Chapter 4: The Sachem Nannakussi

I was roused from a deep and pleasant sleep early in a rainy morning. I was dreaming, I forget of what, but I remember that it was pleasant. I left the dream behind and I found myself facing the Wizard Palégos. He was my sachem, the Eye of His Excellency, the Procurator of the Province of Agus, Count Rægan of Sustan.

“Ist thy band ready to march, Nannakussi?” the wizard demanded without even a “How are you?” as I rubbed the sleep from my eyes. The room was dim. I could barely see that there was someone there. I knew him by his voice. Around us others slept, neither seeing nor hearing what we said.

“Aye, Lord, at first light,” I told him. It was not the first time I had been called thus. There were covens to be found at nearly every crossroads in the province. Most were of no consequence, but because I had Power within me, I was often the one he called upon to control them when they got out of hand. I had been lucky or unlucky enough to have been born a Wit.

“How long for thee to reach Sandy Isle?” he demanded, speaking quickly. Palégos was a soft voiced man, but I knew him to be ruthless when it was called for. I had never heard him sound nervous before.

“If we leave with ye sun we can arrive by noon,” I told him after reflecting for a moment. “Perhaps a little after.” From our post on the north tip of Assateague Island, which was ours in the summer, it was about twenty Imperial miles. Traveling by foot, my troop traveled at four thousand paces per hour, or a thousand per quarter. If we had horses it would have been faster, but only I, as war sachem, had one.

“Have you supplies for three days’ operation?” he demanded.

“Aye,” I replied, trying not to sound indignant. Of course we had supplies for three days, and more. In truth, in this area we could remain in the field permanently if need be. I was remiss in my duty were it not so.

“Good. Ye coven needeth destroyed, Nannakussi. None must escape. All must die.”

“Lord?” I asked, surprised.

“They have tried to summon a demon, Nannakussi. They wooed the High Demon Asmodeus, the Storm Fiend, God of Rage. They failed, I believe, though still I cannot say for sure. If they succeeded, or if next time they succeed, all are in mortal danger!”

“How many are there in this rogue coven?” I asked. A demon loose in the land? Were they all insane? And Palégos only believed they had failed? Palégos was known to see all!

“‘Tis a single inner coven,” he assured me. “Only Seven. The rest matter not.”

“Hast thou names?” I asked, forgetting myself and slipping into informal speech.

“Ye maiden’s name is Nevianne,” he told me, ignoring my slip. “Leofgif, Mildrith, Blædswith, Ælflæda, Eadgyth, and Sigeflæd.”

“I will deal with the matter, lord!” I assured him. I knew there wouldn’t be more. Covens, at least the inner circle, were always seven. The outer circle, from which the inner was replenished, were either thirteen or nineteen, but they were students of little power and not initiated.

I spent the next hour and a half getting my troop ready to leave. Winke-lìntà-mëwakàn, my woman – her name means “Happiness” in my language, and she was named aptly – helped with my supplies, filling my travel gear, finding my new moccasins and winding them to my legs. She made our prayers to Nanapush to forgive Palégos’ wrath and my agency in its execution. Chulëntët, my angelic Little Bird (she was four) brought me tobacco so I would have luck and a clear mind, and I started my day with smoke. My knife and my sword were sharp and polished; I’d no desire to cause the coven members undue pain. My bow strings were dry and protected, and my bow had a loose strap to ride comfortably on my back. Winke fed me from the common pot, and my troop followed me from the longhouse and into the rain. The sun was peeping over the horizon and we began our first thousand paces north.

As we tramped along the sandy trail I worried. I had the Wit, as Palégos knew. That and proximity were why he had picked me for the task and not my rival, Merekowan, or some brainless Susquehannock bully boy. Palégos saw all. Why hadn’t he seen the maiden fail? How could he not? It was a point for me to worry on. If she had not failed, would we find a trail of destruction and death already awaiting us?

The Wit showed me the crossroads, its handful of huts clustered around its ugly, falling down wooden Temple. It was raining there, just as it was drenching us here. Dreary it looked. I peered hard, using all the Wit that I possessed, and still saw nothing, merely a backward hamlet. I saw no danger to myself or to my loved ones, though I could see ahead that I would have a splitting headache that would last for days. I didn’t know what that would be from; all the details around it were hazed.

I saw no corpses. From a distance I saw the Cackling Crone, the Wise Woman, the Cheerful Wanton, the Chaste Wife, the Patient Teacher and the Guardian Wit. She saw me looking and ran to tell the others we were on our way.

So much for the element of surprise. I called myself a fool and a damned fool for giving us away. Never, never search out the Seeress.

Yet the Maiden was still hidden from me. I couldn’t like that. She was key. The rest of the coven could drop dead and we would still be in mortal danger. Either she no longer existed, which implied a very old Druidical approach to the Sacrifice, or...

Or the Demon had consumed her. That would be very bad for all of us. I had never met a demon. Someone is foolish enough to call one up perhaps every hundred years or so. I understood they didn’t only feed once and then disappear.

Still, it wasn’t the first rogue coven we had dealt with. Usually they were mild enough. They cured disease, cleared water, sometimes spoke with the dead or the living, brought fish or game, created love or indifference, brought or dispersed rain, all that sort of routine thing. If they occasionally combined a wax doll with hair or nail parings and gave it a poke, usually nothing serious came of it. If they destroyed crops, they destroyed only half, leaving the Emperor’s portion and seed. If they went out of bounds they met our troop.

I finished my count and Sasusanan, my second, took up his, the simple rhythmic count from one to one thousand, marking off each quarter hour of travel. A thousand paces later Okonikon took the duty. I listened with half an ear as the Hundreds went past and I worried. I decided I should cast runes when we stopped, despite the time it would consume.

Nevianne

My Lord Asmodeus tried to describe his Realm to me, but I confess I could understand little of what he said. First, his speech was difficult for me to follow. He told me that our Saxon dialect that we spoke in the province of Agus had been drifting apart from his, and his from ours, for at least five hundred years. Well I could believe it. If the Latin dialects spoken in Dacia and Carthage were mutually unintelligible, then why should two Saxon dialects be not? I kept having to ask him to speak more slowly, or to explain what a word meant. Many words, in fact.