“Chawnzmit received my invitation, then?”
“It seems so, werowance. Either he received it, or he decided to come of his own accord. He was angry as a beestung bear when he left Werowocomoco. He is coming here full of violence and hate.”
I will meet him with the same.
Opechancanough had offered Chawnzmit food, and sent a man to tell him that he must come to Pamunkey-town, too, for Opechancanough had not yet moved to his new longhouse at Werowocomoco, and he wanted the honor of feasting him, as Powhatan did. He implied that he would not demand guns, but would be satisfied with swords in exchange for many baskets of corn.
The messenger had nearly caught his breath now. “As he was leaving, Chawnzmit made some mention of Pamunkey being more honest than Werowocomoco.”
“I must assume he received my invitation, then.”
Opechancanough was not shocked to learn that Chawnzmit had slipped through Powhatan’s grasp. Of late, Wahunse-na-cawh’s thoughts were turned only to ease and lightness, to resting in his bed and chuckling over the antics of his many young children. The great mind that had united all the tribes of Tsenacomoco, the unifying force of the Real People, had dwindled to an old man’s doddering. No wonder the tassantassas had eluded him.
It happens to us all. If we are not killed honorably in war or lost to the dangers of the hunt, we decline until we are but husks of our former selves. Wahunse-na-cawh, my strong, good brother. One day I will be like you, too.
But that day had not yet come. Opechancanough was still powerful, if not exactly young. And he was a Real Man. A gang of mere tassantassas was no match for the werowance of Pamunkey in all his cleverness and righteous rage.
“Tell me how Chawnzmit escaped my brother.”
The messenger described the Great Chief’s plot—a good enough one, perhaps even exceedingly clever for an old and weakened man. By delaying the loading of the tassantassas’ boat until the tide was well out, and stocking it overfull of heavy dried goods, they had managed to stick the vessel deep in the mud of the river’s bed. The white men were put up for the night in a single longhouse. “But when our warriors came bearing the feast, Chawnzmit would not admit them into the longhouse. He made them stand outside and taste every dish with their own mouths, to ensure the food was not poisoned. When he was satisfied that it was safe, he made the men leave the baskets on the ground. His men carried the food inside and ate it there.”
“Alone, without any Real People?”
“Rude,” the messenger agreed, with a shrug that said, But what can one expect from tassantassas? “In any case, the plan was not to poison the tassantassas. We were to wait until they were eating, then pull their swords from their belts and cut their throats, like deer rounded up in the hunt.”
“Ah.” Half-grudgingly, Opechancanough adjusted his opinion of his brother’s capabilities. It was a clever plan, one Chawnzmit should not have seen coming.
“But the strangest part is this: listen to what I heard from the men of Werowocomoco. As they were setting their baskets on the ground, some of them saw through the longhouse door. The tassantassas had pulled the swords from their own belts, and were sitting upon the flat edges of their blades as if they were woven mats at the fireside.”
Opechancanough squinted at the messenger.
A woman entered with another large gourd of water, which the messenger took with a grunt of thanks. He drank deeply. When the woman departed, Opechancanough said, “How did the white men see through the plot? How did they know you intended to cut their throats with their own blades?”
The messenger shook his head slowly, his face drawn with exhaustion and dismay. “I don’t know. I asked myself the same question, all the while I was running through the forest to you. I cannot think how, unless they have some great magic that is beyond our reckoning.”
Great magic. The slightest, smallest pinch of doubt twisted in Opechancanough’s gut. He pushed the sensation away in disgust. Chawnzmit was coming to Pamunkey-town, and he would be dealt with today, in this place, with Opechancanough’s own hands. The menace of Tsenacomoco would be eradicated, crushed like a flea against a fingernail. Vengeance for Uttamussak. Vengeance for the Okeus, who burned in his temple. There was no room for doubt, no room for fears of unknown magic.
“You must rest now,” he said gruffly to the messenger. “I would let you lie here in my longhouse, but when our guest arrives this will not be a restful place.”
The man staggered to his feet. His shoulders sagged with weariness and his steps dragged as a village woman showed him to a quiet bed. Opechancanough followed them out into the common grounds of Pamunkey-town. Word of Chawnzmit’s imminent arrival had spread. Women called for their children in the snow-crusted lanes, rushing the little ones indoors. Men checked the strings on their bows, gesturing to one another with the silent signs of hunt and war. They melted into the surrounding trees, pale winter buckskin fading among the frosted vegetation, and took up posts where homes as well as food caches could be defended with ease. A blunt-faced woman crouching in the door of her longhouse slid an antler knife from its sheath. Her eyes were hard and fierce.
Someone gave a call of alarm, a double-noted rising whoop, repeated three times. Opechancanough answered with a long, falling whistle. The signal. He felt rather than saw the men of Pamunkey move into position. The forest surrounding the town seemed to hold one long, shivering breath. The treetops vibrated with eagerness.
Opechancanough gazed toward the river. A high, bare staff glided smoothly upstream, peeking over the tops of the winter-black trees. Chawnzmit’s boat. The staff was the great post to which his boat’s white wing fastened. Opechancanough walked to the town’s central fire pit and stood waiting, arms crossed, back straight, the picture of casual welcome, while inside his spirit writhed with eagerness, clamored for blood like a wolf harrying a wounded deer.
The tassantassas landed their small, squat canoe with its two long paddles like a spider’s legs. Chawnzmit led four other white men across the commons. His face was gaunt beneath his thick, wiry beard, and his body moved in nervous twitches. They carried with them the now-familiar white-man smell. Opechancanough would never grow used to that odor: sour and bitter as unripe fruit, musky and thick, like the fear stink of a dog. He inhaled a deep lungful of the smell as Chawnzmit approached, looking wary and keen. Today would be the last day the tassantassa miasma would drift across the land of Tsenacomoco. Though his nostrils pinched against the white men’s nearness, Opechancanough savored the smell like the perfume of a springtime rain.
He pressed a hand to his heart and made himself smile. “Wingapoh, Chawnzmit. It is good to see you again.”
Without a word, Chawnzmit returned the gesture. His hand came to his breast slowly, carefully, and his small blue eyes shifted this way and that, darting like the eyes of a crow.
“You bring swords, I see.”
“We have guns, too,” Chawnzmit said. His tongue flickered out to lick at the long hairs of his face. Through the thick beard, Opechancanough could see cracks in the man’s pale lips. The cracks were deep, angry red, rimmed with cold white skin. The winter had not been kind to these men—no, not at all. “But you shall not have our guns, Opechancanough. Your brother tried to trick us, to take our weapons. We made him look a fool.”
“The mamanatowick is an old man. Old men are often foolish. Come. I have hot food. It is warm inside my longhouse. Keep your guns. We shall talk of trade that is more favorable to you.”
At his heart fire, Opechancanough tasted each basket of bread and dried fish, each bag of smoked venison, smiling ironically at Chawnzmit as he chewed. When the white men were satisfied that the food was not tainted, they fell on it like vultures at a carcass, tearing and gulping, heads bobbing to peer with suspicious eyes into the innocent shadows of the longhouse.
“Your men seem to have a great liking for Tsenacomoco, Chawnzmit.”<
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Chawnzmit swallowed his mouthful of bread. “We have no love for this land. It is wild and hard. Brutal.”
“Your homeland is much more kind, is that it?”
“It is.” Chawnzmit sat back, watching Opechancanough with open mistrust.
Opechancanough gave a friendly chuckle. “The place you come from must be safe as a cradleboard, safe as a mother’s breast. And yet you do not return to that gentle place. Why do you stay here if you find our land so disagreeable?”
“My mamanatowick has commanded us to . . . explore.”
“Loyalty to your mamanatowick has ever been your greatest concern.”
Chawnzmit frowned. The subtlety of the comment was not lost in that shaggy yellow head. “Powhatan was never my mamanatowick.”
Opechancanough waved a hand, brushing away the simmering argument before it could boil over the edge of its pot. “As you have decided to stay in Tsenacomoco—as your mamanatowick has decided that you must stay—we must try harder to be friends.”
“Yes.”
The man was so small, so weak. He could nearly see the edges of bones pressing through the layers of Chawnzmit’s thick clothing. Opechancanough shifted, bending lightly to the side as if working a minor cramp from his back. As he twisted he felt the reassuring pressure of the knife’s handle press against his skin. He had wedged the blade sideways into the wide belt of his tunic. The leather of the belt was thick enough to conceal the blade perfectly. When the time was right, he would slide the knife free with one smooth, practiced motion, and open Chawnzmit’s throat. Simple. It would be an unthinking, easy motion, like a child dancing stones across the surface of a pond. He would do it here, in his own longhouse, if need be, though better by far to do it outside where his men could witness the act. Let all the men see it, and the women, too. Let them watch, just as they had watched Tsena-no-ha walk away.
Opechancanough made the proper noises about trade, offering and counteroffering, eyeing the tassantassa swords, although they refused to place one in his hands for inspection. He made outrageous promises of corn and beans, swearing to provide quantities that far exceeded what the women had laid away in their cellar pits. All the while he watched Chawnzmit’s face, watched the white man watching him. He saw the desperation in the tassantassa’s eyes. It tangled with determination and that flame-hot vein of reckless bravery, which Opechancanough still, despite his hatred for Chawnzmit, admired. The skin around Chawnzmit’s sunken eyes tightened, even as his mouth curved in an easy, placid smile. He knows this is a farce. He knows I know it, too. We are playing one another, openly and boldly. But only one of us can be the fish tricked into the weir. And it is not I, Chawnzmit. It is not I.
The light streaming through the smoke hole slanted and dimmed by the barest degree. The sun had moved half a hand’s breadth across the sky. Opechancanough allowed his hand to drift to his belt and he traced the shape of the knife with one furtive finger. The knife was tassantassa steel. He allowed himself to feel the humor of that fact, the sweet weight of justice. He grinned broadly just as the rustle of many feet sounded outside.
One of the tassantassas leaped up and dodged for the door flap. Opechancanough rested his chin on his fist, watching the man peer outside. Words flew about the longhouse, the long, slurring sounds of the tassantassa tongue mingling in one discordant song of panic as all the men spoke at once. Their faces were urgent, snarling, like circling dogs preparing to leap and bite. Opechancanough’s eyes slid half-closed with satisfaction. He did not need to understand their tongue to know what they said. There are hundreds of warriors outside. The longhouse is surrounded. Opechancanough must have raised every man in Tsenacomoco for this fight.
A rich, prickling sensation flooded his limbs, a wash of deep satisfaction and gloating triumph. It was like winning a contest of boasts, like felling your first deer, like spilling your seed inside a woman. Try to escape this time, Chawnzmit. Try to trick your way free.
Chawnzmit still had many armed men aboard his winged boat, but even if they had had their landing vessel, they would never reach the longhouse in time to free their leader—not through Opechancanough’s forest of bowmen. True, the five trapped here beside the heart fire were only a handful compared to the infestation of tassantassas at the fort. But Opechancanough had long ago discerned that Chawnzmit was the spirit that kept the fort alive. Once he was killed, the rest would drop dead quickly enough.
Chawnzmit was on his feet, making emphatic gestures to calm his men. He turned on Opechancanough. Beneath the beard, Chawnzmit’s jaw clenched and unclenched in a furious rhythm.
“All right, Opechancanough. You’ve snared me.” He did not sound particularly surprised; but then, having only recently slipped Powhatan’s snare, Chawnzmit was surely on guard for more trickery. “You have many men outside.”
Opechancanough stood slowly, hands out, smiling easily. “Many men. Scores. Hundreds. You will not leave Pamunkey alive.”
“I had to try. If there was any chance you might have given us food . . .”
“There is no chance. Before the ice thaws, you will all be dead, one way or another. You will blight my land no more.”
“Your land? It is Powhatan’s realm.”
“Go on thinking that, if you must. It makes no difference now, at the end of your life.”
“You seem very sure of that—sure it’s the end of my life. Perhaps it is the end of yours.”
Opechancanough laughed. “Is it? You’re thin as a featherless chick in the nest.”
Chawnzmit glanced around at his men. He hesitated, and Opechancanough could see desperate thoughts dart and dash behind those blue eyes. He could all but taste the fear that curdled on Chawnzmit’s tongue. Opechancanough’s mouth filled with water.
“You can have me, take my life, torture me—anything you like. But let these men go free. In fact, I will make you a trade. My life for corn.”
Another bark of laughter cracked from Opechancanough’s chest. “So we have come back to trading.”
“Unless you’re afraid to try me. You and I will fight hand to hand. I will give my gun to my men. None of them shall harm you. You may choose any kind of weapon you like.”
I choose tassantassa steel.
“You amuse me, Chawnzmit. Very well. We shall fight hand to hand, but not with weapons. We shall wrestle, just like boys at the huskanaw. If you can throw me, I will give you all the corn you desire. If I throw you, well . . .”
Of course, it would never come to throwing. His hand itched to pull the blade from his belt, but Opechancanough schooled himself to patience. Now is not the time. But the time is soon, Okeus, soon.
Chawnzmit nodded his acceptance. They moved toward the door flap together. Opechancanough bent to lift the flap aside, biting hard at his lip to keep from erupting in laughter. He felt giddy, hot with victory.
Before he could so much as cry out or fling up a hand to defend himself, the hard, grasping talon of Chawnzmit’s hand seized the loop of braid on the left side of his head. Chawnzmit twisted the braid about his wrist until his hand was caught in a black tangle, a turkey’s foot in a snare. Opechancanough gritted his teeth against the tearing of his scalp. His hand flew to his belt. The knife emerged, flashing in the patch of light that was the half-open door flap. Chawnzmit’s other hand descended like an osprey diving. He bent back Opechancanough’s finger until the knife fell into the dust. Opechancanough stifled a cry of pain.
Chawnzmit hauled viciously at Opechancanough’s braid, maneuvering the werowance through the longhouse door ahead of him. A hundred bows were raised on the instant; a hundred flint arrows glimmered in the pale winter sun.
Chawnzmit shielded himself with Opechancanough’s body. With his free hand, the tassantassa pulled the gun from his belt. The weapon made a single, cold click, a sound like steel against stone. The gun’s hard muzzle pressed against Opechancanough’s face. The s
tench of the white man’s body choked in Opechancanough’s throat.
“Put down your bows,” Chawnzmit said. His voice carried far. There was not a hint of a tremor in it. He was as unfeeling and deliberate as a snake in a nest of mice. The white men tumbled out of the longhouse, the smoke from the burning wicks of their weapons hanging like an acrid fog in the air.
Shame burned in Opechancanough’s chest. Bad enough that all these men had witnessed his wife leave his hearth for the tanx Pepiscunimah. Now they saw him helpless as a deer on a roasting spit, trussed by his own hair. He threw his arms wide, made a broad and easy target of his chest. “Kill him, you cowards! Shoot through me! Chawnzmit cannot be allowed to leave this place!”
He heard the creak of bows tensing, the hiss of arrow shafts along steadying fingers.
“If you kill me,” Chawnzmit shouted, “my mamanatowick will never cease to hunt your people. He will send hundreds upon hundreds of men just like me, to seek vengeance for my slaying, and no one who calls himself Pamunkey shall ever know a moment of peace again.”
A few bows lowered.
Chawnzmit bellowed on as he wrenched Opechancanough’s hair. “If you shed so much as one drop of my brothers’ blood, or steal the least bead from any of my men, I will not cease in my revenge until I have hunted down every last person who admits to being a Pamunkey: man, woman, or child. Pamunkey will be finished—no more—wiped from Tsenacomoco as if your tribe never existed!”
The rest of the bows dropped.
“Kill them,” Opechancanough cried. His voice was hoarse and raw. “Kill these dog-fucking tassantassas now, or none of you are men!”
Chawnzmit pressed his gun harder beside Opechancanough’s ear. “I am leaving with food, one way or another. Give me food and your werowance lives, as do your wives and children. Give me food and we will never cross your path again. We will be content, and leave you alone.”
From somewhere in a nearby longhouse came the sounds of hysterical weeping. The women and children were hidden from sight, but they heard Chawnzmit’s words as clearly as Opechancanough did.
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