At the Queen_s command

"I reckon we best do something about that."

Setting a pace that had more to do with caution than Owen's limp, they closed in on the fallen tree. Kamiskwa ranged out far on the right flank and circled around into the trees. Owen and Nathaniel, advancing and covering each other, moved in more directly. It took them the better part of an hour to reach the fallen tree.

Owen stared down at the body of the man behind the tree. "Nice shot." The bullet had drilled through dirty leathers halfway between breastbone and navel.

Nathaniel crouched, turned the man's face this way and that. The dead man hadn't shaved in a while and his ears looked odd. So did his nose.

Owen frowned. "What happened to his face?"

"Not sure. Cain't figure why he has a glove on his left hand neither." Nathaniel stood and waved Kamiskwa over. "He look familiar?"

The Altashee nodded. "Pierre Ilsavont."

Owen leaned back on the fallen log. "You know him?"

"He cheats at cards. The shot that hit you was the best shot he ever made." Woods picked up the man's musket. "Fancy gun. New. Must have stole it. Ain't no way he bought it."

"Let me have a look." Owen caught the musket and tipped it up to look at the butt plate. "Arondel et fils, Feris, 1762. Made last year. Maybe your man was lucky."

"He'd have to be really lucky."

"How so?"

"Winter of 1761 came hard in these parts." Nathaniel nodded toward the body. "That's what's wrong with his face. Frostbite. See, Pierre here got drunk. He walked out into a freezing blizzard. Got hisself dead. Spring of '62 Kamiskwa and I wandered into the churchyard in Hattersburg and peed on his grave."

"Are you sure that's him?"

Woods shrugged. "Never did see him planted. And he died with lots of debts owing. Coulda been he figured himself better off pretend-dead and just laid low."

Kamiskwa spat at the body. " Wendigo." He walked away and started to gather dead wood into a small pile.

"What did he say?"

" Wendigo. The Shedashee have this legend. Cannibal comes among them, kills and eats them. Pure evil, like a spirit, takes them over. It's supposed to do that during the winter, when food is scarce. He reckons Pierre was dead and the wendigo spirit brought him back."

Owen raised an eyebrow. "You believe this?"

"Don't know what I'm believing about Pierre here. Still and all, that same winter, Kamiskwa and me went to Trading Post Number Twenty-three up Queensland. Small place, palisade fence, main gate open, store open, snow drifted in. Five men in there, dead, froze-solid, half-eaten."

Nathaniel looked down, his brows furrowed. "Most folks think it was a bear. Trapper up that way got a bear come spring, said he found a ring in the stomach. That was good enough for most folks.

"But there weren't no bear tracks or scratches at Twenty-three. Weren't no bear awake then. Weren't no hands gnawed off."

He toed the corpse. "I ain't saying it was Pierre here. Like as not it weren't. Don't know what it was. But I am willing to believe there is evil in the world, evil what will make a man crazy. If they want to call it wendigo, that's good enough for me."

Part of Owen wanted to dismiss the wendigo as superstitious nonsense, but he'd seen things on the Continent that had driven men mad. He recalled having to fetch an officer out of the wine cellar of a chateau. The man had just packed himself into a corner and sat there weeping in the dark. He wasn't drunk; he was just seeing ghosts. That was one kind of madness, and Owen had seen the other, too, the bloodlust that never could be sated.

Wendigo is as good an explanation as any.

"What do we do?"

"Grab an ankle." Nathaniel set his rifle down, and took hold of one leg. "We're going to drag him over to that pile of wood, light it up, and burn the wendigo out of him."

They didn't have enough time to burn the body entirely since they wanted to be well away from the spot before nightfall. Kamiskwa said that only the head needed to be burned. Nathaniel produced a stone knife and took the head off a bit more efficiently than made Owen comfortable.

They left the Ungarakii bodies where they lay, but stripped them of all weapons. They also cut off knotted bracelets, one of which each warrior wore. Each seemed to Owen to be of a different style, woven together out of a variety of colored threads and what looked to be hair.

Kamiskwa let a finger bump along a series of knots. "The patterns indicate his family, clan, and societies. The colors are events. Blue for birth, red for battle, black for ceremonies. The hair is from men he has killed."

Nathaniel plucked one from Kamiskwa's hand and measured its thickness against his own thumb. "Two inches, maybe three. That's worth a crown."

"A bounty?"

"That's right, Captain Strake. We get to Hattersburg and the six we collected here means we can live fancy for a while."

"I wasn't aware Her Majesty's Government…"