Eye of the Raven Read Online Free

grounds.
    Small artillery pieces were mounted on swivels along the walls, sentries stationed at each corner. Opposite him men in artillery blue and infantry red wandered in and out of a second long building with several doors, all of the men wearing the small brass gorgets over their breasts that were the sign of rank in the British army. A handful of Indians, the Stockbridge scouts often used by the army, squatted beside a painted animal skin, tossing the white pebbles used in their games of chance. A solitary brave, wearing his hair in the narrow scalplock favored by the Iroquois, sat under a chestnut, slotting small iron arrowheads onto newly fletched shafts. Squads of infantry drilled to the sharp, impatient commands of their sergeants. All around him was an atmosphere of order, discipline, and fear. Although with the fall of Quebec the tide in the bloody war had turned at last in the favor of the British, the fighting was far from over in the wilderness.
    "It isn't their knowledge of the spheres as such that impresses me most," came a refined voice from beside him, "it's that they possess it so intuitively."
    Duncan turned to see a well-dressed man sitting on a keg by the wall of the building, gazing at the solitary Iroquois. "I'm sorry?"
    "The aborigines. All the secrets of the natural world reside within them, yet they express their wisdom not through their words but through their actions. Their knowledge of natural philosophy is instinctive. We barbarians have to have it pounded into our skulls."
    The extraordinary words came from an extraordinary-looking man. The stranger was in his midthirties, perhaps ten years older than Duncan. Over a fine linen shirt he wore a waistcoat in whose pockets hung the fobs of not one but two pocket watches. His long brown hair was tied at the back Indian fashion, with a strip of the dyed eelskin used by the river tribes for decoration. Around his neck hung both a small brass snuff box and an amulet wrapped in what looked like mink fur. His hands were unadorned but for a ring of oak leaves tattooed around one wrist like a bracelet. Over his woolen britches was a pair of leggings like those worn by rangers, though his were of doeskin decorated at the top with beadwork. On his feet were the heavy leather shoes worn by soldiers.
    "I expressed my admiration for the archery skills of that bronzed Shawnee gladiator this morning as he was casually shooting squirrels out of a high oak. He explained that the force was in the wood of his bow and the accuracy in the lines of the shaft, that all he does is say a prayer to the spirits that loaned him the power of the wood, then point. A more perfect scientific explanation I could not expect from any number of learned professors." He looked up with a bright, curious expression at Duncan. "I am composing algebraic equations that explain the force of the arrow," he declared, tapping a linen bag that hung over his shoulder. "I could show you if-"
    He was interrupted by a stocky man in an apron who briefly appeared in the doorway behind them to toss him a plug of tobacco with a quick utterance of thanks.
    The stranger glanced at Duncan self-consciously. "Everyone's a friend when you pay off your debts."
    "Haudenosaunee," Duncan said.
    "Sir?"
    "Not Shawnee. He is of the Haudenosaunee. It means people of the longhouse."
    The man's eyes went round with excitement. "The Iroquois! The noble empire of the north! I have journals from my dialogues with the Lenni-Lenape, the Susquehannocks, the Shawnee, the Stockbridge, all but a prelude for studying the Iroquois. My studies inexorably lead me toward the heart of their inner kingdom. Might you be an emissary of sorts? Is it true they have ten words for bear, depending on the age?"
    Duncan might have found himself grinning at the stranger's odd combination of zeal, intellect, and naivete were it not for his worry for Conawago. "I seek an old Indian brought in today, under arrest." He paused as he saw a new