The Dakota Cipher

by William Dietrich

  He reminded me of doctors describing a painful treatment with a bit too much relish. He certainly didn’t seem the dazzling gentlemen I’d met in George Duff’s house. I should have asked for references.

  ‘Even wilted, it’s bigger than that quill you aim at your sister, you disgusting pervert.’

  He barked a laugh. ‘You do have cheek!’

  ‘Information from torture is useless.’

  ‘Then we’ll start with disfigurement.’ He nodded and one of the Indians jerked on my leash, hauling my head up. I could barely breathe. Another approached me with a mussel shell, sharp as a razor. ‘I like to cut across the eye before gouging it out, because the pain is hideous. Each time the swelling blinds you, a fresh cut releases the pus and the begging starts all over again. I watched them do it to a captive priest once until his sockets were a blind web of crisscrossing mussel cuts, black and red. Of course the priest had nothing to confess and was quite mad by the third day. But it was marvellously entertaining.’

  ‘I told Aurora we’re looking for woolly elephants!’ I cried, eyeing the shell looming close in my vision. And as my eyeball rolled, I saw something out of the corner of one eye and realised what Namida had spied at the beach. I almost had a spasm.

  ‘If that came from Jefferson I might almost believe you. But from Bonaparte too? No, we’ll make you match the Norwegian cyclops. Cut him.’

  ‘Wait!’ I know I was supposed to be stoic as a Roman in the face of this torture, but what was the point? We were chasing myth, a fantasy, and if I could delay things for another minute … There were two hundred against two, and we didn’t have a chance unless I made one. ‘We’re looking for Thor’s hammer!’

  ‘What?’ He motioned the savage with the shell to stop, rotated his sword off his shoulder, and put its point under my chin. ‘A hammer?’ He looked confused.

  ‘A hammer of the Norse gods! That’s why Magnus is here! He thinks Vikings or Templars or some other madmen came before Columbus and hid a magical hammer that could control the world! I don’t care about that, I only thought we could sell it!’

  ‘Ethan!’ Magnus cried in despair and disgust.

  ‘He’s got an old map in his case. He may be a lunatic, but I came along because I was tupping Napoleon’s sister and had to get out of France!’

  Cecil blinked, looking at me in consternation for the longest time. Past him, down a land of wigwams and longhouses, I could see fire-blackened stakes set in the ground and piles of fresh brushwood for burning. I remembered the horrid fires at the Battle of the Nile, the smell of roasting flesh, and the blaze in Count Silano’s strange chamber in the Tuileries. I’m deathly afraid of fire.

  ‘He’s lying!’ Bloodhammer shouted. ‘Torture us! You’ll see!’

  ‘He’s a poor liar.’ It was Aurora, stepping into my field of vision with my longrifle lazily pointed my way. ‘His lies are unbelievable, instead of convincing. This is just stupid enough to be true.’

  Cecil looked from one to the other of us as if he’d found a new species. Then he began to laugh. ‘Thor’s hammer?’

  ‘He wasn’t a god, he was some sort of early ancestor and had this weapon that spat lightning.’

  ‘Ethan, enough!’ Bloodhammer roared.

  ‘Don’t tomahawk me, because we can take you there …’

  ‘Ethan!’

  Cecil swung his sword away and then whipped the narrow flat of it hard across my face, a stinging blow worse than any the Indians had yet given me. A lip split, and my cheek was on fire. ‘Do you think me a fool?’ he screamed.

  I slumped, near to weeping. ‘Ask Magnus …’

  ‘A bloody myth! You want me to believe you are looking for Nordic gods in Louisiana? That you’ve come six thousand miles for a pagan fantasy? That any sister of Napoleon would so much as look at you?’

  ‘She couldn’t keep her hands off me, the randy bitch. It’s Pauline the nymph, who had a reputation long before I …’

  ‘Silence!’ He slashed me with the flat of the sword again. Damn, that hurt!

  ‘Brother, he’s not intelligent enough to invent something so absurd,’ Aurora said.

  ‘Yes! Look at me! I’m a dolt!’ My eyes were watering in pain and shame, but what choice did I have? I dared not look at what I’d seen again.

  ‘Silence, I said!’ And he slashed me with the flat of his sword yet again. I blinked, near to fainting. I hate helplessness.

  ‘We should look at the map case,’ Aurora said.

  ‘I want to burn him,’ Cecil growled. ‘Roast him for days, for having you.’

  ‘Patience, my love. I know I’ve stoked your jealousy to spice the game. But we need to know everything he knows. This is a start.’

  ‘I want him to be porcupined with splinters, and the end of each one set on fire.’ Cecil licked his lips. ‘I want the women to flay his manhood.’

  ‘There’s time, brother. There’s time. But this map?’

  ‘The case is in the canoe.’ He snapped some words to Red Jacket and a young buck darted off to the lake shore to fetch it.

  ‘Let me guide you. Partners, like we said.’

  Then Namida, whom I had entirely forgotten about, began jabbering at Red Jacket. He snapped back at her, but that just made her angrier and she pointed at me, insisting. He argued, but then Little Frog began arguing too. What was going on? The Indians began debating among themselves, and the Somersets looked increasingly annoyed. They snapped something at Red Jacket, and the chief snarled back.

  ‘What’s happening?’ I called to Namida in French.

  ‘We’re claiming you as husbands.’

  ‘Now?’

  ‘Women who are widowed can save a captive to repopulate the tribe. We have no husbands, and they must give us a chance at children. You would become a renegade and fight with Red Jacket.’

  ‘Join him?’

  ‘But you have to marry us.’

  Right now that did seem superior to the alternative. ‘Magnus, Little Frog does have a certain charm,’ I encouraged.

  ‘These women are slaves,’ Cecil seethed. ‘They have no claim on my captives. Red Jacket dare not deny us the torture he’s promised.’

  Namida shook her head. ‘You must become our husbands. This band is depleted by Red Jacket’s quarrels with other Indians: everyone hates him. The women know their men will come to me if I don’t have a man for myself.’

  Well, once again I could produce harmony, like the treaty at Mortefontaine. Sleeping with Namida was just the job for my diplomatic talents.

  The girl was helping me by delaying things, I knew.

  Then the runner came back with the map case. While the Indians argued about my matrimonial suitability, Cecil took out the map and unrolled it for Aurora. They looked at it and then at us, over the parchment rim.

  ‘This is forgery.’

  ‘It’s Templar ink, damn your eyes,’ said Magnus, who had apparently given up hiding his preposterous theory. ‘You know it’s real.’

  ‘You’re both quite barmy. It’s worse than elephants.’

  ‘That we can all agree on,’ I said.

  ‘Yet what if they aren’t entirely insane?’ Aurora asked. She looked hard at Magnus. ‘This hammer. What can it do?’

  ‘I thought you called it a myth?’

  ‘What can it do?’

  He shrugged. ‘No one knows. But if it exists, medieval mariners thought it important enough to cross the oceans and take it to a special place – a very special place.’

  ‘Can it kill people? Lots of people?’

  ‘It was Thor’s weapon.’

  She turned to Cecil. ‘What if they aren’t making this up?’

  ‘You must be joking.’

  ‘They would have this map ready-made for such an improbable story? The map looks real, somehow. It’s so ludicrous that it smacks of truth.’

  ‘I don’t doubt Gage would believe nonsense. The question is whether we should.’

  ‘We can always kill them later. Let’s
have them take us here.’ She jabbed the map.

  I nodded encouragingly.

  ‘No, I want the truth now. I want to roast it out of them now.’

  ‘What if we need their help finding the hammer?’

  ‘We’ve travelled with them for weeks. Gage couldn’t find his own ears. If they’re telling the truth and we have the map, then we know what they know.’

  ‘The Rite said he was resourceful in Egypt and Palestine.’

  ‘Then we tie him to the stake as we intended, drain what he knows, slake the Indians’ blood lust, and go looking at our leisure.’ He licked his lips, thinking now. ‘Something like this hammer, if it exists, could put us above the North West Company, and Montreal, and even the prudes and hypocrites back in England. We could live as we should, married by our own law. We could blame his disappearance on this map. Give us an hour, Aurora, an hour at the stake, and we’ll know everything!’ He grasped the double-bladed axe. ‘It’s astonishing what men will say just to keep their last fingers and toes.’

  ‘Then get Red Jacket to silence those captive squaws!’ The tumult Namida was causing was clearly flustering Aurora.

  ‘To hell with Red Jacket,’ her brother said. He snapped an order and two of the warriors guarding us yanked on our tethers to get us to our feet and pull us towards the stakes, even as Namida and Little Frog shrieked in protest. The tribe’s argument was growing fiercer, Red Jacket unable to quiet either side.

  Cecil, Aurora, and our two guards had soon dragged us twenty yards from the main party of yelling Indians. Clearly we were going to be tied to the stake before clearer, more matrimonial heads could prevail. But these were the best odds we’d faced all morning, and I was becoming impatient. When, when? Aurora had the longrifle pointed at me, and Cecil his sword pointed at Magnus, the axe held loosely in his other hand and the map thrust into his belt. He gave a curt command and the brave who’d dragged me by my tether cut away the cords at my wrist so he could bend my arms around the back of the upright post. Another took my neck leash to help drag me the last bitter feet to my doom. I certainly wasn’t going to make it easy by walking! I began to lift my arms and Aurora cocked my gun. ‘Don’t you dare,’ she said. ‘I’ll shoot you in your knee and you’ll still be alive, but in agony before the fire even starts.’

  ‘Through the heart, Aurora. It’s the least you can do for old times’ sake.’

  ‘No. I like to make my lovers moan.’

  Now the other Indians were beginning to come towards us, still arguing but less heatedly. Namida looked miserable, which was not a good sign.

  And then the head of the warrior holding my left arm exploded.

  It was about time!

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  One moment he was pulling me to the stake, and the next the top of his skull sprayed away in an arc of hair and blood, dropping him like a stone. For just one moment I was stunned, surprised when it finally happened. Then, more out of instinct than thought, I rotated my body and right arm to swing my other escort into the path of Aurora’s gun.

  My rifle went off just as he rotated into her aim, and he dropped too.

  Another shot and a cry from Red Jacket who spun, clutching his arm. The other warriors seemed paralyzed. I grabbed the muzzle of my empty longrifle and, with more ferocity than I knew I could summon against a woman, shoved Aurora Somerset straight back against the bark wall of a longhouse and through it. I knocked the wind out of her as the butt rammed her midsection and the wall shattered. Then I swung the stock at a charging Cecil and parried the arc of his swinging sword. The rapier sank into the wood with a thwack and stuck there, the aristocrat’s face livid with rage and fear, and I twisted the rifle to snap it. Little Frog meanwhile snatched up Magnus’s axe, which the nobleman had dropped, and cut the Norwegian’s bonds. We were between the Somersets and the other Indians, so Cecil danced backward towards the waiting stakes, stumbling on firewood as he fumbled for the pistol in his belt. I yanked the broken sword clear.

  Another shot, and a charging warrior went down, and then Magnus was free and swinging his axe in a great arc, howling like a Viking berserker of old. He waded into the stunned Indians like a maelstrom, the muscles under his torn shirt rippling, and the blades came up red, slain warriors toppling out of his way. They didn’t have their own guns or bows and his weapon whistled as he swung. He paused a moment to stoop and snatch up his map case in determined triumph.

  Why did he care if it didn’t hold the map, which was still in Cecil’s belt?

  I sprang over the prostrate Aurora and tore off the powder horn she’d draped across her chest. ‘Your whore is dead!’ I lied to Cecil to draw a quick shot, and rolled as he fired. Now! Could I club him with my musket or stab him with his broken sword before he reloaded?

  ‘This way, my friends! Hurry, my muskets are empty!’

  It was the voice of Pierre Radisson, calling from the stockade wall. Namida and I had seen him from the corner of our eyes.

  ‘Get them!’ Cecil was yelling to the confused Indians even as he retreated farther, struggling to reload his pistol. He kept glancing at the prostrate form of his sister, face twisted.

  Time to retreat! I hurled the haft of his sword at him, making him duck, and then Magnus, Namida, Little Frog, and I ran to the other side of the longhouse I’d shoved Aurora through. Pierre had pried an opening in the crude palisade of saplings, and we scrambled through, hauling on Magnus to get his bulk through the tight entry.

  ‘Praise Odin, what are you doing here?’ the one-eye asked.

  ‘Saving donkeys!’ Pierre thrust a musket into my arms. ‘Here, until you can reload yours! Norseman, help me plant this keg!’

  The Indians were finally shooting back, but the stockade was between us and provided some shelter from the bullets. I fired into the crowd and another warrior went down, making them scatter. I saw Red Jacket sitting, cradling the arm wounded by Pierre’s earlier shot and wished I’d spent the bullet on him. Then there was a flare, and a fuse was sizzling towards the keg.

  ‘Run, run as if the devil himself is behind you, because he is!’ Pierre cried. Angry braves were darting towards the mouse hole we’d just crawled through, so we sprinted away through a stand of birch, adrenalin coursing. There was a roar.

  I looked behind. The powder keg had blown up, turning the Indian stockade into a penumbra of flying splinters. Timbers flew up like spears and tumbled. I heard screams and confused yelling as the debris sprayed our tormentors. Others would dash out the main gate and come around to chase us, I knew, but now we had a lead of a good hundred yards to reach the lake shore.

  The stockade and longhouse began to burn.

  We ran to the canoe Pierre had snuck ashore and skidded into the water, the women tumbling in first and then me.

  ‘Magnus! Where are you going?’ The Norwegian was running away from us with his axe, back towards the town, but I soon realised his target was the nearest canoes. One chop, two, and they were wrecked for the moment. There were more down the shore but his sabotage had gained us precious moments.

  Bloodhammer came sprinting back, arms pumping, axe head bobbing up and down. He crashed through the shallows, water flying, and threw himself over the rim of our canoe, nearly tipping it. We hauled him in and then we were paddling madly, trying to put distance between us and a village boiling like a disturbed hive. Bullets whined.

  The Indians rushed to the canoes, found them wrecked, and set up an even greater clamour. Then they dashed back down the shore, smoke roiling over their home.

  For an optimistic mile I hoped we’d thrown them into such confusion that they wouldn’t follow.

  But no, here came one, two, three, four canoes on Lake Superior, crowded with warriors, paddles flashing in the sun. I didn’t see a red jacket, but a coatless Cecil was standing in one bow, urging them on.

  ‘There’s a river to the south that will take us inland,’ Pierre panted, ‘but we need distance to make it work. Norwegian, get up and paddle one side while
we three do the other. Gage, load your rifle!’

  I had ball in the patchbox in the stock. It was reassuring to have the familiar weapon in my hands again, out of the clutches of Aurora Somerset, but annoying that my acacia wood stock was once more marred, this time by Cecil’s sword blade. I poured powder from the horn I’d yanked off Aurora. As I loaded and looked back I could see Lord Somerset, no doubt furious at my treatment of his sister, pointing with his pistol as if will enough could bring us within range.

  The distance was one hundred and fifty yards, far too great for a handgun. The occasional shot from the trade muskets of our pursuers went wide. But I had a rifle, crafted for accuracy, and even as we rocked with every paddle stroke I aimed. His white shirt was a tiny flake in my sight. I held my breath and squeezed, my enemy silhouetted against the sky.

  Hammer hit pan, a flash, the kick of the butt against my shoulder and then a long second to judge my accuracy.

  Cecil Somerset jerked and then pitched neatly over the side, falling into the lake with a splash.