At the Queen's Command Page 16

  “I reckon we best do something about that.”

  Setting a pace that had more to do with caution than Owen’s limp, they closed in on the fallen tree. Kamiskwa ranged out far on the right flank and circled around into the trees. Owen and Nathaniel, advancing and covering each other, moved in more directly. It took them the better part of an hour to reach the fallen tree.

  Owen stared down at the body of the man behind the tree. “Nice shot.” The bullet had drilled through dirty leathers halfway between breastbone and navel.

  Nathaniel crouched, turned the man’s face this way and that. The dead man hadn’t shaved in a while and his ears looked odd. So did his nose.

  Owen frowned. “What happened to his face?”

  “Not sure. Cain’t figure why he has a glove on his left hand neither.” Nathaniel stood and waved Kamiskwa over. “He look familiar?”

  The Altashee nodded. “Pierre Ilsavont.”

  Owen leaned back on the fallen log. “You know him?”

  “He cheats at cards. The shot that hit you was the best shot he ever made.” Woods picked up the man’s musket. “Fancy gun. New. Must have stole it. Ain’t no way he bought it.”

  “Let me have a look.” Owen caught the musket and tipped it up to look at the butt plate. “Arondel et fils, Feris, 1762. Made last year. Maybe your man was lucky.”

  “He’d have to be really lucky.”

  “How so?”

  “Winter of 1761 came hard in these parts.” Nathaniel nodded toward the body. “That’s what’s wrong with his face. Frostbite. See, Pierre here got drunk. He walked out into a freezing blizzard. Got hisself dead. Spring of ’62 Kamiskwa and I wandered into the churchyard in Hattersburg and peed on his grave.”

  “Are you sure that’s him?”

  Woods shrugged. “Never did see him planted. And he died with lots of debts owing. Coulda been he figured himself better off pretend-dead and just laid low.”

  Kamiskwa spat at the body. “Wendigo.” He walked away and started to gather dead wood into a small pile.

  “What did he say?”

  “Wendigo. The Shedashee have this legend. Cannibal comes among them, kills and eats them. Pure evil, like a spirit, takes them over. It’s supposed to do that during the winter, when food is scarce. He reckons Pierre was dead and the wendigo spirit brought him back.”

  Owen raised an eyebrow. “You believe this?”

  “Don’t know what I’m believing about Pierre here. Still and all, that same winter, Kamiskwa and me went to Trading Post Number Twenty-three up Queensland. Small place, palisade fence, main gate open, store open, snow drifted in. Five men in there, dead, froze-solid, half-eaten.”

  Nathaniel looked down, his brows furrowed. “Most folks think it was a bear. Trapper up that way got a bear come spring, said he found a ring in the stomach. That was good enough for most folks.

  “But there weren’t no bear tracks or scratches at Twenty-three. Weren’t no bear awake then. Weren’t no hands gnawed off.”

  He toed the corpse. “I ain’t saying it was Pierre here. Like as not it weren’t. Don’t know what it was. But I am willing to believe there is evil in the world, evil what will make a man crazy. If they want to call it wendigo, that’s good enough for me.”

  Part of Owen wanted to dismiss the wendigo as superstitious nonsense, but he’d seen things on the Continent that had driven men mad. He recalled having to fetch an officer out of the wine cellar of a chateau. The man had just packed himself into a corner and sat there weeping in the dark. He wasn’t drunk; he was just seeing ghosts. That was one kind of madness, and Owen had seen the other, too, the bloodlust that never could be sated.

  Wendigo is as good an explanation as any.

  “What do we do?”

  “Grab an ankle.” Nathaniel set his rifle down, and took hold of one leg. “We’re going to drag him over to that pile of wood, light it up, and burn the wendigo out of him.”

  They didn’t have enough time to burn the body entirely since they wanted to be well away from the spot before nightfall. Kamiskwa said that only the head needed to be burned. Nathaniel produced a stone knife and took the head off a bit more efficiently than made Owen comfortable.

  They left the Ungarakii bodies where they lay, but stripped them of all weapons. They also cut off knotted bracelets, one of which each warrior wore. Each seemed to Owen to be of a different style, woven together out of a variety of colored threads and what looked to be hair.

  Kamiskwa let a finger bump along a series of knots. “The patterns indicate his family, clan, and societies. The colors are events. Blue for birth, red for battle, black for ceremonies. The hair is from men he has killed.”

  Nathaniel plucked one from Kamiskwa’s hand and measured its thickness against his own thumb. “Two inches, maybe three. That’s worth a crown.”

  “A bounty?”

  “That’s right, Captain Strake. We get to Hattersburg and the six we collected here means we can live fancy for a while.”

  “I wasn’t aware Her Majesty’s Government…”

  “It don’t.” Nathaniel tossed the bracelet back to Kamiskwa. “Frontier settlements have been asking a long time for some of you Redcoats to keep them safe. Them settlements don’t have proper charters, so no troops come. Bounty-men will come, though, and hunt all manner of things, including the Ungarakii.”

  In dealing with the Ungarakii bodies they found the remains of Owen’s musket. A ball had shattered the stock. Owen removed the firestone assembly and the barrel, then tossed away what remained of the stock. He appropriated the dead man’s musket. It took the same caliber shot as his musket, which saved Owen the need to recast bullets. More importantly it had a shorter barrel, trimming two pounds from the overall weight and a foot and a half from the length.

  The barrel, however, was the wrong shape to accept Owen’s bayonet. And the shorter length meant it had a shorter effective killing range. In the woods this would not constitute much of a problem, since anything he could see would be well within the weapon’s lethal range.

  By rights, Ilsavont never could have expected to hit any of us. Owen looked back at Nathaniel as they marched along. “You said he wasn’t a good shot. Why did he shoot from that range?”

  “Been cogitating on that myself. I reckon he done seen your red coat and got to panicking. A mite skittish he always were.”

  “That not withstanding, I am still going to be in uniform on this expedition.” Owen scratched at the back of his neck. “His action would confirm his being in Tharyngian employ.”

  Nathaniel shook his head. “Most like, but ain’t no love lost ’tween the Altashee and the Ungarakii. Could be his boys seen us earlier and gathered here to get us.”

  Kamiskwa turned and snorted. “Ungarakii cringe before the Altashee. They would not have dared hunt us. They were tracking the corpse we found.”

  “Is that so?” Nathaniel scratched his chin. “They was heading in that direction.”

  Owen frowned. Ilsavont was Ryngian. The Ungarakii were Ryngian allies and knew the area. The dead man’s journal had been written in Ryngian and he was a scout himself. It made sense that someone might be sent to look for him.

  “If they were hunting the body, how did they do it? Neither of you saw any sign of the dead man’s passing, did you?” Owen looked at Nathaniel. “You made a point of this being a big land. How would they expect to find one body in so huge a landscape?”

  Nathaniel shrugged. “I wished I had you an answer.”

  Kamiskwa held a hand out toward Owen. “The corpse’s ring, please.”

  Owen dug it out of a pouch. “Do you think magick is involved?”

  The Altashee cupped the ring in his hands. His eyes closed. He remained very still for a moment, then his eyes snapped open. “Strong impressions. The feeble Ungarakii could not track them.”

  “I don’t recall Pierre being so all-fired powerful myself.”

  “Kamiskwa, can you track this ring back to another impression?�
�

  The Altashee again closed his eyes, then snorted. “Yes.”

  “Where?” Owen smiled. “It will lead us to du Malphias, I am sure.”

  “It is faint and fading.” Kamiskwa shook his head. “And would lead us back to Pierre.”

  “Damn.”

  Kamiskwa grunted. “We should push on. What I cannot detect, perhaps my father can.”

  Owen rubbed at his hip. “Not sure how far I’m going to make it.”

  Kamiskwa smiled. “No matter how far it is, we should walk with haste. We have the ring and though the wendigo no longer has a head, we do not want his body coming after us.”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  May 9, 1763

  Saint Luke

  Bounty, Mystria

  The thought of a headless body trailing them through the woods did create a sense of urgency. They pushed on into the dark until they’d crossed another large stream. They camped slightly upriver of some rapids and Kamiskwa insisted on sinking the ring into the river for the night.

  Nathaniel agreed. “Wisdom in action. The ring will make magick ripples in the water. The wendigo will follow it down stream and miss us by a mile.”

  “That will really work?”

  Kamiskwa shrugged. “In the old stories something similar has been effective. Now we need to take care of your hip.”

  Owen hobbled down to the stream’s edge. His red coat might have made him a target, but it had cushioned the impact with his musket’s stock and had absorbed many of the splinters. He pulled it off, then peeled his trousers down.

  As battle wounds went it wasn’t that horrible. One splinter had stabbed about an inch deep. The rest had just peppered his flesh. He drew the long one out, starting blood flowing slowly from a hole he could plug with his thumb.

  Nathaniel appeared and handed him several of the fern fronds. “Chew.”

  Owen stripped the leaves off the plant and stuffed them in his mouth. What started as sweet became bitter very quickly. Pieces of stem crunched between his teeth, releasing more sour liquid. He involuntarily swallowed a bit and his throat burned. He couldn’t ever recall tasting anything more foul.

  Kamiskwa set down a hunk of moss and offered his cupped hands. Nathaniel slapped him on the back. “Spit.” The frothy green mulch had the look of a freshly smashed grasshopper.

  Kamiskwa packed it into the wound and smeared it around the hip. He then clapped a hunk of moss over it. Using a strip cut from Owen’s blanket, he bound the leg up.

  Nathaniel handed Owen a stout length of maple to use as a walking stick. “It’s a good day when we kill a handful of Ungarakii and get away with only a scratch. We get to Saint Luke, someone can sew it up proper.”

  “I apologize for slowing us down.”

  “No apology necessary.” Kamiskwa spread his arms wide. “We are in Altashee territory and we have slain enemies. We are heroes. Any walk is a heroes’ walk, and no one will complain about its speed.”

  Despite their kind offer to let him sleep, Owen agreed to take a watch. The mogiqua poultice deadened the pain, but didn’t do much to ease the stiffness. Owen wanted to tell himself that his stiffness was only because of the wound, but he knew better. He had marched through the Low Countries with ease, but Mystria presented new challenges. He couldn’t wait until his body had adapted to them.

  Owen wasn’t certain he believed in the wendigo, but during the midnight watch, he did keep an ear out for splashing. In the morning, he scouted down along the shore to see if there were any footprints. He did it as quietly as possible, though his injured hip made that difficult. If either of his companions noticed, they said nothing.

  Kamiskwa chose a course from that point forward which kept to trails and minimized exertion. Whenever Owen protested that they could go faster and more directly, the Altashee counted that his path enabled them to backtrack the Ungarakii. He went to great pains to point out a variety of signs and over the next four days Owen learned a great deal about tracking.

  Toward the end of the fourth day, after slogging their way through a narrow part of a swamp, the three men emerged and climbed one last wooded hill. They paused at the top, giving Owen time to scrape mud off his coattails. At least, that was why he thought they’d paused; then he caught the scent of wood smoke over the stink of the swamp’s black muck.

  Kamiskwa smiled. “Welcome to Saint Luke.”

  “I thought the Altashee migrated.”

  “We do. This is the summer Saint Luke.”

  Owen’s eyes narrowed. “And the name? Is your tribe part of the Church of Norisle?”

  Kamiskwa shook his head. “Some are, but not many missionaries get out this far. My father just likes the name. He speaks your tongue a bit, and has confused Luke for luck. He likes that you have a god for luck.”

  Owen thought the name slightly blasphemous, but imagined Bishop Bumble’s outrage if he knew the truth. That made him smile.

  Nathaniel slapped him on the shoulder. “Just remember, Captain, this ain’t Launston society.”

  Owen nodded, but straightened his coat. “I shall comport myself as befitting one of Her Majesty’s officers.”

  The trio came down through the woods to the Altashee village. It had been laid out in a broad ravine with a stream running around the northern border. A long house with an arched roof dominated the center. The saplings that had been joined together to form the rafters had their branches braided together. Magick had been used because the trees bled into each other. Between them birch bark formed most of the roof and siding, save for where leather flaps allowed entry and exit.

  Around the long house sat smaller structures, all domed, of varying sizes and ostentation. Made of pine and birch like the long house, these dwellings benefited from their owners’ artistic talents. Images from children at play to men hunting a rhinoceros decorated them. Owen wondered if these pictures illustrated stories or might in some way serve as did a coat of arms, to identify the owner.

  As they entered the camp, villagers took notice. Small children came running over to jabber at Kamiskwa. A couple took hold of Woods’ hands, trying to drag him off toward one dwelling or another. He resisted their efforts and said things which had them shrieking or laughing or both.

  One little girl, her green hair shining, clad in a buckskin dress with lovely beadwork, just stared shyly at Owen. He stopped, and dropped to a knee to smile at her. She returned the smile, then her eyes widened and she ran off screaming. It didn’t sound like terror to him, nor was it that happy scream most children just couldn’t contain.

  He stood. “What did I do, Mr. Woods?”

  “Your eyes. She’s not seen that shade of green before. She ran off calling you ‘Moss-eyes.’ Not really a bad thing.”

  Owen frowned. “But not a good one, either.”

  “Ain’t the worst.”

  A hand threw the long house door flap open and an older, heavyset Altashee emerged. He straightened up, showing streaks of hair so white amidst the green that it seemed to glow. He smiled at Kamiskwa and opened his arms. Kamiskwa flew to him and they embraced.

  They parted, then the old man hugged Nathaniel. They exchanged comments and both of them laughed. Owen noticed the old man’s left eye was milky-white, but saw no battle scar in or around the socket. The two men seemed quite familiar and Owen sensed the connection was more than just Nathaniel’s being Kamiskwa’s friend.

  Finally, Nathaniel turned away and waved a hand toward Owen. “Great Chief Msitazi, this is Captain Owen Strake of the Queen’s Own Wurm Guards.”

  Owen pulled himself to attention and saluted. He made a horrible sight, with his stockings and trousers shredded, coated in mud and with scratches bleeding beneath. Leaf litter, burrs, and bits of thorny branches clung to his jacket. His hat had faired the best, but salt stains rimmed the black felt.

  The old Altashee drew himself up and returned the salute. “It has been a long time since the Queen has sent a man to me.”

  Owen wanted to immediately
explain that he wasn’t an official envoy, but there wasn’t any way to do that without dishonoring the man’s comment. Owen cleared his throat. “Her Majesty cherishes the friendship of the Great Chief Msitazi of the Altashee.”

  Msitazi laughed and made a comment that made both Kamiskwa and Nathaniel smile.

  Owen opened his hands. “Did I…?”

  The Chief shook his head. “Captain, I know your Queen has no idea who I am. But you are polite. I like this.”

  Nathaniel jerked a thumb at Owen. “You’ll be liking the fact that Captain Strake here done killed hisself two Ungarakii back two-three walks of here. He’d a-killed more, but me and Kamiskwa was selfish and got a pair each ourselves.”

  Msitazi looked Owen up and down. “Never has your Queen sent a warrior to me. You must come inside.” He turned, and reentered the long house.

  Kamiskwa and Nathaniel began shucking off all their gear and piling it near the long house. Kamiskwa barked an order at two boys. They immediately plunked themselves down beside the equipment and warned others off.

  Kamiskwa smiled. “Guards against curiosity. Please, Captain, take off your coat, trousers, stockings and shoes?”

  Nathaniel was already stripping down, and Kamiskwa pulled off his leggings. They kicked them into a pile, adding their moccasins, and an Altashee maiden approached with a basket to gather them up.

  Owen hesitated.

  Woods slapped him on the back. “Don’t be shy, Captain. Tain’t nothing she hain’t seen before.”

  The maiden giggled.

  Owen blushed, then turned his back and stripped off his muddy clothes. Fortunately his blouse tails hung down far enough to protect his modesty. He gathered his things up and placed them in her basket, nodding his thanks.

  He joined the others in the long house. Msitazi sat on a blanket with Kamiskwa at his right hand and Nathaniel at his left. Owen took up a place across from him. In the long house’s dim interior the Twilight People’s faces all but disappeared for eyes and teeth.

  “Where did you find the Ungarakii?”