“My God, when was our last meal?” Lawrence shook his head. “Damned if I can recall. I could eat a bloody horse.” His eyes shot to his hosts and a mortified look crossed his face. “Er, I didn’t mean—”

Hawkwood smiled. “It’s all right, Major. I doubt that’s on the menu.”

Tewanias beckoned. A figure appeared. It was the old woman from before. Tewanias spoke to her softly. As she left, Tewanias turned back.

There was an awkward pause, as though each was waiting for one of the others to speak, a silence broken eventually by Lawrence, who enquired of Hawkwood, “How much have you told them?”

“Some of it. They know we’ve been trying to get to the border and why the Oneida wanted us dead.”

“The invasion?”

“Not that part, not yet.”

The old woman reappeared with a young girl by her side, slender and pretty, her eyes cast shyly down. Both carried wooden bowls and spoons, which they handed out wordlessly before slipping away as silently as they had arrived.

“Tesatská:hon, Roren.” Tewanias indicated the bowl in Lawrence’s hand and switched to English: “Eat. It is deer. The Kanien’kehá:ka do not eat horse.”

Lawrence reddened.

“Unless all the deer have been eaten,” Cageaga murmured under his breath.

But by then, neither Lawrence nor Hawkwood were listening.

Venison, horse or squirrel, Hawkwood wouldn’t have cared. He’d eaten all three at one time or another during his military service, as had Lawrence. Soldiers on the march weren’t particular when it came to foraging. If it could be skinned, spitted or stuffed in a pot, they’d eat it.

What mattered was that it was food and it was hot and quite possibly the best meal Hawkwood had eaten since stepping off Larkspur’s gang plank. The fact that it helped disguise the lingering taste of the tea didn’t hurt, either, while the rounded cornbread rolls served with each bowl proved a useful tool for mopping up the last drops of juice from the meat.

“By God, if I only had my pipe to hand, I’d die a happy man,” Lawrence said, as he set down his empty bowl. “My compliments, Chief Tewanias. That was as fine a stew as I’ve tasted.”

Hawkwood was about to tell Lawrence that he could dispense with Tewanias’s title when, to his amazement, Tewanias, after rummaging inside the pouch he carried beneath his cloak, produced two small clay pipes, each around six inches in length. With great solemnity he placed one of them in Lawrence’s palm.

Lawrence stared at the object in astonishment. “I’ll be damned!” He beamed as Tewanias handed over his tobacco pouch. “Sir, you are a gentleman after my own heart!”