Eliot Pattison - Eye of the Raven

"Rum in the next bay, y'er honors," he declared in a Welsh accent. "If ye got the coin, it's by the mug or by the jug," he added with a guffaw at his own wit.

Old Belt whispered to his escort, and two of the men took up station at the entry. The drunken Welshman seemed about to protest but halted as he looked at the axes on the warrior's belts and hastily retreated to his game. One of the two remaining escorts lifted a dim lantern from a peg and led Old Belt, Conawago, and Duncan down the central bay of the barn. The warriors knew Red Hand by sight, Old Belt had explained, so Duncan did not interfere as the two Iroquois led the search of the musty stalls. In the first, half a dozen Indians lay in drunken stupor on piles of straw. The next was much the same, though two Europeans in tattered, soiled clothes were present as well, one of them performing an unsteady drunken jig to earn a swig of an Indian's jug. In the third an angry warning snapped out, and a naked Indian woman threw a man's shoe from her pallet as she covered the head of the European beside her with a blanket, leaving the rest of his chalky nakedness for all to see.

The heads of two horses extended from the half wall of the last stall, and from the low moans arising from the stall before it Duncan expected to see more rum drinkers. But at the sight of the forlorn shapes in the straw he rushed forward. Three Indian women and three children lay in the dim light. One woman propped against the wall was in the discomfort of pregnancy, but she watched them silently, making no complaint. Another was clearly stricken with fever, lying between two children who held her hands, trying to console her. The third cradled a boy of four or five in her arms, rocking him back and forth, trying to make him forget his obvious pain. Duncan knelt first by the fevered woman, gesturing for the lantern to be held closer, taking her pulse, lifting an eyelid, laying a hand on her forehead, then stroking it as her body was wracked with violent shivering.

"Hold there!" boomed an angry voice. "No one be touching the squaws but if I-" The stout, heavily whiskered man who stormed into the stall hesitated as he saw Old Belt. "This be private property," he said more tentatively. "No one-" his protest completely died away as the two braves stepped from the shadows. These were not the city Indians, weakened from drink and sickness, that he was accustomed to, but towering warriors of the wilds, in their prime. One of the Iroquois slipped behind him, blocking the door.

"T'ain't no public thoroughfare is all," the man muttered.

Duncan fought the impulse to strike him. "You will get fresh water for these people, now! Then fresh straw."

"Ye have no right."

"Now!" Duncan repeated. Conawago quickly gave instructions to one of the braves to escort the barn's proprietor, who lost all color when he saw the warrior remove the war ax from his belt. He nodded and backed away.

"She has malaria," Duncan explained. "Shivering fever. With Peruvian bark we can cure the symptoms." He turned to Old Belt. "Magistrate Brindle would no doubt be responsive if you requested a physician to bring some tomorrow." The Iroquois chief nodded his agreement. "Ask him for a large supply. She needs to be out of here, back in the Iroquois towns, where she can be cared for away from the miasmas of the city."

The woman with the boy was reluctant to let Duncan touch her son until Old Belt stepped closer. She uttered an exclamation of awed surprise, obviously recognizing the great chief, then nodded to Duncan. Instantly he saw that the boy had a broken arm, the skin an ugly mass of green and blue from coagulated blood, one end of the bone protruding into the muscle.

Conawago spoke with the woman in a comforting voice, then explained to his companions. "The boy was carrying food up the ladder when he fell. She fears he will never be whole again. In the village of her youth a boy who could not shoot a bow was considered worthless, abandoned by his people."

"He will shoot a bow again," Duncan promised, then spoke to Conawago. "I need some of the broken harness I saw hanging on the wall, two small planks, and some of the flour sacking from the first stall."

By the time Conawago returned Duncan had the boy stretched out on the straw, his mother holding his good hand. He cut a fourinch piece of the heavy leather and told the boy to bite it whenever he felt the pain grow sharper, then began shaping the splint as Conawago ripped apart the sacking. Duncan began singing a low song, a Scottish sea shanty of his youth, repeating the chorus in a soft voice. He rubbed his fingers along the broken bone then, nodding at the boy to bear down, with a single smooth stretching motion snapped the bone back into place. He wrapped the arm in one layer of the makeshift bandage, then tightly wrapped the splints with the remaining sacking, and finally made a sling out of the leather.

"For two moons," he said to Conawago, not trusting his own translation, "tell her to keep it like this for two moons and the boy will be whole again."

Duncan smiled as the woman gripped his hand in both of hers and thanked him, again and again.

"He broke his arm taking food into the loft," Conawago observed.

Old Belt needed no further prompting. An unfamiliar energy had entered his eyes, the fire of an aging horse remembering tricks of his youth. He bent over the oldest of the children for a moment, whispering. "There is a secret room up there," he reported as he straightened. "With chairs and pallets and Europeans belongings. And there is a ladder at the far end that will take us up without being noticed."

Duncan was inclined to ascend the ladder alone but did not object when one of the Iroquois braves shot past him and stealthily disappeared into the darkness above. As they gathered near the top of the ladder moments later, they could plainly see the sentinel at the far end, cocking his head toward them, and just as plainly see the long arm that materialized around his neck, dragging him into the darkness.

The second brave pressed ahead, taking up a station on the other side of the door, as Duncan pushed past to enter the chamber. The room had been cleverly built of rough planks on the exterior but was lined with finished boards on the inside, giving it the character of a comfortable habitation. Sacking had been tacked to the floor for a crude carpet, castaway furniture scattered around the room. One Indian was in repose, his head sagging onto the back of his chair, and another four were sitting at a blanket in the center of the floor, rolling the colored stones that were the Indian equivalent of dice, each with a stack of European coins beside him.

The four men on the floor shot to their feet as Duncan entered, hands to the knives that hung on their chest straps. Duncan watched uneasily as they spread out, their muscles coiling, the blades suddenly out of their sheaths. They did not mean to parlay, did not even mean to challenge their intruders before attacking. The man closest to Duncan lifted a long tapered wooden club, a marlin spike used in ships' rigging. It was lethal looking, and Duncan crouched to defend himself against a certain blow, when suddenly the four men froze. They stared in amazement at Old Belt, who had appeared in the doorway, fixing each in turn with a stern, disapproving gaze. As recognition sank in they sagged, lowering their weapons, two muttering low, reluctant syllables of respect for the revered Iroquois leader.

"We will have the Shawnee called Red Hand," Old Belt quietly declared.

Duncan bent to a pallet by the wall. "Still warm," he reported.

The man in the chair, a Nanticoke, judging by his oyster shell adornments, awoke and cast a sour look at the intruders. "We know no one by such a name, old man, just get-" He never finished his sentence. One of Old Belt's escorts tapped his head with the ball end of his war ax, and the man collapsed to the floor. No one reacted.