Red Prophet Page 0,94

the same time he was leaming English, and from the same person. "Come, sit down." Napoleon looked with vague interest at the White boy Alvin, but said nothing to him.

"I was there," said Ta-Kumsaw. "So was my brother."

"Ah. But was there an army?"

"The seed of one," said Ta-Kumsaw. "I gave up arguing with Tenskwa-Tawa. I'll make an army out of other tribes."

"When!" demanded Napoleon. "You come here two, three times each year, you tell me you're going to have an army. Do you know how long I've waited? Four years, four miserable years of exile."

"I know how many years," said Ta-Kumsaw. "You'll have your battle."

"Before my hair turns grey? Tell me that! Do I have to be dying of old age before you'll call out a general rising of the Reds? You know how helpless I am. La Fayette and de Maurepas won't let me go more than fifty miles from here, won't give me any troops at all. There has to be an army first, they say. The Americans have to have some main force that you can fight with. Well, the only thing that will cause those miserably independent hastards to unite is you."

"I know," said Ta-Kumsaw.

"You promised me an army of ten thousand Reds, Ta-Kumsaw. Instead I keep hearing about a city of ten thousand Quakers!"

"Not Quakers."

"If they renounce war it amounts to the same thing." Suddenly Napoleon let his voice become soft, loving, persuasive. "Ta-Kumsaw, I need you, I depend on you, don't fail me."

Ta-Kumsaw laughed. Napoleon learned long ago that his tricks worked on White men, but not half so well on Reds, and on Ta-Kumsaw not at all. "You care nothing for me, and I care nothing for you," said Ta-Kumsaw. "You want one battle and a victory, so you can go home a hero to Paris. I want one battle and a victory, so I can strike terror into White men's hearts and bring together an even greater army of Reds under my command, to sweep the land south of here and drive the Englishmen back across the mountains. One battle, one victory - that's why we work together, and when that's done I'll never think of you again, and you'll never think of me."

Napoleon was angry, but he laughed. "Half true," he said. "I won't care about you, but I'll think of you. I've learned from you, Ta-Kumsaw. That love of a commander makes men fight better than love of country, and love of country better than the hope of glory, and the hope of glory better than looting, and looting better than wages. But best of all is to fight for a cause. A great and noble dream. I've always had the love of my men. They would die for me. But for a cause, they'd let their wives and children die and think it was worth the price."

"How did you learn that from me?" said Ta-Kumsaw. "That's my brother's talk, not mine."

"Your brother? I thought he didn't think anything was worth dying for."

"No, he's very free with dying. It's killing he won't do."

Napoleon laughed, and Ta-Kumsaw laughed with him. "You're right, you know. We're not friends. But I do like you. What puzzles me is this - when you've won, and all the White men are gone, you really mean to walk away and let all the tribes go back to the way they were before, separate, quarreling, weak."

"Happy. That's how we were before. Many tribes, many languages, but one living land."

"Weak," said Napoleon again. "If I ever brought all of my land under my flag, Ta-Kumsaw, I'd hold them together so long and so tightly that they'd become one great people, great and strong. And if I ever do that, you can count on this. We'll be back, and take your land away from you, just like every other land on Earth. Count on it."

"That's because you are evil, General Bonaparte. You want to bend everything and everybody to your obedience."

"That isn't evil, foolish savage. If everybody obeyed me, then they'd be happy and safe, at peace, and, for the first time in all of history, free."

"Safe, unless they opposed you. Happy, unless they hated you. Free, unless they wanted something contrary to your will."

"Imagine, a Red man philosophizing. Do those peasant squatters south of here know that you've read Newton, Voltaire, Rousseau, and Adam Smith?"

"I don't think they know I can read their languages."

Napoleon leaned across his desk. "We'll destroy them, Ta-Kumsaw, you and I together.