Eliot Pattison - Eye of the Raven

"Land." Duncan whispered. "They would play with his life over land?"

"Based on what you have explained lives have been played with for several months over that land. And now Skanawati has made himself the most important bargaining chip of all in the treaty talks," Rideaux concluded. A strangely sad air seemed to descend over the former priest. "You come on a fool's errand. The murders are unimportant. The land is everything."

"Skanawati would not barter away Indian lands for his freedom."

"He might for his life, and that of his village."

Duncan studied the Frenchman. "You said there has been great sorrow there."

"Thirty miles up the western branch. Their suffering this past year has been of Biblical proportions. Disease. Dissent. Crop failures. A flood. Ten of their people crossing the river ice this winter broke through and were swept away. If the Iroquois open up negotiations for condolences his life will be saved, meaning the treaty will be saved, and he will get the supplies to save his people."

"Except," the Shawnee woman noted. "He was wearing paint."

Duncan turned and looked at her questioningly.

"War paint," was all she said.

Duncan stared into his cup a long time. He had not heard the whole truth, he was certain, but much of what the renegade Jesuit and his flock had told him had the ring of truth. He absently looked toward the hearth. Mokie was petting one of the large black dogs that slept there. Conawago was gone.

He rose from the table, uneasy for his friend, taking a step toward the door. Then Mokie screamed.

In a blur of panicked motion the girl launched herself onto the top of a nearby barrel as one of the dogs began barking and leaping up at her. Rideaux cursed, and two of the Indians ran for the second animal, which ran braying in fright toward the door. It was not a dog, but a young bear.

"He is very troubled since his mother died," the Frenchman offered with a shrug, then he darted outside after the animal.

Mokie's screams quickly subsided as Duncan lifted her from the barrel and took her to a window perch, where she could see the chase for the bear. The beast spun around the piles of fur, tipping several kegs over, knocking down a stack of furs, then a rack of drying fish as its pursuers kept slipping on the soft, wet earth. Low giggles began to replace Mokie's sobs, and soon she wiggled free of Duncan and ran outside to join the pandemonium.

Duncan was about to follow her when he realized he was the only one left in the room. Quickly he explored the doors on the far side, finding first a kitchen, its beams hung with dried apples and quarters of venison, its table bearing baskets filled with wild onions and fern fiddleheads. A dry pantry held baskets of grain on the floor, tobacco on its beams.

The third room was lost in shadow. He took a step inside, pushing the door open to allow enough light for him to discern three benches and a table. Beyond these was deeper shadow that had the feel of a cavernous space. He took another tentative step then pushed back against the wall, his heart suddenly racing. Something alive lurked in the darkness beyond the table. He could not make it out, but sensed its presence, could even, incredibly, hear a low sound like the beating of a heart.

Pressing against the wall, Duncan sidestepped to the door then slipped out and shut it. He closed his eyes for a moment, gripping his fear, then lit a candle and opened the door again.

The flame illuminated a circle of only a few feet. He edged along the benches, studying the careful drawings of animals on the walls before lifting a paper from a bench with words in three columns. Moon, lune, ehnita, read the first words in each column. Man, homme, ronkwe, and water, eau, ohneka, the next two lines. Someone was not only teaching English and French but they were also devising a system for writing down the Iroquois tongue.

The table, he now saw, was more of a workbench, covered with wood shavings, carving knives, files, the small bars of lead used for making bullets, plus a number of oily rags.

He halted, gazing into the darkness. The heartbeat was growing louder. Knowing the crowd outside might return at any moment, he clenched his jaw and stepped forward.

After two steps he gasped in terror, nearly dropped the candle, and would have fled if he had not been paralyzed by the monster before him. His heart was in his throat, his feet were leaden.

It was some primeval beast of the forest, a bear and more than a bear, a black fanged thing of nightmares, its jaw moving up and down as if preparing to consume Duncan, its yellow eyes shifting back and forth as if to see what other fresh meat might be approaching.

Yet curiosity began to overcome his fear. The eyes moved without ceasing, the jaw shut in time with the eyes, and with the heartbeat. He lifted the candle higher, advancing, seeing now how a bearskin had been stretched over a frame that gave exaggerated bulk to the shoulders and kept the forelegs extended like encircling arms. It was a bear and not a bear. Over its shoulder were draped other skins, with heads intact, of a red fox, a mink, and a marten. Here and there feathers from birds of prey had been sewn along the forelegs. He stepped warily around the creature, discovering that the rear was uncovered, exposing the intricately constructed frame of carved wooden struts joined with straps of sinew that gave it its shape. Its heart was a box of clockwork gears, from which a wooden pendulum swung, its shaft extending through the gearbox into the head, so that each swing not only gave motion to the black and yellow discs suspended in the eyeholes but also tripped a lever that opened and shut the jaw. From the rear the rhythmic ticking of the clockworks was unmistakable. The fur had muffled the sound, softening it to the heartbeat he had heard.

He returned to the worktable, setting down the candle as he lifted the rags. Underneath was another gearbox, this one largely disassembled, its gears, pinions, and screws piled beside it. With a thrill of discovery he lifted one of the gears, equal in size and shape to the largest one he had found at the murders. As he spun it between two fingers a floorboard creaked. Too late he sensed the movement at his back, too late he smelled the animal grease with which braves anointed their skin. As he turned, a club slammed into Duncan's skull, and he sank onto the floor.

A concussion could bruise the brain, a distant voice recited, sometimes destroying all function of the limbs. A crack in the skull plates made vital fluids hemorrhage, causing slow death as the victim descended into lunacy. Duncan hovered in a distant place, where lecturing voices seemed to come down a long pipe. He had the sense of being carried, but he was strangely disinterested in reacting, simply wanted to linger in the warm, welcome lethargy of this lightless place. Duncan wasn't conscious, he was having a strange dream of being conscious. In his dream came the sound of water lapping on rocks, a wetness on his legs. He was dropped onto something hard, with an object protruding so painfully into his belly that it seemed to stir a new voice, one screaming at him to awaken.

"Duncan!" came the frantic, forlorn cry, followed by splashing. "You must come back to us!"

His eyes flickered open. As he floated away Duncan watched dreamily as Conawago frolicked in a pool of water.

A gust threw cold water onto his face. He blinked, becoming aware of the river and the log that was rapidly carrying him out into the treacherous main current. He shook his head and saw Conawago struggling in the water as he tried to save Duncan, then saw his friend disappear under the water. Suddenly he was painfully awake, and he saw death before him. He rolled off his log and dove.