Council of Fire Read online

  Gridley personally killed two natives before he was wounded in his off arm by a giant of a man who slashed him with a tomahawk more than half the length of his own musket. For just a moment Gridley thought he had met his end, but the huge native was felled from behind by his subaltern.

  To the end of his days, Richard Gridley remembered the look of triumph on the young man’s face—which was still there when another native’s axe struck him in the back, dropping him to the ground and out of sight.

  The three shamans were in view now, twenty feet away. Their twisted hands were extended in the air, touching at the edges. The stream of dark smoke came from the area in between.

  “Cover me, boys,” Gridley said, loading his musket. “I’m going to see if I can get a clear shot.”

  Eight of his remaining nineteen colonials formed a ring around him as he placed the ball, rammed it home, and raised the weapon. He could feel the slash in his arm and knew he couldn’t hold it for long.

  He took aim at the three hands held in the air and fired—and as he did, one of the hollow-eyed natives in the intervening space raised his hand and blocked the shot, his own hand taking its full impact, blood and bone spattering.

  Gridley cursed, pulled out another shot and rammed it home, and again took aim. Once more, as soon as he fired, one of the natives raised his hand and uncannily intercepted the shot.

  “Damn it! First squad, load and fire!” He called to the men close by, who, protected by the men nearest them, performed the manual at arms: loading powder, ramming home a musket-ball, raising their weapons and firing. Of the ten, two were cut down as they prepared to fire, but the other eight managed to get off a shot . . .

  Six hands were raised as the muskets fired. Four of them were struck by the shots. One shot went awry, and the eighth jammed in the muzzle. Two other hands narrowly missed the attempt to intercept, and the balls struck: one hit one of the shamans in the back of the shoulder, and the other was dead on target, shattering one of the hideous hands and disappearing into the black pool within.

  The three shamans collapsed, the one who was struck first, and the other two atop him. The source of the cloud dissipated, but the column leading up to it withdrew into the sky. The human-shaped figure above bellowed with an unearthly cry, speaking words that no white man could understand.

  On the hill, Catherine LaGèndiere screamed as well. Her hands were half-clenched as she continued to work the concatenator, but her eyes were wide, and she was drenched in sweat. Amherst, who had not returned to his viewing position, pushed past Messier to stand before her.

  “What—”

  “Do not distract her,” Messier said, placing his hand on Amherst’s shoulder. The general whirled, grabbing hold of the Frenchman’s arm.

  “You dare to lay a hand on me?”

  “Monsieur General. If you wish to give me some sort of—what would you call it?—a thrashing, then proceed. But if you interrupt her at this moment, it will mean the destruction of everything.”

  “What is she doing?”

  “At this moment,” Messier said, shrugging his sleeve loose from Amherst’s grasp, “she is trying to dissipate that.” He pointed to the great human figure hovering above the battle. “It is an elemental spirit of the air—indeed, I think it is the elemental spirit of the air. Our only chance to dismiss what the shamans have summoned is for that brave young woman to do what God has placed her on this continent to do.”

  The hollow-eyed natives fought their way forward, opposed fiercely by both colonials and regulars, and, a bit to the side, the Iroquois allies. The white soldiers had the upper hand in organized discipline, but the natives were relentless, feeling no pain, their eyes unfocused and seemingly blind. Formation and organization had largely vanished—but it wasn’t every man for himself; the regulars worked with those to their left and right, while the colonials worked in teams of three and four, like hunters of wild animals. The Mohawks, Oneidas and Onondagas did the same.

  The terrible cloud above the battle continued to reach tendrils to the natives that remained on the battlefield. Many had fled after the three Oniate were struck down. The natives who had been beyond the quagmire that had swallowed the Stone Coats had retreated, while others were still fighting furiously with the French.

  Edward and his bodyguard fought their way to the top of the slope; Wolfe was still somewhere below in the melee.

  “Highness,” Amherst said, as Edward reached him. “You have proven your valor. You must retire for your own safety.”

  “Are we out of danger?”

  “It does not seem so.”

  “Then with respect I am obliged by my oath of duty to decline your order.”

  “We will deal with the matter of insubordination later,” Amherst said. “If we live long enough.”

  “Agreed. How fares Mademoiselle LaGèndiere?”

  “She appears to be sorely tried. I do not understand what burden she carries—but I have been told that it is her success or failure that determines our own success or failure. Nothing else matters.”

  “Keeping these monsters away from her matters.”

  “Agreed. I ask that you stay close to her. You may yet have a chance to strike a decisive blow.”

  Edward thought of protesting, but reasoned that if the natives reached the place where Mademoiselle LaGèndiere was doing—whatever it was that she was doing—it would be as dangerous a place as any.

  “Sir.” He sketched a salute and beckoned to his bodyguard.

  Joseph laid the body of An-De-Le gently on a cot within a French tent. He had carried it from out of the melee, with the other Little People around him. In addition to that struggle, there was an even more disorganized fight going on near the base of the command hill, overshadowed by a terrible cloud that he found he could not look at directly.

  The remaining Jo-Ge-Oh gathered around the body of their leader, murmuring.

  “We will curse the Seneca,” one of them said at last. “They will pay for what they have done.”

  “No,” Joseph said. “An-De-Le was slain in battle.”

  “By an arrow fired by a coward. Why should this matter?”

  “An-De-Le knew that our work was dangerous, we all faced that peril and chose it voluntarily. He was killed in battle—whether by a tomahawk or an arrow, it doesn’t matter. It would be unfair for the Jo-Ge-Oh to curse the people we face, especially since the one who slew An-De-Le was killed in turn.”

  “Who will cover the grave of An-De-Le?” The Jo-Ge-Oh was asking a critical question: who, in fact, would compensate the family of the dead. Wars had been fought over this.

  “I will,” Joseph said. “I take the burden on myself.”

  “It is not your burden.”

  “I make it my burden,” Joseph said. “Take care of your leader, Little Brothers.”

  He brushed past them and out of the tent.

  When he emerged, he looked up at the cloud that had formed over the nearby battlefield. But his sight gave him a different view than anyone else.

  Instead of a cloud, Joseph saw the form of a many-handed giant. It was no longer connected to the earth—it was instead tied to the winds, and one of the four was beginning to gather: Ya-o-gah, the North Wind, the spirit of the bear. If that spirit was able to come through and manifest, everything below would be swept away and destroyed. But something was holding it back—something was preventing it from concentrating.

  Without hesitation, he ran toward the hill where his enemies were fighting their way up the slope.

  Chapter 60

  There is no need for challenge

  “They cannot see,” Messier said. “They do not feel. There is nothing to do but to kill them. But, your Highness, they are not the problem. That is.”

  He pointed to the swirling, twisting cloud above the hill.

  “What must I do?”

  “Let her continue to operate the machine,” Messier said. “It is all that is preventing them from—”

&nbs
p; Whatever it was that the Frenchman wanted to say was stopped by a sudden rush of air sweeping toward them, as if the cloud was descending, swirling and squirming like a live thing.

  Edward said something under his breath that might have been a prayer or a curse. He raised his musket and aimed it at the center of the cloud, not sure whether it would have any effect—but it was better than just standing there waiting for something to happen.

  Is this where I die? he wondered, and then dismissed the thought angrily. He sighted along the line of the musket. Everyone around him was scattering, though to his surprise, Messier remained by his side, unarmed, looking directly at the phenomenon that was growing closer and closer.

  Then, when it seemed as if all the sound had suddenly been drawn out of the world, a figure appeared before them. On the slopes of the hills and beyond, everywhere Edward could see except for where Montcalm and Amherst stood and where a young native was scrambling up the hill, everything had stopped; the noise, the movement, the wind.

  The figure was a native; a middle-aged man draped in a colorful blanket. His eyes were black and pupilless.

  “Red Vest,” Montcalm said, walking back toward the native.

  “You know this man?” Edward said.

  “Yes, Highness. He serves—”

  “I serve the Ciinkwia,” the native said. He gestured over his shoulder at the place where the storm had been. Instead there were two figures hovering in the air—a native man and woman, both very tall. The woman held a staff shaped like a sheaf of wheat; the man had a bow over his shoulder and held a tomahawk.

  Montcalm looked at the two figures and crossed himself, his hand shaking as he did so. It was the first time Edward had ever seen the Marquis show the least sign of fear.

  “What do you want?” Edward managed to say.

  “This is not natural,” Red Vest answered. “None of this is a part of the world of the Great Spirit.”

  “I don’t disagree,” Edward said. “I am—”

  “Your aura says who you are,” Red Vest said. “The Ciinkwia do not believe that the Great Spirit intended for Gă-oh to be summoned at this time, in this place. It is not the place of Sganyodaiyo to do this.”

  “Yet he has done it.”

  “What has been done will be undone, although by what hands and what means remains unclear,” Red Vest answered. “But you will not be driven from this world, Prince. Not because of what you have done, but because of what you have not done.”

  “What have I not done?”

  “Many of your fellow whites believe that there is no place for the red man in the world, all of the world that there is. It is not what you believe—and they know this is true. But they—” he gestured away, down the hill—“must learn to believe the same.”

  “You told us that we could only go so far, and no farther,” Montcalm said. “The Ciinkwia told us that they only became stronger. We broke our word and would break it again in the future. Now they come and speak of peace?”

  “You spurn them.”

  “We do not,” Edward said. “We wish to understand them. In every case where the—servants of the Great Spirit—have appeared to us, they have always been hostile. Since the coming of the comet, the powers of this land have awoken and made their presence known. Never have they made any indication that they want peace.”

  “They were in the service of one who violated the commands of the Great Spirit. The spirit of the winds would destroy all—red and white.”

  “From what I am told,” Edward said, “there are more of the—servants—than the shaman out there has called forth. He did not call forth the Obeah-men on San Domingue. He did not make the Place of Bone. He did not drive the men in Massachusetts-Bay to madness from the ghosts of their past. It was not Sganyodaiyo who gathered the spirits of the dead Highlanders around Fort Carillon. There is more to this than the work of one misguided shaman.

  “Tell me, Red Vest. Or have the Ciinkwia tell me. What will they do to make peace between the red man and the white man, or the black man and the white man, or any race and any other race? They send this Gă-oh spirit away, but what next?”

  “You are brave to speak thus to gods,” Red Vest answered, turning his head slightly to the side as if he was hearing a voice.

  “You accord them the title of gods,” Edward said. “I respect their power, but my God is different.”

  “Your cross-god has no power here.”

  I have nothing to lose, Edward thought. “Ask them if they are completely sure of that.”

  “You challenge them?”

  “We must learn to live together. There is no need for challenge—merely mutual recognition.”

  “Or—”

  “Or this war, or something like it, will never end. Graves will be left uncovered, deaths unavenged, the earth itself ravaged by angry men fighting for their lives. Is that what they want, your gods? Is that what the Great Spirit wants? Because it is not what I want. If I am to be king—and it seems that I am—I would want peace. I promise by my God, and by my honor, that those who revere the Ciinkwia shall receive justice by my hands, and honor in my dealings. I swear that for myself and my successors.”

  “Your promises—”

  “Are henceforth binding,” Edward said. “They can accept that or not. But I have made this promise and I will stand by it.”

  Red Vest turned away from the prince and looked up at the shining figures of the man and woman. After a moment they each nodded.

  “The Ciinkwia accept,” Red Vest said. “It is done.”

  As they watched, the two figures—who had completely obscured the cloud—raised their hands as one, and the unseeing, unfeeling natives who had been tied to the phenomenon rose limply in the air, vanishing into the glow that the two deities projected.

  “Their essences had been taken by the Oniate,” Red Vest said. “The Ciinkwia cannot restore them to their former state, but can give them new life in the world of the Great Spirit.”

  Edward nodded, inclining his head.

  When all of the natives had been drawn into the light, Red Vest disappeared along with the two great figures. A soft, gentle breeze, fragrant as a summer meadow, wafted across in their wake.

  Catherine awoke from a troubled sleep to find herself resting on a comfortable cot. Light was streaming into the tent where she lay, and a native woman sat beside her bed smoking a clay pipe.

  “What . . . ”

  “Calm yourself, white sister,” the native said. “The battle is over.”

  “We must have been victorious.”

  “You mean—” She took the pipe out of her mouth, looked at it, and tapped it against the side of the stool on which she sat. “You mean did the warriors drive the enemy from the field? No, it ended a different way. But the monsters were defeated, and the betrayer is gone.”

  Catherine relaxed her shoulders. She wasn’t sure what she was being told, but it seemed to be good news.

  “How do you feel?”

  “Drained.”

  “You were passed out over your medicine-maker. Whatever you were doing, it hurt the monsters. But it hurt you as well.”

  “Am I wounded?”

  “Not in the body that I can see.”

  “I—” She sat up, and then immediately thought better of it. Every muscle in her arms, her shoulders, and her chest was sore. She let herself fall back. “Maybe in the body as well. What happened, then?”

  “Ciinkwia came to the battlefield and stopped the Oniate from summoning the spirits of the wind. They called it abomination and would not permit it.”

  “Who—or what—is Ciinkwia?”

  “They are the spirits of thunder and storm, in service to the Great Spirit. They came unbidden and took the unseeing warriors who had been bewitched by the Oniate.”

  “I felt the Oniate. Those are the Dry-Hands, yes?”

  “Yes.” The native woman shuddered. “They are no more. They were consumed by their working. But they summoned the winds to t
ear the land apart, and that was brought to an end.”

  “By spirits.”

  “By spirits,” the woman agreed. “Do you find this so hard to believe?”

  “After what I have already seen, no. I can accept all of it. I . . . Your pardon, Madame. I do not even know your name.”

  “I am Osha,” she said. “Clan-mother. I came with our warriors. When you were taken from the battlefield, I took charge of you and made sure you were cared for. People are waiting for you to awaken.”

  “Professor Messier?”

  “Yes, he waits,” Osha said. “But also there is another.”

  “Another?”

  “What you call a prince, I think,” she said. “He asked to be told as soon as you woke.”

  “I—” She looked down at herself, at the thin sheet that covered her. She was unlaced and unpinned, and her hair was loose about her shoulders. In short, she was in no way ready to receive Dr. Messier, much less a prince of any kind. “No, no, that would be . . . ”

  “He does not care about any of that, white sister. He has talked of nothing but you since you were carried here.”

  Catherine stared at the native woman, not sure what to say.

  “I will bring him,” Osha said, rising and walking toward the flap of the tent. Before Catherine could say a word, she was out of sight.

  Regardless of soreness, she decided that she would not be receiving anyone completely supine. With some effort she maneuvered herself to a sitting position and made an effort to arrange herself as modestly as possible. There was nothing to be done for her hair; she brushed a few stray wisps from her face, but had no cap or pinner to keep it in place.

  A few moments later, Osha returned with Prince Edward behind. He had his hat in his hand and looked disheveled—just come from a battle, not from his dressing-table.

  “Your Highness,” Catherine said. “Forgive me for not rising.”