A solitary man wrapped in a blanket sat before a smoldering fire at the entrance to the Lightning Lodge. As they were taken closer, stopping a hundred feet away, Duncan made out other figures, perhaps twenty in all, sitting against rocks arranged in a half circle around the man as if paying homage to him.
As he took another step closer and saw the arrows in several of the figures, realization stabbed Duncan like a cold blade. He sprang forward to grab Kass’s arm as she gasped. She too now understood, and he was terrified she would react. Those against the boulders were dead. The Iroquois Council had sent its best warriors to protect the old spirits, and they had been killed by the half-king. Among the dead in front of them were Kass’s father and brother.
The seated man spread his arms to point out his handiwork.
Duncan felt Kass tense, sensing her anguished fury. Then Sagatchie appeared on her other side, pulling her backward, and she relented, a sob escaping her throat as her gaze settled on two bodies at the near edge of the half-circle. Duncan stood at the front alone, straining his eyes, desperately searching for, and just as desperately hoping not to see, the body of Conawago.
Their robed escorts signaled for them to turn around. This was all the audience they had intended. The prisoners had seen the dead, had seen the sacred shrine, and, Duncan suspected, they had seen the Revelator.
They were taken back to their posts, but when the guards had finished tying Sagatchie and Kass, they led Duncan away, toward the flat with the stone-painted tent, and they ordered him to stand alone by a smoldering fire. He sensed many eyes watching him from the darkness. After several minutes, a familiar figure approached. Macaulay acknowledged Duncan with a silent, chagrined nod then offered him a gourd of water.
“Do whatever he asks, lad,” the big Scot advised. “Say ye want to be one of his Highland warriors and he may let ye live.”
“There’s an old man named Conawago,” Duncan said. “Do you know where he is?”
Macaulay cocked his head toward the elevated flat at the center of the village and seemed about to speak when a stone struck his shoulder. He retreated into the shadows, where guards were watching.
Duncan watched the constellations rise, losing track of time but not daring to move. Finally a tiny ringing sound rose from the darkness. Something small and metallic jingled and stopped, jingled and stopped, the sound gradually getting louder.
“In the Ohio country my people were fascinated when a British trader first introduced these,” came a voice from the shadows. Had Duncan not known better he would have thought a well-educated European was addressing him. “They would pay a full beaver pelt for just one.”
The silhouette of a tall, lean man moved toward him, not from the tent but from the direction of the sacred place above the town. The low flames reflected off a small silvery bell that the man tossed from one hand to the other. “Women and men alike braided them into their hair. One of our women traded her daughter for ten such bells.” More shapes became visible, guards holding spears and muskets. A woman slipped out of the shadows to dump an armload of wood onto the dying fire.
“Later I discovered they were called hawk bells.” The man’s precise, articulate words held the faint trace of a French accent. “They tie them to their hawks and falcons in your world.”
“Not in my world,” Duncan said, his voice calmer than he felt.
“The ones who rule your world do so.”
Duncan offered no disagreement.
“At first that discovery made me sad. But later it made me angry. A man has no right to do such a thing. It is an insult to hawks. It spits in the eyes of the hawks and the gods they serve. These are the same people who take our land. These are the people who would destroy our tribes and put bells on the few who survive.”
The dry wood burst into flame so abruptly that the man in front of him seemed to have taken shape out of thin air. He wore a sleeveless waistcoat over his painted torso and one of the army’s new shorter field kilts over deerskin leggings. The Revelator’s strong chiseled face might have seemed handsome were it not for the line of tattooed snakes that ran up from his neck over his cheek and onto his scalp, disappearing into long brown hair that was bound at the back into the kind of tight braided knot favored by British seamen. The fur of a fisher fox was draped over one arm, the head of the animal perched on his shoulder. The white beads that had been sewn into the eye sockets gave it the look of a beast from the other side. The half-king extended his hand over the fire and let the bell fall into the flames. “What do you desire of us?”
“You make it sound as if we came willingly.”
The Revelator sighed disappointedly. “Your name is Duncan McCallum, chieftain of one of the Highland clans that have been so sorely tested by fate.” He paused as he realized Duncan was pointedly gazing past his shoulder. “You wait for someone else perhaps?”
Duncan looked into the man’s deep eyes. “The Revelator is a great Mingo warrior who strikes terror in all he approaches. But you speak like one of the Presbyterian ministers who used to troll for souls along the coast where I was raised.” Duncan was indeed confused by the European affectation of the man.
The man’s smile was as cold as ice. “My father left me at a Jesuit mission when I was young.” As he took another step forward, the fire lit his face. His eyes glowed like black jewels.
“Jesuits teach in French.”
The man shrugged. “I can always parle français with a new friend.”
“I come because I am a friend of Conawago of the Nipmucs,” he said. “I chose my friends based on who they are, not what they are.”
“Which makes you a very bad soldier.”
“I am no soldier.”
“But we are all soldiers,” the half-king said, taking in the camp with a sweep of his hand. “It is the great mistake of the tribes. They have been bears, slumbering in caves, roaming aimlessly in the forests. Now is the time for wolves. Wolves reign supreme in their lands because they stand together. The bigger the pack, the greater their power. Their world is absolute. Once they choose a prey, it must always die.”
“We had wolves in the hills where I grew up,” Duncan replied. “Men with guns would bait them with raw meat then shoot them while they ate. They died because they were so predictable.”
The Revelator shrugged. “I thought Scar had showed you what we do with those who oppose us. And you would be hard pressed to predict what I am capable of.”
Duncan became aware of others beyond the half-king’s guard, figures arriving to sit in the shadows as if in hope of hearing the half-king’s words. “I was told the Revelator was a visionary who spoke for the gods. Instead I find just another savage who plays with knives. A whole camp of your soldiers against a single Delaware tied to a post.”
The Revelator’s cool smile did not dim as he produced a clay pipe from a pouch and bent to light it from a flaming stick. “You are indeed from the Highlands?” he asked as he coaxed smoke out of the tobacco.
Duncan nodded slowly, more confused than ever about this Mingo from the West who spoke like an educated European yet behaved like the most violent of savages.
“The English tried to extinguish the clans there. What would you do if certain English soldiers tortured and killed your family and you found those same foul creatures under your control years later?”
The words stabbed at Duncan’s heart so painfully that several moments passed before he could speak. “This is not about Scottish tribes. It is about the woodland tribes.”
The man’s eyes flared. “Then you know nothing! It is about the Mingoes and the Mohawks and the Hurons and the Onondaga and the Scots and the French métis of the north country! It is about the deaths of all our people, here and on the other side!”