And then Red Jacket stood, too, one sleeve empty but holding a tomahawk in the other hand, his English coat ragged but still a brilliant scarlet in the weird light. His look was simple hatred. He’d rip out my heart if he could. His mongrel band of Dakota and Ojibway renegades stood too, a scarred, vengeful bunch who looked more like pirates than princes of the plains. They looked greedy and foul, nothing like the proud warriors who had helped us on our canoe trip.
‘My. Isn’t this a fine reunion?’
‘We want you dead, Gage!’ Cecil called in a voice made raspy from wounds and pain. ‘We want you to die horribly! I have twenty of the best warriors in the world here to make sure that happens! But we’ll spare you all – Bloodhammer, the women, even little Pierre here – in exchange for whatever artefact you’ve found.’ He tilted his head back to look up at the tree. ‘I must say, the Rite never expected this.’ Another flash, high above at the top in the clouds we couldn’t see, and a rumble of thunder. The light cast him in an eerie glow.
‘The Egyptian Rite knew what we were looking for?’
‘The Egyptian Rite knew that Ethan Gage is always looking for something.’
While Cecil looked as cocky as a man can with just half a face, his Indians, I noticed, were distinctly uneasy. They hadn’t expected this great tree either, with its weird storms and brooding shade. They too were thinking of the Wendigo.
‘You call me little Pierre?’ Pierre croaked in protest. ‘No man says that of the great Pierre Radisson!’
‘Silence!’ And Cecil struck him with a leather quirt, and then slashed him again and again as if reminded to take out his own pain and frustration on his captive. Little Frog gave a cry and a sob. I quivered with disgust. It took every ounce of discipline not to kill Somerset at once, but if I shot the monster, the others would strike Pierre down and rush us before I could reload. The voyageur swayed but stayed upright, eyes closed against the blows.
Magnus had given the muskets to Namida and Little Frog and now he picked up his axe, ready to charge like a Viking berserker. ‘Not yet,’ I cautioned him.
Finally the Englishman stopped whipping our friend, gasping from exertion, while Pierre winced in miserable pain. Cecil’s one eye glittered with terrible madness, a tormented fury completely different than the passion of Magnus Bloodhammer.
‘I am not a patient man, Ethan Gage,’ Cecil said, wheezing. ‘The Rite knows what the Templars were trying to assemble, while you’ve no idea. Give it up, whatever you’ve found, and you make the world a better place. You can have this snivelling frog and this entire cursed prairie! I leave you and the savages to it! Give it over and we can be friends again.’ He tried to smile, but the disfigurement made it a grimace. ‘Maybe I’ll give you my sister again.’
‘Don’t believe him,’ Magnus hissed.
‘Of course not. This bunch even cheats at dice.’ I called to the Englishman, ‘It would help if your sister stopped aiming at me!’
‘Then lower your own gun, Gage! Save your friend! It’s time to be civilised again! What’s past is past!’ Again, the hideous grin.
‘Send Pierre and I’ll stand easy!’
‘Stand, and we’ll send Pierre!’
Aurora swung her gun away. I lowered mine. Cecil gave a push, and Pierre staggered towards us. Then the voyageur stopped.
‘They’ve killed me already,’ he croaked. ‘I’m ready for the next life, Ethan. Don’t give up whatever it is you have. These are evil people and must not have it.’
His words hung in the air, all of us frozen by his refusal to advance farther.
Then everything happened at once.
Aurora snarled, swung her gun upward, and fired into the Frenchman’s back. As his knees buckled Little Frog screamed in outrage, fired, missed, and I thought she might charge, but instead she threw down her musket and bolted to our burrow. Namida shot, too, and one of the Indians went down.
I’d fallen flat, just in time to avoid a volley of Indian bullets and arrows that thunked into the titanic tree, but Magnus grunted and spun as at least one shot clipped him. Namida dropped to reload, too. Then, as Lord Somerset fell on Pierre and brandished his broken sword to take the Frenchman’s scalp, I raised myself on my elbows and fired into the monster’s chest, a bullet I suspect he half wished for. Cecil pitched backward, his broken sword flying from his hand.
Aurora shrieked in renewed fury.
Magnus was running at her silently, lifting his axe despite his wound.
Then the earth heaved.
It was as if a wave bucked the tree and the ground rolled. Sheets of lightning far bigger than anything we’d seen before rippled overhead, sparking as it struck the branches, and there was a wail of agony behind so chilling that I froze. It was Little Frog, screaming! Namida was terrified, clinging to a root like the rail of a ship, and Yggdrasil, or whatever the devil this overgrown twig was, rocked and swayed, loosened roots making pops and burps like a giant smacking its lips. Was it an earthquake? Magnus was thrown to his knees by the lurch, and Aurora, her gun empty, was crawling desperately away in the grass.
All the Indians except Red Jacket were shouting and backing away.
Then Little Frog burst from the hole, clothes smoking, and rushed past me towards Magnus, crying something in her tongue.
She was wielding the hammer!
Her arm was horribly blistered and swollen, and her charge was more like a stagger. She’d paid some terrible price to reach within the cage of roots and wire to snatch the weapon to avenge her lover, Pierre, and when she did the entire tree had quaked. She fell and slid on the grass, her grasp coming loose, and the hammer skidded away from her. The Indians froze, looking in wonder at a weapon that glowed as if it had come from the forge. Now Red Jacket was charging with his tomahawk, knowing our guns were empty. I yanked out my own hatchet. We’d finish this as I should have when he kicked me at Rendezvous.
I wouldn’t have come close to Thor’s hammer, but Magnus snatched it up with a bellow, screaming in pain as its energy coursed through him. He seemed to swell in stature, his beard and hair jutting out from electrical force, his own hand scorching at the touch. Yet even as he cried out he lifted the weapon skyward, spinning it in a crazed circle.
The sky erupted with fire. Lightning cracked in an arcing circle around the crown of the tree, bolt after bolt, some striking Yggdrasil but others lancing down to spots on the ground. Wind howled and then screamed, and clouds that had been merely menacing before began to boil and churn. The Indians scattered except for Red Jacket, who remorselessly chopped at Little Frog as he darted by, staving her temple with vicious efficiency. She dropped, instantly dead. I crouched, ready for him. And then Magnus threw the hammer and lightning blazed where we stood.
Namida and I were hurled back against the trunk of the ash as if punched, and Magnus reeled backward too. But the force of the bolts struck Red Jacket head-on with such searing power that it stopped his charge as if he’d hit an invisible wall, freezing him in agony as energy sizzled like a corona. His coat burst into flames. Then his eyes boiled and jutted, his tongue swelled like a loaf of bread, and he was kicked backward a dozen feet, his moccasins flying off.
Thor’s hammer had worked!
The mystical tool flew back into Magnus’s hands through some weird magnetism between weapon and wielder. The Norwegian caught it with an agonised yell. Bloodhammer seemed infused with electricity himself, clothes smoking, hammer, sky, and tree crackling with attractant charges, he gave a great shout of agony and swung in a circle, a sheet of energy roiling out of the hammer head and blasting into the grass. Fire sprang up all around the tree, a circular wall of flame, and what Indians hadn’t been killed by the searing charge were running for their lives. Now Magnus was howling in agony, twisting about, and with his final strength he leant back and hurled the hammer straight up, as far as he could throw, the weapon turning over and over in the air.