Blood Ties (54 page)

When they reached the shale of the beach, Anne called him to stop, let her eyes relax from the glare of flame, scanned the beach. When she located the glow ahead, she turned back to the boy.

‘You must leave me here, Do-ne. I must go on alone. Just a little way.’

He shook his head.

‘Please, Do-ne. I will not go far. There is someone I must see. Just up there.’

‘Then I will wait just down here,’ he said, falling onto the ground, planting the torch end into the ground. ‘And if you call me I will come. I have this.’ He pulled a small bone knife from his belt.

‘Good.’ She bent, touched his head. ‘I will return in a moment.’

Her feet slipped on the pebbles and, though the moon was bright, she still managed to trip over some larger stones. But the noise did not matter. He whom she sought would be expecting her anyway.

She followed the glow of embers to its source. Tagay was sitting cross-legged, facing the water. Before him, some kind of club was laid out. She could see the scroll work down its side, the hawk head, a blade beneath. Beside it she saw the striped stone, Donnaconna’s Oki. She stood silently and watched as Tagay dropped tobacco into the flames. It glowed, caught, and a sweet scent rose from it.

‘Who do you burn it for, Tagay?’

‘Everyone. Everything. Myself.’ His voice was calm.

‘Do you also burn it for me?’ She hated that her voice could not match his, heard the hardness in it.

‘For you?’ He paused, thought. ‘Of course, for you. I fight for you.’

‘Do you?’ She knelt beside him. ‘Then don’t. I don’t want another man to die for me.’

‘Thank you. Are you so sure that I will die?’

‘He is a warrior, trained from birth to kill.’

‘And I am not. It is true. But I am a warrior’s son.’ He leaned forward, ran his fingers gently up the shaft of his club. ‘And I come from a warrior people. Besides, I have no choice. You heard. They will kill you as a witch.’

She reached to either side of his head, turned him. ‘Listen to me. You do have a choice. You have a choice whether to live or die. Uncle Pierre promised to return with the full moon. There are canoes here, right here. We can take one, hide, wait for him.’

‘Creep back to France while my people are massacred?’

‘If you die they will be massacred anyway.’

He turned fully around to her, his voice now urgent. ‘And you, White Cedar? What of your quest? The hand you must bury.’

She reached behind her, pulled the hand from its pouch. The moonlight made the bones glow green, as if they were possessed of a sickness.

‘This?’ Her disgust was clear. ‘This is a collection of bones, of a woman who died twenty years ago. I will drop it into the ocean on the voyage back.’

‘You could have done that on the voyage across.’ He reached forward. One hand touched her chest, the other rested on her head. ‘You know, you heard it in here, Anne, and here, the voice that told you that you must bury it, just as she who gave it to your father asked for it to be buried. Safely, by the light of the full moon. Two nights from now.’

‘And if you are dead by then?’ Her voice had become a whisper. ‘Then none of it will happen, for I will be dead too.’

‘You may not be.’ Tagay came onto his knees. ‘There is something I didn’t tell you about the hunt. They used guns there to kill my people.’

‘Guns?’

‘Pistols.’

‘But how?’

‘I think,’ he sighed, ‘your brother gave the pistols to them.’

‘My broth …’

It felt as if she’d been struck. She fell back, sat on the beach, her knees drawn up, her forehead lowered onto them, scarcely breathing. He let her stay that way for a while, then reached forward again, nearly touched her hair.

‘You could go to him now,’ he said, gently. ‘Take one of the canoes. It is dangerous but less dangerous than staying, perhaps. He is your brother. He will not turn you away. Especially if you take him what he seeks.’ He pointed at the skeletal hand she still held. ‘You say your family have sacrificed enough. If you believe it, then give this to your brother. Let him take it back across the water. Let him take you with it.’

Anne rose, stumbled slightly, then stood straight. Reaching back, she put the hand away in the pouch, replacing it with something else.

‘This is all I will give to my brother.’ She lifted the tiny silver cross so Tagay could see its glimmer in the moonlight. ‘I found it in a tree in Tuscany. It was a gift to him from our father, in the days when we were all still happy. Gianni placed it in the branches, hoping some day to take it back.’

She turned, took a couple of steps up the path, stopped. ‘You are right, Tagay. You have your task clear before you. And Gianni’s coming here reminds me of mine. So I tell you this, in a way our mother, both Gianni’s and mine, would have told you: Black Snake? Kill the fucker.’

Then she was gone. Her feet slipping on shale meant she could not see his smile, nor hear his reply. But he said it anyway.

‘I will try, White Cedar. Believe me, I will try.’

The torches were placed at intervals of a dozen paces around the perimeter of the field. Between them, the entire tribe of the Tahontaenrat had gathered, every man, woman and child, from babies on their carry boards to the eldest in bark chairs. They came from the village below the cliffs and from every village the length and breadth of their country; yet they mustered, not by village, but by clan. Every member of each clan was hungry, for the influx of refugees had sorely tested the reserves of food. But no one was any hungrier than the person standing next to them, for what they had was shared out equally according to the custom of their people. Yet it was quite unlike the time when Tagay had first beheld the gathering for the Game, when voices had risen, solely and in unison like a thousand geese in flight. Now the people were silent. Not even the newborn cried out though they all seemed awake, as watchful as their parents.

He waited at one end of the field, behind the posts through which Sada had shot the knot ball. Around him, the Bear clan massed, some nearest him commenting on, or fussing around, his armour – or lack of it. Most were simply staring toward the far end of the field where, behind their own posts, the clan of the Wolf stared back.

While his aunt, Gaka, finished the painting of his body in swirling red patterns, Sada was the most fussy of the Bears, bending over Tagay’s arm, checking and rechecking the straps of the forearm guard, cinching the straps to make sure each cedar slat overlapped perfectly. The buckler’s hand grip was next, reinforced with more stitches of hide thread.

While he was pushing the bone needle through against the skin of a hand that seemed made of wood, another clan member ran up and whispered something in his ear. Sada just grunted and carried on with the stitch.

Tagay said, ‘What are the odds now, cousin?’

Sada looked up, shock on his face. ‘Odds? This is a ceremony, Tagay, as well as a fight. It is part of the religion of our people. We do not bet on our Gods’ favours. If you had been raised amongst us, and not among people who have no religion, you would know that.’ He went back to his stitching, putting the thread end in his mouth.

‘Sada?’

‘What?’

‘The odds?’

The warrior spat to the side, while keeping the thread in his mouth, a difficult feat. ‘Eight beaver skins to one,’ he grumbled. ‘It was only five at nightfall. But then you appeared this morning with no armour.’ He put the final stitch in place.

Tagay kept the smile on his face, but inside his stomach flipped again. He was glad he’d already vomited up the soup they’d forced upon him an hour before. He would not want to increase the odds by vomiting again now.

He looked behind him. A faint light shone in the east. The swollen moon was bathed red.

As if washed with blood
, he thought.
Someone is about to die
.

There was a shifting from his clan, a murmur. Tagay saw four torches moving to the centre of the field. A man walked beneath them wearing full wampum, bearing a pipe in one hand and a carved staff in the other. The drums, which had kept up a steady pulse, stopped.

‘Tangled.’ Sada rose. ‘So. It begins.’

‘People of the Deer.’ The Chief ’s strong voice, honed by the rigours of speech-making in council, carried easily to every part of the field. ‘It is a day I never thought I would see, when all of the Tahontaenrat were gathered together beside the lodgepost of our Gods. This is something to praise, when village gathers with village like this, clan from afar merges with clan nearby, families, long separated, re-unite. This is a thing of joy to me.’

There was a universal shout then, the communal cry, ‘Haauu’. When it died away, Tangled continued. ‘But it is also one of sadness. Because we do not gather for celebration, we draw around our hearths because of danger. Many of our people have been killed, many lodges burned. We have been driven out of the hunting grounds, here and here, here and here.’ He raised his staff, pointing to the four winds. ‘These are matters we will discuss, today in a great council. But first we are called here to witness the battle of the Twins, Taviscaran and Iouskaha. They fought in the beginning of our times when the earth was a flat plain of nothing. The blood they shed formed many of the things of our world. I do not think this strange that now, in this time of greatest danger, the Twins are called to fight again.’

Once more there was the cry, ‘Haauu’, stronger than before. Tangled let it reverberate around the field and die away, then spoke again.

‘We know what these two have said. One of them lies in the deepest part of their soul. One of them dies today to prove the other truthful. But this is not the Game, when clan gives knocks to clan and one side or the other rejoice. Let no one think it is and let no blood feud make us fight ourselves. There will be fighting enough for our people in the days to come. Remember that this is not a Wolf fighting a Bear. This is the fight of the Twins. Let them decide.’

Tangled’s voice soared to a high note and he raised his staff. ‘Haauu’ came the cry, louder and longer than before. When it died away, the drums began again and Tangled moved back to his position with all the other chiefs.

Sada went to Tagay. ‘Kneel,’ he commanded. Tagay knelt and Sada moved behind him. He felt his cousin tying a moosehair band around his brow.

‘It is my own, the one I wear to war,’ Sada said. ‘Many enemies have looked at it and died. I think this Wolf will be the next.’

Tagay rose. His legs felt suddenly strong, as if the band around his head was raising him up somehow. ‘Bring me my father’s club,’ he said.

It had been hidden in a bear skin, safe from eyes that would carry the information back to Black Snake. An ordinary club had been exposed to sight. The members of his clan all felt that Tagay’s opponent would be surprised, as they had been, by the choice of weapon.

Tagay swung it, felt its good balance. Sada took the younger man’s finger, pressed it against the cutting edge under the hawk’s head. No trace of dullness, of rust now. It had been well-honed and cut him instantly. Startled, Tagay sucked the blood from his finger.

‘Better you draw blood first than him.’ Sada smiled.

They moved out onto the field to the murmuring of the crowd, many surprised by the young man near naked in his breech cloth, wearing only a guard on his fighting arm, carrying the smallest of shields in the other; surprised also by the slender weapon in his hand. The other Bear members had come with him to the edge, but only Sada was allowed further. He limped beside Tagay, using a stick. They halted twenty paces before their posts.

The murmurings doubled, the drums increased their throbbing pulse, when the Wolf ranks parted and Black Snake strode forth. He had always been a big man but the full slat armour he wore made him appear like a giant. It covered him, from the cedar bark helmet, to the shins swathed in single slats. He walked steadily forward then stopped the same distance before his ranks as Tagay was before his. As he walked, he swung his war club. It was, as predicted, a huge single piece of carved ironwood. Tagay could see the heavy ball end.

He felt his heart pounding, was sure that all could hear it as clearly as he could. If Sada did, he gave no indication.

‘Listen to me, Tagay,’ he whispered, making a show of checking the forearm straps. ‘His armour is good, but it is weak here and here.’ He touched Tagay swiftly at the armpit and knee. ‘Also, it is heavy and he was never the fastest beast in the forest to begin with. So keep moving around him, make him chase you. Do not stand and trade blows, for he will kill you quick. No one cares if you look brave. We only care that you win.’

The drum beats that had built and built as they walked forward now stopped suddenly as Tangled stepped forward, holding his staff out by the end as if dividing the field in two.

‘One more thing. I know this may not seem the best time to talk of my prowess at the Game. But you remember how I scored that final ball that gave the Bear clan its great victory?’

Tagay, whose eyes had been fixed and glazed ahead of him, now looked down. ‘What? What are you saying?’

‘The final ball! I feinted high and went low. And I beat Black Snake on the outside. Remember that!’

With those words, Sada turned and walked back to the ranks of the Bear.

Tagay stood, uncertain that his feet would move if he commanded them. To steady himself, he swept his eyes around, taking in the entire extent of his tribe. As his eyes reached the huge oak tree, he saw a shape up on the branch.

‘Anne!’ he murmured. ‘White Cedar.’

Raising his club toward her, he slowly lowered the tip to the ground. Then he began to walk down the field.

She watched the weapon swept down, raised her hand to return the salute. She didn’t know whether he’d seen it, but she kept waving anyway as he began to march toward his opponent. From her vantage point, looking down, it seemed like a small boy was approaching some giant striding from the pages of a myth. Tagay looked frail, all too human with the vulnerability that implied. The figure that marched toward him was alien, implacable, monstrous.

She had never been religious, unlike her brother. But she knew Gianni believed, fervently, passionately. So she pulled his little cross from her pouch, raised it before her, trying to release some of the prayers he had poured into it, held like breath somewhere in those shining planes. Half-forgotten sentences came from a world so far away. Yet she didn’t care. For Tagay needed all the help he could get.