Return of the Pale Feather
Page 1
RETURN
OF THE
PALE FEATHER
E.B. Brown
Return of the Pale Feather
Copyright 2013 E.B. Brown
Smashwords Edition
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All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Dedication
To my father. You were always my biggest fan,
no matter what stupid thing I’d done.
I love you and miss you every single day, Dad.
Contents
Copyright
Dedication
Part One
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Part Two
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Acknowledgements
About the Author
Preview: Of Vice and Virtue
Part One
A farther Confirmation of this we have from the Hatteras Indians, who either then lived on Ronoak-Island, or much frequented it. These tell us, that several of their Ancestors were white People, and could talk in a Book, as we do; the Truth of which is confirm'd by gray Eyes being found frequently amongst these Indians, and no others.
- John Lawson, A New Voyage to Carolina, 1709
Chapter 1
Maggie
Maggie reined her mount in closer to Winn’s war pony, taking comfort in the touch of her husband’s knee against hers as their horses brushed together. She reached for him, her fingers sliding against the slick skin of his golden-brown thigh. It had been a long ride on a humid summer day without rest, a sacrifice made to speed their journey home, and she was glad it would soon come to an end.
“Do you need rest?” Winn asked, placing his hand over hers. She shook her head.
“No. I just want to get back. The sooner the better.”
He tipped his head toward her, a slight movement, yet she felt the sudden tension of his leg muscle under her hand as his blue eyes met hers. She wanted to ask what was wrong, but if she knew nothing of his warrior ways by now, she knew enough when to keep silent. Her own body stiffened, her response attuned to his. He slowed his pony and hers followed suit.
“I think you are right. We will stop to rest,” he said, his voice louder than necessary. She felt the pressure of his fingers as he gave her hand a gentle squeeze, then slid down off his mount. Unease crept in as he lifted his arms to her waist to help her down.
He never helped her dismount, there was no need. She was perfectly capable, and he was no gentleman.
“I suppose I could use a drink,” she whispered.
His eyes held hers as she slid off the horse. He kept her close, her body sliding down tight against his bare chest, and if she had not been so scared she would have been lost in the delicious sensation as he kept her shielded between him and the horse. She welcomed his touch, even knowing it was a ploy. His lips traced a path over her sun-scorched cheek to her ear where his words fell whispered in her hair as if only sweet endearments.
“We are being tracked. I think there are two men. One is behind us now. The other circles us.”
She bit down over her lower lip as he pressed a kiss to that soft sensitive place near her collarbone.
“How long have you known?” she asked. His arm slipped down around her waist and he pulled her closer.
“Since we left the river.”
“That was miles ago! You should have told me!” she hissed.
“There was no need for you to know!” he snapped back.
She ran her hands through his thick black hair, in part to continue the rouse, yet also to convey her frustration. He uttered a low growl in warning before he shoved her away. Stumbling backward a few paces before she regained her footing, she watched as Winn crouched into a defensive stance to face the two men who approached them.
The men were not strangers.
One stepped forward, knife raised.
“Kweshkwesh. You slither like a snake to follow us. Why?” Winn said, his words tempered with restraint. Maggie kept her eyes on them as they squared off, the two men circling as if bound in a creeping dance, each poised to strike.
Kweshkwesh glanced at her, his eyes dark orbs seared into the twisted mask of his face. She remembered him well, the sneaky warrior who had once stolen her from her husband. A scalp lock braid ran down the back of his neck, his skin a mesh of pox marked scars, and she could see him tremor as he confronted Winn.
As well he should. Her husband had spared his life on one occasion, and she was certain Winn would show no such mercy a second time. She ran her thumb over the butt of the knife tucked in her waistband as she watched them, noticing the second man observing as well. She knew enough of the Powhatan ways to understand the test of honor before her. Kweshkwesh had been deeply shamed in front of the entire village when Winn refused to take his life nearly a year ago. It was a matter that would be settled now by blood.
“You know why. I will have the head of your Time Walker,” Kweshkwesh said, his eyes shifting back to Winn.
Winn straightened from his crouch, extending the knife he held out toward Kweshkwesh, pointing it with precision at the other man’s heart.
“I regret I spared your life once before. Come here, little warrior,” Winn taunted him, waving to him as if in welcome. “I will end your suffering today.”
They crashed together with a slew of slurred Powhatan curses, Winn taking the upper hand almost immediately. The muscles flexed across his broad back as he wrestled Kweshkwesh to the ground, and although Winn was built much thicker than his opponent, Kweshkwesh was still a formidable fighter and used his wiry strength to twist from Winn’s grasp. Winn fell forward onto one knee and scrambled to rise.
Kweshkwesh lurched for Winn with his knife and the men crossed paths again. Maggie let out a cry as she watched the blade slice across Winn’s chest and he kneeled down onto the sandy soil facing away from her. Back to back, both warriors paused, the sounds of their ragged breathing filling the dank humid air.
“Elek?” he choked.
He plummeted forward onto the ground with a sickening thud.
Winn turned toward her, rising up from his crouch, his chest smeared with crimson blood.
“Winn!” she cried.
He looked beyond her, his crystal blue eyes narrowed into slits, as if she neither stood there nor spoke to him, focused on something else to her left. She had no time to consider what he was looking at, too worried about the second warrior that now moved in to attack her husband.
“No!” she screamed.
Her skin prickled as she heard footsteps crush the forest debris near her flank, and before she could turn she felt a whoosh of air ripple her hair as something flew by from behind her ear. She choked on her own scream as the second man fell, taken down by a long-handled axe impaled in his sternum.
Winn reached her side, and she fell into his arms as they stared at the fallen warrior.
“Bloody Indians!”
They looked toward the brush as a man strode toward them. Of equal height to Winn and just as threatening in his demeanor, he parted a new path, stomping on the undergrowth and breaking through low growing branches as if they were twigs. Eyes of a berserker glared at them from a dense bearded face, the thick muscled arms flexed at the sides of a broad chest as his skin dappled with droplets of sweat.
He placed a foot on the body then closed his hands over the axe handle, jerking it away with one quick motion. Maggie could only watch, stunned as he sheathed the weapon on his back, and Winn pulled her to her feet.
“I can see nothing’s changed. Ye still find trouble, no matter where you go, hmm, Maggie-mae?”
She flew into his arms.
“Marcus! How? Why? Oh!” she cried as he closed his arms around her. He lifted her off the ground, squeezing her so hard she laughed through the fresh burst of tears. She touched his face, covered with at least a few weeks worth of beard. “I didn’t recognize you with this thing! You’re here, you’re really here!”
“Aye, lamb, s’all right now, don’t cry,” he said. “Ye were tricky to find, and worse to follow. Did ye know those men tracked you for miles?” he added, directing his question over her shoulder to her husband. She stepped away from Marcus and grabbed Winn’s hand.
“Yes, I knew,” Winn muttered.
“Winn, it’s Marcus! I can’t believe it, he’s…he’s…here.” Winn was tense at her side, glaring at Marcus. Maggie felt as if she faded away at that moment, watching the two men locked in a silent battle as they stared each other down.
She squeezed Winn’s hand. He nodded at Marcus.
“Time Walker,” Winn said.
Marcus grunted some sort of acknowledgment.
“Winkeohkwet,” Marcus replied.
Her eyes darted between the two men, her words jumbled as they poured forth amidst her rising confusion.
“Wait a second! You…you used a Bloodstone? Why? How? What are you doing here, Marcus?” she asked.
He shifted his stare to Maggie and sighed, running one hand through his thick black hair and then down to rub his beard. Maggie had never seen him with facial hair, the unkempt growth giving him a menacing demeanor despite her knowledge of his gentle nature. Standing before her with two wide leather straps crossing his chest and his muscles tensed in readiness to strike, she hardly recognized the man she had known her entire life.
“Aye, I have a lot to tell you, but most of it can wait for now. I’ve been to this place before, and God knows I never thought to see it again so soon. First off, I came for my son.”
Winn’s eyes narrowed.
“Benjamin returned to his time. That was more than two years ago,” Winn answered.
“No, he’s still here,” Marcus insisted.
“But he went back. He used his Bloodstone, I saw him leave,” Maggie replied.
Marcus shook his head. “He never made it. Last trail I could find of him was a record of his release from jail at Jamestown. Seems no witnesses survived the massacre, so there was no one to speak against him. Did he really murder two men, Maggie? Can ye tell me nothing else about it?”
She glanced back at Winn, who remained immobile. As much as revisiting the past pained them both, she could not stand in front of Marcus and withhold it from him. He deserved to know what happened to his son. By right of blood and sacrifice of his journey, she could give him nothing less. After all, Benjamin had once been her husband, and despite what he had done she still believed there was something redeemable in him.
“If he was held at Jamestown, then something went wrong with the Bloodstone. I last saw him at Martin’s Hundred on the day of the Massacre…in the church,” she placed her hand on his arm. “I have so much to tell you, too, Marcus, things I couldn’t put in the letter. I think we should go home, and–and you’ll come with us, won’t you?”
He placed his hand over hers.
“I didn’t hunt ye down through time for the hell of it, for sure. Of course I’ll go with you. Can’t leave ye alone with all these angry Indians about, can I?” he replied, raising a brow with a glance at Winn. Winn nodded in response but said nothing more.
“Marcus–”
“I’ll get my horse.”
Marcus went back the way he came, leaving her standing there with Winn. She watched Marcus go through the underbrush, afraid he would disappear like a wisp of a memory once he left her sight.
Winn led her pony close and gave her a leg up. He rested his hand on her thigh for a moment as she gathered her reins, and she looked down at him. The shallow wound on his chest was no more than a scratch, the bleeding crusted already across the flesh. Thankfully, it would need no stitches.
“What about–about them?” she asked, nodding toward the two fallen men. Bile burned in her throat as she glanced at the deceased and she turned away lest she vomit.
“Leave them. Let the scavengers feast.”
She swallowed back against her dry mouth at his words, yet nodded in agreement all the same.
“And Marcus?”
“Let him return with us, if it pleases you, ntehem.”
“I can’t believe he’s here. You’re going to like him, you’ll see,” she promised. She could read the uncertainty etched into his face. It was a rare thing to see him rattled, yet she had a feeling it was not the last time the two men would rankle each other.
“Did you know he was a Time Walker?” he asked. She shook her head.
“My arrival here was an accident, I didn’t know anything about the Bloodstones. What difference does it make, anyway? I’m happy to see him no matter how he got here.”
He gave her leg a gentle squeeze.
“He is right in one way, ntehem. Trouble follows you,” he sighed. “It is good that I have two sharp eyes to watch you with. If I knew Time Walkers would come for you, I would have dropped all the Bloodstones in the ocean so no other could use them.”
“He won’t be any trouble, I’m sure of it,” she replied. Filled with the excitement of seeing Marcus, she had failed to consider how his arrival would affect her husband. As Winn stood looking up at her, she suddenly suspected what drove him to deny her happiness.
She twisted her fingers in her pony’s mane and bent down, planting a firm kiss upon his tense mouth.
“I love you, warrior. My place is here with you, no matter what happens,” she whispered. His hand slid up around the base of her neck and his fingers gripped her hair as he pressed his forehead to hers.
“I know,” he replied.
Marcus rode into the clearing and they quickly separated. Winn nodded to the other man, then pointed the way toward home. Seeming pleased with the interlude, the horses set off at a brisk pace, and Maggie knew she would see her family
soon. After seeing the way a simple trade visit to the Chosick village had turned out, she would be happy to see the day end.
They reached the settlement by nightfall, the glimmer of the sleepy sun fading as their temporary home came into view. A cottage marked the center of the settlement, made of rough hewn logs. It was flanked by the lean-to and peaked yehakins in a semi-circle around the water well. Winn issued a shrill greeting to announce them, and Maggie waved as his sister came into sight.
When Teyas entered the yard with the squirming toddler in her arms, Maggie urged her pony into a lope and left the men behind. It had only been one day, yet anytime away from her daughter left her uneasy. There were just too many things that could go wrong in the time they lived in.
Maggie’s pony slid into a stop and she leapt off his back, covering the distance to her daughter in a few short strides. Winn’s sister smiled as she handed the child over, her two black braids bouncing as she laughed.
“Take her, she’s a pest!” Teyas teased, flicking her braids back over her shoulder. She squinted her brown eyes at Kwetii in mock disgust, and Maggie pecked the cheek of her sister-by-marriage as she pulled her daughter into her arms.
“Mama!” she child squealed, erupting into a fit of giggles when Maggie planted kisses over her face.
“A pest? Causing your Auntie trouble, hmm? Not my daughter!”
“Oh, no? She has not stopped howling since you left!” Teyas snorted. “Humph!”
“Is your Aunt a meany, Kwetii?” Maggie asked, holding the child up over her head. It seemed she recognized her name by the way she squealed, or it may have been the sight of her father walking toward her, yet whatever the reason Maggie was soon forgotten. The fickle child reached out to Winn and he swept her into his arms.
Marcus stood away a few paces away observing quietly with wide eyes, his arms crossed over his chest. Soon they would sit to talk, and all their questions would be answered. Even without Marcus admitting he had visited their time once before, she would have known it was so by the sheer level of comfort he displayed in his surroundings. Although he stood away from the family as they greeted each other, his behavior lent no lack of confidence. Apparently, he had arrived in her time well prepared and rapidly found a way to procure supplies like weapons and horses.