“What did you find there?” Conawago asked. “In the battle, did you discover something surprising?”
Brandt hesitated. “They was dead, and then not dead.” The corporal still spoke to the fire. “They ran into the Jesuit church for safety, but as the fire spread through the town, the blaze reached it, too. I saw several, a ’Naki grandmother with a gray streak on top of her head like a polecat, with a little girl clutching a cornhusk doll, and a Jesuit priest. But except for the back chamber of stone, the church was all wood. It went up like an inferno. God, the screams.” Brandt went quiet and gulped down more ale. “We never wanted that, not for the church to burn, not for all those Christian women and children to die like that. But an hour later, as we formed up to retreat, there they were, o
