The Shadows of God - J. Gregory Keyes [22]
“Oh, yes. Franklin told me about those. I have not seen one with my own eyes. But I think I shall. How many men do you have at the siege?”
“Five hundred men and fifty taloi.”
“Fifty taloi.” Five hundred men was a lot, considering he had only fifty-four. The taloi were automatons, made of alchemical stuff and inhabited by demons. At close range they could be dealt with, for the wizard Franklin had supplied him with a depneumifier—his men called it a devil gun—that could strip the demons from their artificial bodies. But the redcoats had learned that much and used the taloi as mobile artillery; and in that capacity they were still very much a danger.
“How many men do you suppose Nairne has?”
“I have guessed two hundred. But the women and even the children have been seen firing muskets.”
So Nairne probably had fewer actual soldiers than Mar thought.
“When will the amphibian boats arrive?”
Mar took a long, deep breath. “By morning,” he murmured.
“How many?”
“Four, each with fifty troops.”
“Two hundred more men. Seven hundred men, four gunboats, fifty taloi. Anything else?”
“No. Fort Marlborough would spare me no more.”
“Ah. So they hold the Altamaha sound. Thank you for that, too, Mar.”
I have fifty-four men, Oglethorpe thought. Then he smiled. Fifty-four men and an idea. He had won with less.
Red Shoes brushed his fingers along the drying stalks of the corn hedging the trail. He let his gaze wander up the breadth of the fields that dotted the small prairie to the forested hills beyond, where plumes of smoke coiled cloudward.
“I feel like the ghost of myself,” he told the woman by his side.
“Why?” she asked, her dark eyes turning this way and that, perhaps trying to see what he saw.
“Because I'm home. Home is the only place that can put flesh on the bones of memory. The smell is different, somehow, the light. It reminds me of who I was when I was five, and twelve. And before I left the last time. All my old selves, all dead men, following me as ghosts.”
She didn't comment on his recitation but focused on the pragmatic. “This is your village?”
“It is. Kowi Chito.”
“‘Big Panther'?” she translated. Choctaw was still a new language for her, this beautiful and formidable woman of the high plains who called herself Grief.
He shook his head. “Kowi also means ‘a distance.’ What the French call a league. We named the village that because it is a league to walk around it. At least, that's what they say now. My great-granduncle once told me it was a lie.”
“Why lie about the name of a town?”
“There is a place a few days nearer the rising sun. It is a town of the dead now, almost forgotten, covered in trees. I went there once to seek visions. But once, in the Ancient Times, it was the most powerful town in all the land. Larger than even the cities of the Europeans, perhaps. A place of great warriors and magic makers. The people bred their children to the spirits, and grew stronger still. Finally they became so proud that they neglected the sacred fire, the eye of Hashtali, whose other eye is the Sun. Some say they even tried to kill Hashtali. I don't know how much is true. I only know that most of them are dead now. What my uncle told me is that some of them didn't die but settled here, and these were the people of the Panther god. He said people are too timid to talk about that now.”
“Why?”
“The Panther people were sorcerers, powerful, terrible— wicked. That sort of thing runs in the blood. Our town is the chiefest in the Choctaw nation. Some might claim we made ourselves so with witchcraft.” He smiled sardonically.
“That story must be true,” Grief said softly, “for surely you must be the greatest sorcerer there ever was.”
“Hopaye, in my language,” he said. “Grief, my people can't know how great my power has become. Not right away. Maybe never. They remember me as a formidable shaman; and many were suspicious of me even then, because power can always be used for good or ill. If they knew I had the might of the Antler Serpent in my blood, they might try to kill me. If they kill