Diana Gabaldon · @Writer_DG
18th Aug 2013 from TwitLonger
#DailyLines #MOBY #WrittenINMyOWNHeartsBLOOD #Book8 #IndianScouts #Mohawk
He felt them before he saw them. The sense of a hunting animal, lying concealed in the wood, waiting for prey to come down to drink. He turned his horse sharply and rode along the creek-bank, watching the trees on the other side.
Movement, a horse’s head tossing against flies. A glimpse of a face—faces—painted, like his own.
A thrill of alarm shot up his spine and instinct flattened him against the horse’s neck, as the arrow whizzed over his head. It stuck, quivering, in a nearby sycamore.
He straightened, his own bow in hand, nocked an arrow in the same movement and sent it back, aiming blind for the spot where he’d seen them. The arrow shredded leaves as it went, but struck nothing—he hadn’t expected it to.
“Mohawk!” came a derisory shout from the other side, and a few words in a language he didn’t understand, but whose intended meaning was clear enough. He made a very Scottish gesture, whose meaning was also clear, and left them laughing.
He paused to yank the arrow out of the sycamore. Fletched with a yaffle’s tail feathers, but not a pattern he knew. Whatever they’d been speaking wasn’t an Algonkian tongue. Might be something northern like Assiniboine—he’d know, if he got a clear look at them—but might equally be something from nearer to hand.
Very likely working for the British army, though. He kent most of the Indian scouts presently with the rebels. And while they hadn’t been trying to kill him—they could have done so, easily, if they’d really wanted to—this was rougher teasing than might be expected. Perhaps only because they’d recognized him for what he was.
Mohawk! To an English speaker, it was just easier to say than “Kahnyen’kehaka.” To any of the tribes who lived within knowledge of the Kahnyen’kehaka, it was either a word to scare children with or a calculated insult. “Man-eater,” it meant, for the Kahnyen’kehaka were known to roast their enemies alive, and devour the flesh.
Ian had never seen such a thing—but he knew men—old men—who had. And a few who had done it, too, and would tell you about it with pleasure. He didn’t care to think about it. It brought back much too vividly the night the priest had died in Snaketown, mutilated and burned alive—the night that had inadvertently taken Ian from his family and made him a Mohawk.
The bridge lay upstream, perhaps sixty yards from where he was. There were green-coated soldiers on the far side, and he could smell the sulfur of their slow-match on the heavy air. Grenadiers.
He wheeled his pony and headed back, to find someone to tell.