by Ian Roberts
Totiri, the Iroquois war chief, brings a shimmering hot tomahawk up close to Brulé’s face. He twists violently away from both the telescope and his own searing memory. He’s immediately covered in sweat and breaths heavily. Tonda puts his hand on his shoulder to steady him. He breathes long and deep, his eyes closed, collecting himself. Finally he nods and picks up his paddle. “I do not see Charon. He is not the one on the stake.”
They glide past the Iroquois camp and continue towards the huge, dark outcrop of granite they’d seen from across the lake earlier that afternoon. It rises straight out of the water. The sounds of drumming and the screaming and the light from the fire continue as they paddle along the sheer face of rock. But then, turning a sharp corner, they are out of sight of the camp. The sounds immediately seem far away.
Examining the wall rising a hundred and fifty feet above them, they locate a small ledge at water level they can step on to. Brulé lands, swings a musket over each shoulder and ties them around his waist with a rope secure for the climb. He stuffs two pistols and his moccasins into his belt and secures them tightly. He also ties one end of a length of rope to his belt. He looks up at the sheer face and then, finding a foothold, he hoists himself up. He searches for a handhold above him and finds another foothold and moves a step higher. Savignon and Atsan each tie two muskets secure for the climb and start up, following Brulé.
Last, Tonda steps onto the ledge. He kneels and levers a large rock, sliding it as slowly as he can into the canoe so it doesn’t make noise. It punctures the soft bark and the canoe fills with water. It begins to sink, slowly disappearing into the dark depths of the lake, leaving no trace of their presence. Then Tonda heads up after the others.
Pressed against the face of the rock wall, Brulé stops his climb and gazes down eighty feet to the black shimmering water and the others climbing below him. His route up the wall has good footholds, but is hard to read in the dark. He climbs further until he finds himself below an overhang. Not large, but as he tries to get his hand out over the top of it, he almost loses his grip on the wall. A long, vertical seam of rock obstructs his moving to the left. He tries moving to the right to see if he can find a gap in the overhang. But each time he finds a foothold to move right, the overhang blocks his climb. He keeps scraping his way over until he finds a wide, vertical cleft in the rock wall too wide to cross. He is stuck and it is too dark to try and go back down.
He calls softly to the others below to search for another route up. Tonda, the lowest down, can easily get on the other side of the vertical crack that has blocked Brulé. It opens up a completely different route. Brulé unties the rope from his waist and drops it to Savignon who drops it to Tonda, who starts up the new route. He comes to a smooth, sheer pitch. He presses himself to the wall and claws his way with his toes and fingernails. At one point his toes slip but his fingers claw the rock for anything and he holds on, pressing his knees and forearms tight in against the rock. He scrapes his way up the smooth section, finds a fissure, pushes his hands and feet into it and rests. It runs straight up and he can jam his hands and feet into it to find good purchase now on this new course up to a small ledge where he can stand. He is still twenty feet below Brulé but can see the overhang and the wide, gaping vertical cut that obstructs him. From the ledge where he now stands, Tonda sees the climb ahead is less steep and thirty feet above him leads to grasses and then small shrubs and finally to trees at the top.
He unties the rope at his waist, jams it deep into a wedge of rock and wraps it tight. He throws one end to Savignon who ties it to his waist and jumps out, swinging over the vertical fissure, landing on the smooth face of granite and pulling himself hand over hand quickly making his way up to Tonda. Atsan has climbed up almost level to Tonda who tosses the other end of the rope across to him. He swings over and clambers up to the ledge as well.
As the others move up to the ledge with Tonda, Brulé tries to work back the way he came, but he can find no footholds below that will support him. He’s stuck where he is.
Tonda frees the rope from the rock. He motions to Atsan and Savignon to start climbing further up the slope to give him more room to throw. He coils the rope and flings it high towards Brulé. It hangs uncoiling in space but well below him and then falls down across the rock face. He coils it again, tighter and heaves the rope in a long arc, closer but still below Brulé. He coils the rope again but it cannot be thrown high enough and far enough for Brulé to catch it. Although the climbing is easier above the ledge from where he stands, up there Tonda sees no place to secure the rope; if Brulé’s weight were to pull on it both he and Brulé would be dragged off the rock face.
But Brulé has watched the arc of the rope carefully and calls over to Tonda to throw again. Tonda once more coils it and with a lunging swing throws as far and high as he can. It arches up, unfurling in a ghostly tangle in the pale moonlight as it rises. At that instant Brulé leaps off the rock wall into space. The line finishes its climb and hangs for a moment as he swings his right hand into the arabesque of curling rope. But the piece he lunges at is falling faster than he anticipated and his hand passes wide. He swings again with his left hand grasping at another section. Both he and the line are dropping fast. He feels the cord in his hand, slipping, passing through his fingers. He is free-falling now and must somehow ensnare himself in the rope to break his fall. He throws his arm into a quickly closing loop while twisting his body into another tightening noose beside him. The loose tangle and the arc of Brulé’s fall ends in a wrenching jolt just as he smashes hard into the rock. The impact sends a stabbing pain through his left shoulder as the line gashes deep into his arms and across his chest. He hangs limp, but firmly caught.
Tonda has the other end secure and begins to haul him upwards. Brulé’s arms are entwined in the rope but with his feet he manages to ascend the rock wall until he is beside Tonda. Atsan and Savignon, seeing Brulé safe below, continue to climb. The rock soon gives way to a steep slope of grasses and bushes. They clamber up and into the trees at the top. Tonda and Brulé soon join them.
They quickly scout for Iroquois sentries. But no one seems to be up here, never imagining anyone attempting to climb the rock face or attack their camp. Through the trees, the land falls away again in front of them in a steep, forested drop. They see the Iroquois fire far below and again hear the drumming, singing, and the screams of terror and pain.
They work their way down the forested slope. At the bottom Brulé slips through the last of the trees and crawls on his belly into the tall grasses on the edge of the clearing, the others moving silently beside him. To their right, fifteen canoes, neatly arrayed, line the shore. The steep, forested slope they have just descended becomes a steep rock wall along the back of the clearing. The same wall wraps around to the far side of the clearing creating a semi-circle of rock along the shore. A vertical crack, wide enough for a man to pass through, splits the enclosure on the far side. This was the gap Brulé saw through his telescope earlier. The one he had seen the Iroquois using to leave the clearing. He knows, from having camped here himself, that that sliver of space forms a long cleft in the rock that opens out eventually near the point of land of Champlain’s camp.
In the middle of the clearing, the fire, and behind the fire, tied to a tree, the French soldier slumps unconscious. An Iroquois slaps the soldier trying to revive him.
Brulé sees LeCharon. He lies curled up, his back to them. He counts sixteen Iroquois dancing around the fire. Based on the number of canoes, he estimates that thirty or more must be surrounding the French camp waiting for daybreak. He notices a dozen muskets leaning near the gap in the wall.
Brulé takes his two muskets, checks their charge. He checks the charge in his two pistols, and replaces them in his belt. He lays both his tomahawks in front of him and places both muskets carefully beside him. He checks that the others have one musket aimed and ready to fire and the second at the ready, then he takes a powder horn from his belt. A wick hangs from one of the c
apped ends. He cups his hands around the flint as he strikes it into the wick. The spark catches the powder in the wick and it starts to burn. He turns, holding the powder horn, watching the wick burn down, waiting, and then throws it high into the air above the clearing. It arcs up and then explodes in a startling flash of light and smoke.
The Iroquois stop, stunned. Four muskets fire and four Iroquois drop. But it takes only a moment for them to recover. One Iroquois points to the cloud of smoke at the edge of the clearing. Knowing the guns can only fire once, they charge, howling as one.
Brulé drops the first musket, picks up the second and aims. He fires and hears the volley of three others. Three more Iroquois drop. Brulé scrambles to his feet, hands on his tomahawks, flying into the Iroquois just as they reach him. He parries the blow of a club with his left axe, stepping right to miss the brunt of the blow as a warrior plows into him. Swinging with his right axe, he cuts deep into the man’s neck. He leaps forward into a second Iroquois just as the warrior’s axe whistles by his head. The Iroquois’s momentum knocks Brulé backwards off his feet. The Iroquois raises his knife to strike as they both go down. But before they hit the ground, Brulé has a pistol at the man’s head and fires.
He pushes free and jumps to his feet, turning towards Atsan. His son blocks a blow, and then a second against an Iroquois. Brulé fires the second pistol at the warrior and he drops. Tonda, knowing neither Savignon nor Atsan are tested in battle, cuts straight across the Iroquois’ path swinging and breaking the fury of their attack.
But Brulé hasn’t moved. After firing the second pistol he feels something on the far side of the clearing. He turns and watches Totiri, the Iroquois war chief, emerge through the gap in the rock wall.
Totiri, the black and red paint on his face lit by the fire, surveys the fight. He sees Brulé and strides across the clearing, pulling out both his tomahawks. He attacks, raining down a flurry of blows on Brulé, who parries and blocks them and jumps back out of the way. They circle one another. Each looks for the moment to strike, for a tiny crack in the other’s mental armor. A lightening blow, and another. The blows of the war chief come down in a blur; they pour down. Brulé blocks, parries, dodges. He’s forced back. His left shoulder, where he smashed into the rock wall on his climb, now shrieks in pain as he is forced to deflect each blow from the war chief’s powerful right arm. All of Brulé’s attention goes to defending himself. He steps back again and again. He can feel the edge of the clearing closer and closer behind him, trapping him.
Then Savignon slashes into the fight. Totiri senses him coming and parries the blow. Both Brulé and Savingon attack, swinging hard and fast. Yet Totiri blocks them, twisting and dodging. Even with the two of them they can’t get a blow to land. The war chief is magnificent. Forced back, with four tomahawks slashing at him, he blocks and counters the blows, senses the dead lying on the ground behind him, stepping over them. He misses nothing.
Isolated by the fire, LeCharon finally stirs. He stares at his smashed, bloody hands, but then suddenly notices the dead body beside him. An Iroquois. He looks up terrified, trying to understand what is happening. He sees Brulé and Savignon raining blows down on Totiri, forcing him back tep by step by step, closer and closer to Le Charon. He is directly in their path. Then he sees it, on the ground in front of him, the dead Iroquois’s knife.
Brulé and Savingon gain on Totiri, but a lightening flick of a backstroke across Savignon’s jaw and he staggers back out of the fight and onto his knees.. Once again, Brulé is on his own. He knows he cannot fight Totiri alone for long. He pours down blows on the war chief, clearly his last attack. Totiri steps back once, twice, three times, until he stands almost beside LeCharon. Then the tide turns. Totiri gains the upper hand and starts hammering heavy blows in a fury. His one desire — to finish Brulé, now.
Two ruined, bloody hands hold a knife. LeCharon, crawling to his knees, falls forward, holding the knife tight against his chest and sinks it with one desperate stroke into the calf of the war chief beside him. The pain shoots through LeCharon’s broken hands but the knife cuts deep just at the moment the war chief shifts his weight to that leg.
Totiri grimaces, stumbles and at that instant Brulé blocks a blow and swings his axe into Totiri’s arm cutting the muscle to the bone. He swings with his other axe, but Totiri blocks it and begins another furious onslaught with only his left arm. Stunned by the ferocity of the attack Brulé steps back once, twice, but after a dozen blows the war chief slows, his right arm hanging useless. The Iroquois swings with another defiant blow. Brulé deflects it, then steps around and drives his right tomahawk deep into Totiri’s skull. He drops to his knees. As Brulé yanks the axe loose, Totiri slumps over, dead.
At that moment, he hears the distant shouts of the Iroquois. He knew they would return to protect their canoes. The sound ricochets down the long gorge and out the narrow gap in the rock wall of the clearing.
Savignon kneels several feet away. Blood pours out of the cut on his jaw and runs in a red stream down the rich blue of his new coat as he gets to his feet.
“Get Charon in a canoe,” Brulé says as he runs past him to Atsan. His son also staggers to his feet, blood on his face and chest, an Iroquois lying dead beside him. Brulé runs his hands over his cuts but Atsan pulls back.
“I’m not hurt. Tonda saved me twice. He …” but he trails off, both of them now looking at the Wendat war chief, on his knees, covered in blood. Four dead Iroquois lie sprawled around him.
“Help Savingon,” says Brulé and he steps over to Tonda, only just conscious, dying. Brulé runs his fingers through a deep cut in Tonda’s neck and wipes the Wendat blood on his own arms. Then he takes more blood and wipes it on his lips.
“I take your blood to battle, my brother.” Then, with a tomahawk in each hand, he runs to the canoes. With both axes flying he smashes holes in the fragile elm bark. Chips fly as he works his way down the line of canoes.
Savignon readies a sleek, birch bark canoe, almost certainly the one taken from Petashwa’s assistant. LeCharon stumbles, broken and shattered, as Atsan drags him to the lake.
Again the cries of the Iroquois catch their attention, echoing down the rock walls through the gap. Closer now.
The first light of morning glows a pale yellow on the horizon. Brulé can see the canoes of Champlain’s party escaping across the lake.
They help LeCharon into the canoe. The priest looks up at Brulé. Their eyes lock for one brief second in a connection that somehow transcends the havoc and desperation around them. “Thou shalt be with me in Paradise,” the priest whispers. The screams of the advancing Iroquois break the moment.
Yet, now for the second time, the priest reveals the path Brulé must take. He must stay. They’ve smashed the canoes so that the Iroquois cannot chase Champlain’s party. Now they have no canoes to return home. But thirty or more Iroquois with guns, furious and vengeful, would go by foot to the Wendat for canoes and kill and destroy whomever and whatever they could.
“Savignon, look at that gap in the rock. We could defend that. Both of us. We can destroy them here. Finish them. Whoever is left will not attack the Wendat.”
Savignon looks across the lake at Champlain escaping and then down at the smashed canoes.
“They will attack the Wendat on foot, Savignon. We can stop them here. Now.”
Atsan, about to get in the canoe behind LeCharon, stops. “I am staying with you.”
“No, Atsan. Take him. Go.” He almost screams the order at his son. He knows how harsh it sounds, but he cannot begin to say what he really feels might lie ahead, or speak of his feelings for his son now standing before him.
“But —”
“You must get Charon to Champlain. That is our deal for the guns. That depends on you now. You must do that, Atsan. Go.”
Standing in the shallow water by the canoe, Atsan walks back to Brulé and throws his arms around him. Brulé holds him, breathes him in and kisses the top of his head. “That dog Totiri
is dead. His village weak. When you get home, attack his village, take your mother and her children and bring them home to the Wendat.”
Brulé pushes his son toward the canoe, steadies it as he climbs in and then shoves the canoe out into the lake. Atsan takes his paddle and digs in for two strokes. He looks back one last time, tears welling up in his eyes, then quickly turns and paddles hard and determined after Champlain. LeCharon fumbles with a paddle in his broken hands, drops it and then slumps back, staring listlessly out across the lake.
The screams now seem closer, louder, echoing down the long, rock gorge. Brulé picks up one end of a smashed canoe and drags it toward the rock wall. Savignon drags a second. They wedge them, one on top of the other, between two trees and the gap in the rock face. They now have a five-foot barrier blocking the only possible entry back into the clearing.
They run and collect the dozen muskets leaning against the wall and gather the eight others they had brought. Savignon checks and loads furiously as Brulé takes two burning sticks from the fire and jams them into two canoes, setting the dry bark alight. He rushes back to help Savignon load. The cries seem almost on top of them now. But looking down the length of the rock-walled gorge, Brulé still cannot yet see any Iroquois.
“We can do real damage here Savignon. Real damage…for awhile.”
Once into the steep-walled gorge, the Iroquois will have only one defense, straight into their musket fire. They will know this. It will begin and end here, now, decided in one furious onslaught. He’s propelled now, keen and alive, he sees, to the very human destruction he so abhorred, to the destruction he had sworn himself against.