The Launch of the Ravens

Limited Time Availability: Another free excerpt from my novel, Restive Souls

April 27 is International Crow and Raven Appreciation Day. Let’s celebrate!

Restive Souls is an alternative history novel in which the Brits win what in our timeline is called the Revolutionary War, and emancipate North American slaves in the wake of the colonial defeat. Still in final edits, so there may be goofs, evil dangling modifiers, and other shenanigans.

This part of the novel takes place in Savannah, a stubborn holdout governed by a man named Elliot Fae, who has created a fiefdom and managed to retain the last slaveholding outpost in the land. In the opening scene, mercenaries have freed some of the slaves.

“Bolo’s Notes” are annotations provided by the fictional historian who introduces major portions of the novel or adds context to the narrative.

This excerpt will only be available for a limited time. Welcome to the land of the disappearing excerpt.

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Excerpt from Part II of Restive Souls: The Story of the Phalaris Bull (1820)

16

Nocona had told the men found in the longhouses that they were free, but they seemed confused. Some of them knelt to pray. Others wandered aimlessly. Nocona’s Savior Warriors had rounded up the men who had poured out of the longhouse. The newly freed men stood, or knelt, or sat in a small crowd surrounded by Nocona’s men and their horses. One of them, who said his name was Lomboi, asked about a group called The Night Patrol.

The man’s clothes were ragged. His short, black, tightly curled hair was patchy and unhealthy. Nocona, wondering about lice, didn’t want the man getting too close to him. The man standing next to him looked like he should own an ink well and a pen. He didn’t have the scars of hard labor that the man named Lomboi had. He was short and had the approximate body shape of a large brown ball, skin softer than a baby’s, and a look inside his eyes that Nocona thought testified to a life sorted out in an aristocrat’s bathtub.

He realized, for the first time in his life, that not all men were meant to be warriors, that there may come a time when some men would be sequestered from mighty warriors and work with numbers or the design of a city, or perhaps even commit to lives of song and dance. He didn’t know what it was about this man next to Lomboi that made him think those thoughts.

He thought next of the coward Pahayoko, who had lived up to his name through his great love for the women of the clan, but with a heart too soft for the Kwahadi life. Pahayoko was a man who understood numbers so well that most of his kin thought he was crazy. He would spend hours making bizarre calculations about the movement of the moon across the sky, tracking its path on a strange device near his wife’s buffalo skin tanning operation, which had expanded in recent years into a series of longhouses that served congregational business in Nacogdoches, a city that had been taken by Comancheria when Nocona was helping the father of Puhihwitsikwasʉ, Waakakwasi, capture San Antonio from the Mexicans.

Bolo’s Notes

Puhihwitsikwasʉ, known to Texan Anglos as Iron Horse, was the first Paraivo (head of state) of a united Comanche nation, known primarily as Comancheria, but sometimes as the Comanche Empire. Legend had it that Puhihwitsikwasʉ could use his mouth to blow bullets away from his body as they approached. Opposing Mexican and Spanish generals believed the legend and considered Puhihwitsikwasʉ an impossibly difficult and fearsome foe. In 1815, Puhihwitsikwasʉ, on a diplomatic mission to Charleston, presented a Spanish-made chain mail to Ecclesiastical Tribune Hesed Williamson that Puhihwitsikwasʉ said he wore in battles against the Mexicans and Spanish during the Comancheria Conquest.

During those years, Nocona couldn’t understand why any Kwahadi would look for any purpose off the horse. He forced Pahayoko to join his troupe on a hunt for Apache infidels, who had openly rebelled against God by burning churches and attacking congregational headquarters on the Comancheria frontier.

Pahayoko didn’t fare well. During a bitter fight in the West Texas plains against Llanero Apaches, Nocona watched as Pahayoko faced a warrior. Both had fallen off their horses. The Llanero was quick to jump to his feet, brandishing a knife. He waited for Pahayoko to get to his own feet. Pahayoko, however, merely stared at his opponent as he remained curled on the ground, feigning pain.

Nocona was racing toward them but stopped his horse about twenty feet away, mesmerized by the interactions between them. He aimed his Ferguson toward the confrontation.

The Llanero warrior jumped up and down twice as he looked down at Pahayoko, yelling, “Dao Go Te' doo Hondah!” or, “It is good we meet, and welcome!” Pahayoko remained curled on the ground, unable to react. Nocona called on him to stand up and fight, but instead, Pahayoko began to sob. That was too much for the Llanero warrior to bear. As he left his feet, his body seemed to trail his arm, which became a spear as it lunged toward the prone Pahayoko, quickly slicing his throat. The Llanero man screamed at Pahayoko for refusing to fight as blood emptied into the dusty ground around him.

Nocona watched as the man then stared at him. Nocona lowered his weapon and said as best he could in the Llanero’s Athabaskan language, “You fought with honor. Do not be angry with the man’s spirit. It is my head where you should bury your hatchet. I should not have brought the man to you in this way.” He didn’t know if he was speaking the man’s language correctly. As soon as he said the words, he worried that he had said something such as, “I will shoot your dog and your mother, too,” but the man bowed and turned his back on Nocona, walked back to his horse, and rode away.

The battle continued, but their battle had ended. Nocona even encountered the man once more during a horse skirmish an hour or so later when the man nodded again, raised a fist into the air, then turned his attention to another Kwahadi warrior.

After that day, Nocona changed the paints on his face. He repainted the white paint on one side of his face red to honor both Pahayoko’s cowardice and his foolish attempts to turn a coward into a warrior. He added a geometric tattoo line to the blue side of his face, already busy with numerous others, to represent the tracking of the moon, also in honor of Pahayoko. He added another tattoo, consisting of a thinly drawn representation of a fist, on the red side of his face, to represent the honor of the Llanero man who had killed Pahayoko.

But until seeing the little round man next to Lomboi Cutter, he had always considered Pahayoko an anomaly. A freak of nature. All Kwahadi, he had thought, must be warriors. It was their singular purpose. He had always felt remorse over what happened to Pahayoko. But why? Now he knew. Some men, like women, needed protection. Without even knowing the man in front of him, he wanted to take him by the shoulders and pledge protection to him. It was a strange feeling.

Nocona turned his attention to Lomboi. “This Night Patrol you speak of. It is weak. We have eliminated many of them already in a short time. You will see more of them die if you join us.” He looked at the man next to Lomboi. “He should stay here.”

“Where are you going?” asked the round man.

“To Savannah,” Nocona answered.

The round man smiled broadly. “I told you,” he said, striking Lomboi on the shoulder.

“Yes, you did,” Lomboi smiled back. Lomboi looked at Nocona. “He predicted this. He said you were coming.”

“He speaks to the great spirit?” asked Nocona.

“He’s just an architect,” said Lomboi. “But he is from a congregation. Everyone in a congregation speaks to the great spirit.”

“I hail from the Cejita de Los Comancheros Congregation. I bow to you in Christ’s name.” Nocona jumped off his horse and bowed.

“Are you from the Union?” asked the round man.

“I am from far away. West, from the great plains of a land you’ve never seen. We are allies with the Carolina Union. Mostly because,” Nocona smiled, “they pay us well.”

The round man sized up Nocona. “You are a Comanche?”

“I am Comanche in the same way you are a human. It is a broad grouping. But if it helps you understand, you may consider me Comanche. My name is Nocona. These are my fellow Kwahadi warriors. We are savior warriors who free the lands from those who taint the word of God.”

“I am Kolo Opala,” said the round man.

“And you are an architect. I have never heard of those people. Are the architects from the slave nest across the wide waters?”

“No no. That is my profession. I built a church. A cathedral, I guess you could call it. The Methodist Episcopal Praise House in Charleston.”

“I have been told of this great building by the diplomats who have been to Charleston. You built this yourself? Are you a sorcerer?”

Kolo smiled. “No, I drew the plans. On paper. And instructed others how to build.”

“You were a commander of a builder’s army then.”

“Well, yes, as it were.”

“I have found that all good leaders of men possess the same qualities. How many here among you are willing to fight?”

Kolo looked at Lomboi. Lomboi shrugged his shoulders. “Now?” Lomboi asked.

“This is how your Carolina Union won its way from the Anglos. You won a victory, freed captives, turned them into an army, and moved on to the next subjugated enclave. Is this not so?”

Lomboi looked at his bedraggled brethren. “I don’t know how much fight any of us have within us. We have not had a good meal in half a year.”

“If you can fight your way into Savannah, you can eat heartily there,” said Nocona. By this time, some of Nocona’s men had begun treating a few minor wounds on some of the men who had emerged from the longhouses.

“We can fight,” said Kolo. “I know how to handle a Ferguson. But we have no weapons.”

“Can you fire a flintlock? We have looted several, if you can handle them.”

“I have never fired a flintlock or a Ferguson,” said Lomboi. “All I’ve done is work the fields.”

“I have never fired a muzzle-loaded weapon,” confessed Kolo quietly.

Nocona looked around. This would not do. “Ask your men and women here. Some here surely have experience with gunpowder weaponry. Or perhaps the bow and arrow. We can provide these as well.”

“I can do this,” said Lomboi. He touched Kolo’s shoulder and began to walk around the camp, conferring quickly with the men and women in the newly freed group.

Nocona was fascinated by Kolo. He was soft spoken, with soft hands, even a soft face, but Nocona sensed a determination in him. And he could fire a gun. He thought that if Kolo were to fall off a horse and find himself challenged by another man, he’d respond with his best parry, even if it was a fruitless endeavor. He would not be Pahayoko.

“Your friend says you predicted my arrival. How so?” asked Nocona.

Kolo shook his head. “I didn’t really predict it. I was captured only a fortnight ago. The man who runs Savannah’s congregation has been staging raiding parties as far north as waterways just south of Charleston. Capturing rice field workers working the rivers and creeks in the lower country there. I was visiting my brother, a field hand in the rice delta. He has a grand home that he shares with several others. It had been a plantation home, but it was confiscated after the Colonial Rebellion. A beautiful piece of architecture, I must admit. Europeans are evil, but they know how to design grand homes. Now they are our homes. We built them, after all.”

“And what of your brother?”

“They only got me. I had strayed off congregational lands some, despite warnings, which I chose not to believe. To look at two absurdly immense magnolia trees. It was an expensive viewing, I must say.”

“The Union has been taking a lazy approach to this scourge in the Savannah River valley. We are here to rectify that mistake on their behalf.”

“Have they no militia? No army?”

“They have a great navy. Their army is weak. They rely on their congregations for militia, and these militia are unwilling to do much more than defend their parish.”

“The congregation I am a part of. It was said that they would send militia to Savannah to fight.”

Nocona shook his head. “We are paid by a congregation from Philadelphia. A Methodist congregation, I think. We are in truth, not paid by the Union itself.”

“You are mercenaries.”

“That is fair to say. But we would never work for heathens like this Savannah slave-holding warlord. The Kwahadi believe that the Carolina Union best represents the future of your East Coast. Anglos cannot be trusted with as much as an apple seed on their fingertips. Comancheria is a great empire. We can do much business with the Carolina Union. The New England Federation? Not so much.” Nocona sniffed loudly, annoyed to even be thinking of the New England Federation, even though it was no longer dominated by Anglos.

As if on cue, Kolo said, “There is a rumor that the leader of the Kedash Lost Nations Congregation, Sojourner Truth in New York City, wishes to lead New York City into the Carolina Union.”

“There are many stories of this Sojourner Truth in the plains. It is said she has seen visions since the very day she was born.”

Kolo nodded. “She is famous. And young. Just barely in her twenties and already a tribune.”

“But New York City alone? Surely the British will not allow such a secession.”

“Philadelphia has joined. And Baltimore joined soon after.”

Nocona knew of Philadelphia and its exit from the New England Federation in 1812. But he had also understood it as an event much appreciated by the Anglos and Germans and other Europeans of the Federation. Philadelphia was an African city. As was Baltimore. He wondered if Europeans were preparing to settle for a separate but agrarian society. If the Europeans living in the Americas hoped for a strategy of fleeing the cities for life and dominance in the countryside, they were sorely mistaken, he thought.

Nocona noticed that Kolo was staring at him without speaking. Finally, Kolo asked, “You have a congregation? In Comancheria?”

“That is amusing. Even savages think we are savages,” Nocona laughed. “That is the convincing way of the Anglo, who spread disinformation like butter on hot bread.”

“I am sorry. I did not mean any disrespect. I am surprised that congregational ways could have spread so far west so soon. That is all. My comment was not meant as a cultural statement.”

“A cultural statement. What an interesting way you have with words. You have received a formal education in the white man’s world?” Nocona wasn’t impressed by that. It would be like learning how to pray from the church of Hades.

“No. I learned architectural drawing from a mentor, a freed slave in Charleston. After that, I studied some at a small congregational university in Charleston. I didn’t receive a degree, but I learned much. It was a university administered by the Afriker community in Charleston, but there were some European teachers there. Out of necessity, I’m afraid. But they were sympathetic to our causes.”

“Hmph,” said Nocona. He had met few Anglos sympathetic to the cause of anything but their desire to control the continent. A few Germans were said to be migrating to Texas, but they seemed the same to him. Interested only in conquest and extracting anything of value from the soil.

“There is also an impressive Tsărăgĭ university north of Charleston.”

“And do they also teach the white man’s ways? Seems an invasion of a different sort.”

“No, you don’t understand,” Kolo said.

Nocona thought he understood well enough, and suddenly felt the desire to wrap a cowhide strap across the man’s mouth.

But Kolo continued. “The white man is here to stay. We must become practiced in his ways of industry, or he will use his industry to subjugate us. We must master it and become even more proficient at it than he. The Carolina Union navy has begun building metal ships that can successfully do battle with three European frigates simultaneously, without one battle scar.”

Nocona didn’t know anything about naval ships. “Battle scars are honorable,” he said.

“Not if they sink you,” replied Kolo.

“Perhaps the Union should consider using its formidable Navy to turn away Europeans attempting to land on these shores to subjugate us with their industry,” said Nocona.

“They don’t sense that need methinks. Europeans wishing to move to the newfound lands have begun to favor the far southern reaches. The vast continental lands south of Mexico.”

Bolo’s Notes

Discouraged by the demographics in the northern Americas, a massive wave of European immigration ultimately resulted in The Argentine Confederation, a southern power that eventually controlled all South America aside from Brazil and the Spanish speaking nations north of Peru and Brazil.

The immigration was fueled in large part by huge land purchases by the British banking firm Barings and Hope & Company, as well as the German Berenberg Bank. This led to an influx of European industrial titans and a hugely successful wheat export trade.

There is to this day a continuing cold war between the United States and its ally Brazil aligned against The Argentine Confederation, mostly because of the Argentine Confederation’s history of brutality against Inca populations in its territories and a continuing fascist regime that has led to the decimation of First Settler populations in the Southeast portions of the country. Much of the cold war is fought through proxy rebellions in the mountainous Chilean and Peruvian provinces on behalf of the United States, and through proxy rebellions on behalf of Argentina against the U.S. ally, The Haitian Federated Archipelago in the Caribbean.

Nocona knew nothing of these lands.

Kolo continued. “If anything, I think the leaders of the country feel like they need some measure of European immigration in order to integrate their knowledge of industrial processes.”

“Mr. Kolo, you are now making me ill and faint. Let us table this discussion for another time. Perhaps after both our deaths and at the dinner table of the angels.”

Kolo smiled at that and bowed. “As you wish, of course.”

Nocona liked this man. He had a grace about him that Lomboi seemed to lack. But Lomboi had suffered greatly, Nocona thought. He felt empathy for both men.

Lomboi returned with a head count of potential soldiers. It accounted for nearly half the men, and a fair measure of women who had been gathered from another camp, which surprised Nocona. Women typically stayed behind during wartime in his culture, but he didn’t doubt their ability to fight when called upon. Some Comanche clans were known to have powerful female warriors.

“That is enough. Then you shall all join us on our march to Savannah. It will be unsafe for us to leave those who cannot fight with us. We have enough knives among us to distribute to everyone who is not soldiering. If the worst happens, they will be able to fight to their death, and hopefully leave long gashes for their enemies to cherish in honor of battle.”

17

Adwoa Inlight Asana Abuakwa was feeling old. She had buried her husband a few days prior—after, it seemed to her, having just met him. They had been married twenty-five years, but that span seemed so much shorter now. She had always considered herself fortunate in finding an Ashanti man from the Aduana clan. Finding someone from a similar background was a near miracle given the uncertainty of Afriker ancestry. Many people didn’t even know their birthday, much less where they were from with any precision.

Adwoa had found a home in a community on All Saints Congregation property in Charleston with dozens of other Ashanti. But the path of her life had been laid down when the Tsărăgĭ priestess Ahyoka was murdered in front of her. Adwoa had always been known for her bayi. The events of those days fostered a desire within her to dedicate her life to its cultivation.

When the Queen Mother of the congregation’s Ejura-Fey community had introduced her to her husband, Adwoa rejected him on the spot, saying he would interfere with her bayi. He would have none of it. He felt so high and mighty, she was recalling now with a smile, so sure that she was his birthright, it seemed, that he declared that her bayi was no match for his desire to be her husband. He was part of a council of the judicial healing court of the Ejura-Fey community and considered himself very important. And, he frequently pointed out, his lust for her could smother any magic that she might have.

His name was Hosmer Falling Sky. He had a First Settler mother and an Aduana father, but he looked and acted fully like an Aduana. He had helped the Tsărăgĭ rebuild their settlement in Monck’s Corner, which they renamed Wassamasaw, and learned financial numbers at the Tsărăgĭ university. In fact, he had joined their congregation before he met Adwoa, and only reluctantly left, he had said, because of his strong bond with fellow Ashanti in Charleston.

In physical form, he had not been the strongest man, but in mind and morals, she thought, he surely was. She refused to experience his death in a permanent state of grief. He had lived well until consumption usurped his body, and she would live her remaining days in celebration of his presence on earth.

Despite his frequent teasing over her bayi and its weakness compared to his determination to be her husband, he was Adwoa’s loudest advocate. He had told her one day to spread her wings, to listen to every movement on the ground and in the air, to tap into her magic during every second of every hour of every day.

And so, she did. It was for that reason that she could hear the ravens from far away sent by a raven master, she knew, off the coast of Savannah. It was for that reason that she knew they were in flight to report a great danger. It was for that reason that she knew she could skip the usual report to the Queen Mother and go directly to the congregational synod with her information, and it was for that reason she knew they would listen to her.

Without hesitation, the congregational synod dispatched a message to the Charleston Naval Command, which launched two of its three new ironclad frigates into the waters off the docks of the city’s newly constructed port.

The original intent had been to launch the new frigates with much fanfare, but the winds had been carrying rumors of trouble in Savannah for many years, and although nobody knew what to expect, it was determined that now would be the time to find out. So, the frigates were hastily released from their berths and sent out to crawl along the coast south to Savannah.

The Carolina Union then held a special session of its Synod, where it decided to send cavalry units to Savannah. These were to be led by the 16th Queen's Carolina Lancers, which numbered more than 250 men.

Such was Adwoa’s influence. It didn’t hurt that she was not known for false alarms. Her alarms were quite rare. Her most famous alarm was discussed frequently and ruefully by Zulu West, who expressed her regret at not being able to sufficiently react to Adwoa’s awareness on that fateful day of Ahyoka’s undead spirit.

Neither the congregational synod nor the Carolina Union Synod waited for the ravens’ message from Savannah. They sent a military response with the understanding that the final details from the ravens’ message might alter the course of the mission. For now, the gunships and cavalry were sent on a simple assignment: assess the situation.

When the ravens finally arrived, Adwoa had been sleeping lightly in her cabin along the Wampacheone Creek on All Saints congregational grounds. Sometimes she could hear the moaning of slaves from long ago as she slept, moaning that still haunted the creek bed and the woodlands of the old Boone Plantation that had once occupied the area around her. That she could hear that moaning was the curse of her bayi, for she was alone in experiencing the ghostly and guttural cries and groans of suffering and torture. It was as if someone had created a book of sound to record the way of life of those who built the land’s homes and agriculture under the crack of a whip, and then told her, “Only you shall listen.”

She awoke at dawn to the sound of thousands of ravens descending into the branches of the live oak trees, whose dripping moss shook like ropes dangling from clanging bells as the ravens alighted. The live oak trees consisted of two perfectly spaced rows leading to the old Boone estate, which was now a school and administrative center for the congregation’s Ejura-Fey community. The ravens landed on the branches so that now they nearly covered the trees completely, turning them black.

The ravens chattered amongst themselves until Adwoa scampered out of her cabin wearing nothing more than a long nightshirt and feathered slippers. When she appeared, the ravens went silent, until one spoke. It screeched in a long, scratchy, old voice, but she couldn’t understand it and told them so. Then another spoke in shorter, more understandable squawks. It mentioned, in raven’s tongue, the ironclad that had summoned them. Then the beast went silent. Another raven spoke, this one in a series of long-winded, deep caws that described a harsh land that, the raven said, echoed the very same kinds of groans and utterances of the Wampacheone Creek. But, said another raven in caws of much shorter bursts, these were not the groans of ghosts.

Adwoa could see it all clearly, and then saw something much worse as the ravens screamed in unison, shaking the nearby trees with deafening high-pitched screeches.

She saw a man inside a bronze bull being burned alive, his tortured shrieks echoing through the interior of the bull and then out two sculptured nostrils as if by the design of the most macabre musical instrument that a human mind could conjure. The sounds had somehow been made hauntingly beautiful, and the raven who described this to her as it gave her this vision expressed its great dismay over this violation of the great spirit that had created both man and bird.

The ravens had been told by the ironclad’s Raven Master to carry a different message, said another raven, but this was the message they chose to send. Then the ravens flew up in unison like a black blanket being sucked into the heavens, disappearing over the trees, twisting and curling into a black cloud that colored the emerging blue sky of the new day.

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Notes

h/t to LindaAnn LoSchiavo for the alert regarding International Crow and Raven Appreciation Day.

As for Restive Souls’ release date, sorry, I don’t know yet.

Thanks for reading!