Fear nipped at the girl like the fangs of a rabid wolf, but she did not give in to it. To do so, to plunge through the forest in panic, would mean her capture, and worse. The white men must not get their hands on her.
Tenikawaku would rather die than be defiled. Since childhood she had been taught that the most important quality people possessed was their dignity. She valued hers more than life.
Not all tribes shared the Nansusequa belief. The whites certainly did not. Teni had seen how many whites behaved, and had been appalled. They did not treat anyone with respect, even themselves. As for ‘Indians,’ as the whites called her people, they were considered inferior.
Teni’s father, who had worked so hard at mastering the white tongue, once told her that some whites regarded Indians as little better than animals. Their own words. Incredible words, since they implied the whites regarded animals as inferior, too, instead of as their brothers and sisters. So much about the whites was strange. So much about them mystified Teni.
But now was not the time for Teni to think about white and red beliefs. Not with four men after her. Four whites who reeked of the drink that intoxicated, and who had pursued her from New Albion with one thought in mind.
Teni trembled at the thought of the vile deed they intended to commit.
The men had made their lust plain when one of them, the one whose name was Byram Forge, had grabbed her as she walked past and tried to press his lips to hers. She had slapped him, as was her right. Because she was strong and had used all her strength, she had nearly knocked him down. Forge’s lust was replaced by rage, and at a bellow from him, his three friends leaped to seize her.
But Tenikawaku of the Nansusequa was not so easily taken. She was as fleet as her sister the doe and as canny as her brother the fox, and she fled into the forest with every confidence she would elude them.
The Nansusequa took pride in their woodcraft. Males and females alike were taught from birth the woodland ways that had ensured the survival of her people for untold summers. It was why the surrounding tribes referred to them as the Old Ones. But that is not what the Nansusequa called themselves. Among themselves, they always had been and always would be the People of the Forest.
The forest was their home. It sustained all their needs, and asked in return only that they treat it with the respect and dignity with which it treated them. To the Nansusequa, the forest was not a mere collection of trees and rocks and creatures. It was the source of all, part of the living presence of That Which Was In All Things.
The snap of a twig brought Teni out of herself. She was being careless. She must concentrate on the whites and only on the whites. The sound warned her they were close, much closer than she thought. She stopped and crouched, straining her senses, seeking them.
The forest was as still and silent as the cave of bones. Teni looked and listened, but saw no one, heard nothing. It troubled her greatly, for she had not suspected the whites possessed such stealth. She reminded herself that for all their bizarre beliefs, the whites were not to be taken lightly.
How well Teni remembered the first time she had encountered a white man. She had seen but six summers, yet the memory was as vivid and fresh as if it had happened only yesterday. Word came to her village of a camp of strange ones on the bank of the Serpent River. The strange ones came to trade, it was said. They offered marvelous articles in exchange for furs.
Many of her people had gone to visit the strange ones. Hand in hand with her mother and father, Teni was among them. The whites scared her; they were so different. Where the Nansusequa tended to be slender and sinewy, the whites were big and blocky. Where the Nansusequa tended to be quiet in manner, the whites were loud. They were like bears that ate the berry that caused creatures to lose their sense of self and blunder noisily about.
That had been ten summers ago, and Teni’s outlook toward whites had not changed. Were it not for their trade goods, she would have nothing to do with them. She loved the jewelry most of all, the necklaces and bracelets that flashed in the sun and dazzled her when she admired her reflection in the stream or the mirror her mother had obtained for a mink fur.
Teni clenched her fists, upset with herself. She was doing it again. She must stop withdrawing into herself and concentrate on Byram Forge and his friends.
About to move on, Teni started to rise, then froze. Not a stone’s throw away a dark silhouette appeared against the backdrop of greenery. It was the figure of a crouched man. He was searching for her, but had not seen her thanks to her green buckskin dress, which made her seem part of the forest. The Nansusequa, men and women alike, always wore green buckskins, one of many practices that set them apart from other tribes.
The white man’s face swung in her direction. Teni saw that it was Byram Forge himself, saw his rough features and the hairy growth on his chin. Forge wore buckskins too, but they were not green like hers. His moccasins were shorter than hers, and fringed. In his knobby hand he clutched a rifle, and a brace of pistols and a big knife adorned his waist.
Teni had a knife of her own. She had been taught to use the bow and the lance, but women did not carry them everywhere, as the men did. The women relied more on their feet and their heads to get them out of trouble, as she was doing now.
Forge’s head swiveled this way and that. He sensed her. But so long as Teni did not move, he should not be able to spot her. Hardly had the thought crossed her mind when Forge looked right at her. His cruel mouth split in a triumphant grin.
Byram Forge shouted something.
Teni whirled and fled. To her right and left the undergrowth crackled under the headlong passage of hurtling forms. The whites were converging. Keeping low, Teni ran as she had never run before, threading through the trees with flawless skill. In long, graceful bounds, she vaulted obstacles in her path.
From behind her came the crash of brush and the pant of heavy breathing. Teni risked a glance and beheld three of the four, Forge foremost among them. They grinned in anticipation of what they would do when they caught her.
Where was the fourth one? Teni wondered. She assumed he had fallen behind. She was confident the others would give up the chase eventually, too, once they realized they had no chance of catching her.
Teni plunged into a thick stand of saplings and burst out the other side. A willow stood ahead. She raced under its overspreading boughs, and almost immediately a form sprang from behind the bole. She tried to veer aside, but iron arms banded about her waist and she was lifted off her feet and shaken as a bobcat might shake a mouse. Teni kicked and thrashed, but the man held fast while bawling excitedly at the top of his lungs.
Fear spiked Teni as Byram Forge and the other three came flying out of the saplings. Smirking, they slowed, and Forge pointed at her and said something that made the others laugh.
Teni’s blood ran cold. She would bury her knife in her belly before she would let them have their way. But that was a last resort. She was Nansusequa, and the Nansusequa did not let their dignity be violated without a fight.
Forge came up and relieved Teni of her knife. Tossing it in the grass, he cupped her chin and looked her up and down, eating her with his eyes. He talked at length, and although Teni did not understand the language, she understood his meaning well enough. When he licked his thick lips, she repressed a shudder.
The other white men gazed at her with undisguised lust.
Forge let go of her chin and stepped back. He made a comment that produced more mirth. The whites were enjoying themselves. They anticipated enjoying themselves even more.
Teni had stopped struggling. Not because she had given up, but the better to gird herself. She hung her head, as if in despair, and when Byram Forge took his eyes off her, she galvanized into motion. She whipped her right foot forward and planted it where it would hurt Forge the most. Simultaneously, she arced her head back into the face of the man holding her. She heard the crunch of cartilage and felt the moist spurt of warm blood. The man howled and let her go to press his hands to his face.
Teni bolted. There were too many to battle. Better that she get away while she could. But she had only taken a few strides when her legs locked together and she crashed to the earth. Twisting, she discovered one of the whites had tackled her. He uttered a string of harsh gutturals, cursing her, no doubt. He would have been wiser to restrain her arms as he had her legs.
Teni balled her fists and punched him. She hit his eyes, his cheeks, his nose. He yelped for help, but before anyone else could reach them, Teni bucked and kicked and broke free. In a twinkling she was up and streaking off into the forest.
A hand snatched at her dress. Fingers caught her sleeve. It did not stop her, but it slowed her enough that heartbeats later Byram Forge rammed into her with the impact of a falling tree. Down Teni went, the breath whooshing from her lungs. Her vision swam. Desperately, she sucked in air and clawed for purchase so she could rise.
It was too late.
Blinking, Teni looked up and blanched. The four men had her surrounded. They stood there, hands on hips, regarding her with harsher looks than before. The face of the man whose nose she had broken was smeared with blood.
Byram Forge spoke. This time no one laughed. Instead, the man with the busted nose and another one seized her arms. None too gently, she was hauled to her feet.
Teni did not resist. She met Byram Forge’s glare evenly, betraying no trace of the anxiety that gnawed at her like a muskrat gnawing at tender shoots. She wished she spoke their language so she could tell them what she thought of them.
Standing sideways so his hip was to her, instead of the part of him she had kicked, Byram Forge gripped her jaw much harder than the first time, and violently shook her head, as if of a mind to rip her jaw off. Snarling, he slowly drew back a hand so she could see what was coming. Then he slapped her.
The blow stung, but Teni had felt worse. She stoically held her head high in mute defiance.
It made Forge madder. Seizing her long raven hair, he fiercely shook her head from side to side.
Teni could have sworn he was tearing her hair out by the roots. Excruciating pain flooded through her. Gritting her teeth, she bore it without a cry or a whimper. That was another trait of the Nansusequa. From childhood they were taught to never, ever show weakness to an enemy.
Byram Forge stepped back. His face was flushed. He drew his big knife and held the blade so it gleamed brightly in the sunlight that filtered through the willow’s boughs. He reached for her hair again, but instead of grabbing a handful, he plucked a single hair and held it so she could see as he sliced the hair in half with a deft flick. He was showing Teni how sharp the knife was. Smirking, he lightly jabbed the sharp tip into her shoulder. The tip pierced her dress, and with a twist of his wrist, he opened a slit as long as her little finger.
Teni could guess what was next. Byram Forge intended to cut the dress from her body. The violation was not to be borne. She would not permit it, even to the point of dying, if need be.
Since Teni was not struggling, the pair holding her had relaxed their grips enough to permit her to do what she did next. Namely, she shifted toward one and then the other, and stamped the heel of her foot onto their toes. One yelped and the other sprang back, enabling her to wrench loose and try, yet again, to escape.
Teni fairly flew. She did not look back. She did not need to. She could hear the breathing of the fastest of them.
It was Byram Forge. An elk in rut, he would not be denied.
Teni was fleet, but it was a long way to her village. Her hope was to outlast them. The Nansusequa were known for their stamina. During the celebration her people held each summer at the time of the ripening of the raspberries, she always placed in the top five in the foot races.
On Teni ran, as tireless as a panther. She noticed that Byram Forge’s heavy breaths were not as loud. A swift glance showed her that he was beginning to tire and had lost ground. The others were even farther back. Soon she would outdistance them.
Teni debated whether or not to inform her parents. Her father might want to confront the whites of New Albion. Angry words might lead to blows, and blows to reprisals. She made up her mind to keep silent. No real harm had been done. She would just make it a point to never venture alone to the settlement.
Deep in thought, Teni rounded a maple. Too late, she spotted an exposed root. Her foot snagged, sending pain clear up her leg, and before she could even think to right herself, she sprawled on her belly. Her elbows absorbed most of the fall, racking her arms with agony. Barely able to move her hands, she sought to rise before Forge reached her. She failed.
It was akin to having a tree fall on her. Teni bit her lip to keep from shrieking. He deliberately gouged his knee into her spine. His hand clamped in her hair and her head was jerked back so hard, it was a wonder her neck did not snap. He snarled at her in the white tongue and cuffed her.
Dazed and helpless, Forge flipped Teni onto her back. The knee that had gouged her spine now dug into her stomach. Forge bent low. His breath, which reeked of ale and onions, filled her nostrils. He was saying incomprehensible things.
A wave of nausea afflicted Teni. She was vaguely aware the other three had come up and circled her.
Byram Forge put a hand to her bosom. Leering, he squeezed, hard, and then laughed when she weakly sought to push him off. He was still laughing when a lance transfixed him from front to back. The tip caught him below the heart and sheared completely through his body.
Teni recognized the type of lance. No two tribes fashioned their weapons exactly the same.
This lance was Nansusequa.
Forge gaped at the smooth hardwood haft. He blinked, then coughed. Blood spurted from his nose. He looked up, past Teni. He opened his mouth to say something, but all that came out was more blood. Gurgling and twitching, he oozed off of her like mud.
The three remaining whites were glued in shock. The spell was broken when a lithe figure flashed past Teni and attacked the whites like a wolverine gone amok. A knife darted and danced. Ironically, it was a knife obtained in trade with the whites. The person wielding the knife was as dear to Teni as her own heart.
“Dega!”
Degamawaku was Teni’s brother. Older by two summers, Dega had always looked out for his sister when she was little. He was still looking out for her, only now he had done the unthinkable. He had given in to raw rage.
“Dega! No!” Teni cried, but her plea fell on ears rendered deaf by the roar of boiling blood.
Degamawaku of the Nansusequa had been out hunting when he’d heard harsh sounds. Curious, he had investigated. He had come on the source of the voices just as Byram Forge had slammed into his sister’s back. Shock had washed over Degamawaku, a great wave of shock that caused the world to spin and delayed his reaction. Then Byram Forge put his hand on Teni, and deep within Degamawaku rage boiled such as he had never known and never imagined a human being could feel.
Dega’s right arm had moved of its own accord. His lance had left his hand before his head realized what his hand had done. Drawing his knife, Dega was on the other three in a rush of blazing wrath. He slashed and stabbed and cut, moving so swiftly that their efforts to defend themselves seemed the efforts of two-legged turtles. Two were down, bleeding profusely, when a hand fell on Dega’s arm. He whirled, thinking it was the last white, and went to plunge his bloody blade into the white’s chest.
“Brother! You must stop!”
Dega’s eyes met Teni’s. It jarred him. The full import of what he had just done hit him with the force of a physical blow.
The crash of a thicket alerted them that the fourth man was fleeing. Dega started after him, but his sister would not relinquish her hold.
“No! Let him go,” Teni urged. “There has been enough killing.”
Dega almost went after the white man anyway. “What they did—” he blurted, but did not finish. The deed the whites had been about to do was too hideous to be spoken of.
“It is over,” Teni said soothingly. Worry filled her, both for him and for her people, over the consequences of his anger.
Degamawaku of the Nansusequa gazed at the blood-smeared forms on the ground. “What have I done?” he breathed.
Teni did not bother checking Byram Forge for a pulse. There was no need. But she did kneel next to the other two, and in turn took their wrists and pressed a finger to their veins. One was dead. The other had a weak heartbeat. He would not last long.
The white man’s eyes opened. He swallowed a few times, then mewed and blubbered.
Teni shook her head to signify she did not understand. Only a few of the People of the Forest spoke the white tongue with any fluency. Most, like herself, knew only a few white words, mainly having to do with the barter of furs for the marvelous assortment of white trade goods.
Dega stood with his knife at his side, scarlet dripping from the blade and spattering his moccasins and the ground.
The white man wailed at the sky. He clutched Teni’s wrist and squeezed with phenomenal strength, pleading to her with tears in his eyes.
Teni tried to pry his fingers off but couldn’t. His dirty nails dug into her, breaking her skin.
A strident cry tore from the white man’s throat. In the extremity of his impending fate, he lunged at Teni’s neck, seeking to wrap his hands around her throat.
There was a blur of steel. The white man arched his back, gasped, and collapsed, staring blankly at the knife buried in his chest and at Dega’s hand on the hilt.
Another groan sounded, but not from the white man. His days of making sounds of any kind were over. The groan came from Teni. “Three of them, my brother. Three lives our people must answer for.”
“They deserved to die for what they were going to do to you,” Dega replied.
“They were living creatures. They had in them That Which Is In All Things,” Teni said. The People of the Forest had a name for the mystery of mysteries, but it was seldom spoken out loud. To do so would reap calamity.
“Did they?” Dega questioned. “Do any of them?” He was skeptical. The whites reminded him of nothing so much as locusts. At first there had only been a few. Then more came, and even more, until the land between Nansusequa territory and the great salt sea far to the east was crawling with them. And still more whites were arriving all the time.
The growth of New Albion was added proof of the influx. It had started as a trading post, but the population swelled summer by summer until now nearly a hundred wooden lodges flanked the Serpent River, which the whites had renamed the Albion River.
“They are people like us,” Teni said.
“Not like us,” Dega retorted. “Never like us.” He began wiping his knife blade on the shirt of one of the dead men. When he was done he slid it into the sheath wedged under his green breechclout. The breechclout and knee-high green moccasins were all he wore. In the winter Nansusequa men preferred buckskins, but in the heat of summer breechclouts were favored.
Brother and sister showed their blood ties in their similar builds and facial features. Both were slender, but then, all the People of the Forest were prone to leanness and long limbs. Both had black hair, slicked with bear fat, that hung past their shoulders. In addition, Dega had a short clasp, made from porcupine quills, that splayed his hair at the back in a fan effect. Their eyes were dark brown. High foreheads, prominent cheekbones, and oval chins completed the image.
By any standard, red or white, Tenikawaku was a beauty, her brother strikingly handsome. Not that either gave much thought to such matters. Among the People of the Forest, a person’s worth was not measured by how attractive he or she was, but by character, maturity, and wisdom.
“We must tell Father and Mother,” Teni urged. She could not keep it to herself now, not with three dead whites.
“I should go after the one who got away,” Dega said.
“What for?”
“Maybe I can catch him before he reaches New Albion.” Dega did not say the rest of it.
“And do what? Kill him?” Teni gestured at the sprawled forms. “Has there not been enough blood spilled?”
“If I silence him he cannot tell the other whites,” Dega noted. “They will not know who did this.”
“You would have us keep our part in it a secret?”
“Either that or risk war.”
“Surely it would not come to that?” Teni said. “We have traded with the whites for many summers. We are their friends.”
“Are we?”
“You have never truly trusted them, brother. Not from the very beginning. Why is that?”
“Their eyes always say one thing and their mouths another.” Dega nudged the body of Byram Forge. “I sometimes wonder if any of the whites are truly our friends. Even Reverend Stilljoy.” He sighed. “But I will not go after the last one if you do not want me to.”
“Thank you,” Teni said, and clasped his hand. “Now come. We must not delay any longer.”
They headed west, loping at a pace that would eat the distance rapidly.
“I hope you are right, sister,” Degamawaku said. “If you are not, more blood will stain the earth.” He added ominously, “A lot more.”