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warriors were just outside the front gate, and they would not wait for Gepanocon’s treasure to be hidden.
    Fallon left the chief’s hut and ran to find Gilda and Noshi.
     
     
    Serving as war chief for this battle, Opechancanough did not hesitate to attack Ritanoe. Usually he and his braves hid in the woods for hours to judge the strengths and weaknesses of an enemy camp, but Gepanocon had revealed all by opening his village to the traders. Opechancanough would not waste time at Ritanoe, for he wanted most of all to capture the Englishmen, and Gepanocon would surely try to hide them.
    The old men and women of the village made a futile effort to close the tall gates of the palisade as the enemy streamed from the forest, but the walls were easily pushed aside. Inside the village, women and children screamed and ran from the huts that the Powhatan set ablaze.
    Walking behind his warriors, Opechancanough searched for the clothed men and felt his anger rise as he stalked from hut to hut only to find frightened women and children. In one hut he found raw copper and tools to work it, but the grass mats spread upon the floor were empty. This maddening inability to find his quarry drove him past the point of endurance, and Opechancanough ordered that all in the village should be killed.
    His warriors obediently pulled the women and children forward to meet the knife, but Opechancanough held up a hand. Standing among the knot of survivors was an unusual boy, with red hair and fair skin. He wore leather breeches and a full shirt, and Opechancanough felt his heart beat faster as he walked over for a closer look. Could this stripling be one of the survivors of Ocanahonan? Surely one so young could not be the source of Gepanocon’s copper weapons.
    The boy stood with his hands on the heads of two dark-haired children, and as if by command, all three kept their heads lowered before him. “Look at me,” Opechancanough commanded, and only the older boy’s head rose. He glared defiantly at the war chief.
    Opechancanough felt the corner of his mouth twitch in a half smile. The boy’s skin was pale and pink from the sun, his nose sprinkled with the brown spots common to the skin of the clothed people. His face was clear, and his body tall like a fast-growing weed, but the troubled blue eyes were those of a man who has seen thirty summers of sorrow.
    Opechancanough put his hands under the chins of the two children and jerked their heads up. The little boy’s eyes were green and dark with fear, the little girl’s as blue as the sky at noonday. All three children were dressed in the linen clothes of the English, and each child’s forearms were tattooed with tribal markings and a small sign that made Opechancanough’s stomach tighten into a knot. The sign of the cross.
    Opechancanough lifted his head to consider their fate. These were not children of Ritanoe. The two boys were marked with the sign of the Mangoak tribe; the girl, strangely enough, wore the symbol of the Powhatan. And though all three bore the sign of the cross, the younger ones could not possibly understand what it meant.
    Opechancanough stepped away from the children and commanded one of his warriors to bind the youngsters together, for they would be captives for the chief of the Powhatan. The two young ones cried as the warrior bound their hands, and though the older boy said nothing, Opechancanough could feel those blue eyes burning through him no matter where he turned.
    With fury lurking beneath his smile, Opechancanough ordered his men to fire the village.
     
     
    Walking in the center of the long line of warriors, Opechancanough watched the children carefully. The older boy must have spoken to the younger ones, for the children remained silent on the journey back to Weromacomico, neither crying nor protesting their capture. Occasionally the little ones looked to the older boy for comfort, but the red-haired boy seemed to speak to them through his eyes. They