A single raider bolted towards the road. A machete shot out of the trees. It was so fast Linda only made out what it was when it had buried itself in the man's head, cleaving the back of his skull. The man stopped running and reached up to touch the handle. Only then did he realise he was dying and keeled.
Cortez strode across the clearing wiping blood off his big Bowie knife. He picked up the container full of gas and took it back to Bertha. Greaves came out with a funnel and they refilled the tank.
'Come on,' said Linda. 'I think it's safe to go back now.'
The moon was low and the sky was getting lighter. Dawn was on its way. The bluff, the woodlands and the river below, everything looked different in the light of the approaching day. Especially, thought Linda, the brave and astonishing young woman with whom she'd spent the night.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
This was about payback, plain and simple. That's what Ahiga told his braves. Payback for four hundred years of oppression, treachery and barefaced lies.
The white man stole this land from them. Their forefathers had to live with that because the white man had the numbers. Now the Great Spirit had cut the white man down to size. It was time to take back what was rightfully theirs, to send a message to each and every white man left alive.
Don't fuck with us no more.
What Ahiga didn't mention, was his own personal payback. He hadn't told them of the eyes. Those beautiful brown eyes, with their long lashes, that still looked up at him every time he closed his own to go to sleep. He'd said nothing of the gun barrel he'd placed between the lips of the eyes' owner, or the guilt he'd carried ever since. This was where the payback started. Where old scores were finally settled.
There were two sentries posted on the trail up to the burial ground. Neither looked as though they could even hold a gun, let alone fire one. The two scouts he'd sent to scope out the defences had returned and asked him to accompany them.
There didn't appear to be many men guarding the area. Their defences were minimal. The two scouts, Hastiin, a young Navajo Ahiga had chosen specially for the mission, and Akecheta, a Sioux who was a crack shot, were wary. They wanted to check with Ahiga that it wasn't a trap.
Ahiga came with them so as not to arouse their suspicion. He already knew it wasn't a trap. He had been briefed on when and how to attack by Fitch and Golding. He assured the two braves there was nothing to worry about. The Neo-Clergy had sent most of their men off to guard Colt and the Prophet as they left the camp.
Besides, they were arrogant and complacent. They didn't think anyone would dare attack them.
The two braves seemed satisfied with this explanation. Ahiga sent Hastiin back to order the rest of the braves to advance. Then he gave Akecheta the go ahead to take out the sentries.
Akecheta took two arrows from his quiver. This was going to be done old school. They'd come packing plenty of heat as back up, but the initial attack was to be done in honour of their ancestors. They had a point to make today.
Akecheta released his bow string and the first arrow struck the left sentry clean in the chest. The shot was perfect, a thing of beauty. The sentry tried to swat it like an insect. Then he looked down and saw the shaft poking out of him. He turned to alert his comrade but dropped dead before the warning could reach his lips.
The other sentry dropped his weapon in fear and surprise. He stared wildly about him, panicking. He bent to pick up his rifle then, half way down, decided against it and just ran. Akecheta sent an arrow after him, which thudded into his back making him fall forward, twitching.
Ahiga and Akecheta walked up the path to make sure the sentries were dead. The second one was twitching and crying. He rolled over on to his side and looked up at Ahiga. 'Please Mister. Please, I don't wanna go see Jesus just yet. I've survived a lot. You don't know what I been through and I ain't even kissed a girl yet.'
Ahiga knelt by the man. He reached over and cradled his head with his right hand, pulling the man up onto his knee. Akecheta's arrow protruded from the front of the man's robes, which were soaked with his blood. Ahiga supported the man's chin with his left hand.
'Aw thanks mister,' the man said. 'I could tell you was a good sort, straight off I could tell. I'm a good judge of character see and I took one look at you and -'
Ahiga pushed forward hard with his left hand and pulled back with his right. The man's spinal column snapped with an audible crack. Ahiga pushed the body away and stood up.
Akecheta thanked him for finishing the job, to which Ahiga nodded. They waited for the rest of the braves to join them.
There was a sacred and ceremonial path all the way up the giant mound to the burial place. The chief at Lame Deer had explained in great detail all about the path, and the way to proceed along it to bury the fallen leader. Ahiga did not like him. He was a bore and a weakling. Like the idiot Hopi he'd gotten rid of.
There were also secret ways up to the burial ground. Ways that hid whoever followed them. However, warned the chief, bad things happened if they were misused. Ahiga had ignored his mewling and demanded the routes off the chief. The man was a coward and he gave them after making only the feeblest protest.
Ahiga and his war party moved quickly and quietly in pairs. When they got to the perimeter the pairs split up and circled the Neo-Clergy camp. All the braves were trained in guerrilla warfare and stealth tactics, but the camp guards were practically asleep.
In the centre of the burial ground was a large steel tower. The Clergy had dug up sacred graves for the foundations and poured concrete inside, to anchor the legs of the tower. These white devils had desecrated the most holy land and now they were nonchalantly climbing the tower, welding new pieces to it, even whistling and joking.
Ahiga could see anger and resentment on the faces of the braves as they looked on from cover. That was good. They were starting to hate smart. Theirs was a dispossessed generation who had finally been given a cause, a target for all the discontent and alienation they'd felt growing up.
On the eastern side of the camp were the living quarters: tents mostly, plus a few benders – temporary structures made out of bent twigs and reeds, an old woodsman's trick. In the centre of this area was a large log cabin which must have served as a central food hall, although it looked as though it had only just been finished. Beside it there were barrels of water.
Nine armed guards were visible in the camp. Eight of them were in pairs, patrolling the grounds, while the ninth was idling against the wall of the cabin. The other hundred or so occupants were all unarmed, just over half were women and children. They looked happy and content in their work, oblivious to the danger lurking all around them.
It was just as Fitch and Golding had said. Ahiga knew they thought they were playing him. They imagined they still had something to hold over him, even after all these years.
The only thing that held him to them was his need for revenge. To redeem himself and win back his manhood. Manhood they had stolen. Not with their threats or their innuendo, or even the terrible thing they had made him do. But the man he had done it to, had shown him what real bravery and what real manhood were.
In giving in to Fitch and Golding he had fallen far short of that mark. That was what he could never live down.
This was where they got theirs. They were the ones being played. This was where it started and it wouldn't end well for either of them.
Ahiga raised his arm and his bowmen readied their weapons. On his signal they stepped forward and let fly, raining a volley of arrows down on the unsuspecting camp guards. Five of them fell on the spot.
Two civilians got caught in the volley. An old man took one right in the eye and his head snapped back, as though he was looking at the sky, trying to pinpoint where the arrow came from. Then he toppled over. A young woman was hit in the shoulder. She stepped into the trajectory at the last second and fell to the ground screaming with pain.
Her hollers were drowned when Ahiga fired his pistol in the air. The braves charged into the camp whooping and calling the ancient war cries. They were dressed in ordinary western clothes. They had no feathers in their hair, or war paint on their faces, but they looked terrifying.
