It was less than a half hour before dark now and snow was falling heavy from the gray sky. Within twenty minutes they were up over a wooded hill to the right, toward where the Spanish army and Indian refugees were supposed to be. Eddie and T.T. got a lot of angry looks from the Cherokees every time they stepped on a twig or dragged their feet. The smell of death, like that smell that had lingered over every Neanderthal camp after a successful hunt, and over the one small battle-field that Eddie had seen, was heavy in the air. Jay and Bruco and the youngest warriors were standing under some particularly huge trees examining something—No they are talking to somebody. No, it’s both.

Eddie and T.T. were the last to get to the scene of the mess. There were two dead horses with arrows in them. Three dead Indians—Piscataway—a dead Spanish foot soldier, a wounded Spanish don, with fancy hat and all, and three prisoners. The prisoners were two Nanticoke Indians who were working as Spanish guides, and a Whiteman in buckskins and feathered Robin Hood hat with an arrow through his left arm. The man was armed like an Indian with knife, bow, tomahawk, but also a short sword.

The don was in a lot of pain with a broken leg, and Bruco was standing on it, snarling in Spanish. Jay was talking to the other Whiteman. When Eddie came up with T.T. Jay nodded him over, and nodded at the Whiteman with his blonde hair and trimmed beard, “Seamus, Eddie. Eddie, Seamus.”

That’s right, Jay-Bone don’t like to talk when we back in time, says it hurts his head.

The don was suffering, the Indian scouts seemed resigned to being executed by the Cherokees, and Seamus was looking to Eddie questioningly. Eddie just decided to take charge, “No Seamus, I ain’t no Whiteman’s slave, en you are lucky that this here killer might actually listen ta any pleas fo mercy you might make through me. But firs’, what-the-hell kind’a name is Seamus fo a Spaniard?”

“I be a Wild Goose, Irish soldier o’ fortune driven from ma lan’ by the English bastards. I serve this man, Don Emanuel. We fight the ‘eathens fo’ lan’ to settle—our fleet scuttled in yon ‘arbor…”

Seamus was interrupted by the snapping of Don Emanuel’s neck by Bruco, who then began to dress in the don’s clothing. Jay interjected, “Lisin Mic, we burnin’ Porto Soto to da groun’ tonight. We gotta go ova dem walls den we kill en rape all. If you ged us in through da gate, den we spare da women en chillin’, en you can keep yer’s. You wan lan’, den you fight fo me, en you ged lan’. Our people been near all kilt. Coul’ bring you in as a warrior—you en yer’s.”

Jay then drew the slain footman’s sword and pressed it to Seamus’ throat.

Seamus seemed unperturbed, “A bloody ‘anded ‘avage you be—en good to an oath sure. You be the footman. The big ‘eathen might pass fo’ ma fat don by torchlight. ‘Ave ‘im limp ‘tween White Oak en’ Slicer, en we may breach the gate. Guard’s change at midnight. Half pass’ ‘leven I wager as good.”

Convinced that he had been marooned on a lost planet inhabited by witch-doctors, savages and pirates, T.T. smacked his lips in wonder and questioned Jay, standing like the shredded remnants of a feral child beneath his giant tuxedoed form, “So Mister, I’d like a reckoning. My grandmother was part Piscataway. Less information remained about her ancestors than the slave ancestors of my grandfather. I believe in God and I figure he set me in this place for a purpose. I intend to do my part. You are the war chief. Will I be carrying casualties, or making them.”

Jay looked up intensely into the giant’s eyes, and for answer reached down for the footman’s pole-axe-spear with a hook on the back. The shaft was sheathed in metal for three feet below the head. Jay snapped it off just below the steel haft and handed it to T.T. and pointed to the vicious looking Cherokee chief, indicating that T.T. was to be RavenSong’s bodyguard.

T.T. looked down at Jay and nodded, sounding a lot like the heat that had crashed into that crack-house to save Eddie, “I’ll lay out the red carpet for him wherever he goes chief.”

Eddie stood among a hundred savage killers in the darkening forest and could not help stealing a glance in the direction of the unseen town that might have been his hometown in a different world.

Some kid is listening to his mother read him a bedtime story in that doomed town right now.