75

Wesley hit his stride with the invocation of Thadodaho. Any remaining mutterings were silenced. The council were cast back to nights by the fire - the faces of their grandmothers temporarily floating in the mind of each one.

“You recall the brave one who turned the heart of the warlord? Hiawatha. You recall what happened the first night he made the case for peace to him - how Hiawatha lost his first daughter. You recall the second time he asked the warlord for peace - how he lost his second. And the third?” He turned back to Frances, “your Catherine.”

Calum listened to the creek for a while as Wesley paused.

“Hiawatha made the case for peace to the warlord even as his daughters were ripped from him. Yet here we are, and I was the first one - in my heartbreak - to give mine up. For the sake of peace. Or so I told myself. But here we lost their mothers, and, believing it to be an act of violence from our neighbours, we sent our girls away. To keep peace by avoidance. We heard that our girls, too, were lost, having run away. I sensed the foulness of it, but - in that state I was in - I was no use to anyone. But now I hear from this brave one his story, and I know that any peace is over.”

Calum felt the eyes of the amphitheatre on him. He considered his orenda. His life-force. Could they see it? He planted his own gaze firmly forward, on Wesley.

“This boy’s father was killed. At the hands of his sister. Marked in the old ways. The boy found him, scalped. So here is my contention for the fire-keepers to debate. Whatever spirit was found in Thadodaho in ages past has returned again with nothing to offer us but violence. Who here will stand against this case?”