Language of the Bear

by Nathanael Green

  He’d found it.

  “What is it?” asked the giant.

  Then Azariah surprised Pyke. The man laughed.

  “It is an omen!” Azariah raised the parchment to the sky and laughed. “It is a sign of our power.”

  His men circled him. Azariah still held the paper aloft.

  “We have made an impression on our dear English friends. These men were sent to kill me!”

  Instead of being frightened, however, Azariah was all smiles. He lowered the document and held out a palm.

  “Take heart! This night is proof that not even the Crown can stop us!”

  The giant yelled in salute, encouraging the others, while some of the Indians began their whooping. Finally, the rest joined in, resulting in a loud crescendo. Azariah spoke over it:

  “Find these men and bring them to me! We will show the world that we are not to be trifled with!”

  His men cried in exultation and then burst forth, spreading themselves out. Azariah stilled two men and in hushed tones gave them orders. Then, Azariah loped off while the two disappeared into the darkness.

  Though Pyke couldn’t see them, he knew what they’d been ordered to do: to lie in wait near the horse.

  His eyelids were so heavy it was a struggle to keep them fully open.

  He checked on the Indian again. The man was still breathing, but barely. He would be dead in short order.

  Pyke’s eyes flicked back to the horse. Azariah had left the blankets, of course, and Pyke was so bloody cold he was almost willing to spring the trap and take his chances.

  But that would never work. They were armed with muskets and probably pistols. He only had a tomahawk, which he didn’t know how to properly throw, and his sword and a small knife, both of which had no range compared to a musket or pistol. And he was in no condition for a fight to the death. It would be a nobly useless gesture.

  “Forgive me,” he whispered, gripping Wolf Tongue’s shoulder. “But I cannot help you. May God have mercy on your soul. And mine.”

  The man’s breath was faint but steady. But there was nothing Pyke could do. If he was going to live, he had to leave the Indian. He needed to find shelter and build a fire. He needed to go on to complete the mission, so that Wolf Tongue did not die in vain.

  Slowly, he stood and carefully surveyed the forest. He couldn’t see the two men Azariah had ordered to lie in wait. There was nothing else to do but flee as quietly as possible.

  He was about to take his first step when his conscience pricked him again. He was a gentleman. He had once claimed honor.

  With reluctant eyes, he looked at the inert body of the Indian once more and knew he couldn’t leave the man. It would be inhuman.

  Cursing, he crouched and began.

  He was going to carry the bloody Indian over one shoulder and find a shelter. The exertion would be difficult, but it would heat him up and fight off the chill.

  ***

  Pyke had gone less than twenty paces when he nearly toppled over. It had been a long time since he had carried anyone over his shoulder, and the Indian, a hulk of a man, was dead weight. And he had to move quietly too, carefully picking his steps. Pyke managed to steady himself, took a few heavy breaths, then resumed his march over the uneven ground.

  He followed the river and kept close to it, only because he hadn’t seen any of Azariah’s men take this direction. The going was difficult, the weather malevolent, the pain in his shoulder and legs from the load unbearable.

  Through the snow and benumbing cold he ambled. He took frequent, short breaks to catch his breath and switch shoulders. It was agony to stop and even more agony to resume. More than once he considered leaving the Indian and hated himself for it.

  Comenius, the Moravian at the Lenape village, came to mind and his words echoed: “We can be better than men.”

  From time to time, Wolf Tongue groaned incomprehensibly. Pyke shushed him, even knowing the Indian probably didn’t hear him. At least it meant the savage was still alive and this effort had not been in vain.

  The snow began to accumulate on the ground, making the way more arduous and slick. Pyke knew they would be able to easily track his steps, but he had few options. Because he carried the Indian, he had to take wide paths. There was no way around it. He kept his ears perked and prayed to God he would remain unnoticed.

  It was too much. His muscles quivered and his legs began to fail him. Each step required the strength of ten men. Fighting to the end, he finally went down on one knee, then the other, and without his balance, the Indian slumped to the ground off his shoulder. Pyke laid on his side and breathed heavily.

  He had seen no shelter and now feared the worst. The exertion had warmed him, but he could go no farther. Soon his sweat would grow icy cold and freeze him all over again.

  For a moment he lay there and listened to the sounds of the quiet forest and his barely breathing companion.

  He had tracked the river and now looked out to it. At this point it was wide and sluggish. The snow came down heavily, almost like rain, and landed silently on the viscous water. The cliff still rose along the other side, jutting into the black, starless sky, but …

  Set against the shimmering face of the cliff’s rock, a gaping black hole.

  He squinted his eyes in the darkness to see better.

  It had to be a cave, carved out of the rock by the vagaries of time and weather.

  Pyke crawled over the Indian and elbowed his way through the crackling bracken to the river’s edge.

  It was definitely a cave, but in this groping blindness he had no way of knowing how deep it was. And it would be dank and water-logged. But it would provide shelter from the wind and the snow.

  Now he just had to cross the river with the Indian.

  There was no time to build a raft or canoe. There was no time to find a long way around the river.

  They had to go back in the water. And Pyke, exhausted beyond measure and a weak swimmer himself, would have to tow the Indian along. The thought of returning to that shivering water terrified him. He’d nearly drowned less than twenty minutes ago. And the memory of that time in the creek with his older brother, when he’d gone under, came flooding back to him …

  He pushed the useless thoughts away and hurried back to Wolf Tongue. The man, miraculously, was still breathing. Pyke gathered up as much portable wood he could find and packed it in his and the Indian’s clothes. He didn’t have the strength to put the man over his shoulder again, so he grabbed fistfuls of cloak and tugged the Indian toward the water.

  Pyke’s feet felt the immediate sting of the cold. Could he do it? He wasn’t sure, but he was going to try.

  May God give me strength.

  He immersed himself in the cold, pulling Wolf Tongue in with him.

  The river was deep here. His feet lost the ground’s touch quickly. But that was good because the current was slower. He wrapped one arm around Wolf Tongue, keeping the man’s face skyward, and with the other arm paddled backward over his head.

  Because of the shock of the cold, it was difficult to breathe. His muscles tensed against it. At first he had no rhythm, but eventually his feet and one arm learned to work together. It was a struggle to row and keep Wolf Tongue’s face above water, but he managed.

  After swimming for what felt like an eternity, he dared look over his shoulder to track his progress. To his horror, he found that the current had carried him a little distance from the cave and he’d only gone halfway. Every joint in his body ached, and now his legs were cramping. The muscles were knotting up as if in death, and new stabbing pain shot up his calves. Between each kick, he sank below the surface.

  Pyke kicked harder, ignoring the crippling pain in his legs, and he made wider arcs with each paddle of the arm. He pushed and pulled and clawed his way, inch by painful inch, closer to the cliff. As he neared, he saw it: the face was not sheer near the river’s edge. There appeared to be jutting, rocky paths. He thanked God.

  Finally, his hand f
ound rock mid-stroke, and his fingers latched to it. He held there, catching his breath for a brief moment, and then hauled Wolf Tongue up beside him. The cave was another ten yards over jagged rocks, and the Indian nearly slipped out of his grasp several times. But Pyke held on.

  When he tried to lower Wolf Tongue gently to the ground, the Indian slipped from his grasp and crashed with a thud. The cave floor was wet and slick, but at least they were out of the weather now.

  He shivered uncontrollably. He laid the wood he’d brought on the ground, then stooped over it. Blindly, he struck the Indian’s tomahawk against a piece of spare flint for his musket. There were no sparks for several minutes, but Pyke kept at it, knowing if he didn’t build a fire he would be dead.

  He figured Wolf Tongue already was.

  Finally, a spark erupted from the crash of steel on flint, but it fell harmlessly on the sodden wood. He had no fire yet, but the spark showed promise. He used the tomahawk blade to chip away at the wood, revealing the dry shavings that he showered into a pile.

  Rejuvenated, Pyke scratched the two things together again and again. With trembling hands, he missed his mark several times and battered his fingers. The pain was sharp, enough to startle him out of his chilly stupor.

  The sparks soon rained down on the wood, and finally the first flame blossomed.

  Eleven – Awakening

  His eyes fluttered open on the tail end of a shiver. He saw the fringes of fur near his eye. Beyond that, he refocused on a wall of stone, a small pile of wood, someone’s foot. A heap of ash and burning wood roiled with orange and white. No real flames rose from the sticks, but the fire surged and swirled through the wood like the currents of a river.

  The river.

  Wolf Tongue clenched his eyes shut to clear them, then reopened them and pushed himself up. Pyke’s woolen overcoat fell from him as he did. He looked around in confusion, then brought a hand to his head. It felt as if he were being repeatedly smashed with a war club.

  He sat in a small cave before a fire. The stone, porous and pocked with holes of black and red in the firelight, arched to half his height above his head and sloped quickly down to his right and behind Pyke. To his left and through the opening, he could see thin sunlight sprinkling the water of the river. Only a few strides to his right, the floor became a swath of mud two body lengths around before the ceiling sloped down to meet it. Pyke sat across from him and gingerly pulled some burning thing from the fire.

  “Finally awake, I see,” came Pyke’s voice. Wolf Tongue could hear a smile in it, but he felt in no condition to return it.

  “What happened?” he asked.

  “Here, drink this.”

  Pyke offered a charred piece of wood he held in a cloth. Wolf Tongue leaned forward, accepted it, and examined it. It was a bowl only as big as his hand, crudely made, and filled with steaming water.

  “They took the horse, our supplies, and our cups. I hollowed out a piece of wood with your tomahawk and a knife. It doesn’t hold much water, but you couldn’t drink much at once last night anyway.”

  Wolf Tongue slurped at the water and felt its warmth run down his throat and settle in his belly. Suddenly, he recognized that it was not only his head that pained him. Every muscle ached as if he’d been beaten for hours. His stomach churned and it felt as if his other organs were being cut open.

  At least most of the cold had left him.

  Wolf Tongue handed the makeshift cup back to Pyke and forced himself to smile. “It’s not bad, but I’d rather have cider.”

  “Me, too.”

  “What happened?”

  Pyke spent a few moments explaining how he’d managed to get out of the river and work his way back to the horse. Then, he took a long, slow breath and looked out into the sunlight. His face seemed to darken before he looked back and pushed an unburnt end of a stick into the fire.

  “You were there, lying in the snow. So was Azariah and a dozen of his men.”

  Wolf Tongue grimaced. So it had all been fruitless.

  Pyke coughed and continued, “When I got into his tent, he wasn’t there. I had thought him a dullard for having only one sentry. Instead, he’d laid a trap. It was as if he knew we would come for him.” Again he shook his head and grimaced with the look of a man who loathed himself.

  Wolf Tongue sat for a moment in silence, then uncurled and tested his limbs as he stood. His muscles and his innards still ached, and his head throbbed, but his body seemed to respond to his mind. He had vague recollections of stumbling through snow, bare tree trunks flashing beside him.

  He shuffled to the cave opening and refilled the little cup in the river. As he returned and placed it beside the fire, he said, “Did you get to use the tomahawk?”

  Pyke picked up the weapon and examined it. Wolf Tongue thought he saw something like grudging admiration, but Pyke handed it across the fire and looked away as if in disgust. “It did its job. And it’s handy for starting fires, too.”

  Wolf Tongue took it back and set it on the ground beside him. “I killed another of his men. That’s two less who are hunting us.”

  Pyke sighed and again looked out the opening. Wolf Tongue felt the frustration fill the cave like the smoke that curled and then seeped into the cracks of the rock above him. They’d come so close to their prey, seen his face glowing in the light of the fire, only to nearly die in the river. And now Storm-of-Villages was likely hunting them. If the cold and hunger did not subdue them, a lead ball or steel blade still might. He liked it better when he was the one hunting from the shadows.

  Wolf Tongue wondered what the soldier was thinking now. Was he, too, questioning their mission? Thinking whether his own reasons for his actions were still as compelling as they had seemed only a day earlier?

  Wolf Tongue studied the soldier for a moment. His hair was wavier now than it had been, long, tawny strands that seemed reluctant to be tied at the base of his neck. His eyes were the color of the rock around them as they stared into the fire and lines appeared along cheeks as he clenched his jaw.

  “Storm-of-Villages,” said Wolf Tongue. “You saw him at the horse?”

  Pyke seemed to come back from a long way away. “Yes. I came upon you near the horse just as he and his men found it. He seemed unwounded. I had to abandon the horse and all our supplies.” He paused again, then said, “He found the Colonel’s letter.”

  Wolf Tongue’s eyebrows lowered. “It’s just a piece of paper. Anyone can scribble with charcoal on paper.”

  “You don’t understand. That piece of paper has the Colonel’s seal, his own personal mark that says I go under his orders. And the Colonel is Azariah’s uncle.”

  Wolf Tongue blew out a long breath. “So he will hunt the Colonel and us, if he can learn who we are.”

  He took Pyke’s silence for assent.

  Wolf Tongue’s mind swirled. Storm-of-Villages had always been spoken of as a dangerous man, but a lonely one. He would come to the villages and try to gather men to him. He would alternately preach like the quhanstrono in the black robes or else try to sway them with visions he’d seen atop his lonely cliff. But he had been alone, or else with only a few others. They were no threat to the Susquehannock. He was only one bear, dangerous on his own, but no match for a tribe.

  Now, though. That had changed. There were more than twenty in his camp, and who knew how many more elsewhere. Wolf Tongue remembered the rumors that Storm-of-Villages had stolen the hearts of many who still lived with their people. White Europeans, black ahonesee, and iomwhen alike who were secretly loyal to the man. How many would stand with him if he rose against the English or Susquehannock?

  With a sickening feeling in his stomach, he wondered what other rumors were true. Could he see a man’s soul? Did Hahgwehdiyu truly teach him the language of the birds? Wolf Tongue had looked into his eyes and seen the flame of rage.

  Did he know that he was of the Susquehannock?

  He pushed those thoughts away and stirred the fire with a stick. The wood was
wet and smoky, though most of the smoke seemed to disappear into the fissures of the cave, instead of out into the air.

  “What do you do now?” he asked and was surprised at the hollowness of his own voice.

  “I will kill him. I must.”

  Wolf Tongue nodded, the words of his own blood oath echoing in his mind like the whispers of ghosts.

  Pyke cleared his throat. “But first, we must find supplies. We cannot survive long in the wilderness with no food, no muskets, no water, no blankets.”

  “There is an English camp not far south of here. It’s small with only the quick shelters you soldiers build when you don’t plan to stay very long. But they’ll have food and supplies, if we can manage to buy them.”

  “Good.”

  The question of what to do after that swirled with the smoke. Wolf Tongue again found himself thinking of Fox’s Smile on the day he left. She had offered to leave their village, to marry and live elsewhere. He could see the worry and love in her dark eyes, in the tiny tension of her brow and the curve of her lips. He could also see the stubbornness and frustration in her posture and her folded arms. Like a fool, he’d turned her down. He needed to earn his glory, to take a place of honor among the tribe’s warriors.

  The river seemed to laugh at him as it gurgled past the cave’s entrance. All he had done so far was to make a bigger enemy for his dwindling people. And now, how could he and this one English soldier stand against Storm-of-Villages who was raising an army?

  He thought for the briefest moments of returning to his village and rousing his people in a war party. But as quickly as it came, a realization splashed against him, cold as the river: they would not come to his aid.

  Lifting Smoke was glad to be rid of him. Wolf Tongue had left partially for the purpose of winning the chief’s respect, of earning a voice in the council. If he returned now with his head lowered and asking for help, none would come to his aid. It would only prove him unworthy to Lifting Smoke, unworthy of his blood oath to the Lenape. Unworthy to Fox’s Smile.

  He looked back to Pyke and again wondered what the man was thinking, as he seemed adrift in the same doubts as Wolf Tongue. The soldier unconsciously clenched and relaxed his left hand as if the movement would grow back the finger that he’d lost.