Pillage
Before noon he reached the river and took a canoe upstream. It was slow going against the current, and took him a few hours to get upstream to the enemy camp on the banks of the Kentucky and Ohio. It was a large camp with newly raised shelters of deer hide stretched over a lashed pole structure.
This is a weird bunch of Cherokees; maybe a splinter group intermarried with some other tribe.
A woman and a child—a boy of perhaps five—had been watching his progress for about a half hour. Others came as they called until the grassy rise above the muddy bank was crowded with them. There were about sixty women, children and elders. There were two canoes on this side and they had perhaps a dozen shelters ringing a single bonfire, with small cook-fires in front of each individual shelter.
He beached downstream out of bowshot and advanced on the camp above the bank through a few spare little trees with an arrow knocked and two in hand. One of the old men stepped forward with an arrow knocked to his bow and another with a spear. A couple of boys had toy bows, ready to fight him off. This made him smile.
The Elder with the bow began to shout a warning and Jay put an arrow through his open mouth. The boys let their arrows fly to no effect and Jay put an arrow through the other old man’s knee. The women and children were screaming and some of the mothers grabbed the boys and took their bows away.
Look at her, the pretty one with the quiet boy. She’s standing her ground. You know who she is.
He walked into camp and approached the pretty young woman and her boy as the others backed up into a semi-circle. He stepped aside and scalped the old warrior and placed the trophy in his belt with the others.
Fourteen scalps hillbilly, that’s a lucky take.
As he was standing to claim his woman the scream of a toothless old banshee spilt the air and pierced his sensitive eardrums. An old gray-haired woman was charging him with a bone knife held like she was the bad guy in a self-defense demo at some karate school. He just grabbed her wrist and swept her feet, which dislocated her shoulder. Before he could break her wrist the young woman stepped before him and took the knife. She then said something, kneeled before him, and held the knife out in her palm, handle first.
You a calm girl ain’t you? I think we’re spending the spring together, maybe up in the mountains with old RavenSong.
He took the knife and gave it back to her. He then motioned for her to rise and smelled her hair while he held her chin between his thumb and forefinger. Then someone stabbed him in the belly. The pain was extreme. He could not believe that he had let his guard down like this.
Was it the old woman or this girl?
He looked to grandma and she was just curled up next to her husband, who he had shot through the mouth, moaning. He looked to his new bride and she just returned the look in confusion, wondering what was wrong with him. That’s when he felt the tug in his wrist.
Wow, just when I was settling in for a little family life, I get called again. I wonder who it is: Three-Rivers or the Neanderthals?
He noticed then that she was looking with great sadness at his prize tomahawk. She then signed to him, wanting to know if she could look at the scalps. He handed them to her and then went and sat down on the fallen log that these people used to beach their canoes over.
Yep hillbilly, that’s Topknot’s old lady.
The boy stayed behind holding the knife as the rest of the people went about the business of preparing the dead elder for burial and removing the arrow from the other man’s knee.
Darn dummy you are leaving behind a whole bunch of gimps. How are they even going to fend for their kin?
They came after us. Yes they did, and that makes this okay.
She walked up to him, kneeled and handed him back the scalps, a look of relief and curiosity on her face. He signed to her as best he could that he had left her husband wounded along with four others and hoped that he would make it back to her. He sat for the entire day, and through the night, as the cramps got worse and his wrist fired up. She came to him with food and he declined, not wanting to get sick in transit. Her and her boy ended up sitting with him all night. They even made a little fire in front of him. This touched him, and he handed the boy his father’s tomahawk and began to tell them all about Duty and Edwin, and how he couldn’t wait to see them again. He liked Topknot and his big non-running friend, and found himself wishing they were here, and finally hoping that they would make it home.
As Dawn reached across the thawing land the pains became unbearable and the nausea took hold. He stood and motioned for the woman and boy to stand back. He gave the boy his bow and arrows as he noticed the people gathering around looking at the strange cloud in the sky. Then he noticed a wounded young warrior being helped from a shelter. He had a chest wound.
That’s probably one of those boys you shot up two days back. I bet they’ve been hiding him from you. You must look to be about to die yourself dummy.
He spread his arms and breathed in the good clean air that welled up at the confluence of the Kentucky and Ohio rivers. He thought for a moment about the scalps in his hands and decided that it would not be right to have them burned, and did not want to leave such reminders with these grieving folks, so he balled them up between his hands. When the bolt hit him he heard a savage beast snarl across the land as he elongated into a stream of troubled information and was sucked through a crease in the Universe…
Here I come Duty as soon as the Little Boss Man is done with me.
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