“You heard Lord Graham give us permission,” Duncan declared. “We are leaving.” He glanced toward the main camp. Most of its occupants were gathered around a table where the casks of rum were being served out.
“Of course you are. Once the price has been paid.”
“The other kegs are in a boat tied to the little island past the landing.”
The half-king spoke an urgent command, and half a dozen warriors broke away. “One more minor payment,” he said to Duncan.
“Payment?”
The half-king’s smile was cold as ice. “A quick walk down the aisle, then you may go. Our generous Lord Graham would not refuse us a little entertainment.”
The warriors surrounding the Revelator stepped back to reveal two score Hurons, each brandishing a weapon, facing each other to form a narrow alley. It was a gauntlet, the line of torment down which prisoners were sometimes thrust. The warriors would not step out of line, but the blows they aimed at the miserable creature who ran between them could be, and often were, fatal.
Paxto, chief of the Wolverine clan, stood at the head of one line, the bones woven into his hair rattling as he swung his war ax. Scar stood at the other, holding a heavy club. “Wolverines!” Custaloga hissed. The warriors in the lines were all of the hated clan. They would be certain to draw as much blood as possible.
The half-king seemed to take great pleasure in the frightened silence of the Iroquois. “One of you must reach the end. If the first falls, another must try, and another, until the end is reached. You can decide who runs.” He lifted the long braid of Abigail, oldest of the children. “The quiet maiden?” He stepped to Tushcona and made a sewing motion with his hand. “The weaver of Iroquois fate?” He stopped before Custaloga and stooped, bending his shoulders to mock the old man. “Custaloga, the warrior who became a woman?” The Hurons began to hoot and call in derision at the Iroquois. Duncan inched toward Scar. “Perhaps Sagatchie, who shamed his people by putting on the king’s uniform?”
He was still speaking when a figure shot out of the shadows toward the gauntlet, a lean man in tattered clothing whose hands were tied behind his back. The half-king casually extended a leg and the stranger tripped, sprawling on the ground. “A noble gesture, Bedford,” the halfking said with another thin laugh as Jacob darted forward to defiantly stand over the man. They had at last met the valiant schoolteacher of Bethel Church. The half-king pushed the boy aside, lifting Bedford by the collar and shoving him toward Hetty.
“Perhaps you would step into our line,” he said to the Welsh woman. “Nothing to fear for you, mother of so many names. One who can make snakes fly. You can turn all their axes to feathers.” When Hetty only glared in response, he turned back to the Iroquois. “Ah,” he said, as he reached the tallest of the women, “the beautiful Kassawaya. Just a graceful waltz with the Wolverines and you’ll-”
Duncan leapt in a blur of motion. He had seen the act performed in medical school, and he knew he had but one chance to repeat it now. With all his strength he slammed the edge of his hand into Scar’s neck, abruptly pressing his artery against his windpipe. As the warrior began to collapse, Duncan ducked and caught him on his shoulders, one arm over a leg, the other over an arm, draping the stunned body over his shoulders. With a war screech, he darted into the mouth of the beast.
The blows fell hard on the Huron’s back. Duncan twisted, slamming the man’s feet into the jaw of one warrior, twisting violently to hit another on the opposite side. A club bounced against Duncan’s ear. He knocked down the ball of a war ax with the limp arm. A stick bounced against Scar’s skull and onto his own, and for moment he was sure he would fall. More sticks sought to trip him, more clubs slammed onto the Huron as he twisted the unconscious man to block the blows, though several glanced off his own head. Blood was in his eyes. He staggered, off balance, then recovered, shouting out a Gaelic curse, and spun in a full circle, using Scar’s appendages to strike his assailants. His arm jerked as a club drew blood from his forearm, his ankle screamed in pain as another pounded its bones.
Then suddenly there were no more tormentors. He let the unconscious body fall from his shoulders and collapsed onto his knees, gasping, blood running down his arm and jaw.
He became aware of a pair of well-polished black shoes near his face, and he looked up into the stern face of Colonel Cameron.
“Well played, McCallum,” the colonel said with a cool smile. His grenadier guards rushed to stand over Duncan.
It seemed to take all his strength to turn and sit on the ground, facing the line of Wolverines. Some of the warriors stared at him in disbelief, others in fury. Several swung their clubs as if about to attack him. Savage cries broke out.
It took a moment for Duncan to realize they were coming from others in the camp, dozens of Scots and Indians who had been watching. They were cries of amusement, of laughter. A brawny Scot doused him with a bucket of water and helped him to his feet as others rushed forward. He ignored the pain of the congratulatory slaps on his shoulders as he watched Conawago and Sagatchie herd the Iroquois around the edge of the camp, joined now by the schoolmaster. To buy them time, he began to murmur acknowledgment to those who swarmed around him and accepted swigs of ale from several offered flasks. It was a quarter hour before the crowd began to break up, the Wolverines still glaring at him as he tried to inconspicuously make his way to the beach.
The elders and the children were already halfway to shore when he climbed into a canoe. He froze, paddle in his hand, as he saw the tall warriors of the Revelator’s guard gathering with several Scots at the far end of the beach to land the boat with the powder kegs. The Revelator had used the gauntlet to gain time to reach the kegs. Duncan watched in horror as a keg was handed down a chain of men and a hand ax slammed into its top. His paddle cut into the water as the first confused curse echoed across the river. Furious orders followed, and more kegs were opened, all revealing nothing but gunpowder. Duncan put all his strength into his paddle, and his canoe shot forward.
“McCallum!” came the half-king’s furious roar. A musket barked, and another. Balls plucked at the water around him, and then he was out of range.
He started shouting to his companions on the shoreline when he was still a hundred yards away. They stared in confusion, not understanding his desperate calls for them to run. On the far side of the high tongue of land, half a mile away, Woolford waited with his rangers.
“They opened the kegs!” he shouted as he leapt out. “They know why we are fleeing!” He pointed behind him. A dozen canoes were rapidly following them, filled with enraged warriors.
Chapter Fifteen
Despite Duncan’s desperate urgings, the escape of their weary band was agonizingly slow. They stumbled through an abandoned pasture then encountered thickets of brush covering the steep slope up the open ridge they had to cross to reach Woolford’s camp. The elders and the children were weak from their long ordeal. Tushcona and Bedford carried the youngest on their backs but were nearly spent before they were halfway up.
By the time they reached a vantage point at the top of the ridge, their pursuers milled along the riverbank, searching for their trail. Duncan and Conawago exchanged worried glances, knowing that as soon as they began to run across the open-faced ridge, they would be spotted.
Sagatchie helped the last of their party climb over the ledge marking the top of the slope then joined them to gaze down on the open field below. Duncan did not at first understand the sigh of satisfaction that came from the big Mohawk, then he followed his gaze to the solitary figure that stood on a boulder, staring up at them. His metal helmet was unmistakable.
“Wolverines,” Duncan heard himself say. A chill ran down his spine. The blood feud between the Iroquois and the Wolverine clan was like a festering wound, and Duncan had rubbed salt into it by shaming the Hurons at the gauntlet. The half-king had sent those he knew would be most likely to bring back all the scalps of those who had deceived him.
“Run!” Kass sh
outed at the children and the elders, urging them desperately across the top of the ridge toward the safety of the rangers. Bedford scooped up one of the children, and Kass threw another onto her back as she ran.
Sagatchie eyed the ledge rock that jutted upward a few feet away, making something of a parapet overlooking the pasture below. A great calm seemed to settle over him. He laid his rifle on the ledge, along with his powder horn and cartridge box.
Duncan now saw Conawago staring at the Mohawk. A melancholy pride burned in the Nipmuc’s eyes as he lowered his own rifle onto the rock parapet and helped Sagatchie remove his pack then extracted the little wooden container that warriors always carefully guarded on their travels. Tushcona, carrying their only other rifle, rushed to their side as Kass, Bedford, and the children ran headlong across the open ridge. Without a word she began checking the priming in the pans of the guns.
A serene smile lit Sagatchie’s face. “This is what the spirits always intended,” he declared in a level voice. “I know now they have not forgotten me.”
Duncan followed his gaze toward the Wolverine Hurons, and his heart wrenched. He had trouble making his tongue work. “No. .” he protested. “God no, Sagatchie. Please don’t. I beg you. .”
Sagatchie seemed not to hear him. He turned one cheek, then another as Conawago dipped a finger into the little wooden cylinder and painted the red stripes of war on his face. When the warrior looked up to the sky, he had his war ax in one hand and his knife in the other. “Hear my call! My name is Sagatchie, of the Wolf clan of the Mohawks!” he shouted toward the clouds, pressing his protector amulet tightly against his heart. “The strength of the wolf is in my arm! The speed of the wolf is in my legs!”
When he finished he turned to Duncan, who found no words as the Mohawk lay his forearm along Duncan’s own in the warrior’s grip. He nodded at Duncan, still smiling, then launched himself down the slope with a joyful whoop.
They had four rifles, and Tushcona stood by to reload as Conawago and Duncan fired. When they dropped the first two Hurons who had begun to run across the pasture, the others at the edge of the field answered with screams of war. Their enemy had shown themselves, and the battle was joined. The Hurons fired their own rifles, the bullets ricocheting off the rocks around Conawago and Duncan, then tossed them aside and drew out their war axes.
Two more Hurons fell to their rifles, but Duncan’s shot at the helmeted chieftain missed. The advancing warriors stopped abruptly as Sagatchie appeared out of the thicket, shouting at them, waving his war ax in challenge. Suddenly a second figure, grey and bent, scrambled out of the undergrowth to join him, swinging his own ax.
Duncan spun about to see Adanahoe, tears streaming down her face. She was holding Custaloga’s pack and shirt. The eighty-year-old chief, survivor of the razing of Ononadagoa Castle by the Wolverines decades earlier, was a warrior once more and was finally facing his enemy.
Duncan and Conawago fired again, and there were only a dozen Huron left, facing the two Iroquois across thirty yards of grass. It was the old sachem who moved first, shouting out his war cry and charging directly at the Huron chief, Sagatchie a step behind.
An anguished cry broke the eerie stillness as Duncan and Conawago lowered their rifles. Kass was running at them, flinging off her pack and jacket, lifting her bow. She broke away when Duncan grabbed her arm, then leapt past them into the undergrowth of the slope.
They watched helplessly as the two chiefs danced with their axes, slashing and backing, chopping with vicious strokes. It was Custaloga who landed the killing stroke, but as Paxto fell, the aged Iroquois was covered with Huron assailants. Sagatchie leveled two of the attackers and was pulling his ax from the leg of a third when four more leapt on top of him. A mournful moan escaped Duncan’s lips as his Mohawk friend fell. Kass appeared in time to put an arrow in the Huron who raised a knife to scalp the fallen Mohawk.
Suddenly a warrior at the edge of the field shouted frantically, and the war party froze, following his raised arm toward the river. With cries of alarm they backed away, carrying the body of the pot helm chief with them.
A call from behind broke the brittle silence. Duncan turned to see Woolford and several rangers running from the far side of the point. He did not wait for them but started down the slope with Conawago at his side.
Bodies lay strewn about the field, six downed by rifle shots, seven by blade and ax. Singing a low, melancholy chant, Kass dragged away the Huron dead heaped by Sagatchie’s body, then stood over the dead Mohawk. He had been sliced in a dozen places, but the blow that had taken him had been from the ax in the back of his skull. Kass said nothing as Duncan bent to remove the weapon, but as the blade came free, dripping Sagatchie’s lifeblood, she seemed to lose all strength. She sagged, collapsing into Duncan’s arms, then slowly, leaning on Duncan, lowered herself to her knees by the body.
Duncan turned and walked toward the rangers that emerged onto the field.
“We came as soon as we heard the shots!” Woolford gasped.
“A few minutes more and we could have made it to you,” Duncan said in a hollow voice.
“The Hurons paid the butcher’s bill,” Woolford muttered as he surveyed the dead. “Where’s. .” his question died away. The mournful death song started by Kass was all he needed to know.
“Dear Jesus, no!” he moaned and rushed past Duncan to where Kass knelt. He dropped to the ground and buried his head in his hands.
More death songs rose as the elders arrived. Duncan and Conawago laid out the body of Custaloga beside that of Sagatchie.
“The bastards fled,” Woolford said in a tight voice. “Why?”
Duncan looked about the field, realizing he had no answer. The two men quickly made their way to the river and mounted a high, flat boulder.
“That is why!” Duncan said, pointing to a long line of objects floating downstream. Woolford extracted his telescope. “Canoes and long boats,” he reported in an uncertain tone.
Duncan took the glass and quickly saw the reason for the ranger’s confusion. There were at least fifty canoes on the river, and they were all empty, adrift in the fast current. Ahead of them were long boats strung in a line, being towed by a lead boat in which half a dozen men feverishly worked the oars.
It was early evening before they began to climb over the ridge that jutted into the river. The Iroquois rangers quickly disposed of the enemy dead, but they would not move the bodies of Sagatchie and Custaloga, would not leave them alone, until long songs had been sung and long chants spoken to console their spirits.
Woolford was shaken badly by his friend’s death. He had fought at Sagatchie’s side for years. “He was the best,” the captain said in a breaking voice when he returned to the Mohawk’s body again. “The best of all of us.”
Duncan studied his friend and realized that Woolford had long known what the rest of them had learned, that Sagatchie had been unbowed, that he had fervently kept the old ways alive even while bridging the worlds of the tribes and Europeans. He had been pure, never touching rum or whiskey, steadfast in the ancient ways of his people, his long rifle the only compromise he made to European technology.
When Adanahoe announced where their burial scaffolds would have to be erected, her companions were surprised but they did not argue. Woolford just nodded and sent one of his men for blankets to wrap the bodies.
Kass seemed to find new strength in reciting the death chants, yet she seemed inconsolable. The tears did not stop flowing down her cheeks as she cleaned Sagatchie’s body and murmured the sacred words. As Duncan approached her, Conawago touched his arm. “The song she sings now,” the old Nipmuc said. “It is not one of mourning.”
Duncan backed away. “I don’t understand.”
“It is not a death song, it is a love song, one of courtship.”
It was another half-hour before Duncan knelt beside her and explained that they would have to leave for the rangers’ camp.
She seemed not to hear. “He will be
strong.” The tracks of her tears were plain on her face. “He is going to run like a stag in the forest and hear his father’s voice in the wind.”
“He was very strong,” Duncan said as if to correct her.
A sad smile broke across her countenance. “You do not understand, McCallum.” She flattened her palm over her abdomen. “I carry Sagatchie’s son in my belly.”
For a moment Duncan wanted to say it was impossible, that they had been together less than a month, and they were antagonists for the first days. But he saw the radiance that shined through her despair and the certainty of her voice. The people of the forest had their own instincts, and they knew to trust them. He knew better than to doubt her words.
It was early evening before their long, slow procession emerged upon the ridge and made for the rangers’ camp. Bedford had scavenged a pistol and knife from the dead Hurons and had nervously patrolled all afternoon. Although he was obviously impatient to leave his captors behind, the Iroquois would not be hurried in their rites, nor in the slow cleansing and wrapping of the bodies. The sun was touching the western treetops when the cry of a killdeer broke through the silence of their grim column.
The ranger captain spun about, rifle at the ready, and Duncan realized it was a warning cry from one of his men. When the call repeated, Woolford ordered the company to continue, then set off in the direction of the call, toward the rising bluff that hovered over the river. Duncan followed a few steps behind.
The ranger captain was above Duncan at the top of the bluff when he froze. Duncan watched in confusion as Woolford seemed to sag, leaning on his rifle as if he were about to fall.
“The bastard,” Woolford spat as Duncan reached his side. “The contemptible scheming priggish bastard.”
Duncan tried to piece together the puzzle on the river. Two frigates had materialized half a mile away as well as four of the squat barge-like vessels the British called gunboats. In the fading light they were securing their moorings in a wide arc parallel to the island on which the rebel Scots and the half-king’s warriors were camped.
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