Eye of the Raven (2 page)

"By all that's holy, dig it out!" Duncan whispered, watching the sleeping camp, desperately trying to calculate where the remaining sentry would be.

"All that's holy will tell me if I am worthy," Conawago replied slowly. His months-long quest to reconnect the tribes to their gods, who had so clearly abandoned them, might be the most urgent task of his life, but he would not rush the spirits.

He was waiting for a sign.

Duncan surveyed the camp in grim anticipation. Surely there was no chance now of escaping undetected. But he would not interfere with this courageous elder, who so uncannily reminded him of his beloved grandfather, who had indeed become like a grandfather, and more, to him. Duncan's tribe too had been abandoned by its gods, years earlier in the Highlands of Scotland, his tribe too was nearly extinct due to the greed of the European kings. He had been denied a chance to give his life for his clan in Scotland, but he would not hesitate to offer it up to protect the gentle old Nipmuc.

He freed his knife of the leather strap that kept it tight to his belt then knelt and rested his rifle barrel on a boulder facing the camp. The Huron raiders, always painted with blood, would come first, screaming like banshees, eager for the demons carved on their ax heads to chew enemy flesh.

He heard a whispered syllable of gratitude and looked up to see a solitary goose fly across the face of the moon. Conawago arranged a square of leather below the seam of ochre and began gouging it out with his knife.

They were trotting westward, along the ancient trail that connected the homelands of the Iroquois in the north to the western Ohio country, the first gray light of day filtering through the oaks and hemlocks, when Conawago abruptly slowed. Suddenly his long battle ax was in his hand, its end circling in the air as if about to be launched. Duncan raised his rifle, instinctively cocking the hammer. Conawago pushed the pouch that contained the hardwon ochre to his back to protect it, and he seemed about to charge forward when he spotted a pale oval object on the path in front of him.

Duncan had never known him to show defeat, but now as the old Indian gazed at the turtle shell painted with red symbols an anguished groan escaped his lips. He took a step backward and seemed to sag as a tall warrior stepped out of the shadows. The stranger was unarmed except for a hunting knife hanging from a strap across his bare chest, though the fire in his eyes said he was about to wreak havoc. Conawago dropped his ax to the ground and motioned Duncan to lower his gun, muttering one word, "Onondaga," the name of one of the friendly Six Nations, the Iroquois.

But the man gave no indication of being an ally. He tensed, his fists clenched, as if about to spring on the old man.

Duncan stepped to the side, ready to react when the stranger attacked. He saw now the turtle tattoo that covered half his face, the elaborate painted designs on his arms and chest, exposed under the sleeveless waistcoat he wore open over his buckskin leggings and loincloth. The stranger was no ordinary warrior but a leader of one of the tribes' powerful secret societies. Duncan searched his memory for what he had learned of the Onondaga in his months with Conawago. They were the keepers of the Iroquois Confederation's central hearth, arbiters of disputes, guardians of the ancient secrets that kept the tribes anchored to their past.

"Chief of the Turtle Clan," Conawago added, as if the announcement should quiet Duncan.

"You are outcast!" the intruder hissed. "Since the birth of our people our totems have been safe, honored by our prayers and protected by our gods. Then you steal them like a common thief? You spit on our gods! You are no longer protected by the Haudenosaunee!"

Duncan saw the grief that rose on his friend's face, like a physical pain contracting his features. His mind raced back a month earlier to a small cave above one of the long lakes west of the New York colony, its entrance surrounded by skulls and feathers. Over the opening had been a large turtle shell painted with symbols identical to those on the shell before them. Conawago had insisted Duncan wait outside while he entered the cave. The old Indian had spent the day before in purification rites at a mountain spring and most of the following night reciting prayers in the tongue of his fathers. But Duncan had seen the mote of doubt that had lingered in his eyes for days afterward, and the appearance of the clan chief now seemed to trigger the same emotion.

"The relic I borrowed was left there by my mother in the last century, when I was a boy," Conawago explained in a level voice, pulling from inside his shirt a little ceramic figure of a man that hung from a strap around his neck, "a figure made by the first mother of my Nipmuc tribe, at the beginning of our days."

Duncan inched forward, struggling to keep up with the Iroquois words. He glanced toward the shadows as he did so, sensing that they were being watched.

"It was entrusted to my clan, for all the Haudenosaunee," the man said, using his people's term for the tribes called Iroquois by the Europeans. "I gave a blood oath to protect it."

"It belongs to no one," Conawago shot back. "When my father died my mother took it to the shrine cave to honor his Mohawk people. But it is for all the tribes of the woodlands, all the tribes whose gods are leaving them."

"Our gods stand with us! They flee from no one!"

"Open your eyes! While we fight the Europeans' war for them," Conawago countered, "our women and children die of European diseases. The tales of our peoples have been passed on for generations, but now British rum deafens our young to their elders. Our peoples become dependent on goods they know not how to make. The Europeans sweep up our land as if we don't exist. My Nipmuc people are nothing but last year's leaves blown from a tree. The gods are drifting away, forgetting us because we have forgotten them."

The stranger's face clouded a moment, then his gaze returned to the little clay deity. "I saw you leave the cave that day, but I was unable to follow. I think," he added in a threatening voice, switching to English for the moment as if he wanted Duncan to hear, "you stole a sacred amulet just to sell to some Englishman. Skanawati will not permit it."

"He did but remove a family totem!" The protest escaped Duncan's lips unbidden. He would not let the stranger abuse Conawago.

The stranger's hand went to his knife. Conawago stepped closer to Duncan, a new uncertainty on his face. The announcement of the warrior's name seemed to have shaken him. His hand rose and gestured Duncan away.

"The figure belongs to no one," Conawago repeated, extending it on the strap. "But returning him to his mate gives him new strength." As he spoke his hand slipped inside a pouch on his belt, and he produced a second figure nearly identical to the first, though clearly female.

The sight of the second relic silenced the Onondaga. He stared at it intensely then sighed and lowered himself onto a nearby log. "What is it you seek, old man?" Duncan did not miss the small flicker of his hand, a signal to someone in the shadows.

"I am speaking with the ancient spirits every day and night, reminding them of rites I knew as a child. I am cleaning the dust from their ears, the thorns from their eyes. I am speaking names not heard for years."

"That is the duty of the Onondaga." There was no more anger in his adversary's voice, but rather a rising pain. "You are not even of the Haudenosaunee."

Conawago's eyes flared. He jerked his shirt open to reveal the tattoo of a wolf on his left breast. "I was born of the Mohawk and Nipmuc tribes," he declared in a proud voice, for all the forest to hear, "blood kin to King Hendrick," he said, speaking of the beloved old chief who had died earlier in the war, leading Iroquois braves against the French at an age of over eighty years. "I have been in the court of the French king, given medals by the English king. I have hunted buffalo when they still ran on the banks of the Hudson, spoken with men who knew the great Champlain. And," he said with a simmering voice, tapping the tattoo, "I was made a member of the wolf clan of the Mohawk before you even knew your mother's milk." Duncan had seldom seen his friend so passionate. The two Indians seemed to be drawing each other out, tapping emotions usually buried deep inside.

But it was not the fierce words that choked off Skanawati's protest. His eyes grew round with wonder as he pushed Conawago's shirt to the side, revealing another tattoo on his left shoulder, of a sun with long rays extending down his arm and onto his chest. He ran his fingers over it, the fingertips hovering just above the lines, as if sensing some power emanating from it, then looked up and down, from Conawago's stern expression to the tattoo, before he could find words again. "I thought no man alive still bore the mark of the dawnchasers," he declared with awe in his voice. As Duncan had learned months earlier when he had seen the tattoo on a dead friend of Conawago's, the mark was bestowed only on the elite few who completed an ancient rite, a treacherous, sometimes fatal, twenty-four-hour race across mountain, swamp, and forest to connect and empower shrines of the forest gods.

"I was the last to receive it," Conawago said. "The gods know we have forgotten them," he repeated.

"I thought it one of the lost things. You know the places of the chase, the words that must be spoken?" Skanawati asked with sudden urgency.

Conawago slowly nodded his head.

"Why have you not shared this with our people?"

"It is not worn for pride, or glory."

"We need holy men."

"I have done too many unholy things in my life to become one."

Skanawati looked with melancholy at the little god on the leather strap and slowly nodded, as if he understood the explanation all too well.

Duncan studied the chief anew. There was an air of great power about him, even in his stillness. He was a warrior in his prime, though his eyes spoke of something deeper.

"Come back with me, and we can join the two gods in the cave. Teach me." When Conawago did not reply Skanawati looked strangely shamed. For a moment, in the long shadows of dawn, the Iroquois chief seemed old beyond his years. "Then let me help you." He gestured at Duncan. "I could take this white slave of yours and get many pelts for him in the Ohio country."

Duncan gave no sign he had understood the words, just returned Conawago's sober gaze as his friend seemed to consider the offer.

At last the old Indian shrugged. "I will keep him for now. He is clumsy, but he collects my firewood and cooks my rabbits."

The Iroquois studied Duncan with disdain, then offered a shrug of his own as if to say Conawago would come to regret his decision. He took a step backward, paused, then pulled a little furwrapped bundle from his belt and handed it to Conawago. It was what the tribes called a medicine bundle, containing sacred items collected from the forest.

Conawago solemnly accepted the gift, cupping both hands around it then pressing it to his heart. "You have not said what brings you so far from your longhouse."

Skanawati stared silently into the forest, considering whether to reply. "The Warriors Path changes," he said at last, using the Iroquois name for the trail they stood on. "We have been losing warriors along the trail," the chieftain explained, an unsettling darkness entering his voice. "We find their bodies by old shrine trees, mutilated as if by a predator. Sometimes," he said hesitantly, "it is Europeans who are dead." He looked from Conawago to Duncan, considering them carefully before speaking again. "My mother had a dream," he finally added.

Duncan looked up at the Iroquois. It was a startling revelation. Dreams were intensely private to the Indians. The spirits spoke to them through dreams, linked them to the world on the other side of death. Dreams were fate, dreams had to be obeyed.

Skanawati looked at the dawnchaser tattoo as he spoke. If an Iroquois held a strand of wampum beads in his hand he had to tell the truth. For Skanawati it seemed gazing on the tattoo required him to share deep, urgent secrets. "In her dream she was taken along this trail by an old bear spirit. The bear told her the trail is becoming a crack in the world, that the lives of many men are being stolen on it, that their ghosts form a line pointing to the Ohio country. Then not long after, my mother saw for herself the beginning of that crack and sent me onto the trail. She said when I find the ghosts they will tell me how we leave the servitude of the English king."

They were bold words, terrifying words, for they portended not only much death but a rift between the English and the tribes. If the Iroquois left their traditional alliance the British army would likely seek their destruction, for fear they would aid the French.

"And are the ghosts speaking with you?" Conawago asked.

A chill ran down Duncan's back as Skanawati nodded. "I have looked into the crack in the world," he declared. "There are terrible things to behold. Death walks this trail. Man becomes tree. Man becomes machine. The ghosts call out challenges to me in the night."

Conawago and Duncan exchanged an uneasy glance.

"We are not ghosts," Conawago observed.

Skanawati seemed to consider the point, then solemnly nodded, glancing again at Duncan. "I have heard tales of a crazy old Nipmuc wandering in the mountains with a yellow hair." The Iroquois' gaze drifted back toward Conawago's tattoo. "You must leave this trail. Go deeper into the mountains, stay away from the forts, stay away from the bloody water, or you may fall into the crack in the world. Hide. Not even the children will be safe when the covenant chain breaks," he said, referring to the century-old metaphor for the bond between the British and Iroquois. "More ghosts are coming." He scooped up the painted turtle shell as he spoke.

"Yet you roam the forest without fear," Conawago pointed out.

"I am the answer to the ghosts," the Iroquois replied.

Then without another word he slipped into the shadows.

I have looked into the crack in the world. The lives of men are being stolen. More ghosts are coming. The Onondaga's words preyed on Duncan as he and Conawago journeyed on at the slow, steady trot used by the tribes in the wilderness. Stolen lives meant lives taken without honor. Skanawati had been speaking of murders that threatened the covenant chain. If that chain were broken, the Pennsylvania and New York colonies would become bloody abattoirs. With new foreboding Duncan recalled the sentry in the enemy camp, felled by what had seemed like a ghost.