The Dakota Cipher

CHAPTER THIRTY

Red Jacket snapped some orders and the tribe began backing from the beach to form two parallel lines towards the gate of their palisade village. The women eagerly pushed into position ahead of the men, shaking their sticks and screeching contempt, which is usually something women do only when they’ve known me for a while. I saw gaping mouths, white teeth, and black, remorseless eyes. It took every ounce of courage to take the first tottering step forward.

We were about to run the gauntlet towards the stake and the fire.

‘Don’t fall,’ Cecil coached. ‘They’ll beat you until you’re unconscious and see how many bones they can break. That makes it hurt even more when they tie you to the stake.’

‘Perhaps you could show how it’s done?’

‘Quite unnecessary. Running the gauntlet is instinctive, Mr Gage, or so Girty told me. He’s quite the mentor, you know.’

Someone shoved from behind and I staggered forward, wrists still bound behind my back. I’d have to be quick, ducking the blows of the strongest and meanest and trying to keep my face down and undamaged. So I dug my feet in the gravel of the beach, crouched while my tormentors howled with anticipation, and then, when a musket went off, sprang. They whooped.

My speed took them by surprise so the first few clubs missed, wind singing by my ears. But then blows began striking my arms, back, and thighs. Someone thrust out a stick to trip me and I had the wit to jump and come down on it, snapping the wood and eliciting a cry of surprise. I butted another brute and kept staggering. One particularly fierce crack stung the side of my neck but the pain jolted me forward just as I was faltering. I surged ahead again, clubs a tattoo on my torso.

‘Good show, Gage!’ Cecil was shouting. ‘Oh, that must hurt!’

‘His head! Hit his head!’ Aurora screamed. At least she wasn’t urging them to aim for more private areas.

There was a great shout behind and I glanced to see that Magnus, charging like a bull, had knocked over half a dozen of his assailants and was stomping on indignant, writhing forms as other Indians howled with laughter. The distraction allowed me to squirt ahead the final ten yards with only a few last smart blows. I plunged through the gate of the village where half a dozen armed warriors waited in a blocking semicircle and sank to my knees, too excited for the full pain to yet register. Bloodhammer’s size had turned his ordeal into sport, the gauntlet widening around him like a swollen python. As he ploughed forward he dragged Indians with him, grunting with each thwack and spit, and when his knee went down once he simply genuflected and shoved off again, gasping. Finally he broke free of his tormenters and joined me in the dirt. A trickle of blood ran from one temple and his chest heaved. Norse fire burnt in his eyes.

‘Did they crack a rib?’ I asked.

‘Barely dusted me. I broke a nose with my foot. I heard it crunch.’ He grinned, his teeth red with blood.

‘Look for any chance you can. I’d rather die fighting than burn.’

The cordons on his neck popped out as he strained at his bonds. ‘If I get loose, it won’t be just us dying.’

It seemed appropriate to concede some fault, given the circumstances. ‘I’m not always the smartest judge of women,’ I admitted.

He spat blood. ‘We’ll pay her back.’

‘And living in nature doesn’t improve human character,’ I went on, a regular Locke to dispute the Rousseau of Magnus.

‘This is nature corrupted by gunpowder and rum,’ the Norwegian replied. ‘These Indians are on the edge of extinction and know it, and the knowledge has driven them crazy.’ He looked sourly at a brave who sauntered up, languidly swinging his axe. ‘Out there it’s still different.’

‘Out where?’

‘We just haven’t gone west far enough.’

The Indians tied tethers around our necks like dogs and Cecil languidly walked in front of us, his sword now unsheathed and balanced casually on his shoulder. ‘Gage, I’ve never met a spy so easy to anticipate.’

‘I’m not a spy.’

‘After failing to get you in New York we didn’t even have to trail you to Washington. We had only to wait for you at Detroit, so obvious was your mission. I was sceptical that my sister’s bit of quim would be enough to get you to abandon a chance of American escort, but you almost suggested the arrangement yourself. Tsk, tsk, Ethan Gage. You played her lackey until you spied a squaw, like a dog distracted by a new rabbit. And then, after peeping on us, you made a beeline for the Mandan wench, the one place we might look for you. I’m beginning to wonder if a fool like you and the hero of Acre are the same man at all. Are you an imposter?’

‘I’ve discovered your headquarters.’ I looked about.

He laughed. ‘This dung heap? This nest of primitives? I use savages, Ethan. I’ve got my eye on a castle in Montreal, after we’ve helped these Indians push your mercantile, indentured nation back east of the Appalachians with an uprising so violent that the rivers from the Monongahela to the Mississippi run red with blood. Ten thousand cabins are going to burn, and ten thousand children are going to become orphans, inducted into the tribes. Tecumseh will make Pontiac look like a Franciscan monk by the time he’s through, and Britain has guns enough for all of them. Yes, America must be confined, Ethan Gage, for its own good and the good of the world. I will not let your nation of grubby equality and mercantile greed pollute civilisation! America will be contained until it inevitably withers, just as France must be contained! So now you’ll die, and we’ll send your entrails back to Jefferson after the dogs help pull them from your slit belly. You can watch us smoke them for preservation – oh yes, the old women know how to keep you alive and conscious while we do it! Unless, of course, you want to tell us what you’re really doing on the far frontier, so far from the salons and parlours that keep you worm-white and useless. Tell us, Gage, and because I’m charitable I might grant you the gift of a swift tomahawk to the head! You’ll tell us anyway, when the squaws put coals in your ears and anus and shove cedar splinters up your wilted prick.’

He reminded me of doctors describing a painful treatment with a bit too much relish. He certainly didn’t seem the dazzling gentlemen I’d met in George Duff’s house. I should have asked for references.

‘Even wilted, it’s bigger than that quill you aim at your sister, you disgusting pervert.’

He barked a laugh. ‘You do have cheek!’

‘Information from torture is useless.’

‘Then we’ll start with disfigurement.’ He nodded and one of the Indians jerked on my leash, hauling my head up. I could barely breathe. Another approached me with a mussel shell, sharp as a razor. ‘I like to cut across the eye before gouging it out, because the pain is hideous. Each time the swelling blinds you, a fresh cut releases the pus and the begging starts all over again. I watched them do it to a captive priest once until his sockets were a blind web of crisscrossing mussel cuts, black and red. Of course the priest had nothing to confess and was quite mad by the third day. But it was marvellously entertaining.’

‘I told Aurora we’re looking for woolly elephants!’ I cried, eyeing the shell looming close in my vision. And as my eyeball rolled, I saw something out of the corner of one eye and realised what Namida had spied at the beach. I almost had a spasm.

‘If that came from Jefferson I might almost believe you. But from Bonaparte too? No, we’ll make you match the Norwegian cyclops. Cut him.’

‘Wait!’ I know I was supposed to be stoic as a Roman in the face of this torture, but what was the point? We were chasing myth, a fantasy, and if I could delay things for another minute … There were two hundred against two, and we didn’t have a chance unless I made one. ‘We’re looking for Thor’s hammer!’

‘What?’ He motioned the savage with the shell to stop, rotated his sword off his shoulder, and put its point under my chin. ‘A hammer?’ He looked confused.

‘A hammer of the Norse gods! That’s why Magnus is here! He thinks Vikings or Templars or some other madmen came before Columbus and hid a magical hammer that could control the world! I don’t care about that, I only thought we could sell it!’

‘Ethan!’ Magnus cried in despair and disgust.

‘He’s got an old map in his case. He may be a lunatic, but I came along because I was tupping Napoleon’s sister and had to get out of France!’

Cecil blinked, looking at me in consternation for the longest time. Past him, down a land of wigwams and longhouses, I could see fire-blackened stakes set in the ground and piles of fresh brushwood for burning. I remembered the horrid fires at the Battle of the Nile, the smell of roasting flesh, and the blaze in Count Silano’s strange chamber in the Tuileries. I’m deathly afraid of fire.

‘He’s lying!’ Bloodhammer shouted. ‘Torture us! You’ll see!’

‘He’s a poor liar.’ It was Aurora, stepping into my field of vision with my longrifle lazily pointed my way. ‘His lies are unbelievable, instead of convincing. This is just stupid enough to be true.’

Cecil looked from one to the other of us as if he’d found a new species. Then he began to laugh. ‘Thor’s hammer?’

‘He wasn’t a god, he was some sort of early ancestor and had this weapon that spat lightning.’

‘Ethan, enough!’ Bloodhammer roared.

‘Don’t tomahawk me, because we can take you there …’

‘Ethan!’

Cecil swung his sword away and then whipped the narrow flat of it hard across my face, a stinging blow worse than any the Indians had yet given me. A lip split, and my cheek was on fire. ‘Do you think me a fool?’ he screamed.

I slumped, near to weeping. ‘Ask Magnus …’

‘A bloody myth! You want me to believe you are looking for Nordic gods in Louisiana? That you’ve come six thousand miles for a pagan fantasy? That any sister of Napoleon would so much as look at you?’

‘She couldn’t keep her hands off me, the randy bitch. It’s Pauline the nymph, who had a reputation long before I …’

‘Silence!’ He slashed me with the flat of the sword again. Damn, that hurt!

‘Brother, he’s not intelligent enough to invent something so absurd,’ Aurora said.

‘Yes! Look at me! I’m a dolt!’ My eyes were watering in pain and shame, but what choice did I have? I dared not look at what I’d seen again.

‘Silence, I said!’ And he slashed me with the flat of his sword yet again. I blinked, near to fainting. I hate helplessness.

‘We should look at the map case,’ Aurora said.

‘I want to burn him,’ Cecil growled. ‘Roast him for days, for having you.’

‘Patience, my love. I know I’ve stoked your jealousy to spice the game. But we need to know everything he knows. This is a start.’

‘I want him to be porcupined with splinters, and the end of each one set on fire.’ Cecil licked his lips. ‘I want the women to flay his manhood.’

‘There’s time, brother. There’s time. But this map?’

‘The case is in the canoe.’ He snapped some words to Red Jacket and a young buck darted off to the lake shore to fetch it.

‘Let me guide you. Partners, like we said.’

Then Namida, whom I had entirely forgotten about, began jabbering at Red Jacket. He snapped back at her, but that just made her angrier and she pointed at me, insisting. He argued, but then Little Frog began arguing too. What was going on? The Indians began debating among themselves, and the Somersets looked increasingly annoyed. They snapped something at Red Jacket, and the chief snarled back.

‘What’s happening?’ I called to Namida in French.

‘We’re claiming you as husbands.’

‘Now?’

‘Women who are widowed can save a captive to repopulate the tribe. We have no husbands, and they must give us a chance at children. You would become a renegade and fight with Red Jacket.’

‘Join him?’

‘But you have to marry us.’

Right now that did seem superior to the alternative. ‘Magnus, Little Frog does have a certain charm,’ I encouraged.

‘These women are slaves,’ Cecil seethed. ‘They have no claim on my captives. Red Jacket dare not deny us the torture he’s promised.’

Namida shook her head. ‘You must become our husbands. This band is depleted by Red Jacket’s quarrels with other Indians: everyone hates him. The women know their men will come to me if I don’t have a man for myself.’

Well, once again I could produce harmony, like the treaty at Mortefontaine. Sleeping with Namida was just the job for my diplomatic talents.

The girl was helping me by delaying things, I knew.

Then the runner came back with the map case. While the Indians argued about my matrimonial suitability, Cecil took out the map and unrolled it for Aurora. They looked at it and then at us, over the parchment rim.

‘This is forgery.’

‘It’s Templar ink, damn your eyes,’ said Magnus, who had apparently given up hiding his preposterous theory. ‘You know it’s real.’

‘You’re both quite barmy. It’s worse than elephants.’

‘That we can all agree on,’ I said.

‘Yet what if they aren’t entirely insane?’ Aurora asked. She looked hard at Magnus. ‘This hammer. What can it do?’

‘I thought you called it a myth?’

‘What can it do?’

He shrugged. ‘No one knows. But if it exists, medieval mariners thought it important enough to cross the oceans and take it to a special place – a very special place.’

‘Can it kill people? Lots of people?’

‘It was Thor’s weapon.’

She turned to Cecil. ‘What if they aren’t making this up?’

‘You must be joking.’

‘They would have this map ready-made for such an improbable story? The map looks real, somehow. It’s so ludicrous that it smacks of truth.’

‘I don’t doubt Gage would believe nonsense. The question is whether we should.’

‘We can always kill them later. Let’s have them take us here.’ She jabbed the map.

I nodded encouragingly.

‘No, I want the truth now. I want to roast it out of them now.’

‘What if we need their help finding the hammer?’

‘We’ve travelled with them for weeks. Gage couldn’t find his own ears. If they’re telling the truth and we have the map, then we know what they know.’

‘The Rite said he was resourceful in Egypt and Palestine.’

‘Then we tie him to the stake as we intended, drain what he knows, slake the Indians’ blood lust, and go looking at our leisure.’ He licked his lips, thinking now. ‘Something like this hammer, if it exists, could put us above the North West Company, and Montreal, and even the prudes and hypocrites back in England. We could live as we should, married by our own law. We could blame his disappearance on this map. Give us an hour, Aurora, an hour at the stake, and we’ll know everything!’ He grasped the double-bladed axe. ‘It’s astonishing what men will say just to keep their last fingers and toes.’

‘Then get Red Jacket to silence those captive squaws!’ The tumult Namida was causing was clearly flustering Aurora.

‘To hell with Red Jacket,’ her brother said. He snapped an order and two of the warriors guarding us yanked on our tethers to get us to our feet and pull us towards the stakes, even as Namida and Little Frog shrieked in protest. The tribe’s argument was growing fiercer, Red Jacket unable to quiet either side.

Cecil, Aurora, and our two guards had soon dragged us twenty yards from the main party of yelling Indians. Clearly we were going to be tied to the stake before clearer, more matrimonial heads could prevail. But these were the best odds we’d faced all morning, and I was becoming impatient. When, when? Aurora had the longrifle pointed at me, and Cecil his sword pointed at Magnus, the axe held loosely in his other hand and the map thrust into his belt. He gave a curt command and the brave who’d dragged me by my tether cut away the cords at my wrist so he could bend my arms around the back of the upright post. Another took my neck leash to help drag me the last bitter feet to my doom. I certainly wasn’t going to make it easy by walking! I began to lift my arms and Aurora cocked my gun. ‘Don’t you dare,’ she said. ‘I’ll shoot you in your knee and you’ll still be alive, but in agony before the fire even starts.’

‘Through the heart, Aurora. It’s the least you can do for old times’ sake.’

‘No. I like to make my lovers moan.’

Now the other Indians were beginning to come towards us, still arguing but less heatedly. Namida looked miserable, which was not a good sign.

And then the head of the warrior holding my left arm exploded.

It was about time!