“Oh, God of Our Fathers,

What is Man?

That thou toward him with hand so various,

or, might I say contraryous,

tempers thou providence with a course,

not evenly as one rules the angelic orders,

but inferior creatures mute,

irrational and brute…”

-Samson Agonistes, Milton

…

Sullen Savagery was heard in the voices raised in raven mockery upon the walls. Peter smiled in cruel resolve, feeling the cold calm of an inner hand bridle his physical being. The body that wanted to run, rage, bow or submit to take off the great weight of instantaneous peril, was harnessed like a horse by its master as Peter walked evenly towards the door, past the men grabbing weapons in confusion, having never disarmed, except for his rifle, which was held by Thirteen, who held the door with the other hand, “Master, there are three on the roof above, awaiting your back to feather.”

“Of course, Thirteen,” he agreed, having no doubt as to the prowess of his heathen enemy. Thirteen followed, covering his form with his broad back in the torchlight of the courtyard. Arrows thudded into the mailed back of the man, the chink of the mail giving, but not breaking, music to Peter’s ears. Peter turned, cocking, with an offhand shot that tore away the face of one painted devil, who pitched forward and fell over the door, before the crowd of men rushing out its portal.

He ducked back behind Thirteen, who was feathered with two more arrows, one in his leg mail and into the boot cuff, as Peter drew his pistol, rose, as Thirteen knelt, and shot a broad Yakima warchief in the guts. That man ran and dove at Peter, to be caught like a terrier-tossed rat between the hands of Thirteen, who broke that broad back over his knee. The third Yakima was drawing his arrow knock to chest, when Tory Ball knocked off his head with the blast of a double charged trade musket.

The men were spreading out seeking the ladders built into the wall as their fellows grappled hand to hand with Blackfeet warriors above.

Father was next to him, “Son, what say we let them in?”

Thirteen was now singing Saint Martial’s Hymn, of camping among the saints as he marched like a gargoyle towards the gate.

Father grinned, “I have the north wall, Son,” and rushed that way as that culvern swept the wall and the crew wrested with white-eyed black-faced figures in the torch light. Peter commanded, “Open gate!”

The enamel iron gate, which was being wrestled with by a dozen pair of hands, then swung outward, smashing numerous bodies against the west wall and flinging the others before the southwest post, where Breed let loose his blunderbuss to howls and cries.

Peter was up the south ladder, hearing Father snarling on the north wall and seeing with his right eye Thirteen being feathered like a pincushion with Blackfeet arrows as he sang through his brazen visor, not drawing his felling ax, but holding a grenade in his right hand and a match in his left, then tossing the greeting among the mob crowding the gate with an explosion that tossed feet across the snow and hands into the night.

As Peter reached the catwalk and crouched to load his pistol, he saw Thirteen cast his ax, splitting the breast bone of one broad form, and then roared like a lion as he charged, unarmed except for his armored form to punch and kick and knee the enemy.

A panting form leaped over the wall, an ax and knife in each hand, and Peter threw and knocked that square head in with the butt of his pistol, then unslung his rifle and clubbed the next one cresting the wall in the knee, breaking that leg and sending the savage back where he came.

Behind him, east towards the house, a Yakima medicine man landed like a cat, drew his scalping knife, and charged for Peter in a low crouch. Peter clubbed his rifle and feinted a swing to the head, which the man ducked, only to have the brass butt plate of Peter’s fine hunting rifle, clear the teeth from his mouth. Peter kicked the stunned man in the groin and off the wall, into the courtyard, where his neck snapped like corn set on the fire to pop.

A burning, searing pain ripped down his back. Peter named himself within, ‘Fool, you never mailed up, now Mother is doomed,’ but was able to turn and grab the hand that had aimed for a downward neck thrust but had ripped shirt and skin and muscle in a shoulder-to- hip rip cut. Peter grabbed the knife hand with both hands, smashed out those wide front teeth with his forehead, bulled the younger, thinner man against the wall, and drove his own knife up into those Blackfeet balls.

‘He is maybe thirteen years—oh well, off you go to hell.’

Peter heard a call within his head, echoing in his ready hand, and drew Aor in a blind, backhand slash in time to take the head off of the Blackfeet brave that charged him from the south. The headless body drove him back on the catwalk to his butt.

A warrior loomed above him with French trade ax held high to cleave in his head.

‘So I am about to be slain with discounted junk!’

Seeing each other upside down, it came as some surprise to both, when Aor sizzled up through the cods and guts of the warrior, to end his says in an agony of night, for Peter did not think to thrust. It felt more like the sword pulled his hands upward, his arms straightening more to keep a grip than to power a thrust..

Peter rose and saw dead behind him to the east, and Breed being scalped before him to the north. In anger he heaved that wonderful, fine, olden sword. He saw it fly, rather than as a cast knife does, as he had thrown it, but as a spear cast true seeks its target, transfixing the head of the warrior kneeling on Breeds back.

Peter ran low following that cast, then tripped as a cast club or ax took his right foot from him. Nearly pitching off the walk into the yard. A heavy tramp sounded behind him. Seeing Breed moaning and trying to rise under the body, Peter rolled to his back, drawing his dirk to fend off attack. Over him loomed a big broad man, a Frenchman, grinning through his red beard and bushy mustache as he drew a pistol to cock, sure of a Russian/English/Catholic/Orthodox kill, taking four hated birds with one slug.

‘Not like this,’ he prayed, half rising to throw the heavy dirk as the pistol rose, was cocked and leveled—a streak of steel and light passed over Peter’s left shoulder, severing the wide-eyed heretic’s [1] arm at the elbow. The man clutched at his stump in shock, looking at the hand and pistol which were neither there.

Aor, flipped, spun, rose, then hummed and lowered itself to the catwalk, where it pretended to stick point first. This was enough for the five Ree braves pouring over the wall, to stop in place, take fright, and clamor back down the steely-vine knit walls of ivory that had been so easy for them to scale as a consequence of their enchantment against hellish beings.

‘So Muslim, heathen and heretic are not of hell, merely destined there.’

The Frenchman was stunned in awe, trying to press his stump into his buckskins to stem the flow of blood which did not come, for the heat of Aor had sealed the wound. The man knelt and prayed, in slurry-scented English, “Please, Boss, a clean death by yer hand—not my soul to take by that devil blade?”

Knowing better than to raise his head and eat an arrow, Peter knelt before his enemy to the sounds of Father cursing like the pirate he once was at the man he threw back over the wall, and of Thirteen chanting the Fourth Jest of Roland’s Song as he snapped a neck below and of the women in the house firing a volley at the savages on the west wall, some of whom groaned and howled.

“Frenchy Hugo [2], I reckon the Blackfeet are spent, call off yer Ree and I will show mercy.”

The man screamed in Ree, words that included a warning of deviltry. A chorus of perhaps twenty voices, rose in a panic, enough to have finished the job—‘No, not with Thirteen down there and Aor up here.’

“Mercy, Boss—a low pemicen hunter, but bossed to lead me wife’s men in support of Montreal’s Rule. I’m yer man, now, by mercy right—names Brule Tee.”

Thirteen was singing like a church bell, chasing the savages down the mountain with nothing but his rendition of the last charge of Archbishop Turpin.

“By Christ on the Cross, Boss, what manner o’ man is that, piled the dozen best Blackfeet in creation at the door o’ this weird white station?”

Now trusting to providence, and the candid nature of his captive, suddenly confident he would not eat an arrow, Peter stood to have a sizzling arrow crease his scalp and shear off locks of his long brown hair. This caused him to laugh and thrust his dirk through the throat of Brule Tee, who he suspected of having rused him up.

“Aor,” snarled he, “bring the hand—I mean the entire shooter, alive—that sent that arrow at me.”

The sword was off like a dart into the dark, making a sound like steel rasping from brazen sheath. The clouds cleared to permit the moon to shine, fuller than it should be this close to Christmas, illuminating a bloody white mess, dozens of bodies, to include half their men dead or disabled, and piles of Blackfeet and Ree with a garnish of Yakima.

Father called out, “If ye live, call yer name.”

“Ben, Master.”

“Esch, Boss.”

“Breed, Master,” vomited the runt.

“Rudy Clune, Ball’s man,” groaned a dazed voice.

“Farve, Boss—good en well hurt,” he grunted from above the gate next to Breed.

“Lewis, formerly Overseer Ball, Sir.”

“Tory Ball, Lord, broke hand is all.”

Father bellowed, “Tory Ball, you are Station Master of Grim Hall. Hold this place in my name and my eldest daughter, once of age, ‘ill be your dame.”

Mother could be herd gasping, at the carnage or the promise of her daughter, one could not discern, in the doorway of the court as all of the women came out to tend the wounded.

Father heaved a big man off the wall, “An Injun should not be so fat—its unnatural as the sea swallowing Ivanstar!”

…

Notes

-1. The heretics who follow the Antipope of Montreal and belive that Christ came to Canada in Antiquity and that every soul might address God and Christ directly without the guidance of clergy.

-2. Heretic, after one Victor Hugo, who proposed various material heresies, such as flying men, and men sailing under sea like pagan gods.

…

This ends the open posting of Slave.

The Third Coil, Chapters 11 thru 16, will be available in January 2026 in the Graphomaniac Archive #2.