“I regret to say you are prisoner of the half-king,” the nearest of the deserters declared with a Highland accent. “Though I daresay,” he added with a grin, “you might be better off if we just let you kill yourselves in peace.” His hearty laugh was echoed by the man beside him, then by others, until the entire company was laughing at their mud-covered, helpless prisoners.
The Delaware, a muscular man with a strong, handsome face, had been dying for days. The Huron women who brought them their food made sure Duncan and his companions, tied to posts across from the Delaware, understood the penalty for those who opposed the Revelator. With cruel glee they explained that the man had come from the West with a load of furs, defying the half-king’s decree that no more animals of the Ohio lands would be sacrificed for the enrichment of Europeans. The Christian Indian had been given a hearing before the Revelator and had chosen to loudly denounce the Revelator as a false god. He had been condemned to what the half-king’s followers called the death of five days.
“Scar!” a woman hissed. The women quickly retreated at the approach of a huge Huron warrior with a face covered with hash marks of deliberately inflicted scars. The hideous pattern twisted with a sneer as the man called Scar declared himself to be the lieutenant of the half-king, then kicked dirt in the Delaware’s face and boasted of the man’s torture. On the first day the man’s knees and ankles had been shattered with stone hammers. On the second children had been allowed to work on his extremities with knives, slicing away small pieces of flesh, which they fed to the gathering dogs. On the third his toes and ears had been sliced away. On the fourth his fingers had been taken. On the fifth, that very morning, long splinters of wood had been thrust into his body. If he survived to the next dawn, he would be roasted alive. The Huron grinned then kicked the man before marching away.
Such cruelty was the way of some tribes, Duncan knew, but his heart wrenched as he realized the tortured man gazed at him. The post he was tied to was no more than five paces from that of the Delaware, close enough for him to hear the labored breathing and to see that a deep intelligence endured behind the torment in the man’s eyes.
“He is a Delaware,” Sagatchie said, as if that explained much. “His tribe has lost its hearth. He is brave, but a stick standing by itself will always break.”
The tale of the Lenni Lenape, the Delaware tribe, was often told at wilderness campfires. They had once been a mighty foe of the Haudenosaunee, ruling the lands of the mighty river for which they were named, but in the last century they had been decimated by disease and colonial encroachment on their traditional lands. When a few drunken subchiefs had signed away huge tracts of land to settlers, the Haudenosaunee had been furious, claiming the lands lay within their federation and threatened to exterminate the remaining Lenape if they did not acknowledge the supremacy of the Council and settle in towns under Iroquois rule like Shamokin.
Some of the Delaware had left their clans, choosing independent lives along the fringes of settlement. They were powerless against the tribes, for alone they had no strength. Tribal orators were fond of holding bundles of sticks as they spoke of how warriors standing alone were like single sticks that could be shattered but those who acted together, bound like a bundle, were unbreakable.
Duncan watched in torment as a spasm of pain shook the Delaware’s body, triggering new trickles of blood from half a dozen wounds on his torso. With a deep groan the man lost consciousness.
“I’m sorry,” Duncan said, turning to Sagatchie. “I didn’t mean for you to-”
Sagatchie interrupted. “You wanted to get to the half-king’s camp.” There was not even a hint of fear in his voice. “Kassawaya made certain we did.”
“Kassawaya?” Duncan asked, straining at his bindings to look at the woman, tied to a post on the other side of the ranger. She did not return his gaze, but he did not miss the tiny grin that flickered on her face.
Sagatchie waited for a guard to walk by before replying. “If they found us coming by stealth, we would have been attacked and overwhelmed, killed in the forest. We survived because we were seen as harmless. The young girl I knew was ever the prankster. They had been following us for nearly an hour.”
Duncan stared at the Mohawk in disbelief. Ever the prankster. They were facing hideous deaths, but Sagatchie wanted him to know he had forgotten his disapproval of Kass the warrior and was getting reacquainted with the girl he had run with in the forest as a boy. The fight in the mud had been staged.
It was early evening when the straps that bound Duncan and his companions were loosened, and they were escorted by half a dozen warriors to a stream to wash away the dried mud that still clung to them. They were being prepared for something, Duncan knew. Most likely it was the gauntlet, the alley of torture in which prisoners were shoved down a path lined with enemy warriors who lashed at them with their weapons. Prisoners did not always reach the end alive.
As Sagatchie straightened, still standing in the stream, the tall Huron named Scar appeared, studying the Mohawk with a sneer then flinging more mud on him, striking his face. Sagatchie snarled a curse, and Duncan was certain he would have leapt at the well-armed man had Kass not put a restraining hand on his arm. Scar laughed and lifted his necklace into the faces of his prisoners, shaking the sticks that hung on it. With a gasp Duncan realized they were not sticks but human fingers, freshly amputated.
“Take our hands and we will hit you with our arms! Take our arms and we will kick you with our legs!” It took a moment for Duncan to realize Kass had spoken the defiant words.
The Hurons laughed. Some made lewd gestures at the woman, others smiled coolly and looked in the direction of a small raised flat at the edge of the abandoned town. The tent that had been raised on the flat was unlike any of the others scattered around the old town site. It was a large white canvas box of a tent with scalloped flaps, the kind used by the French military for high officers. Its white canvas had been painted with a grey pattern to give it the appearance of a stone cabin.
They were being prepared for an audience. He watched in alarm as Sagatchie again seemed about to leap at his captors. The Mohawk had been beaten with a spear shaft on their journey to the camp. His ribs would crack with more blows. Duncan moved to step between him and the Huron who goaded him, but Kass was there first, drawing up her body in a way that seemed to unsettle their captors.
They motioned their prisoners forward, not toward the ornate tent but up a worn trail that led out the far side of the abandoned town. After a quarter hour of steady climbing, they passed between two nearly symmetrical conical hills that were strangely devoid of trees. As they reached the shadows between the hills, they were met by half a dozen somber warriors in fur robes who carried heavy spears as their only weapons.
“Follow,” the tallest of the warriors commanded. Duncan realized he had spoken in the Haudenosaunee tongue. The Hurons had given them to Mingos, the western Iroquois.
They ascended the narrow cleft and emerged into an eerie, otherworldly scene. The wide bowl they entered was scorched and charred, its only trees the twisted burnt offspring of the huge oaks that grew on the slopes below. There was still enough light left for Duncan to see that the high barren bowl was pockmarked with lightning strikes. They were at the place where lightning gathered, the ancient shrine whose secret Hickory John had been tortured for. Bizarre rock formations, most scorched and cracked by heat, surrounded a central formation lit by torches. Their escort had the air of robed monks, the torchlit bowl that of a pagan temple. The long rounded formation at the center of the bowl, covering what appeared to be a cavern, had the appearance of a stone lodge.