Now there were puffs of answering smoke from the high grass, the crack of gunfire, and bullets whapped into the trunk around us. Bloodhammer cursed as if they were annoying insects. The women dragged their bundles of twigs and wove them to make crude torches, using flint and steel to start a small fire in the leaves. I kept up a covering fire. Our persistent pursuers lay flat and invisible.
‘There’s a hole!’ Magnus cried.
We turned. A dirt tunnel like a burrow had appeared under the massive root, bigger than the opening into the bear cave. The tree had grown around the entrance. ‘Take the women and go look,’ I ordered. ‘I’ll hold Red Jacket’s band off!’
I sighted, squeezed, and felt the reassuring buck against my shoulder, smelling the burnt powder. The sniping actually relaxed me. The familiar motions of cock, squeeze, ram, and prime were something to do, and I could keep our tormentors out of effective range. Bullets whacked back, my attackers invisible except for the puffs of musket smoke. They were smart enough to move after firing.
Finally I heard Magnus shout.
‘We need an electrician!’
‘Then come keep guard!’
Magnus crawled out and took the rifle with one hand, shaking the other as if burnt. ‘It’s very strange,’ he said, wiping dirt from his mouth.
So I dropped down into the tunnel. The soil was held back by what at first I thought were roots, but then I realised the subterranean part of the tree had grown along the form of a tunnel made by a different support entirely: ivory. The Norse had lined the roof of their passageway with fossil mastodon tusks. Had they found the elephants? Found a boneyard? Or done in the last mammoths themselves?
The passage was drier than expected, and ahead was a scent of something scorched. I felt my way to the torchlight where the women were waiting. Namida and Little Frog were crouched in a womblike room too low for us to stand in, somewhere under the heart of the tree’s trunk, transfixed by an odd contraption. Ribs of root extended from tree trunk above to ground below, forming a cage of wood the size of a ship’s trunk. Above this cage, a glittering wire as thick as a feather’s quill descended from the cave roof to a wooden cylinder the size of a small keg. The wire took just one turn around the drum, so I guessed it had once held a thousand feet or more of costly wire that had unreeled as the tree grew upward over the centuries. When the drum was finally empty, the growth stopped, stunted by lightning because the rod could go no higher.
But that wasn’t what fascinated the women.
Instead, after its single turn around the drum, the wire also led downward to the thick, heavy head of …
An upright hammer.
The weapon was bigger than a carpenter’s tool but smaller than a sledge, and from the butt of its short handle to the massive head was about as long as my forearm. The hammerhead was fat and blunt, made of some kind of silvery ore that glowed, and looked to weigh at least fifteen pounds. More wires curved among the web of roots, and the hammer was balanced on the end of its metal handle as if kept from toppling by electrical force.
‘It’s Thor’s hammer,’ I said in disbelief. Or
‘No! Watch what happens.’
Suddenly there was a blinding flash and sparks flew like that fireworks display at Mortefontaine. The chamber shuddered and there was a low, distant boom, the far-off report of thunder. Then the sparks fell away, the hammer now blazing with electric fire that had been fed to it by the wire. It hummed. Slowly, its glow began to fade.
‘It feeds on the lightning,’ Namida said. ‘The tree does too, I think. Magnus tried to touch the hammer, and it burnt him.’
So the hammer was being charged and kept ready, in much the same way I’d charged an electrical sword I’d used in a duel with Big Ned during the siege of Acre. Yes, the fundamental force that animates nature! Here was a weapon of some kind, yet what could we use to snare the thing without harming ourselves? I tried to think of what old Ben would have done, but was too distracted by the pop of gunshots from outside the tree. ‘We have to go help Magnus.’
We crawled back out. Magnus was crouched behind one of the enormous roots as I’d been and the three of us joined him.
‘Did you get the hammer?’
‘I don’t know how to seize it.’
Our assailants had crawled closer, taking less pain to hide themselves.
‘We need it!’
‘Magnus, we’re not gods.’ I took my rifle back and handed him a musket. I shot, there was a yelp, their movement went still again, and then I heard an odd, nasal version of Cecil’s voice.
‘We have Pierre!’
The voyageur was alive!
And so was my enemy.
‘Hold your fire!’ I ordered, reloading.
Slowly the English nobleman rose from the grass and hauled the Frenchman with him. The voyageur who’d rescued us was battered, his shirt loose, his eyes blackened, and his leggings in tatters. It looked like he’d been dragged across the prairie instead of marched. His hands were bound.
Little Frog gave a gasp, dark eyes bright with tears, and glanced desperately back at our tunnel.
But it wasn’t Pierre who startled me.
Instead it was Cecil Somerset himself. The handsome, proud face had been shattered by the rifle ball I’d fired during the canoe pursuit from Red Jacket’s village. His right cheek was cratered. Parts of his teeth and upper jaw were missing and his right eye was an empty socket. The wound was red and yellow with infection and pus, and his other eye was painfully squinted against the insects that buzzed at his head to feed on the corruption. The dashing aristocrat had been turned into a frightening monster. How long could the Englishman live with such a hideous wound? He must be keeping himself alive by force of will – because he wanted whatever was under the tree. His broken sword was jammed in his belt.
Another figure rose in the grass. Aurora! Makeup gone, hair greasy, clothes filthy and tattered from hard riding, yet she was still strikingly beautiful, tanned as an Amazon, holding a hunting piece of her own. Her fine bones and lovely figure were still there, and despite my logical loathing I couldn’t help but be wrenched by her allure. To underscore the gulf between us, she lifted her gun and deliberately sighted at me with no hesitation.
And then Red Jacket stood, too, one sleeve empty but holding a tomahawk in the other hand, his English coat ragged but still a brilliant scarlet in the weird light. His look was simple hatred. He’d rip out my heart if he could. His mongrel band of Dakota and Ojibway renegades stood too, a scarred, vengeful bunch who looked more like pirates than princes of the plains. They looked greedy and foul, nothing like the proud warriors who had helped us on our canoe trip.
‘My. Isn’t this a fine reunion?’
‘We want you dead, Gage!’ Cecil called in a voice made raspy from wounds and pain. ‘We want you to die horribly! I have twenty of the best warriors in the world here to make sure that happens! But we’ll spare you all – Bloodhammer, the women, even little Pierre here – in exchange for whatever artefact you’ve found.’ He tilted his head back to look up at the tree. ‘I must say, the Rite never expected
‘The Egyptian Rite knew what we were looking for?’
‘The Egyptian Rite knew that Ethan Gage is always looking for
While Cecil looked as cocky as a man can with just half a face, his Indians, I noticed, were distinctly uneasy. They hadn’t expected this great tree either, with its weird storms and brooding shade. They too were thinking of the Wendigo.
‘You call me
‘Silence!’ And Cecil struck him with a leather quirt, and then slashed him again and again as if reminded to take out his own pain and frustration on his captive. Little Frog gave a cry and a sob. I quivered with disgust. It took
