The Dakota Cipher

Magnus.

‘This is nature corrupted by gunpowder and rum,’ the Norwegian replied. ‘These Indians are on the edge of extinction and know it, and the knowledge has driven them crazy.’ He looked sourly at a brave who sauntered up, languidly swinging his axe. ‘Out there it’s still different.’

‘Out where?’

‘We just haven’t gone west far enough.’

The Indians tied tethers around our necks like dogs and Cecil languidly walked in front of us, his sword now unsheathed and balanced casually on his shoulder. ‘Gage, I’ve never met a spy so easy to anticipate.’

‘I’m not a spy.’

‘After failing to get you in New York we didn’t even have to trail you to Washington. We had only to wait for you at Detroit, so obvious was your mission. I was sceptical that my sister’s bit of quim would be enough to get you to abandon a chance of American escort, but you almost suggested the arrangement yourself. Tsk, tsk, Ethan Gage. You played her lackey until you spied a squaw, like a dog distracted by a new rabbit. And then, after peeping on us, you made a beeline for the Mandan wench, the one place we might look for you. I’m beginning to wonder if a fool like you and the hero of Acre are the same man at all. Are you an imposter?’

‘I’ve discovered your headquarters.’ I looked about.

He laughed. ‘This dung heap? This nest of primitives? I use savages, Ethan. I’ve got my eye on a castle in Montreal, after we’ve helped these Indians push your mercantile, indentured nation back east of the Appalachians with an uprising so violent that the rivers from the Monongahela to the Mississippi run red with blood. Ten thousand cabins are going to burn, and ten thousand children are going to become orphans, inducted into the tribes. Tecumseh will make Pontiac look like a Franciscan monk by the time he’s through, and Britain has guns enough for all of them. Yes, America must be confined, Ethan Gage, for its own good and the good of the world. I will not let your nation of grubby equality and mercantile greed pollute civilisation! America will be contained until it inevitably withers, just as France must be contained! So now you’ll die, and we’ll send your entrails back to Jefferson after the dogs help pull them from your slit belly. You can watch us smoke them for preservation – oh yes, the old women know how to keep you alive and conscious while we do it! Unless, of course, you want to tell us what you’re really doing on the far frontier, so far from the salons and parlours that keep you worm-white and useless. Tell us, Gage, and because I’m charitable I might grant you the gift of a swift tomahawk to the head! You’ll tell us anyway, when the squaws put coals in your ears and anus and shove cedar splinters up your wilted prick.’

He reminded me of doctors describing a painful treatment with a bit too much relish. He certainly didn’t seem the dazzling gentlemen I’d met in George Duff’s house. I should have asked for references.

‘Even wilted, it’s bigger than that quill you aim at your sister, you disgusting pervert.’

He barked a laugh. ‘You do have cheek!’

‘Information from torture is useless.’

‘Then we’ll start with disfigurement.’ He nodded and one of the Indians jerked on my leash, hauling my head up. I could barely breathe. Another approached me with a mussel shell, sharp as a razor. ‘I like to cut across the eye before gouging it out, because the pain is hideous. Each time the swelling blinds you, a fresh cut releases the pus and the begging starts all over again. I watched them do it to a captive priest once until his sockets were a blind web of crisscrossing mussel cuts, black and red. Of course the priest had nothing to confess and was quite mad by the third day. But it was marvellously entertaining.’

‘I told Aurora we’re looking for woolly elephants!’ I cried, eyeing the shell looming close in my vision. And as my eyeball rolled, I saw something out of the corner of one eye and realised what Namida had spied at the beach. I almost had a spasm.

‘If that came from Jefferson I might almost believe you. But from Bonaparte too? No, we’ll make you match the Norwegian cyclops. Cut him.’

‘Wait!’ I know I was supposed to be stoic as a Roman in the face of this torture, but what was the point? We were chasing myth, a fantasy, and if I could delay things for another minute … There were two hundred against two, and we didn’t have a chance unless I made one. ‘We’re looking for Thor’s hammer!’

‘What?’ He motioned the savage with the shell to stop, rotated his sword off his shoulder, and put its point under my chin. ‘A hammer?’ He looked confused.

‘A hammer of the Norse gods! That’s why Magnus is here! He thinks Vikings or Templars or some other madmen came before Columbus and hid a magical hammer that could control the world! I don’t care about that, I only thought we could sell it!’

‘Ethan!’ Magnus cried in despair and disgust.

‘He’s got an old map in his case. He may be a lunatic, but I came along because I was tupping Napoleon’s sister and had to get out of France!’

Cecil blinked, looking at me in consternation for the longest time. Past him, down a land of wigwams and longhouses, I could see fire-blackened stakes set in the ground and piles of fresh brushwood for burning. I remembered the horrid fires at the Battle of the Nile, the smell of roasting flesh, and the blaze in Count Silano’s strange chamber in the Tuileries. I’m deathly afraid of fire.

‘He’s lying!’ Bloodhammer shouted. ‘Torture us! You’ll see!’

‘He’s a poor liar.’ It was Aurora, stepping into my field of vision with my longrifle lazily pointed my way. ‘His lies are unbelievable, instead of convincing. This is just stupid enough to be true.’

Cecil looked from one to the other of us as if he’d found a new species. Then he began to laugh. ‘Thor’s hammer?’

‘He wasn’t a god, he was some sort of early ancestor and had this weapon that spat lightning.’

‘Ethan, enough!’ Bloodhammer roared.

‘Don’t tomahawk me, because we can take you there …’

‘Ethan!’

Cecil swung his sword away and then whipped the narrow flat of it hard across my face, a stinging blow worse than any the Indians had yet given me. A lip split, and my cheek was on fire. ‘Do you think me a fool?’ he screamed.

I slumped, near to weeping. ‘Ask Magnus …’

‘A bloody myth! You want me to believe you are looking for Nordic gods in Louisiana? That you’ve come six thousand miles for a pagan fantasy? That any sister of Napoleon would so much as look at you?’

‘She couldn’t keep her hands off me, the randy bitch. It’s Pauline the nymph, who had a reputation long before I …’

‘Silence!’ He slashed me with the flat of the sword again. Damn, that hurt!

‘Brother, he’s not intelligent enough to invent something so absurd,’ Aurora said.

‘Yes! Look at me! I’m a dolt!’ My eyes were watering in pain and shame, but what choice did I have? I dared not look at what I’d seen again.

‘Silence, I said!’ And he slashed me with the flat of his sword yet again. I blinked, near to fainting. I hate helplessness.

‘We should look at the map case,’ Aurora said.

‘I want to burn him,’ Cecil growled. ‘Roast him for days, for having you.’

‘Patience, my love. I know I’ve stoked your jealousy to spice the game. But we need to know everything he knows. This is a start.’

‘I want him to be porcupined with splinters, and the end of each one set on fire.’ Cecil licked his lips. ‘I want the women to flay his manhood.’

‘There’s time, brother. There’s time. But this map?’

‘The case is in the canoe.’ He snapped some words to Red Jacket and a young buck darted off to the lake shore to fetch it.

‘Let me guide you. Partners, like we said.’

Then Namida, whom I had entirely forgotten about, began jabbering at Red Jacket. He snapped back at her, but that just made her angrier and she pointed at me, insisting. He argued, but then Little Frog began arguing too. What was going on? The Indians began debating among themselves, and the Somersets looked increasingly annoyed. They snapped something at Red Jacket, and the chief snarled back.