But Pétant was undoubtedly enjoying the night with his new bride. Nicholas smiled at the once impossible notion of Opichi and Pétant together as man and wife. In the end, it all made perfect sense. The robin and the bear belonged together. If this was such, why could he not make a life with Katari?
He then thought about Mingan, the Grey Wolf, and the other warriors who were actively seeking her; to find her and take her home to her worried family. Nicholas realized now, that Katari was daughter of a tribal chief and a revered medicine woman. They would not accept a rough and low-bred Coureur de bois into their daughter’s life. Katari was certainly destined to wed a highly ranked warrior. Not a guttersnipe.
When the serving girl swayed by suggestively, Nicholas signaled for her to serve him another mug of ale. It was sure to be a long night. He was determined to stay away from the little rented house until the light of morning broke upon the settlement. Then, he would purchase the necessary provisions and set out to deliver Katari to her people. There was no sense in any more delay.
Again the buxom server approached, but without his requested drink. He quickly saw that her face was drawn with concern and confusion, and not with a sly lust for a tumble and coin.
“What is it?” he questioned in a low voice.
“Are you the marksman who goes with the red-headed bear man?” she asked.
“Yes,” he answered with growing worry.
“I was instructed to tell you that there were men here looking for him earlier. And for the little Indian squaw. They were not good men, and the inn’s owner does not want them here to wreak their havoc. It is bad for business during Handelstijd. And so he would bid you leave now, as well.”
Nicholas was already off and moving out into the night.
~~~~~
He ran through the dark streets as swiftly as he could, weaving around any obstacles that he encountered. His mind whirled relentlessly as he jumped over a drunken couple sitting on a corner, the woman with her skirts up above her knees.
The only men who would seek both Pétant and Opichi together would be the ones intent on obtaining revenge of a certain kind, and specifically for the events that transpired at the spring brigade encampment on Lake Seneca. And Le Tousse’s brand of retribution would only end in the death of Pétant and the kidnap and abuse of Opichi.
As he ran, Nicholas turned options over in his mind. There weren’t many. Sprint to the Fort Orange garrison and obtain the aid of the soldiers within, or hurry toward the unsuspecting newlyweds in the hopes that they had not yet been found out? Was Katari safe? Had Le Tousse also discovered where Nicholas was housed with Katari?
Katari. He veered off of his current course and in the direction of the room they shared. He had to make sure she was unharmed. He would not let anything happen to her. Nicholas blew into the room like a gale-force, causing a sleeping Katari to fly awake with a scream.
“Nicholas?”
“Stay here, Katari,” he commanded, relieved to find her untouched. “We are all in grave danger here. I will be back as soon as I can retrieve Pétant and Opichi. Then we will ride out. Tonight.” He grabbed up his flintlock, as well as a dagger. He did not know how many men Le Tousse would have with him, or how they would be armed.
“Pack your things, Katari, and I will be back for you shortly. Bar the door when I leave. And be ready.”
In a flash, he was gone again, still breathing lightly through his nose, although his heart was racing. Katari had not been discovered, and she was unharmed. Now he would continue on to check Pétant and Opichi. As he approached their room, about three alleys away from Katari, he could see at once that things were very wrong. The door hung ajar, and flickering lights fell from within. He heard a woman cry out. It was cut unnaturally short.
Blood rage descended upon him, but he slowed his pace and drew his weapon. He heard the angry bellow of Pétant and a fist connect with flesh. He hoped that it was his friend’s massive fist doing the beating.
When Nicholas peered around the doorframe, he saw very quickly that the situation was grim. There were four large-bodied men in the room. Three of them were attacking Pétant at once, and the giant was taking damage judging by the blood gushing from his flared nostrils.
Nicholas recognized Le Tousse’s pock-marked face in the opposite corner. He had Opichi by the throat and hair, and was pulling at her clothes as she thrashed. Her mouth was bloodied as well.
Four men. He had to make a decision, and rapidly. When the black-haired one drew a knife to Pétant’s throat as the others held him down, Nick raised his flintlock and fired. Smoke filled the small room. The next few moments were chaos, with men spilling out of the house and into the street with him. Suddenly, he was face to face with a snarling, knife-wielding, and thoroughly irate Pierre Le Tousse.
~~~~~
Had Nicholas gone mad to think that she could sit and wait for him? Katari packed up their belongings as swiftly as she could, and then set about loading the second flintlock resolutely. She was grateful that her mother and father believed in allowing their only daughter to touch such weapons. It did not take her long, and she felt that it was done accurately.
She shouldered her bags and carried the heavy weapon like a dagger in front of her. Would that she had her old bow on her back as well. The night was darker than the others of late, with dense cloud cover cloaking the glow of the moon. The smell of rain hung in the air. Katari moved through the streets cautiously, unable to run at more than a shuffling trot carrying the supply bags and the flintlock.
Their horses were stabled three streets over at the edge of the town, at the farm of a short and stout older man who farmed hogs with his son. Should she fetch the animals, or hurry to Pétant and Opichi’s new room? And where, exactly, was it located in the first place? She was suddenly confused in the thickly shrouding darkness.
Unfamiliar noise drew her onward through the void. Katari heard a mixture of both male and female voices, raised, angry, frightened. Injured. Her breathing hitched in her throat and her sides ached, but she kept moving forward toward the sounds. There was a larger droning noise in the background as well, and it was one she did not recognize.
Shapes loomed in the darkness. Bodies met and tangled in the ink of night, and Katari twisted and side-stepped to avoid them. Hearing another female screech, she turned in that direction. It sounded very much like Opichi.
She recognized Pétant in the fray, his massive arms swinging wildly, connecting solidly with flesh. It was then that she saw Nick, grappling with a strange man just as large and brawny as he was, with black hair and a beaked nose. They both bellowed like bull elk in combat. Opichi was just behind them, with her mouth and nose bloody as she shrieked and shrieked.
Katari raised the flintlock, but her hands were shaking. Then two men twisted and turned in the brawl, one shape blending into the other. There was a flash of metal, and she heard Nicholas gasp in pain. Opichi reached her side, then, and the big, heavy gun trembled ever more wildly in her hands. How had Nicholas ever aimed and fired the thing so many times, and so accurately? Her slender arms quaked with fatigue.
“Baashkizan!” Opichi screamed in her ear. Shoot it! Katari gritted her teeth and squeezed off the trigger. The firearm discharged with a bang that rocked her to the core and numbed her ears and hands. She saw that both men went down with the shot. Katari dropped the gun and fell to her knees. She crawled to Nicholas and cradled his face in her lap. A great dread filled her when she observed the knife hilt protruding from his chest and his strangely quivering body.
The oddly thrumming sound in the background continued to grow. With a swell of sound like locusts in the summer heat, a sea of redcoats appeared through the gloom. The English had finally arrived to take Fort Orange.
Chapter 12
The morning sunrise was lovelier than any she had seen in years. Swirls of rose and gold intermixed with unusual lavender streaks rose above the forest trees to create a mantle of great beauty laid across the should
ers of the small settlement. The sweet splendor was just not right on such a morbid dawn.
Katari bit her lip as she stood on the back doorstep, breathing in the fresh air deeply. Beyond their wooden stoop, the town of Beverwijck roiled with unrest. Overnight, the redcoats had secured Fort Orange and now moved door-to-door with their pamphlets that ranted on about who governed who, why, and how. Katari cared not a whit for any of it. Many disgruntled Dutchman and other traders left in droves, the festivities of now Handelstijd forgotten. Others remained doggedly within the encampment to wait out the English disruption, in the hopes that the flow of trade would be renewed.
Her eyes were grainy with both the fatigue and the grief she now experienced. Katari looked over her shoulder at the still body of the man on her bed. Pétant had carried him all the way from the white doctor’s house and nestled him, unconscious, into the softness of the bed.
The doctor had cleaned and stitch the deep knife wound, but he was very grim with his outlook. Nicholas would die by the morning light, he had said firmly. There was just too much blood loss. She did not realize that a man as big as Pétant could cry, but he had. Katari could not seem to shed tears, for they had frozen upon her heart in pure fear.
The dawn’s light had come, and Nicholas breathed on. But he was weakening. Katari feared that every sighing inhalation would be his last. She had prepared a pine poultice, and ladled a nourishing broth between his cracked lips, but what could she do about such a great loss of blood?
She sat down on the step and balled her hands in her blood-stained lap. Think, Katari. Think about him. Mpënala.
When she closed her eyes and covered her ears with her hands, it allowed for an odd calmness to overtake her. She focused on breathing in and out, slowly, evenly. She pictured Nicholas awake and healthy, and smiling down at her. Swiftly, another image overrode the one of Nicholas in her mind. Quite clearly, Katari saw the gurgling hemlock spring.
Her eyes shot open. “Pétant!” she called, rising and spinning toward the door, with hope swelling anew.
~~~~~
“I’m not sure that I believe it, Katari. But Opichi says that you are a gifted healer, indeed, and I realize that my friend has run out of options.” Nicholas had not regained consciousness, his breathing was still shallow and unsteady, and his face was unnaturally pale.
Pétant dropped an armload of long, straight maple branches that she had asked for in a pile at her feet. “I saw this in my vision,” Katari repeated firmly.
“Would that I could have a vision every time my own mind went blank with worry,” Pétant muttered, but he disappeared once again into the trees to fetch the soft pine boughs that she had also requested.
If she did not at least try to call forth her healing powers to help Nicholas – the ones from deep within that arrived while in a trance – Katari could not live with herself. The last time she had tried to do such, in the Minsi Medicine Lodge with her mother, she had failed abysmally. Her stomach had ached, her brow had sweated, and her head had throbbed so badly that she wished to dash it on the rocks by the stream. Her mother had counseled her to halt, and rest, and to wait for the maturity necessary to reach her inner talent.
“The power of the trance does not always come neatly when summoned, Katari,” Jenna had told her daughter with a hug. “Your physical distress tells me that you are not ready. You may never be ready. “
At Katari’s anxious face, Jenna continued doggedly, “But if this is so, it is as the Creator intended, Alawa, my little pea. Do not ever feel as if you have failed.” Yet, Katari had failed, in truth. The old man had passed away in his sleep of the sickness that plagued him, even with the careful ministrations give by both she and her mother. After that, Katari no longer wanted to try the art of healing.
It made her nauseous just to think about the frightening and physically overwhelming process again. But not trying was failure in itself. And for Nicholas, Katari knew that she would do anything.
~~~~~
It took only one hour to build the miniature lodge, once Katari had received all of the appropriate materials. She did not want to leave Nicholas alone during the process, but Pétant had sworn to watch over him closely while she and Opichi efficiently wove together the branches, gathered boughs of soft pine, and sought out the necessary plants from within the forest.
Now, Opichi watched her from beneath lowered lashes as Katari prepared a small fire positioned carefully at the lodge entrance. “I am happy that you killed that man, Katari. He was a bad man. He hurt me once, and he was going to do it all over again.”
Katari nodded, not trusting herself to speak at the moment. Although she had never taken a life, she had no regrets about this man Le Tousse. He had been intent on killing both Pétant and Nicholas, and taking Opichi as a slave. She did not think she could ever wipe the memory from her mind of the moments following that resounding boom. The horrible seconds when she did not know which man that she had felled. When Katari believed that she might have been the one to kill Nicholas.
Luckily, it had been Le Tousse who had received the smoking flintlock ball in his back. But Katari was just too late to save Nicholas from the wickedly deep slash of a dagger point. The arrival of the English had sent everyone else scrambling into the night, save for few fallen Frenchmen, about whom they cared not at all. As Katari looked up at them from the ground, cradling Nick’s head, they had ridden past without a word.
“Are you ready now, Katari?” Opichi asked softly. “I have collected all of the plants and the red-twig dogwood berries and the bark that you have requested.”
“Yes. Please have Pétant bring Nicholas to me.”
When they returned with Nick’s limp body, Katari did not truly feel as if she was ready inside. But it was time. Nicholas had run out of hours.
“We will pray for your success,” said Opichi, and led Pétant away. Katari took a deep breath, and crawled into the small lodge with the dying man who she cared for like no other.
~~~~~
The interior of the little hut was both warm and dim as Katari crept in on her knees. Nicholas was laid out, quite unmoving, on a bed of pine boughs. His face was paler than that of Katari’s very blond mother, Jenna. She removed his clothes very carefully, and then slipped free of her own. She carefully bathed them both with waters from the sacred spring beneath the hemlock tree. Now, every inch of skin would be smudged, or exposed to the touch of the medicinal plants that she had placed to smoke on the fire. Katari prayed that the smudging would bring on a trance.
She willed herself not to cough, but instead, to inhale the smoke-laden air deeply, fanning it over Nicholas as well with a turkey feather she had found near the spring. Katari had spared several leaves of sacred Lobelia tobacco from her medicinal travel pouch as well as the bark shavings from the dogwood. It was a shrub of many uses to her people and held great spiritual meaning. As a final measure, she had prepared a poultice from the crushed dogwood, and infused it with the root of the blood-lily as well as a few dried berries of the fever-bush.
She began to sing the ancient words that her mother had long ago taught her. After a while, she did not even recognize their significance, or where they came from. She felt dizzy, and her vision was blurred. She swayed above Nicholas, touching his body, his wound, and smearing the blood-root poultice on his chest, as well as her own.
Her limbs began to tremble with a strange exertion. Her vision went grayish and funnel-like. She had that feeling again, the enveloping one of nauseous dread, of being taken away, of becoming someone Katari did not want to be. Her insides felt squeezed, and she found it hard to breathe. She swallowed her fear back and laid her body across Nicholas’s, drawing a pelt over top of them while she still had the faculties to do so. The trance was arriving quickly.
The berry medicine left her skin tingling and stinging as it came in contact with his. A sudden warm flush infused her. Her toes twitched oddly. She could hear herself still chanting in a peculiar way, with the sound muffled
against bare skin.
Katari could feel Nicholas’s chest hairs against her bare breasts, and his man parts touched her loins. Yet, he still felt like a lifeless husk to her. When she laid her cheek against him, she could no longer hear his steady heartbeat from within. Sudden terror cut through her, choking out all other thought. She was too late. Katari threw her head back and cried out, but the smoke-filled air became the black of oblivion.
~~~~~
Grey Wolf dismounted from his horse and knelt next to the glistening spring. He checked it carefully for any sign of contamination by animal or man, but found it pure and suitable for drinking use. He dipped his empty waterskin into the cool liquid, and listened to the glug of it filling.
An unusual moment of weakness washed over him. When the skin was full, Grey Wolf sat back on his haunches and rested, drawing in deep breaths of fresh, morning air to buoy him. He could hear the others in his party talking and milling about their campfire behind him. They had finally left the great port of New Amsterdam and had headed north in search of Katari. They were on a mission to ride to the closest settlement at Fort Orange, and look for any word of his twin’s whereabouts there. They had been on the move northward for two days.
Three days ago, a grey-bearded doctor had come forth, and disclosed some additional information to Father Allouez, with a certain amount of coinage to bend his memory in the right direction. It was said that there was another White man who traveled with a young Native woman. This particular man – a French trader - had been present at the time of the dray accident and was being looked for by others as well. It was the only lead Grey Wolf had yet been given, and he was certainly going to make haste in using it. He could not return to his mother and father without his twin. But why had this man taken Katari? The reason could not be good.
Savage Journey Page 11
