Chapters (30)
Not a spineless dog after all, Tewanias thought, as he hit the water. Through a haze of pain he saw the Oneida leap from the bank with a howl and hurtle across the stream towards him. Dressed in cloth kilt and leggings, with a single feather woven into his tufted hair, one half of his face coloured red, the other half black, the Oneida was painted for war. His right hand gripped the hilt of a short, broad-bladed sword; his left, a military-issue carbine.
Ignoring the pain, Tewanias scrabbled vainly for the knife at his waist.
With a savage yell, the Oneida raised his sword above his head and drove it down towards Tewanias’s throat. Tewanias rolled, felt the kiss of the blade as it ripped through the skin of his upper arm, heard the clang as the sword glanced off the rock beside his head. He slashed his knife towards his attacker’s thigh and heard an exhalation of pain as the blade parted the Oneida’s flesh. But the speed of his opponent’s reaction told him that he had inflicted only superficial damage. The Oneida twisted aside and slammed the butt of his carbine down towards Tewanias’s knife hand, trapping it against the rocks on the bed of the stream. As he raised the sword, his mouth split into a grin of triumph.
Pinned and unable to move his arm, his blood darkening the stream, Tewanias launched a kick towards the Oneida’s crotch. He saw the Oneida wince as his moccasined foot made contact, but he knew it had been a pitiful effort. Staring up at his opponent, at the murderous expression on the red-and-black face, he waited for the death blow to fall.
Savouring the moment, the Oneida drew back his sword, grinned again and thrust downwards.
And his right eye exploded.
The sword blade missed Tewanias’s throat by a hair’s breadth as the Oneida’s corpse slumped sideways, the smile still affixed. Released from the weight on his wrist, Tewanias pulled his arm free and stared in disbelief at the body draped across him and at the blood trickling from the ruined eye socket and skull. As the echo of the shot died away, he pushed the dead man from him and raised himself out of the water, blood dripping from his wounds.
Wy-att, he thought immediately.
Then he heard the bark. Thinking that the runner had not been alone, he reached for the dropped war club, his eyes searching the bank for the source of the sound. And then his eyes widened in surprise.
Above him on the bank was a large dog. Standing in front of the dog, feet in the water, gazing down at him with a questioning look in his blue-grey eyes was a slim, dark-haired boy holding a discharged army pistol.