The Dakota Cipher

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

At least we didn’t have to paddle.

We were trussed like hogs and thrown in the bottom of Red Jacket’s canoe and the one we’d just stolen. A third canoe bore the Somersets with more Indian paddlers. A fourth included Namida and Little Frog. The two Indian women looked at us gloomily. They’d seen what happens to captives.

This flotilla shoved off at dawn, the fort silent except for roosters and dogs, and soon we were out of sight. Except for rough handling as they tied us and dragged us, we were unmolested, since they were saving us for their village. I worked a while at the rawhide thongs but only succeeded in sawing my wrists. The Indians were better at trussing prisoners than my assailants at Mortefontaine.

Our captors paddled all through that day and night, arriving the next morning at their home village on the western shore of Lake Superior. If it was any consolation, I judged by the sun and my memory of maps that the shoreline continued to lead us southwest. Unwittingly, we were a good hundred miles nearer our intended destination on Bloodhammer’s map.

Gunshots and whoops announced our approach, and even from the bottom of the canoe I could hear the excited shouts of those waiting, no doubt trading torment tips and taking bets on how long before we screamed, fainted, or died. Somehow it was worse not being able to see yet, staring hopelessly up at the sky. Then the splash of paddlers leaping out, a dozen hands reaching to heave me up like a sack of flour, and finally I was ashore where my ankles were cut free so I could stand awkwardly, blood rushing painfully back to my feet. My hands stayed bound. Bloodhammer was propped up as well.

I blinked, dizzy from anxiety. In front, a howling mob of perhaps two hundred Indians faced Magnus and me. Men, women, and children alike were armed with a stick or club and looking as excited as an orphanage at Christmas. A couple of rocks sailed out to sting us, but there was no serious barrage. You don’t open your present until its time.

I tried to be philosophical. Magnus had dreamt that men who lived in virgin wilderness would be born with natural nobility and secret insight. Yet what I saw when civilisation was absent was raw human savagery stripped of any restraint. Nature was cruel, not benign, and that cruelty would now be turned on us.

I looked at my companion. ‘I’m sorry, Magnus.’

There was nothing to reply. He was looking at his tormenters with a Viking scowl that would give Tamerlane pause. Many men would collapse and weep at this point, praying against whatever horrors were planned – I had half a mind to do just that myself, if it would do any good – but Magnus was simply taking his enemies’ measure. If he ever got loose of his bonds, he’d be Samson at the pillars. So how to free ourselves?

I glanced about. Aurora had claimed my longrifle, I saw with annoyance, angling it across her chest like a sentry. Some painted buck was shaking Bloodhammer’s double-bladed axe. Our stolen provisions had disappeared – probably eaten by our captors on the paddle here – and I realised I was ravenously hungry and desperately thirsty. Well, I’d lose my appetite soon enough.

Red Jacket paraded up and down the beach, raising his arms, pointing at us, and orating in his native tongue. No doubt he was boasting how clever he was to have caught us, or explaining how foolish I was to try rescuing Namida. The girl and Little Frog were to one side of our party, shrinking from the shrieking assembly but in no danger themselves. Fertile women were too valuable to squander. Cecil was to the other side, hand on sheathed rapier, thoroughly enjoying his advisory role. He, I decided, would be the first to die. Then his half-sister, if that’s what she really was, the Siren. Yes, bitter revenge, just as soon as I got loose of two hundred agitated Indians!

I tried to come up with a plan – electrical demonstrations, ancient spells, hidden weapons, predictions of a solar eclipse – and failed completely. It’s not easy to improvise when facing torture.

Red Jacket had an idea of his own. He posed in front of us, hands on hips like the lord of the manor, and then speechified to the crowd again.

They howled with delight. Cecil Somerset frowned, which I hoped was a good sign. Namida, I noticed, had glanced backward at something out of sight of the crowd but then quickly turned her attention again to me.

A scraped deer hide was thrown on the ground between us. Red Jacket reached into one of his deep English pockets and pulled out a handful of what at first looked like pebbles. When he cast them onto the leather, I realised they were Indian dice, carved from the pits of wild plums. They were oval instead of square, in the Indian manner, and had just two sides: one side was carved with lines, circles, snakes, ravens, and deer; the other was blank.

The Indians hooted and pranced. They loved gambling.

And so did I, allowing myself a tiny wager on hope! Ten beans were placed on the hide as well.

Red Jacket snapped something at Somerset and then jerked his head towards me. Cecil protested in the Indian tongue, but the chief would have none of it. He shook his head and barked at Somerset again.

The Englishman finally shrugged. ‘He wants you to gamble, Gage. Apparently you have a reputation for it.’

I swallowed. ‘I seem to be a little low on money.’

‘Gamble your life, of course.’

‘So if I win?’

‘You escape with your hair.’

‘And if I lose?’

Cecil smiled. ‘Then you’ll run the gauntlet before being strapped to the stake, giving everyone a chance to take a swing at you.’

‘How sporting.’ I knelt at the deer hide, wrists still bound. ‘How do I play?’

‘It’s a simple version. Red Jacket will put the chips in a wooden bowl and throw. If more of the plain white side land up than the decorated, the thrower wins a bean. If more of the decorated side land up, you win a bean. If the advantage is seven white to three decorated, then two beans. Eight is three, nine four, and if all ten die are white then Red Jacket gets five beans.’

‘What do I get?’

‘Conversely, if the majority is decorated you take beans at the same rate. The first person to take all ten beans wins the game.’

‘That’s even odds and could take a long time,’ said Magnus.

‘At this point, friend, doesn’t that sound attractive?’ I countered.

‘Precisely,’ said Cecil. ‘But two consecutive throws of one colour can end it in a moment. So this entertainment may prove brief, as well.’

The swarm of Indians crowded around, excitedly betting among themselves on how I would do. Red Jacket scooped up the dice, put them in the bowl, waggled it like a sifter, and threw the dice against the hide. A roar went up, fading to a mutter. There were five white sides, and five decorated. Neither of us won.

He scooped them up to throw again.

‘Wait, don’t I get a turn?’

‘Under the circumstances, Mr Gage, I think it’s safer to keep you bound.’

Red Jacket threw again and this time there were six white, four decorated. The crowd whooped as if it were a horse race! The chief took one bean.

He threw again, and once more got six white. Delirium! Drumming and chanting!

‘By John Paul Jones, I don’t think anyone’s on our side. Be sure to cheer if we win a bean, Magnus.’

‘They’re just making sport of us.’

‘It’s better than the alternative.’

Another throw, and this time seven decorated dice turned up. The crowd groaned in dismay. I got two beans to even our pile, and there was enough mourning to animate a Greek chorus. I’m lucky at gambling, so my spirits rose.

Two more throws, each of us taking a bean, and then seven white for Red Jacket, giving him six beans for my three. There was one bean left in the middle. Luck seemed to be running the rascal’s way: hysteria among the onlookers.

‘I appear to be losing,’ I told Cecil resignedly.

‘Not yet. You’ll play until you’re entirely bankrupt.’

I actually won the next toss, taking the final bean between us, and then the one after that, taking one of Red Jacket’s beans and making us even again. Now the Indians muttered and mourned, poor losers.

But then he took two of mine, then one, I won that one back, then the chief took it yet again, and another besides. I had one bean left, he had nine. The Indians were dancing, singing, and anticipating my demise with frolic worthy of a Neapolitan carnival. I hadn’t caused this much amusement since Najac and his gang of French-Arab thugs hung me upside down over a snake pit. I really should have been a thespian.

Red Jacket grinned, scooped the die up while dragging the sleeve of his ratty English coat, and gave a victory whoop as he shook to throw. The Indians howled with anticipation.

But I’d watched this sly devil with a gambler’s eye. I suddenly twisted off my knees, landed in the sand on my rump, and lashed out with a free foot, kicking the bowl out of his hand and sending the dice flying. I had that small cache of silver dollars I’d hidden in the sole of my moccasin to keep them from the shrub-drinking voyageurs, and I’ll bet the metal made the kick sting even more.

‘He’s cheating!’ I cried. ‘Check the dice!’

I hadn’t actually spotted it, but each time he scooped up the dice he gave no opportunity for me to inspect them. Judging how he’d gambled for Namida, I was betting he’d slipped one or more dice with two white sides into the game. And yes, I saw one likely example and slapped my foot down over it, even as an angry Red Jacket tried to pry it off.

Cecil stepped forward between us and gestured for me to sit back. I uncovered the dice and he lifted it. Sure enough, two sides were white.

The crowd was silent.

‘Clever guess, Mr Gage. If you’d made a more civilised gesture we might have cause to question the entire propriety of this contest.’ He flipped the die in the air, catching it, and slipping it into his own pocket. ‘But you lashed out like a brute.’ Red Jacket looked murderous.

‘He cheated! Set us free!’

‘On the contrary, you upset the final throw of the game before its conclusion could be reached. We thus have to go by the score when you unceremoniously backed out. It was, I recall, nine to one.’

‘Only because he rigged the game!’

‘You upset the contest rather than make proper challenge. You can blame your own boorish manners for what is to come.’ Then he shouted something to the assembled Indians and they yelped anew, ecstatic that the fun of our torture could finally begin. Cecil turned back to me. ‘Don’t you understand that the game has been stacked against you from the start, Ethan? Do you really think we were going to allow a French-American spy to blithely blunder around British fur territory?’

‘Spanish territory, now French.’

‘Don’t think I’m disturbed by that technicality.’

‘Norwegian territory!’ Magnus shouted.

He smiled. ‘How quaint. It’s historical progress to have you both die.’