The Legend of the Bloodstone (22 page)

Her ears filled by the fading pounding of the drums, she did not notice a snapping of forest debris on the path behind her until the footsteps were upon her. 
The hair pricked up on the back of her neck and she smelled his dank scent before she swung around to confront her stalker.

Nemattanew
stood crouched behind her, slowly rising to his full height as she glared at him.  He was planted between her and the village, her only escape being the woods. She moved her hand to the knife at her waist for reassurance, and glared at the man as she waited for his next move. Obviously, he had lied about his intent upon leaving the village.

He took a step toward her, and she backed away an equal amount of paces.

“So the Red Woman stays here.”

“Just
go away, leave me alone,” she said, her voice tapering off as it wavered. “Winn will be back soon,” she lied. She darted a glance to her rear to see where to escape, dismayed to see only dense brush and no discernible trail.

They both knew it to be a lie, and a grin stretched over his lips.

“I saw him leave the village. He goes to ask for your life, but we both know he will not get it.  What then, Red Woman?”

“You should worry what he will do
when he finds you bothering me!”

“No,” he growled. “You should worry if I will kill you
now, or let you suffer. Perhaps I will keep you until he returns, and let him watch you bleed from my knife.” He reached out and snatched her wrist painfully, turning it over.  He made a deep growling sound as he glared at the scar on her palm

“Stay away from me!” She shouted, wrenching away from him.

“
Winn truly hides a Time Walker?” He raised his head to the stars and let out a chilling howl of laughter. “He thinks to keep you? What a fool he is!”

She fumbled backward and felt the stab of a branch in her ribs and leaves brush her neck.

“Run,” he grinned, his words dripping with excitement and malice. “Run as fast as you can. I give you a count of five before I gut you.” He traced a path on his own chest with one finger from the base of his throat down to his navel. “I will see great honor when I bring your head to my Weroance.”

She believed every
ounce of his threat, and took off in a sprint. The satchel bounced against her kidney as she darted through the trees, wincing at the sting of braches tearing at her face and neck. She jumped over a rotted fallen tree and lost her balance, falling to her knees on the pine-needle strewn ground.  Looking around, she tried to catch a breath, her chest heaving with the effort, and she sighed when she realized he was not pursuing her.  When she struggled to her feet, her head still spinning, she was immediately knocked back to the ground by a blow from behind. 

She felt his breath hot against the back of her neck as he leaned in close to her ear, with rancid breath that stank and caused her nose to wrinkle in disgust.

“Where is your warrior now, Red Woman? I see no man here, except me.”

He bound her wrists behind her back with a thick rope and hauled her to her feet.

***

She
sat on her knees in the dirt, a pair of viselike hands gripping her shoulders to keep her as much upright as was possible with her head hanging limp. The return to awareness was abrupt, as if a light switch had been flicked on and suddenly she could see again, but a thick sour smoke filled her lungs and she twisted her head away from the scent.  The hands held her tighter, and then she spotted a burning ember smoldering in the hand of another held directly under her nose. She scrunched her nose and sneezed, and struggled to sit back away from the smoke.

“Enough! Stop it!” she snapped. At the sound of her voice, the
brown hand with the burning bundle of twigs pulled back away from her face, and she coughed out the last remnants from her lungs.

“Welcome, Red Woman.”

Maggie looked up. The voice was stilted but clear, authority ringing through his words as sure as the smoke smothering her breath.  It was Nemattanew who stood at her side keeping her upright, but the man who spoke sat on a high dais in front of her.  He wore a decorated breechclout riddled with brilliant colored beads, his arms littered with thick copper bracelets and smeared with bright red paint, his ears studded with multiple metal hoops of varying sizes.  His face was creased with age, bronzed to a dark hue, a stark pallet of amused disgust gracing his expression as he considered her, the white woman kneeling in a disoriented heap before him.

“Welcome? This is hardly a welcome!” she snapped, prompting a wave of gasps from onlookers.  She suspected she was in a long house, the huge space very similar to the
yehakin she shared with Winn but on a much grander scale, and with the cluster of people gathered, she could see this was some sort of ceremonial assembly. She desperately hoped that not all the pomp and circumstance was in honor of her appearance.

The man considered her words, his black eyes narrowing into slits. The two beautiful women at his side moved closer to him when she spoke, as if to shield him from the advance of the evil Red Woman.  Maggie could not help a stifled laugh that emerged as the gloriously
half-naked woman clung to the man, equally decorated in their finery.

“I am Weroance
Opechancanough,” he said. His voice betrayed no anger at her words, only a curious tolerance, but his face still was hardened in a formidable mask. The strength of her resolve began to crumble as a sick feeling permeated the pit of her stomach and she realized exactly who the man was and how tenuous her situation had become.

“I’m Maggie,” she replied simply.

“Tell me, Maggie,” he began, no acknowledgement of her response crossing his lips. “Do you put a spell upon my nephew, as the Pale Witch put a spell on me?”

“I know nothing of spells,” she shot back, figuring the stronger the better. To sit like a quivering idiot and plead for her life would be useless, so if she
were going to burn she would do it with a fight. “But I do know what happens to you and your people. Is that why you want me dead?”

His lips pursed tightly and he patted the shoulders of each woman beside him,
and then gave a curt nod to the other spectators in the long house.

“Leave us.”

Nemattanew continued to keep a grip on her shoulder, and he made one attempt to argue in his own language before the Weroance issued a final order to dismiss him.  The long house emptied completely in less than a minute, leaving her on her knees at the feet of the leader.

“I wonder why you still have a tongue, with the way you speak. Have you turned my nephew
into a fool? Is sharing your furs such pleasure he would forget he is a man?”

“You don’t know anything. And Winn is no fool.”

He slid off the platform, with much more finesse and grace than Maggie expected from an older warrior, then squatted down in front of her to eye level. When he reached out to touch one of her thick red braids, she swatted at his hand with her bound fists, which only caused him to smile. It was not a pleasant smile by any means, more forced and maligned, but it kept his hand away and for that, she was grateful.

“Don’t touch me,” she hissed. She overplayed her hand against his composure and lost, a startled yelp escaping her lips when he snatched her chin in his fingers, his ebony eyes flaring.

“I will touch what I please,
madam
,” he snarled. “You only breathe right now because of my command. Perhaps you should consider that before you speak.” He released her chin and she sat back on the ground, her eyes still set warily on him as she fought to control her rapid breathing.

“What do you mean to do with me?” she asked.

“What my nephew failed to do.”

“Your nephew is a…a decent man.”

One eyebrow rose slightly. “Decent? What meaning is that, Red Woman?”

“It means good. Kind.”

His black eyes narrowed into slits and his weathered face hardened.

“Winkeohkwet will not disobey me. No warrior of mine makes such a mistake. You think you are so important to my nephew, you think he would not crush your skull at my command?”

He meant every syllable, from his expression of wonder at her protest to his pledge to murder her himself.  She swallowed back the bile rising in her throat and closed her eyes.

“I know he would not hurt me,” she whispered. 

He darted forward and grabbed her neck with one large and surprisingly vise-like hand, the other latched to her shoulder to make it easier to drag her close to his pedestal.  There he slammed her head down onto a flat, round stump protruding from the ground, the skin of her neck and shoulders scraping against the roots that anchored the stump to the ground.  Her vision split into blackness with shredded stars whirling above, but before she could succumb to losing consciousness, his hand loosened on her throat enough for her to gasp air back into her lungs.

“I have killed many
Time Walkers. You are one of many, Red Woman, and you will not be the last.”

She saw dark dried blood on the stump, her cheek pressed into the slimy wood that she realized was slick with gore from another recent sacrifice. She gasped another breath of air through her narrowed windpipe, unable to move since his fingers still held her down by the neck.  What could she say to save herself? She was no Pale Witch, nor a witch of any kind, and her magic came from her knowledge of her own time, not some spell.  Her stomach whirled and dropped when she saw him raise a mallet in his other hand.

“I know when you will die,” she croaked. The effect was not instantaneous, but it worked.  He slowly lowered the weapon and removed his hand from her neck, and she gauged her actions against his by very carefully raising her head. She kneeled in front of him, hoping her attempt at mimicking other Indian women would show him her deference.  Trying to control her rapid breathing as her lungs screamed for more air, she remained hunched over at his command, her cheek caked with wet gore from a previous sacrifice on the stump.

“Then your magic is more powerful than even the Pale Witch,” he said, careful and controlled in his response, spoken more to himself than to her.  “Tell me, Red Woman, when will I die?”

She made the decision, not certain if it would keep her alive, but afraid it was her only hope.

“
I see you trick the English by sharing their food.  I see your warriors take many lives in one bloody day, in all the English villages. It will be called the Massacre of 1622. You think it will drive them back across the ocean, but it will not,” she said. Her voice gained conviction as she thought up more nonsense to cast doubt in his mind. “A
Weroance
who knows when his time ends cannot lead his people,” she said. “And the man who kills the Red Woman will curse his people for eternity.”  She dared to look up, and saw his eyes opened wide and his mouth slightly agape. “I have seen it…and it will be!” she hissed.

She clenched her hands tightly but could not feel the pain as her nails dug into her palms, too focused on the way the deep bronze of his skin faded to a grey tinged pallor on his face.  The hand holding the mallet twitched and rose slightly, indecisive, before it dropped back down at his side.

“Nemattanew!”

The warrior responded to the
Weroance’s command with only a few seconds delay, and Maggie realized he had been standing nearby the entire time. 

“Take her to the English, since they claim her as kin. She will share their fate.”

Opechancanough lowered his head close to her crusted cheek, and though her heart pounded loudly in her ears, his words were clear.

“You may keep your life today, Red Woman, as I spared the Pale Witch once before. When you see her, tell her what
was done here today,” he whispered. “You will die, but not by hand.  I will not let you curse my people.”

H
e straightened up and nodded. Nemattanew grabbed her by her bound wrists and dragged her out of the long house. 

Part Three

Creep along, lest the fight falls upon you

Chapter
15

She sat in a wagon, her head feeling as if an axe had split it, although it remained intact and throbbing. Nemattanew rode beside the wagon, the man called Thomas Martin driving from a bench in front of her, ambling along as if it they found a stray white woman every day. She closed her eyes for a moment with a semblance of relief. She was still alive, and that was enough of a victory for the moment.