The surgeon tested the water at the stove and poured some into a tin cup. He brought it to Pyke. “Have a sip. Now, the matter of semantics. You see, I was shot at from such a great distance that the ball hit my chest but caused barely any damage. I had an awful bruise the next day, but that was all. I don’t like to boast, as you know sir, but to my way of thinking, that would constitute being shot because I was in fact struck by the device. The gentleman disagreeing claimed that a man was only shot if the ball did some serious damage, at least breaking the skin. You see?”
Pyke nodded. The pain was becoming too much to carry on conversation.
“Now, son, tell me how this happened? I’m the one that has to look after everybody comes through here, so I need to know—”
Pyke cut him off. “Road agents. Two of them.” He gulped the rest of the water. It tasted metallic, but it was pure enough to refresh.
“Devilish bastards. And how did you manage to survive?” Blackstone leaned him back so he was lying on the examination table. The doctor slid a tiny, feathered pillow under his head.
“By wits alone. We overtook the two men. They were no soldiers.” Pyke squeezed his eyes shut against the pain, which flashed in waves. Blackstone pressed the whiskey into his hand.
Pyke craned his head up to drink more of the whiskey. Father had always told him that the alcohol would help dull any serious pain. He took two heaping sips and laid his head back down on the pillow.
“We?” Blackstone asked.
“I’m sorry?”
“You said ‘we overtook the two men.’ I thought you traveled separately from the Indian. Was there another soldier?”
Pyke’s heart beat faster. Lying down, he could feel it batter his rib cage. “Forgive me, I’m not myself. It was only me.”
Blackstone seemed to accept this. The doctor gave him his back and Pyke heard the man doing something. He rolled his head to the side to watch the man. The surgeon was hunched over a table, on which were his metallic instruments.
It’s not the bullet, it’s the infection that gets most men, Father had always told him.
Pyke shuddered at the thought of a protracted infection. He offered a prayer to God it would not happen to him.
“Two road agents are no match against a British officer,” Blackstone said.
“Bloody well said.”
Blackstone turned back to him, holding two knives of different sizes. “I’m afraid we have to get on with business here, my boy. So listen. The ball is not that deep. You are fortunate it did not sever any major arteries or was a few inches lower. I will extract it and bandage you up. It’s a good thing you found me so quickly, as this will lessen the chances of infection.”
“I see. Let’s get on with it then.”
“Good man. Now put this between your teeth.” Pyke felt a slab of wood in his mouth. “Bite down, and do not move.”
Blackstone went to work. Pyke felt one of the knives tear into his skin near the wound. The pain bombarded him, but he struggled against it to stay conscious. Without Wolf Tongue at his side, he didn’t feel comfortable falling asleep in this strange town. The surgeon seemed nice enough, but there was something odd about the man. Why would such a seasoned surgeon in the Army be stationed in this sorry excuse for a town? Probably, he’d offended the wrong man or done something else ill-advised.
Pyke felt another stab of pain as more skin tore, and he groaned against the wood between his teeth.
“Hold, son, we are almost there.”
Pyke gritted his teeth and tried to think about Damaris. The images his mind produced of her were fleeting and vanished with each new flash of pain. He let out a groan, one louder than he would have liked, but the surgeon said nothing.
“Here we are.”
With one last explosion of pain, he felt something slide out of his body. He was having trouble focusing his eyes, but when he was able to, Blackstone was holding the ball out for him to see. It was covered in his blood.
“Why don’t you take a rest now, son?” the surgeon said.
Pyke shut his eyes, already slipping away.
He thought he heard the surgeon say, “You’ll need it in the days to come,” but he couldn’t be sure.
***
The doctor’s bread was fresh. Pyke tore off huge chunks and ate it as quickly as he could, filling his belly. He drank more boiled water and even managed to sit up with the surgeon. The bandages were wrapped tightly around his chest, and Blackstone had told him to move as little as possible. The wound was not very large—little more than an inch—but still, the less active he was the better.
“How long have you been here?” Pyke said.
Blackstone drank liberally from wine skin and belched. “Nigh on three years now. I’ve seen some terrible things. Terrible. A lot of good young men dying on the frontier, leaving wives and families to starve. And the Crown is not … forgive me. I’m getting carried away.”
Pyke wasn’t surprised by Blackstone’s rather outspoken opinions. All the surgeons he’d known had not been shy in expressing contrary thoughts. They were somehow exempted from the rules of polite society, by virtue of their profession, Pyke figured. Father had never cared for doctors, as he considered most of them “middle-class upstarts.”
“It is your house, sir, you may speak freely,” Pyke said. Normally, he’d frown on such talk, but at this moment he permitted it. A few hard days on the frontier and now he was turning a blind eye to backtalk against the Crown? He’d changed. Or maybe it was the combination of his present dire situation and nagging wound: he didn’t have enough energy to quibble over small talk.
“I am a patriot, son, believe you me. I was born in the old country and hope to die there someday. But the Crown has not done right by this colony and probably the others. These colonists are made to bow and curtsy and they are offered no support in return. Nothing. They must carve everything out of the woods, and very often, they just end up carving their own coffins. We are offered varying, limited protection against the Indians and the French to boot. How are we—” Blackstone stopped himself. “I go too far.”
The surgeon finished what was in his wine skin and began searching for another. Finding none on his person, he went to the cupboard next to the stove. He came back to the table with one and made an offer to Pyke.
The pain was still bothering him, so he took the liquor. “Thank you, Major.” Pyke wondered how long he’d been out and where the Susquehannock had gotten to. They needed to find shelter. He had a feeling the surgeon would demand he stay for the night, due to the wound. Perhaps Blackstone would take Wolf Tongue in as well. The surgeon had said that they all lived together in this town anyway, whites and Indians.
Just like in Azariah’s camp.
Pyke finished with the whiskey and handed the skin back to the surgeon. Blackstone’s head was tilted and he was watching Pyke with curious eyes.
Pyke tore off another piece of bread and ate it. His mind was not at ease. There was something off about the surgeon. About this town. It was a settlement, but a sickly one, as if the frontier had sucked the life from it.
Blackstone took the wine skin and gulped some more whiskey. The man had engulfed plenty in their short time together and, aside from a little garrulousness, showed no signs of inebriation.
“I know you are a good soldier and an honorable sort. I can tell that much just by speaking with you. So I know you would never express any outrage, but when a man is a doctor and gets to be my age, he finds it difficult to still his tongue,” Blackstone said.
Pyke nodded. “Your words will go no farther, Major. I wonder where I might find some shelter for the evening. Could you direct me to a place in town?”
The surgeon chuckled. “You will find no hostel in this place, I’m afraid. But you’re more than welcome to stay here. In fact, it’ll be the doctor’s orders. I need to keep an eye on that wound.”
Part of him welcomed the thought of sleeping under a roof, out of the elements, after the last
few days. But part of him was worried. He couldn’t quite put his finger on why. And where would Wolf Tongue find shelter? If Pyke raised the subject of the Indian, he might arouse suspicion.
Perhaps he was just being too cautious. He should trust this man. After all, Blackstone was a surgeon and had served in His Majesty’s Army for a number of years and knew the Colonel. Blackstone wasn’t clergy and he wasn’t a barrister, but being a surgeon had to count for something in terms of discretion. He should just confide in the man and hopefully find some help.
“Where are you headed, if you don’t mind me asking?” Blackstone said. The surgeon took a drink but kept his rheumy eyes on Pyke.
Pyke was about to open up to the man, but the way the surgeon looked at him forced him back into tight-lipped silence. “I’m afraid I can’t say. My mission is confidential.”
Blackstone held up a hand. “Say no more, son. It is not for me to pry sensitive information out of a loyal soldier.”
“I wonder if you might allow me to find that Indian. I didn’t get a chance to thank him properly for his help,” Pyke said.
Blackstone’s eyes narrowed. “You gave him coin, did you not?”
“I did. But that is not properly thanking a man, is it?”
“I’m not sure moving around with that open wound would be so good for you, son.”
Pyke softened his face and smiled. “It would only be a few minutes. I feel it is my Christian duty.”
Blackstone was silent for a long moment. Then he grunted. “You would fit in well here, son. We English in this town have an amicable relationship with the natives, as it should be.”
The man had answered without answering. Pyke opened his mouth to press the issue, but then he heard the door to the examination room open and the sound of footsteps on the creaking floorboards. “Are you expecting someone?”
Blackstone stood and propped the wine skin up on the table. “A surgeon is always expecting someone, because man and nature can be cruel, wicked things.”
Fifteen – An Arrow Unloosed
Wolf Tongue crossed his arms and frowned at the man across from him. Brown was a big man with shoulders as wide as Wolf Tongue’s, though he was half a head shorter. The smith had a thick, gray beard over an open collar and an odd mustache that curled up towards his eyes on either side of his nose. He seemed friendly enough, but his prices were no bargain.
“What you’re asking for is three times what it’s worth,” said Wolf Tongue with exasperation in his voice.
The smith wiggled his mustache and leaned back with one hairy, bear-paw of a hand on top of a hunk of steel he’d sunk into a tree stump as an anvil. He spoke in a slow, odd accent. “Then it’s not worth it to you, aye?”
“Keep your pistol, the powder and the bullets,” said Wolf Tongue. “What would you ask for two deer hides, a couple of flints, four days’ rations, and a pouch of tobacco?”
The mustache twitched again, the eyes narrowed shrewdly. This man was no stranger to trading. “I’ll take the coins, those two knives, the necklace, your powder horn and that tomahawk.”
“For some stale bread, poorly tanned hides, and crumbly flint? I could get that with just the coins themselves with some to spare.”
Brown shrugged and brushed some unseen thing off his makeshift anvil. “Thing is, I’m the quartermaster, but I don’t got much to trade ’cause I don’t got much at all. Those coins and necklace don’t do me much good out here. And I don’t see us heading back to civilization anytime soon.”
Wolf Tongue narrowed his eyes and watched the smith for a moment as he thought of his options. There was little he could do to improve his situation. He needed food and warmth at least for a few days, and he had nothing else to trade with.
Four exchanges later, Wolf Tongue walked away with two plain deerskins, a handful of crunchy tobacco, and a few days worth of food. It had cost him both knives, the coin, and one of the powder horns he’d taken off the men who’d ambushed them.
Once away from Brown’s house, Wolf Tongue threw both the skins over one shoulder and tucked what little food he’d managed to get into his bag. The quartermaster admitted that the little town didn’t have a baker and that he distributed some of the supplies, but at least he’d had a full loaf, a few strips of salted pork and a handful of dried vegetables. It would be enough to last them at least a day or two—long enough to forage or fish, or else move on to somewhere with more reasonable prices. Or perhaps Pyke would be treated to food and supplies as a British officer.
Wolf Tongue looked up from arranging his gear. He’d momentarily forgotten that here, he was supposed to be separated from Pyke, to appear as strangers. The grayness of town and the absence of the sun resurged in his mind and again he felt the tingling of hostility that seemed to emanate from the earth itself.
Even the pigs that still rooted into the earth seemed aloof. The two animals stood shoulder-to-shoulder and shoved at one another, both seeking some nut in the black soil, unaware of the muck that they tore from the ground and smeared on their faces. The pigs were the only moving creatures to be seen, and it seemed to Wolf Tongue that he was suddenly the only man in a vast wilderness unlike that of his home.
With a shudder, Wolf Tongue pushed the thoughts away and wrapped the hides securely to free his hands. He was tired, sore, and hungry. That was all. A good deal of rest and some food would banish that melancholy.
He glanced toward the surgeon’s house, a small, bark and panel building. A glimmer of lamplight licked at the oiled paper of the one window cut in the south side. Pyke was now in the hands of his own people again, and an army officer. Likely he’d have a good night’s rest, a clean bandage, and a plate or two of hot food.
He deserved it, Wolf Tongue thought as he turned toward the creek. The soldier had proven himself in battle, and there was no doubt that he’d saved Wolf Tongue’s life at least once.
Though, he probably could have killed those scalpers even without Pyke’s help, he thought with a small grin.
So with Pyke cared for, Wolf Tongue expected to pass the night on his own. In fact, he hoped where he waited would be well hidden from prying eyes. He stepped toward the creek and would find his way down the stream to where it met with the river.
Much of the area was thick with evergreens and he’d build enough of a shelter to keep him warm and let him sleep at least through the night. The thought of sleep made him blow out a long breath and look to the sky. It would be full dark in only moments and it might take another hour to make it to the river. Perhaps he would move just far enough away from the town for secrecy and settle in a dry spot. Then he could meet Pyke in the morning.
With that settled, Wolf Tongue looked over his shoulder once more at the town behind him. He stopped, his body suddenly rigid.
Four men moved along the road, their light clothing silhouetted by the slate-colored trees and mud behind them. Each was armed with a musket slung over a shoulder and they came along the path steadily and quickly. Wolf Tongue recognized the shaved head of the enormous man leading the group as the one who’d tracked them and followed their fake canoe, Farkas. And his companion, Artemis, much shorter and with a hawkish look about his thin face, walked in curt steps.
Wolf Tongue’s blood hardened in his chest. He took a half step to the side and squatted behind a tree. He didn’t need another fight today, of all days. Maybe they had just come for supplies like he had and would pass through. Or else lodge somewhere while Pyke could slip out unseen.
“… Damn fools,” came a snippet of their conversation. Wolf Tongue huddled closer to the tree and watched with thunder in his chest. “At least the doctor will have something to drink.”
Wolf Tongue’s hand tightened on his musket as the men unerringly walked directly to the surgeon’s house and one-by-one slipped through the opening.
Wolf Tongue clenched his teeth and slapped an open hand against the tree in frustration. “I wanted battle and glory, but I should have left it to Kicks-the-Oneida,” he
hissed.
With a steadying breath, he sorted out his options. Could he even save Pyke if the men had already found him? Yes, he decided. The boy had said Storm-of-Villages wanted captives, not corpses, so Pyke would likely still live. At least until they took him back to the camp. But Wolf Tongue could not wait for an opportunity, especially if this entire dirty town sided with Storm-of-Villages.
You never kill a hare with an arrow you don’t release.
He stood and unslung his musket. Without removing his powder horn, he primed the pan and pulled the hammer to half-cock. He pulled his tomahawk and knife loose and held them in his hands along with the gun—there would be little room or time to fire inside the house, so after his first shot, he’d need to be ready.
He stepped toward the surgeon’s house, grimacing at the squelching of his feet in the mud. As he neared, he drew the hammer back to full cock.
Shoot one through the window, take the next as he tried to come through the door. After that, it would depend on the circumstance. He would have to be fast, and close, so none could use their own muskets or pistols.
Wolf Tongue scanned the town again before his eyes flashed to the window. His heart screamed like the drums of war and he blew out a shuddering breath with a half-grin. He had wanted battle and glory.
He was now only fifteen strides from the house and he took his musket and knife in one hand to free himself to swing with the tomahawk. He could hear muffled sounds of speech from inside the house, though nothing distinct.
He’d have to be fast. Tear the paper with his tomahawk, aim, fire, and run. Aim for the bald one, the leader, and the others might falter.
“—see what the quartermaster has for us,” came a voice that was suddenly clear.
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