack of experience, Shadow surmised that the attacking force was nothing more than a small hunting party that had stumbled upon the True Humans and planned a quick ambush, hoping to get away with some scalps, or maybe a horse.
    Remembering what his uncle had said, Shadow reached for the knife dropped by the Raider his mother was now preparing for an eternity of agony in the Shadow Land. The knife was made of iron, a thing Shadow had seen only once before on an arrow point for which his father had traded a horse among the Raccoon-Eyed People of the plains. He grabbed this knife of iron and scaled the canyon wall to the place where the enemy warrior had fallen with Black Horn’s arrow in his head.
    Here, on the canyon rim, the boy could see everything. The warrior with the arrow in his head was still, but breathing, his eyes closed, instead of open in the death stare. The brown pony below had died, and Shadow’s mother had stopped beating the corpse of the enemy to wail her song of mourning and pull at her hair over the body of old Wounded Bear. Shadow’s baby sister, Mouse, was still staring at him silently, the dog pulling her cradle board standing obediently, panting, the whites of his eyes showing as they rolled suspiciously in his head.
    Some warriors of the Burnt Meat People were attempting to climb out of the canyon, but so many people were blocking the narrow trail that the men could not make their way to the top. The few young warriors who had been walking near the end of the moving band were now gathering on the high ground above the chasm for an attack, but none owned a horse.
    Some distance away to the north, the Raider who had been hit in the jaw by Black Horn’s axe was being carried away by four other Raiders, and it seemed to Shadow that these five were all that were left of the ambush party.
    Black Horn was across the chasm from Shadow, mounted, his bow in one hand, his lance in the other. He had dropped his reins, for his pony had been trained to react to pressure from the rider’s knees. The boy knew his uncle would not wait for the young warriors on foot, but would gallop after the Northern Raiders and kill as many as he could before falling. Black Horn was a warrior who boasted often that he would die young in battle.
    Now a powerful war cry pierced the sounds of moaning and crying in the canyon, and Black Horn’s mount raised red dust. The enemy Raiders, not so far away that Shadow could not see them individually, laid their wounded companion down, formed a line, and prepared their bows and arrows. To Shadow’s surprise, even the warrior who had been wounded in the face with the axe pulled himself to his knees and reached for an arrow from his quiver.
    The enemy warriors had been foolish to ambush a party so much larger than their own, Shadow thought. They would be ridden down by Black Horn, who could keep them busy until his friends could arrive and finish them. Shadow could see