by Sadie Conall
“I see your wounds have healed since last we met,” I said and he smiled then, just a little, but his grin was hideous from that badly healed knife wound on the side of his mouth.
“Yes, they have healed well enough. And as you can see, I found my wife and children, along with the families of my dead brothers. It took me many months to find them and many months to get here, so now we rest for a week before returning to our village. But I feel I must thank you, for without that trade between you and I, the fight would have been impossible. Although I never asked your name. What do they call you?”
I paused, having no care to tell him my Bannock name but I saw the hardness in his eyes as I had the first time I met him and knew I should not cross him. A man such as this must never become an enemy.
“My name is Madeleine. Although some know me as Esa-mogo'ne’.”
“I do not know the meaning of these names, but I imagine they have strength,” he paused to glance at Ryder, then back at me. “But what are you doing here, so far from your own white settlements in the south. But business do you have in the north?”
I felt Ryder and Te’tukhe tense beside me and knew that, like me, they didn’t want the Pawnee knowing we were heading north to stay with the Hŭŋkpapĥa Lakota, or that we were bound for the lands of the Bannock, for that tribe were mortal enemies of the Pawnee nation. Acutely aware of the men’s tension and desperate to hide my own, I remembered the conversations I heard Ryder, Te’tukhe and Thibault discussing last night before I fell asleep, about the changes to this territory, about the opportunities to trap beaver and mink and ermine in the rivers to the north. And so the words came easily enough, although some of them were half-truths.
“Our son, the boy you met all those months ago waits for us in the north, along with family who own familial links to Te’tukhe’s French-Canadian father. But we’ve heard talk the rivers up there run rich with beaver and we’re eager to see this for ourselves.”
Tahkawiitik nodded, for like everyone else in this camp he had heard the same stories. And for a little while he spoke with us about trapping, where to find the best rivers and the biggest beaver dams and both Ryder and I let Te’tukhe take the lead on this for he had lived that life. After a little while, Tahkawiitik turned back to me.
“I am glad we had the chance to meet again, Esa-mogo'ne’. And if you ever have need of shelter when passing through Pawnee lands, know you are welcome in my village. It is on the banks of a river the French know as the Wolf, or the Loup, for they know us as the Wolf people. So until we meet again, as I think we will, I wish you and your family well Esa-mogo'ne’, as I know you wish me and my family well.”
He made a move to stand so I followed his lead and stood up, as did Ryder and Te’tukhe. When he reached out to take my hands in his own I felt his energy flood through me like a physical thing and I tried to hide my shock, for only once before had I felt energy such as this and that from a man the world now knew as Napoleon Bonaparte. It was a powerful tangible thing that could easily be turned to evil.
When he released my hand, I could still feel his energy for it had been such a violent intense thing and as Tahkawiitik turned to Ryder and Te’tukhe, I watched as they stepped back after he clasped their forearms, for they too had felt his power. He bid us adieu and as we turned for our own camp, we barely spoke as we finished packing our horses, stunned by the encounter.
We said our goodbyes to Thibault and his family, mounted our horses and turned north, towards the lands of the Hŭŋkpapĥa.
*
We were camped within a wide deep gully the following morning, an hour or so before dawn, when I woke to the sound of horses riding hard, coming straight towards us. I rolled out of my furs and screamed at Ryder and Te’tukhe to move.
Ryder had been on watch since before dawn and he was standing on one of the huge fallen logs which stretched across the gully looking out into the woods and I saw him turn towards me in horror as I screamed at him to take cover. I turned to see Te’tukhe come instantly awake and roll out of his furs, reaching for his musket as I scooped Wi’keya up in her blankets then turned and ran with her to some thick ferns growing around another fallen tree higher up in the gully. She was sobbing, yet not screaming, as though used to living in fear. I pushed her under the tree, bidding her to stay there in the little Sioux I knew. But this child had instincts far beyond her years and she crawled under the log to hide, even as I pushed the blanket in after her, trying to protect her from what was coming. For this was the darkness I had been waiting on. This was the change, and it was now upon us.
I sprinted back to my furs where my musket and bow and sheath of arrows lay and grasped my musket before running for cover, joining Te’tukhe up in a thick stand of maple and hickory, sliding into a crouch before glancing back at Ryder. He was hurrying along the trunk of that fallen tree a good fifteen feet above the gully floor and almost at the tree’s thick foliage when he turned, suddenly aware of the riders coming towards us, the beat of hooves vibrating across the forest floor. He moved into a low crouch and sprinted the last few feet, disappearing beneath the foliage just as I felt the hiss of an arrow pass my face, thudding into the trunk of the hickory beside me.
They screamed their hatred of us as they galloped into the gully, their horses’ hooves churning up mud and dead leaves as they raced through our campsite. Stunned to see us not abed in that gloomy light, they pushed their horses up and out of the gully to take shelter within the trees, but not before Ryder and Te’tukhe had fired their muskets, wounding one of the men. He fell close to our fire and my own furs, the wound in his side a dreadful thing and although he wasn’t yet dead, he soon would be. His screams filled the gully as Te’tukhe shouted across to me, pointing to a man who had dismounted not thirty feet away from us, limping towards the trees, seeking cover.
I recognized him as the man with the putrid wound on his upper thigh, one of the men who had ridden into the Rendezvous camp late last night. Yet what did they want with us? And then the stench of that foul wound swept across to me and I wondered how he was still upright and walking and not abed with fever.
I glanced over at the child hidden under the log, yet from here she was invisible, as was Ryder, now hidden deep within the branches of the tree. And then there were more booms of musket fire from our attackers, the gully becoming a cloudy place fill of gun powder, the stench of it filling my eyes and nose and mouth.
I turned as Te’tukhe sprinted off, running low, back into the woods so he could come in on the attackers from behind, but that left me all alone on their left. But they knew it and a barrage of arrows along with musket fire hit the trees all around me. I scrambled back behind a massive oak as an arrow thudded into the ground behind me. I turned and lifted my musket to fire, aiming it at the man nearest me and as he stood up to release more arrows, I fired at him, taking my time, making sure the shot found its target. He dropped to his knees, my shot killing him instantly. I moved again, sprinting to take shelter behind an elm even as a musket shot ripped into the tree where I had been crouching only moments before and as the bark of the tree smashed and splintered, I turned at a movement on my right and saw Wi’keya push herself out from beneath the log. The child had found her voice and was now screaming in terror.
I yelled at her to move back but I didn’t have the Sioux words although she looked at me, her eyes full of fear as tears coursed down her face. And then astonishingly, the injured man called out to her, speaking rapidly in a dialect I didn’t understand, a dialect which sounded like the language Hanyewi’winyan had spoken. I stared incredulous as the child turned to look at him and I saw the look which crossed her face. She knew this man, yet she was terrified of him and although I would never know what he said to her, she turned and crawled back beneath the log, her screams now whimpers of terror.
I turned as musket fire came from the tree where Ryder was taking shelter. He was firing at a man who was now sprinting through the brush towards the girl, a knife in his hand. I saw him go down
, Ryder’s shot hitting him in the shoulder, but he was only wounded and sought cover in the trees even as I heard Te’tukhe’s shouts and turned to see a third man came running towards me, an axe in his hand, his eyes wild with hate. But as he saw my face, I saw confusion there, bewilderment, even as I saw Te’tukhe kneel, holding a pistol in both hands, screaming at me to get down and as I dropped and rolled away I heard the pistol fire. The man fell like a stone, dead before he hit the earth. I pushed myself to my feet and sprinted behind another oak, turning to see the fourth man, the sick one, aim his musket and fire at the foliage where Ryder still hid. I screamed at Ryder to take cover and hearing my voice the sick man turned, spitting as he yelled at me.
Te’tukhe sprinted off through the trees to cover Ryder, as the wounded man on the other side of the gully began firing arrows into the foliage.
I glanced back at the sick man, astonished to find him limping towards me, growling like a madman. He was less than twenty feet away from me and we both knew I had no time to reload my musket. He grinned as I fell into a crouch at the base of the tree, reaching for the butcher knife in the sheath on my right moccasin and the dagger held in its leather scabbard on my belt, aware of Te’tukhe yelling at Ryder to take cover, followed by more musket fire.
I was alone on this side of the gully, my musket useless and as the madman lurched towards me, smiling, I saw only cruelty in his face. I felt the weight of my knives in my hands, balancing them, for he was no more than fifteen feet away now, speaking in that dialect I didn’t understand, his body trembling from the effort as he dragged his leg, the smell of him making the bile rise in my throat.
Yet I didn’t know this man. I didn’t understand his hatred of us. And as he raised his musket to fire at me, I heard Ryder and Te’tukhe yell at me, the men realizing too late that I had no cover. The sick man couldn’t miss. He was too close. Except he was dying. I could see his hands trembling as he raised the weapon, but he was off balance because he favoured his wounded leg. He pulled the trigger and I rolled behind a tree even as I saw the bloom of fire as the powder hit the pan and the sound reverberating around the woods.
As I curled behind the elm, I waited to feel the ball explode into the softness of my body, destroying bone and tissue and muscle. But instead I heard the tree take the full impact of the shot and in the slowest of motions I could smell the overwhelming stench of gunpowder in my hair, on my clothes, in my mouth along with the screams of horses and the shouts of Ryder and Te’tukhe.
The splinters from the shattered tree trunk became countless shards of wood, some of them miniature daggers. And then the sharp pain deep in my forehead as one of them cut deep, slicing through the tender skin to lie there, embedded in my forehead. It was only a moment before I felt the wetness on my face followed by the metallic taste and smell of blood.
I knew he was coming for me. The smell of him was vile. And I could feel the hatred pulsating off him, an ugly thing as black as hell. I rolled away just in time to avoid a lethal kick to my face then using every bit of strength I owned I rolled again, even as he turned and lunged towards me.
He might have once been a good-looking man, but not now. His face was feverish and bloated from illness, his body rank, his limbs weakened from poison. Yet I didn’t know him. He was a stranger to me. And as his mouth opened in a scream of rage I could hear Ryder and Te’tukhe come running through the woods towards us, yet we all knew I was beyond their help. They couldn’t fire at him because I was too close. And they were too far away, on the other side of the gully.
But I was a fighter. I had been a fighter since I killed a man in the wild when I was a girl not yet fifteen. And I felt that fighting spirit now, for I was determined this gully would not be my grave, nor would I die at the hands of a man I didn’t know for a crime I didn’t commit.
Yet the blood from my wound blinded me. As I tried to get to my feet, wiping the blood from my eyes with the sleeve of my buckskin I felt him rear above me, along with someone else. Their movement was nothing but a movement of air, yet this wasn’t the ancient one come to help me as he had in those deadly battles with Thorne and Jarryth, for among all the noise and smells and tastes of gunpowder and blood, I heard the lightest of footsteps on rotten wood just off to my left and the scent of someone.
But all my attention was on the man before me as he growled, reaching for an axe secured within a rawhide belt around his waist. As he gripped the weapon, as he lifted his arm, using the thrust and power of his body to smash that deadly blade into me, I rolled again, hearing another anguished cry from Ryder coming from somewhere far behind me as I felt the axe brush my right shoulder and then the thud as it hit the ground by my right arm. It had missed me by a heartbeat.
And now he was on top of me, reaching for me with his hands and I saw clearly the look in his eyes was one as madness, the same look I had seen in Jarryth’s eyes, as we fought in the chapel at Millbryne Park.
Yet, like his friend, I saw a moment of bewilderment cross this man’s face. But then he screamed in rage, reaching for his knife held within his belt on his waist and in a fight to the death I gripped my own knives, launching all the weight and strength in my body in a desperate bid for balance, before I threw the butcher knife. It caught him in his left shoulder. And what might have felled a weaker man, didn’t stop this madman.
Blinded by blood, I wiped my eyes again with my sleeve even as I pulled myself up into a low crouch as again he came at me, his knife poised above me to strike. I moved quickly, pushing myself off the balls of my feet and plunging the dagger I had traded with Tahkawiitik for my musket all those months ago deep into his groin, even as I saw a blur of movement just off to my left. And as the man screamed, sweeping down at me with his knife even as he fell, a blow I couldn’t avoid, suddenly someone was there beside us and through the veil of blood in my eyes I saw another knife plunge deep into the man’s neck as somebody threw themselves against him, pushing him off balance so that the knife just missed my face.
All the strength left his body as he fell, blood pouring from the wounds in his neck and groin but before I turned away from him, unwilling to see him in death, I saw the stunned look of surprise on his face as he looked at this person who now stood above him.
I moved to wipe the blood from my eyes, even as the forest went deathly silent, although the acrid smell and taste of gun powder filled the gully, rising above our camp like an early morning mist.
When I looked back, the sick man had gone, passed away into another place, his days on this earth over, the shell of his body now an empty thing of decay. And what I thought was a dream, was real. For the knife imbedded in his neck was my own, the one I had paid a fortune for in New Orléans as a gift for Ese-ggwe’na’a but had used to trade for the freedom of Poongatse and Wannge’e in St Louis more than a year ago.
I tried to push myself up to stand but didn’t have the energy for it, even as I felt gentle hands trying to help me, so I remained on my knees, not understanding any of this. When I heard Ryder and Te’tukhe come running up the bank towards us, their cries echoing around those now silent woods I knew they had also seen her standing over me, her hands held out to help me.
*
Ryder was white with fear, but he only saw the blood which flowed from the wound on my face even though it was nothing, just an abrasion, but as he gently reached for me, afraid to hurt me for he thought me badly hurt, I closed my eyes to his fear and pushed my head into his hand as though I were a child, even as his fingers began to weave themselves within my hair, bunching thick strands of it into his fist, almost with violence, and then he was pulling me to him as I began to whimper, falling against the warm strength of him. I closed my eyes in gratitude that he and Te’tukhe were unhurt.
“I’m alright halfbreed, don’t fret so,” I whispered, as he hugged me to him. I could feel his heart beating against my own and then Te’tukhe was reaching out to help me to my feet and as I stumbled, feeling dizzy and nauseous, we all turned to look at
her, where she stood in silence watching us.
She didn’t move, but I could smell her fear. It was ripe and raw and a terrifying thing. And I saw the old fur coat she wore which fell to her knees, a raggedy worn thing which I recognized as my own, a garment I had sewn myself many years ago, having cured the furs myself after catching the small animals in my snares. And then I heard her cry, a long low cry of distress as she glanced over at the fallen tree. We all turned to see Wi’keya crawl out from beneath it to stand in the ferns, distressed and bewildered, her tiny hands going to her mouth as she cried.
The young woman stepped towards the edge of the gully for the child was on the far side of it and when she stumbled in anguish, as Te’tukhe and Ryder moved to help her for she looked so frail she seemed incapable of making another step, she moved away from them and began to run, calling out to the child in Sioux, a desperate call from a mother to her child.
“Come little one, come baby, come to Mama, you’re alright now, you’re safe.”
The little girl saw her and uttered a cry of such longing that it tore at my heart. And then she moved, her little legs stumbling through the ferns and shrubs as she ran towards Deinde'-paggwe.
Two
Ryder poured water onto Madeleine’s wound from her own waterskin to clear away the blood and make sure no splinters remained embedded in the wound.
“Does it hurt much,” he asked.
Madeleine shook her head. “Are you sure you’re not hurt? And Te’tukhe and the child? And Deinde'-paggwe?”
“We have a few scratches, nothing more,” Ryder answered softly. “Yet who were those men? And why come for us? Neither Te’tukhe nor I understand the reasons for it, yet they seemed intent on targeting you, for whatever reason.”
And then they heard her speak at last, her words slow and unsure, as though she were used to keeping her silence. Yet she spoke in the Sioux dialect.