The warriors surrounding the Revelator stepped back to reveal two score Hurons, each brandishing a weapon, facing each other to form a narrow alley. It was a gauntlet, the line of torment down which prisoners were sometimes thrust. The warriors would not step out of line, but the blows they aimed at the miserable creature who ran between them could be, and often were, fatal.
Paxto, chief of the Wolverine clan, stood at the head of one line, the bones woven into his hair rattling as he swung his war ax. Scar stood at the other, holding a heavy club. “Wolverines!” Custaloga hissed. The warriors in the lines were all of the hated clan. They would be certain to draw as much blood as possible.
The half-king seemed to take great pleasure in the frightened silence of the Iroquois. “One of you must reach the end. If the first falls, another must try, and another, until the end is reached. You can decide who runs.” He lifted the long braid of Abigail, oldest of the children. “The quiet maiden?” He stepped to Tushcona and made a sewing motion with his hand. “The weaver of Iroquois fate?” He stopped before Custaloga and stooped, bending his shoulders to mock the old man. “Custaloga, the warrior who became a woman?” The Hurons began to hoot and call in derision at the Iroquois. Duncan inched toward Scar. “Perhaps Sagatchie, who shamed his people by putting on the king’s uniform?”
He was still speaking when a figure shot out of the shadows toward the gauntlet, a lean man in tattered clothing whose hands were tied behind his back. The half-king casually extended a leg and the stranger tripped, sprawling on the ground. “A noble gesture, Bedford,” the halfking said with another thin laugh as Jacob darted forward to defiantly stand over the man. They had at last met the valiant schoolteacher of Bethel Church. The half-king pushed the boy aside, lifting Bedford by the collar and shoving him toward Hetty.
“Perhaps you would step into our line,” he said to the Welsh woman. “Nothing to fear for you, mother of so many names. One who can make snakes fly. You can turn all their axes to feathers.” When Hetty only glared in response, he turned back to the Iroquois. “Ah,” he said, as he reached the tallest of the women, “the beautiful Kassawaya. Just a graceful waltz with the Wolverines and you’ll-”
Duncan leapt in a blur of motion. He had seen the act performed in medical school, and he knew he had but one chance to repeat it now. With all his strength he slammed the edge of his hand into Scar’s neck, abruptly pressing his artery against his windpipe. As the warrior began to collapse, Duncan ducked and caught him on his shoulders, one arm over a leg, the other over an arm, draping the stunned body over his shoulders. With a war screech, he darted into the mouth of the beast.
The blows fell hard on the Huron’s back. Duncan twisted, slamming the man’s feet into the jaw of one warrior, twisting violently to hit another on the opposite side. A club bounced against Duncan’s ear. He knocked down the ball of a war ax with the limp arm. A stick bounced against Scar’s skull and onto his own, and for moment he was sure he would fall. More sticks sought to trip him, more clubs slammed onto the Huron as he twisted the unconscious man to block the blows, though several glanced off his own head. Blood was in his eyes. He staggered, off balance, then recovered, shouting out a Gaelic curse, and spun in a full circle, using Scar’s appendages to strike his assailants. His arm jerked as a club drew blood from his forearm, his ankle screamed in pain as another pounded its bones.
Then suddenly there were no more tormentors. He let the unconscious body fall from his shoulders and collapsed onto his knees, gasping, blood running down his arm and jaw.
He became aware of a pair of well-polished black shoes near his face, and he looked up into the stern face of Colonel Cameron.
“Well played, McCallum,” the colonel said with a cool smile. His grenadier guards rushed to stand over Duncan.
It seemed to take all his strength to turn and sit on the ground, facing the line of Wolverines. Some of the warriors stared at him in disbelief, others in fury. Several swung their clubs as if about to attack him. Savage cries broke out.
It took a moment for Duncan to realize they were coming from others in the camp, dozens of Scots and Indians who had been watching. They were cries of amusement, of laughter. A brawny Scot doused him with a bucket of water and helped him to his feet as others rushed forward. He ignored the pain of the congratulatory slaps on his shoulders as he watched Conawago and Sagatchie herd the Iroquois around the edge of the camp, joined now by the schoolmaster. To buy them time, he began to murmur acknowledgment to those who swarmed around him and accepted swigs of ale from several offered flasks. It was a quarter hour before the crowd began to break up, the Wolverines still glaring at him as he tried to inconspicuously make his way to the beach.
The elders and the children were already halfway to shore when he climbed into a canoe. He froze, paddle in his hand, as he saw the tall warriors of the Revelator’s guard gathering with several Scots at the far end of the beach to land the boat with the powder kegs. The Revelator had used the gauntlet to gain time to reach the kegs. Duncan watched in horror as a keg was handed down a chain of men and a hand ax slammed into its top. His paddle cut into the water as the first confused curse echoed across the river. Furious orders followed, and more kegs were opened, all revealing nothing but gunpowder. Duncan put all his strength into his paddle, and his canoe shot forward.
“McCallum!” came the half-king’s furious roar. A musket barked, and another. Balls plucked at the water around him, and then he was out of range.
He started shouting to his companions on the shoreline when he was still a hundred yards away. They stared in confusion, not understanding his desperate calls for them to run. On the far side of the high tongue of land, half a mile away, Woolford waited with his rangers.
“They opened the kegs!” he shouted as he leapt out. “They know why we are fleeing!” He pointed behind him. A dozen canoes were rapidly following them, filled with enraged warriors.
Chapter Fifteen
Despite Duncan’s desperate urgings, the escape of their weary band was agonizingly slow. They stumbled through an abandoned pasture then encountered thickets of brush covering the steep slope up the open ridge they had to cross to reach Woolford’s camp. The elders and the children were weak from their long ordeal. Tushcona and Bedford carried the youngest on their backs but were nearly spent before they were halfway up.
By the time they reached a vantage point at the top of the ridge, their pursuers milled along the riverbank, searching for their trail. Duncan and Conawago exchanged worried glances, knowing that as soon as they began to run across the open-faced ridge, they would be spotted.
Sagatchie helped the last of their party climb over the ledge marking the top of the slope then joined them to gaze down on the open field below. Duncan did not at first understand the sigh of satisfaction that came from the big Mohawk, then he followed his gaze to the solitary figure that stood on a boulder, staring up at them. His metal helmet was unmistakable.
“Wolverines,” Duncan heard himself say. A chill ran down his spine. The blood feud between the Iroquois and the Wolverine clan was like a festering wound, and Duncan had rubbed salt into it by shaming the Hurons at the gauntlet. The half-king had sent those he knew would be most likely to bring back all the scalps of those who had deceived him.
“Run!” Kass shouted at the children and the elders, urging them desperately across the top of the ridge toward the safety of the rangers. Bedford scooped up one of the children, and Kass threw another onto her back as she ran.
Sagatchie eyed the ledge rock that jutted upward a few feet away, making something of a parapet overlooking the pasture below. A great calm seemed to settle over him. He laid his rifle on the ledge, along with his powder horn and cartridge box.