Chapter 24
Just Short of Death
Sarah followed as Iroquet and Matt traipsed down the well-worn path to the Rideau River. Chogan kept pace with her, flicking her a sideways glance, but quickly looking away. She bit her lip to keep it from quivering. Did he hate her now, after everything they’d gone through together?
She peeked over her shoulder as footsteps tramped behind her. Half of the Algonquin warriors, those who weren’t guarding the camp, and all of Champlain’s men, including the explorer himself, trailed them to the water’s edge, where they spread out along the bank and readied their weapons.
Iroquet gazed across the river. The Kanienkehaka warriors kept to the trees, well back from the riverside where they’d make easy targets. They peered between the curtains of leaves, arrows poking through gaps and aimed towards the Algonquin and the small delegation of peace negotiators. The atmosphere was as tense as their retracted bowstrings.
The Algonquin chief flipped over a canoe that rested on the bank and shoved it into the water. He leaped in and looked back at Matt with his arms crossed.
“You stay with Chogan,” Matt said to Sarah, as he sloshed into the water. “It’ll be safer here, I think.”
Sarah stopped him with a tug on his sleeve. “Don’t even think about leaving me.”
“I’m not. I promise. I’ll just be at the powwow. Girls aren’t usually invited.”
“I don’t care if I’m invited,” she said flatly. “I’m coming with you, even if I have to swim this river again.”
“I will take you,” said Chogan, grabbing another canoe.
His uncle groaned. “Will you hold your temper?”
“Yes,” said Chogan. “Perhaps I have more discipline than you think. I will not raise my knife,” he patted the sheath at his waist, “unless this Segoleh shows treachery.”
“You will not raise your knife,” said Iroquet, “unless I say you can.”
Chogan pursed his lips. “You do not trust my judgement?”
“No.”
“Fine,” said Chogan. He shoved the canoe into the water and held it steady for Sarah to climb in.
“You think you can keep me away from those falls this time?” she asked.
Chogan smiled. “It wasn’t my fault you decided to hug a tree.”
Sarah tried to swat him with the paddle, but he ducked out of the way. At least he was joking again.
Iroquet growled, “This is not a feast we’re attending.”
Sarah and Chogan quickly wiped away their smiles. “We know,” said Sarah. “It’s just that we’re trying to make the best of a—”
“Bad situation,” finished Matt, grinning. “Only this might turn out to be a great situation.”
Iroquet dipped his paddle into the river. The canoe slid easily through the rippling water, trailing bubbles. Chogan drew swiftly alongside him, whisking to the other side in seconds. Before Sarah had steeled herself to face the warriors milling among the trees, they’d beached the canoes. Dread prickled through her. Could she stand calmly in front of them? She winced as she remembered the arrow whistling through the air and thudding into Matt. But when she looked at Matt he smiled. They couldn’t be that dangerous then, could they?
Segoleh, the stout warrior with the crescent nose and a stripe of black hair, stepped out from the camouflage. He ordered his men to stay behind the trees and approached alone, except for one reedy warrior by his side. He nodded tersely at them. With a wave of his hand, he directed them to a sandy hollow on the beach where one of his men tended a fire. With a grunt in Mohawk, he ordered the man to withdraw, sending him scooting back to the treeline. Then Segoleh spoke to Iroquet in a strange dialect. Chogan translated.
“We smoke,” he said. “And we talk.”
Chogan explained to Matt and Sarah, “Wendat is a language we have in common. It has to do with our association with the Wendat and one of the dog meat’s gods.”
Iroquet nodded to Segoleh and walked towards the fire. They fanned out around the crackling flames, sitting in a circle with Segoleh facing Iroquet. “Why do you bring children to a talk between men?”
“The children,” said Iroquet, “will inherit the land—the forest, the lakes, the bounty of this world.” He looked at Chogan. “They have more at stake here than we do.”
Segoleh grunted. He turned to Matt with a stern face and paradoxical grin. “I did not believe you could do it. I was prepared for war.”
Matt buffed his nails on his shirt. “You shouldn’t underestimate the white man,” he said. “Even young ones.”
“Yes,” said Segoleh. He slipped a pipe from his shirt, stuffed tobacco leaves into it, and lit it with a flaming twig that he pulled from the fire. He puffed contentedly, then handed the pipe to Iroquet.
Sarah coughed. The two men looked at her and frowned. “It’s bad for your health,” she said, still choking. Her eyes burned and grew watery with tears.
“Don’t be such a dope,” Matt whispered to her. He nodded at the war parties on active alert on both sides of the river. “Bad for your health,” he muttered. “Living is bad for your health in this day and age.”
“Sorry,” she whispered.
“Strange girl,” said Segoleh.
Iroquet looked heavenward and rolled his eyes. “Very strange.”
As Chogan translated, he tried his best to keep a straight face, but he couldn’t disguise a smirk.
Sarah scowled. How dare they make fun of me! She took a deep breath, but Matt swatted her before she could open her mouth.
“The ultimate in weirdness,” he agreed.
She clenched her fists and glared at him. She was tempted to tell him off, but she clamped her mouth shut. This was no time to spar with Matt. There were loaded weapons all around them, all aimed their way.
Iroquet accepted the pipe from Segoleh and took a few puffs. Both men reached into their pockets and withdrew more tobacco. They tossed it into the river, muttering blessings. Chogan explained that their people offered tobacco to the river as a gift to the spirits.
Matt studied them, his eyes lighting up. “You have so much in common.”
Iroquet shook his head. “We are nothing like each other.”
“Nothing,” echoed Segoleh.
“But you are,” said Matt. “You wear similar clothes. You hunt and fish the same way. You both honour the land. You share more than you could ever share with the white man.”
“We share distrust,” said Iroquet.
Matt turned to Segoleh. “How were the Five Nations convinced to join together?”
“My forefather, Dekanawida, which means Two Rivers Running, did this many moons ago. He was a Wendat god who decided to live across the Beautiful Waters with the Kanienkehaka.”
Sarah listened intently, trying to decipher the story in modern terms. She remembered from her history lesson that Wendat was another name for the Huron people. This might explain why they had a language in common—both the Iroquois and Algonquin nations had an association with the Wendat. But by Beautiful Waters, did he mean Lake Ontario?
Segoleh continued. “My ancestors tried to put him to death by hurling him into a deep gorge, but he reappeared the next day in one of the guest cabins outside the gates of the village. So they listened to him and adopted him as one of their own. Hiawatha, an Onondaga chief who’d lost his seven daughters in war, took Dekanawida’s message to heart. Together they developed the Great Law of Peace, the symbol of which was the white pine—the Tree of Peace. It spread its roots amongst the Five Nations—Kanienkehaka, Onondaga, Seneca, Cayuga, and Oneida.”
Chogan translated the names of the nations into French—People of the Flint, People of the Many Hills, People of the Mountain, People of the Landing, and People of the Standing Stone.
“Amazing,” said Matt. “Peace was the better option then, especially when so many families had died in wars. And your god was a Wendat and spoke a language you still share.” He turned to Iroquet. “Aren’t your allies to th
e west the Wendat?”
“Dekanawida deserted the Wendat,” said Iroquet.
Matt’s smile wavered, but he made another attempt. “You’re all brothers.”
Iroquet snarled.
Segoleh laughed heartily, which shocked Sarah, but didn’t seem to surprise Matt at all.
“Brothers do not kill brothers,” hissed Iroquet.
“Brothers do not steal brothers’ land,” Segoleh snorted.
“Okay, okay,” said Matt, holding up his hands. “I get your point. But you understand mine, too, or you wouldn’t be sitting here today. All you’re doing is killing each other off when you should be thinking of ways to slow down the invasion of the white man.”
“How will we fight these men,” asked Segoleh, “if they become as numerous as you say?”
“You can’t,” said Matt. “Many nations will try to fight, but they’ll fail.”
“Then what is the point of this?” asked Iroquet.
“Yes,” said Segoleh. “You led me to believe—”
“That you can still win. I know,” said Matt. “But not by fighting. They’ll try to trick you. You’ll have to trick them first.” Matt paused and tapped a finger on his cheek.
“Let’s see. How about . . . you form a joint council to approve any decisions the white man makes. Demand that the white man honour the council’s authority and draft your own treaties. Don’t let the white man take your land! Make them pay for every bit of it with laws that will protect it and protect you. And learn their language and their writing so they can’t fool you with their papers. Don’t believe what they tell you the papers mean. See for yourselves.
“They’re a crafty bunch of men, but you can be craftier. Just because there are more of them doesn’t mean you have to let them take over. You’ve been armed with knowledge now. Use it!”
Iroquet grunted. “Councils. Treaties. Laws. What are these? We will fight. They are so pitiful now, we can do this without the help of the dog meat.”
Segoleh scowled. “The bear dung speaks true. We can oppose them by ourselves. Why did I listen to you? We cannot work together with this pond scum.”
Iroquet leaped to his feet. Segoleh shot up beside him. The warriors in the woods drew their bows taut. Just the slightest word from their leader would send arrows flying. The soldiers and warriors across the river raised their weapons, ready to fire.
Sarah jammed a fist in her mouth as she watched the talks unravel. This was hopeless. The only thing standing between these two men and all-out war was Matt.
He jumped between the two men and held up his hands. “Wait a minute. We didn’t come here to insult each other. Can’t you sit quietly and talk about what’s best for the nations?”
“What’s best,” said Iroquet, his face flushed, “is to wipe this dog meat from the face of the earth.”
Segoleh’s fists clenched. The muscles in his neck bulged. “What’s best is to continue what we started in the village of your kin.”
“No!” said Matt. “For goodness’ sake, can’t you people ever get along? Why do you think the world is such a mess? Nobody has any honour.”
“They have no honour!” the two chiefs said, each pointing at the other.
Matt opened his palms, imploring. “You have to listen to me.” His words swirled away, lost somewhere in the fog. In fact, fog was everywhere. Sarah could barely detect the two men glaring at each other around the fire. She could only vaguely make out Matt, standing across from her, his eyes glowing like two small moons in the mist. Chogan blended with the flickering flames, but there was a momentary glint—the reflection of the firelight off his knife as he drew it from its sheath. No. This can’t be happening. They’re going to kill each other, right here and now. And we’re smack dab in the middle of it.
“Matt!” she screamed.
The knife rose in Chogan’s hand, its honed-edge aimed at Segoleh’s throat. The arrows were drawn back in the hands of the Kanienkehaka. Across the river, the Algonquin lined up to release their arsenal. Champlain raised his arm to signal his men to fire. It was a living nightmare, which could only end with all of them dying and scattered on the ground like crushed leaves. Sarah’s heart threatened to burst from her chest.
The arrows soared. The bullets zinged. The knife slashed. Sarah wanted to close her eyes, but she couldn’t. This was it. She was going to die.
Chogan’s eyes nearly popped out of his head as something ripped the knife from his hand. The arrows stopped in midair and vanished in their flight over the river. The bullets froze as if caught in a time warp; then they too disappeared.
Sarah blinked and looked at Matt. Above his head, a vortex was developing. The air around him rippled in distorted waves, but she could see his arms raised as if he were conducting an orchestra. Each new arrow the men released was sucked skyward. The guns flew out of the explorers’ hands. Howling and screaming erupted from both companies. Champlain ducked as an arrow nicked the edge of the whirlwind and reversed course, grazing his scalp. The bloody battle had become a comedy. The knot loosened in Sarah’s gut. She smiled. No one was going to die today. Soon the smile burst into a rolling belly laugh.
The warriors’ cries gradually subsided until the only sound was Sarah laughing. As she wiped the tears away, she noticed the air around Matt had cleared. So had his strength; he crumpled to the ground like a puppet released from its strings. For a minute he looked like he was dead. A layer of frost glistened on his face. His skin was stretched tight against his skull, and he didn’t move, didn’t even twitch. As Sarah rushed to his side, though, he broke into a laugh.
She chuckled, too, and hugged him. She nearly collapsed beside him in relief.
“It’s over, Matt,” she said. “I think they’ll listen to you now.”