The Orenda Joseph Boyden (55 page)

The world goes quiet for the rest of the night but nobody sleeps. The only noise we can hear as the sun begins to show is a few wounded Haudenosaunee singing their death songs, the crows soon joining in the chorus with their morning chant.

IN THIS TIME OF GREAT TROUBLE

I stand in the house of the crows, the roof partly burned away so the sun’s rays now sparkle across the water pooled upon the wooden floor. Christophe Crow stands in his place on a small platform, facing us. Above his head, he holds dried ottet in his hands, formed so carefully that it’s round as a moon.

My girl, you are so pretty. You are so fragile, and yet I see in your outstretched arms the strength you’ll one day possess. I’ve never seen a head of hair so thick and shiny in a child only just a week in this world. Will you help me pray to Aataentsic that your father survived the night?

People who follow the great voice begin to crowd around us, lining up to take a part of him into their bodies. Christophe Crow told us earlier that we need to prepare to die soon if this is what the great voice decides.

Sleeps Long, standing beside me holding her own baby in her arms, scoffed at that. “Has he so little faith in our men who stand outside and protect us? Maybe he should stop hiding in here.” Now, as the people come to eat from Christophe Crow’s hand, she pushes away. “I need air,” she says. “Meet me outside and we’ll bring some food to our husbands.”

I watch as the people, those from their faraway land mingled with ours, wait anxious in the line to take the bit of food into their mouths, as if worried there will be no more when they reach the front. The
faces of those who take the ottet and turn from the crows seem sated, even calm. It’s then I make the decision. I will take some of this food into my mouth as well, this food that Christophe Crow has tried to get me to eat for so much of my life. I will take this food if it helps to protect my husband. The crows always say if I speak what I need to the great voice, if I take his body into mine, then he will answer my prayers. And so I line up, and I pray to you, Great Voice, that you protect Carries an Axe in battle, and you push our enemies out of our land, and you allow my husband and me to grow old together as we watch our child bloom along with the three sisters.

As I get closer to Christophe Crow, I repeat my desire over and over, and when it is my turn and I stand in front of him, his hand holding a piece of the ottet torn off the moon, he looks down at me, confused.

“You are willing to accept the Great Voice?” he asks.

I nod.

“In this time of great trouble,” he says, “there’s little room to act like a child.”

I look up at him.

“I normally wouldn’t believe you, and instead think you were playing another game with me.”

“I worry my husband will be killed today,” I say.

Christophe Crow’s eyes change then. He nods, and as he holds out the ottet, I open my mouth.

—

I FIND MY HUSBAND
alive and talking with his mother and father near where we sat yesterday. Sitting down with them, I begin to cry. This makes me feel weak, but Carries an Axe holds me while his parents look away, holding each other. Both my husband and his father look exhausted, their faces strained beyond their years. An arrow glanced off Tall Trees’ arm and he wrapped it in a bloody bit of cloth one of the
hairy ones gave him. Carries an Axe is proud that nothing has touched him yet. “Don’t worry,” he says, “their arrows can’t find me.”

We lost many war-bearers last night. I listen as the two men talk, but I’m so tired I fear I’ll fall over and crush my child.

“Here,” Sleeps Long says, reaching out for my girl, “let her visit with her relation.” Cradling her own daughter in one arm, she takes my daughter in the other. Carries an Axe takes me, and the two of us lie back in the grass, drifting off as the spring sun shines down on our faces, dreaming we’re not in this strange village of war but home after a good day of planting.

THEY WILL SOON SHOW US

All of us who still stand in defence of the village, maybe half the original number now, had fully expected the Haudenosaunee to do one more great push as the sun broke. I had feared this more than anything because I was sure it would have broken us. But by noon, the world remains quiet, the odd arrow slicing its way in, hitting dirt or the side of one of the buildings left standing.

No one’s slept for more than a few moments at a time for the last two days. The sentries are so tired that some have begun seeing the enemy in the shadows or hearing them climb the walls.

Now that we have a chance to walk about and calculate the damage, I see how well the stone structures at each corner of the pali-sades have served us. The French placed many of their shining wood in each one, and the constant firing down upon the enemy from their protected position is what has saved us this far from being overrun. The bodies piled below them prove their worth. These are something I won’t forget.

But the palisades themselves have suffered miserably. Stretches of them have been hacked or burned so that a group of focused men could push their way through. Those with any strength left work to repair them, tying the weakened logs together and digging new posts in behind the damaged ones.

“Why do you think they’ve gone so silent?” Fox asks as we take our turn as sentry once more on the ramparts. He’s pale from loss of blood.
I look at the dead below, their number doubled since yesterday. Indeed, their bodies have begun to stink. The Haudenosaunee, I realize, won’t leave until this is done.

“I imagine, old friend,” I say, “they’ll soon show us this new trick they’ve been working on.” I look behind me at the smoking ruin of the village.

With the sun already passing its height, we sit and wait, our heads nodding in the spring day, a beautiful one with a slight breeze. I’ve collected as many arrows from the dead as I could find, and my shining wood is loaded. Fox sleeps beside me. I know my friend, though. He will awake suddenly, as if he has no idea what dreams are.

Down the ramparts I hear a familiar voice cry out. Opening my eyes, I see that it’s my new son, Carries an Axe. He points to the field and shouts. We’re in for it again.

Fox and I stand. He’s slower than me with his side clearly paining him. His leg’s bright from the blood seeping onto it. I look across the field and see something I’ve never even imagined, a wooden palisade as wide as four men with their arms outstretched, slowly making its way across the empty field.

“What are we witnessing?” Fox asks.

It’s then I can make sense of it. The Haudenosaunee have strapped together a great shield of logs to protect their advance, the men behind lifting it and walking it, putting it down to rest before lifting it and walking it forward again. My stomach sinks further when I see a second one emerge from the forest.

“Well, my brother,” I say, looking over to Fox. “We’re in for a fight now.”

We watch the advance, all of us behind the palisade quiet. As the two walls creep closer and closer to us, one on either side of the field, I find the tension of the last days slides off me. I listen to what I think are waves rhythmically hitting a sandy beach before I realize it’s the blood pumping through my body.

Once again, I shout for the ones around me to prepare but not fire.
The wall in front of us is within range of our arrows but I see how useless it will be to fire. There must be a way to breach it. I ask for Fox to please figure it out.

He laughs. “If they come too close to our wall, we’ll just push theirs down on top of them.”

Despite his joking, I wonder if it might possibly work.

The Haudenosaunee walking behind the ones who carry the wall start firing shining wood and arrows at us, but now that we’re in their line of sight, so are they in ours. We exchange iron and arrows without much consequence when I hear a strange, familiar voice shouting out, asking us to fight hard. I glance behind me and see the crow named Isaac walking back and forth, looking up to us in his long robe, his arms out, his fingerless hands raised.

Shaking my head, I turn to Fox and shout as more shining wood explodes, “Tell me again why I thought bringing them among us was a good idea?”

Now that their wall is close to ours, their men dart out from its protection with torches and axes to attack our palisades and gate. We fire down and pour boiling water or pitch onto them, their screams by now something I’ve grown used to. I look over at the closest stone bastion and see that the hairy ones have a good angle and shoot as fast as they can at the ones behind the moving wall. But still, it creeps closer to our own.

Despite our great effort, the enemy below now hacks at the pali-sades, and it can’t be long before they break through. “Fox,” I shout, “go down and pass poles up to the ramparts.”

He knows not to question, and despite his wound, he’s slid down the ladder before I can turn back to the fight.

He and another are soon handing up lengths of spruce and poplar hoarded to strengthen the palisades. I grab one and, reaching out, jam its tip against the enemy’s wall and start pushing with all my might. Quickly, the others see what I’m attempting, and putting down their weapons, they take up poles of their own, a gang of us
now pushing against the top of the enemy wall so that we begin to feel it give way.

A man shouts out beside me, and I see Isaac struggling to hold his own length of wood in his fingerless hands, but it slips from his grasp and falls to the ground. He looks at it for a moment, then places his nubs onto my hands, and together we push, watching as the wall that the Haudenosaunee built topples back and onto the ones crouching behind it.

With a roar, we pick up our weapons and fire down upon the surprised enemy, sending most of them scurrying back to the tree line.

This is a great victory, I think. This turning them back might be enough to send them home.

I look for Fox to share this with him just as I hear men screaming and wood splintering down the line. The enemy’s second wall leans against our own and, as if in a bad dream, our palisades give way, collapsing into the village.

NOW WE’RE EVEN

Dusk settles as we prepare to fight up close. I hold my club in one hand and my knife in the other. Fox stays close beside me, and we move up to where the palisades were destroyed. It looks like the Haudenosaunee surprised even themselves, as only a handful jump through the breach and are quickly overrun by us. But we have no time to repair the damage they’ve done and instinctively gather by our ruined wall, their war-bearers on the other side shouting and whistling, readying themselves to charge in. The French have been left up in their stone buildings to keep firing upon any enemies who try to hack or climb in at other places. We’re in trouble. It won’t be long now.

I tell Fox we’ll help defend as long as we can but then have to get back to the crows’ house and try to get the women and children out of the village and to a safe location. I think hard about how it is we’re going to do this. Aataentsic, please help me with that answer. Fox and I know what’ll happen now as we brace and the Haudenosaunee begin roaring on the other side, sending themselves into a frenzy. We’ll get all the people we can out of the village, even if we have to chop a hole through the palisades, and then we’ll fight until our last breath in the hope they can disappear into the forest and eventually make it out to the islands.

Carries an Axe and Tall Trees stand side by side near Fox and me. We all look at one another and then at the palisades. The Haudenosaunee begin to climb through. Despite his injury, Fox is the first to pounce
and meet them. He swings his knife and hatchet so that he pushes back a half-circle of the enemy. They try to surround him, try to get around him, but he stabs the first one who gets too close. This gives the other three of us the chance to jump in as well, swinging and cutting, trying to avoid their knives and hatchets and clubs as best we can. I feel a knife slice my arm but ignore it just as another Haudenosaunee swings his club toward my head. Rolling out of the way, I see Tall Trees kick the attacker so that the man falls back, and then Tall Trees is on top of him, crushing his skull with a hatchet.

Two men have attacked Carries an Axe. I lunge at one with my knife, aiming for his lower back, the warrior screaming out and falling to his knees. The other one glances at me, and Carries an Axe swings his own hatchet, splitting the man’s skull. We hear shouting over the din and see several Haudenosaunee raining down blows on Tall Trees. By the time we get there, he’s on his knees, his face covered in blood. Carries an Axe screams and rushes the men, stabbing and slicing, his hatchet a blur as two and then three fall to the ground. But the other men keep swinging down on Tall Trees till I can see, as I myself bring my club down on one of their heads, that he lies flat on the ground, bleeding into the dirt.

When we have killed all the attackers, Carries an Axe kneels down by his father. I turn at the approach of an enemy running at me with his hatchet raised and, ducking his swing, slice through his belly with my knife. When I turn back, I can tell Tall Trees is dead.

Carries an Axe stands up and says, “My wife will be proud that I tried with my all today, yes?”

I nod, and just as I begin to run to him so that together we can find Fox and get the women and children out of the village, an arrow slices straight through Carries an Axe’s neck. He falls to the ground, and as I reach him, he’s choking on his blood. His eyes are wide as he drowns in it, and I see there’s nothing to do for him as I hold him and he pushes against my chest, begging me to help. Let it be quick. Please, let it be quick. He pushes harder with both hands against me as if it’s
me who’s killing him, and all I can do is hold his shoulders as the life pumps out of him in spurts until finally he goes still.

As I make my way to stand, a scream of pain shoots through my leg, and as I look down, I see an arrow sticking out of my thigh. I try to stand but fall over as a Haudenosaunee runs up, both hands raising his club above me. I lift my arm with my knife to try and stab him but swing pathetically. He smiles, then tenses, and just as he begins to swing down a body flies into him, knocking him over. Fox rolls on the ground with the much bigger man and, slipping around to the man’s back, takes his knife and slits across his throat.