After the translation, he said, “Between thirty and forty able-bodied men. His force is mixed. Some are white, and some are Indian.”
“What is Indian?” Kicks-the-Oneida said, drawing the laughs of his hangers-on. “I do not know this word.”
Pyke understood the gibe was at him for not knowing one tribe from another. He swallowed his pride and said, “I do not know what tribes these men were from.”
“As if you could tell the difference between an Englishman, a Prussian, and a Frenchman,” Wolf Tongue added quickly in English.
“It doesn’t matter who they are,” Kicks-the-Oneida said. “They are divided, and not warriors. They’ll fall to our muskets and tomahawks. Storm-of-Villages is not even a soldier.”
“Is this true?” Lifting Smoke asked Pyke.
Pyke remembered their word for yes and continued his answer in English. “He’s not a trained soldier. But he is a soldier’s son, and a soldier’s nephew. He has been around trained men all his life. So he must have absorbed some things. And most importantly, he is cunning as Wolf Tongue said.”
Everyone waited for Fox’s Smile to translate his words. And then Wolf Tongue spoke, “Storm-of-Villages may be the most dangerous enemy we have faced.”
Kicks-the-Oneida chortled mockingly. “The leader fears an unseasoned soldier! This man is not fit to stand in front of a war party!”
At Kicks-the-Oneida’s latest insult, his apple-polishers hooted and caused a stir of conversation to ripple through the council. Pyke counted eight of them, who were openly supportive, and a smattering of other hangers-on who were not so vocal as well.
Pyke seethed at the insult hurled at his friend and wanted to speak on his behalf, but Wolf Tongue gave him a look that said be quiet. Pyke looked to Lifting Smoke, who he thought by rights should have interceded on Wolf Tongue’s behalf but did not.
Wolf Tongue waited patiently for the tumult to end. “Why would we have the second best warrior lead the war party?”
Kicks-the-Oneida’s eyes flared in rage, and finally, Lifting Smoke cut in. “This matter has already been decided. Wolf Tongue will lead the party.” He looked from the corner of his eyes to Wolf Tongue. “Make your words plain.”
“Storm-of-Villages is dangerous because he’s unpredictable. He’s English, but not a trained soldier. He has lived with the Mohawk, but has not fully adopted their ways. His force is divided, so there is no telling how he will put them to use. And always, there is a deceit. Always. We must not underestimate him.”
The chief’s eyes unslitted and his face softened. At least part of him agreed with Wolf Tongue. A murmur of agreement flashed through the gathering, while Kicks-the-Oneida’s men stayed hushed.
“Our numbers are even,” Kicks-the-Oneida said. “So we should not play childish guessing games. We should dictate the battle.”
Wolf Tongue kept his eyes on Lifting Smoke, probably having sensed the old man was partly on his side. “I agree we should have a plan but we must also have contingencies.”
Pyke knew then that Wolf Tongue was going to win the argument. The man knew diplomacy. Rather than defying the tribe’s heretofore-best warrior openly, he pretended to agree with the man in principle, then very carefully distinguished his own position, thus appealing to everyone. Kicks-the-Oneida’s form of rhetoric, on the other hand, was poor and only supported by his own staggering reputation as a warrior. He’d lost the crowd and clearly did not know how to win them back.
The council talked for another hour, and there were more minor disagreements but Wolf Tongue emerged the winner. He would lead the war party at first light tomorrow morning, and no one was to question his authority or judgment on the battlefield. They would stray no farther than a mile from the village, though, because they did not want to leave their women and children totally unprotected.
Pyke watched Kicks-the-Oneida as the council broke up. The warrior had lost the argument but still had his sycophants, and they were a loyal bunch. The eight of them also seemed to be considered the better warriors of the tribe, too. Pyke frowned at the thought of their meager force having divided loyalties, but there was little he could do about it.
***
“It’s a shame you English have not shared your secret of making cider with us,” Wolf Tongue said over dinner.
They ate in Wolf Tongue’s longhouse with his mother. She was a striking woman, looking much younger than her forty years. And very quiet. The Indian must have gotten his tongue from his father.
“Too much drink leads to ruin,” Pyke said before he sipped his water and shifted against the tightness of his dressings. The shoulder was starting to throb again, but at least he was able to use the arm. He was going to need it. “Have you given any more thought to sending for help?”
Wolf Tongue frowned. “Lifting Smoke would not have it. The English brought this trouble, and so further involving them would only invite more.” The Susquehannock then seemed to reconsider his words. “That’s the way he sees it.”
Pyke wasn’t going to let the man off that easily. “And how do you see it?”
“I don’t see how extra muskets and men would hurt,” Wolf Tongue said with a smirk.
“No telling how the Colonel would have responded to such a request. The man is inscrutable. But I doubt he would have given aid.”
“He’s English.”
Pyke snorted. “But you have no problem fighting a battle the English should?”
Then Wolf Tongue grew serious. “I think Storm-of-Villages is a blight on the land and would become our problem sooner or later. Better to deal with the man now, while he’s still weak.”
Pyke gauged the man’s expression, not exactly sure if Wolf Tongue believed what he was saying. Wolf Tongue met his gaze. The man looked sincere, but sincerity was difficult to read in someone who was always joking.
“And you?” Wolf Tongue asked. “What do you do now?”
They hadn’t spoken of Pyke’s plans, but he figured that Wolf Tongue would have known without the need for words. “A British officer sees his mission through.”
“You fight with us? Without the English?”
It did sound absurd. He’d never fought with these men before. Though he’d never faced Indians in battle, he’d heard from others how they fought, and it was very differently than how the English did.
But none of that mattered. He had a mission. “I stand shoulder-to-shoulder with you.”
Wolf Tongue pursed his lips in appreciation. “I lead my first war party tomorrow.”
At that moment, Pyke remembered the Colonel had asked the tribe for their best warrior. Strange to think they’d send a man who’d never led men in war.
“Why do you smile?” Wolf Tongue asked.
“Because the Lord can lead us to funny places,” Pyke said evasively. “I’m glad I’ll be there to see you lead men for the first time.”
Wolf Tongue was about to say something but then looked past Pyke. Someone had come into the longhouse.
Fox’s Smile appeared and came to the small bench along the wall where they sat. “My father needs you,” she said to Wolf Tongue.
Wolf Tongue grabbed another bite and stood. “Keep an eye on the quhanstrono so he doesn’t get into any more trouble. He has a way of angering iomwhen.”
Pyke chuckled at the reference to their short time with the Lenape.
“Do you want more food, Pyke?” Fox’s Smile asked.
Pyke tapped at his stomach. He hadn’t eaten much during their journey and now what would have been a regular meal felt like an overstuffed feast. “I would like to walk this meal off. May the lady accompany me?”
Wolf Tongue and Fox’s Smile shared a silly grin, and Pyke knew he was the butt of some unspoken joke between them. No doubt it was his alien manners.
Wolf Tongue winked. “Try not to fall for this man’s charms.”
***
Pyke walked with his hands folded behind his back and head down. Fox’s Smile kept the pace and led him around the quiet villa
ge as the afternoon wore on.
If Azariah pushed hard, he could be here this evening. But that would be difficult. Azariah might be intelligent and cunning, but when it came to practical matters and the logistics of moving troops and supplies quickly, that was a thing that had to be learned. More likely, Azariah’s small force would arrive in the area tomorrow, as Wolf Tongue and he had figured.
Still though, he shuddered at the rather carefree way the Susquehannock went about their daily rituals when there was a chance the enemy could be storming their village that evening.
“You are wounded,” Fox’s Smile said.
He’d forgotten about the shoulder and for a moment couldn’t think of what she was referring to. “The bullet did not penetrate too deep. It is more a nagging cut than anything else.” Slowly, carefully, he swung his arm around to test the shoulder socket. He felt the grip of the dressing and the pull of the lacerated skin near the wound.
“I did not mean your shoulder,” the woman said. “The wound I speak of is much deeper than a bullet could ever go.”
Pyke’s next step was a slow one, but then he caught himself and regained the pace. “I’m afraid I don’t know of what you speak.” But he did, and he didn’t know how she could know. A superstitious chill ran through his body, and the silly notion that the Indian woman was a witch and could somehow read his mind and see into his heart terrified him for a moment.
“You watched me and my man with hurt eyes.” Then, sensing his embarrassment, she quickly added, “It is nothing to be ashamed of.”
Pyke kept his eyes on the ground ahead and plodded on. When he finally looked over at her, she was smiling in a friendly way.
“Wolf Tongue is …” He searched for the right words, the ones that would carry the proper weight. He wished he knew more of their tongue so his thoughts could be made clear. “… a great warrior, an honorable man, and a good friend.”
She raised a questioning eyebrow. “You say it as if you are surprised.”
Now he knew why Wolf Tongue was so taken by the woman. She was a beauty, for an Indian. But it was more than that. She had a tongue on her. It wasn’t as sharp or as biting as Wolf Tongue’s, but they were two of a kind.
“I am not surprised,” he lied, and rather badly. “It just needed saying. We have been through much.”
She had an impish grin on her face, and he couldn’t help but return the smile. They continued on.
“Will you two marry?” he said, asking what was a most impertinent question of a woman. Inwardly, he chuckled at the thought of being so forward about a private matter with a British girl in Philadelphia. He would have been quickly rebuffed and quite likely slapped.
But Fox’s Smile wasn’t offended in the least. She continued to speak with a startling openness. “Yes. I will marry him because he is in my heart and will be forever.”
Pyke felt an overwhelming ache inside, like a part of him was missing. Her name flitted through his mind like a bat in the night sky. Barely seen, barely heard. But there.
“Does your father approve?” Pyke asked, already figuring the answer.
“He will,” she said with naked determination. “Does her father approve?”
This time, Pyke wasn’t so caught off guard by her, but still he took his time answering. They stopped at a felled tree and Pyke offered her a seat before he took his own next to her on the log. She seemed confused by his manners, as if uncertain why she should sit before he did.
“It’s a funny thing,” Pyke said. “I was concerned more with the father’s approval than with the lady’s own. The father barely hesitated to give his blessing, but the lady has declined.”
Pyke gazed out at the village. He watched a gaggle of younger boys circling the fire, in the midst of some game. To his right, farther down the main path, a man tested the string of his bow. It was no English archer’s bow, that was for sure, as it appeared much smaller and not requiring as much brute force to use.
“Why?” Fox’s Smile asked. “Wolf Tongue tells me you are a good warrior. For an Englishman.”
He chuckled at the barbed comment made by proxy.
“He also tells me you saved his life,” she said.
Pyke heard a thickness in her voice, and when he faced her, he saw her moistened, grateful eyes.
“The man exaggerates. I aided him in a time of need, as he did me.”
“Thank you, Pyke.”
He smiled, feeling an ease around her he’d never felt with a British or colonial woman before. “To answer your question, another has the lady’s heart.”
She wiped the few tears from her face with the back of her hand. “Then she is a fool.”
He was partly offended by her insult. And partly not.
“She is very young. Perhaps too young for her own good. Maybe if the timing had been different …” He trailed off, not allowing himself to get pulled into a pointless hypothetical.
She let him have his silence for a few moments. Though, by the way she kept glancing at him, he could tell a question burned inside her.
He raised his eyebrow to give her the opening.
“How will this battle go?” she asked. “None of the men around here, especially Wolf Tongue, would ever dream of giving me a straight answer.”
Pyke felt confident they’d emerge victorious. When two forces were evenly matched in numbers, the more cohesive, trained, and tested force would always win. There were always exceptions to that rule, because the Fates liked to play their cruel part in human affairs, but it was useless fretting about those. Besides, from what Wolf Tongue had told him, the Susquehannock warriors had grown up fighting together. Their battles with the Oneida were the stuff of tribal legend. These men knew how to fight together. Whereas Azariah’s force was unproven.
But there were unknowns, and these other possibilities kept nagging at him. How would Azariah come? How would the men follow Wolf Tongue’s lead when they were used to taking orders from another? Would Kicks-the-Oneida create dissension among the ranks to promote himself?
And, what trickery would Azariah use? The man’s mind was a convoluted tangle of dreams, ambitions, motivations. It made him unpredictable. And that was an advantage that could not be overlooked.
Pyke realized he had taken much too long to answer her question. “We will win. You needn’t worry.”
She gave him a knowing smile. “You are a good man, but a bad liar, Pyke.”
Twenty-One – The Path to War
Wolf Tongue tilted his chin to the air and smeared gritty paint along his throat. The smell of ash and animal fat filled his nose as he wiped the black gel under his jaw and around the back of his neck. Beside him, Runs-in-Water, Bone Snake, and Strikes Twice slathered their own faces. Pyke sat on the ground, watching as he ran a stone along the edge of his sword.
The sun was still unborn and hidden just below the horizon, but its light had begun to filter through the clouds into the village. The light had not come, but instead the darkness seemed to settle and fall into the earth, leaving everything, the houses, the palisade, the other groups of men preparing for war, smeared with blue-gray.
Wolf Tongue looked to the side as Fox’s Smile approached with another bowl of pigment. “Let me do that,” she said as she set down the wooden bowl filled with thick red ooze. She tilted Wolf Tongue’s head down toward her. With quick hands, she painted what felt like lines up over his face, taking care not to agitate the cut on his left cheek. She smeared the back of his head down to the nape of his neck and a long streak across both eyes.
She appraised him with pursed lips, then scooped a wad of red paint onto three fingers. As she continued her work, Wolf Tongue swiveled his eyes to Pyke.
“You don’t paint yourself for war?”
Pyke shook his head and tested the edge on his sword. “No.”
“But if you die, how will your god know which is you? You English all look the same,” he said, trying not to smile.
“Stay still,” said Fox’s Smile. Wolf
Tongue turned back to her with a little sigh that brought on a stern look.
Wolf Tongue was anxious. He could feel the tension in the village, feel his own muscles itching for movement. The battle would be joined soon, and he could do what he had trained to do. But this waiting wore on him. He reminded himself that impatience would be what would get him killed and his people hurt.
Instead, he turned his mind back to Pyke as Fox’s Smile smeared red streaks on his face. The soldier had been quiet since he’d arrived except for his speaking out at the council. The man had never been one for conversation, but he had begun to loosen his tongue after some days in the wilderness together. Now, though, he seemed to be more withdrawn than ever. It seemed that his encounter with Storm-of-Villages and his escape had wounded him more than the bullet in his shoulder.
Wolf Tongue looked again to his friend, who’d returned to sharpening his sword in long, steady scrapes. Before, he had seemed thoughtful in his quietness, but now he seemed brooding as if his spirit struggled with itself.
Perhaps that was good. He would need his strength in battle.
Fox’s Smile stepped back and studied her work. “Good,” she said. “Black across the eyes and streaks up and down like a wolf in the shadows. Red stripes in between for the favor of the jogah.”
“You look fierce,” agreed Runs-in-Water.
“And you,” said Wolf Tongue. Runs-in-Water had painted a thick, solid stripe of black across his eyes and nose with perpendicular, thinner stripes running downward along his throat.
Wolf Tongue eyed his uncles who’d also painted their faces and necks, one with designs of white on black, the other, one half red, one half black. The men were brothers from the Porcupine Clan, both married into the Wolf Clan.
The men nodded their approval to Wolf Tongue and smirked. “It’s been a long time since we went to war,” said Bone Snake. He always seemed to talk mostly with his bottom lip, which jutted forward slightly.
“I’m glad I could give you cause again,” said Wolf Tongue.
“Leave it to the young ones to stir up trouble,” said Strikes Twice, though there was no malice in his voice. He was the younger of the brothers, and twelve years older than Wolf Tongue.
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