The Peaks of Silence

The words of the elderly Seneca medicine man brought no comfort to his companions: a novice French Colonial Marine named Hugo Rochefort and a nine-year veteran, Ensign Sacha Athenois.* In the Canadian wilderness of 1741, there was no shortage of death. Cross-border raids from Canadian tribes and Provincial raiders alike were not uncommon.

Less common were rumors of supernatural creatures dwelling in the boreal forests and high mountains. A few settlers dwelling on the margin of the great forests had seen the Dagwanonyeta, the Flying Heads, flitting through the moonlit treetops, long hair trailing like fiery comets. Others had found gigantic piles of excreta which could only have come from the Genonsgwa - the "Flint Coats" or stone giants - rumored to roam the woods. And the presence of partly dissolved human bones in those piles left no mystery about their preferred diet.

And even worse was Djieien, a legendary Seneca creature dwelling in a forbidding canyon in the Green Mountains adjacent to Lake Memphremagog - a creature said to have crawled up from Hell millennia ago, unthinkably ancient and evil.

But it is to those mountains and that canyon that the two Marines and the medicine man must flee, pursued by a bloodthirsty band of Provincial raiders seeking the young Iroquois maiden who accompanies them. If caught, she will be tortured and murdered. But, as she and her two Marine protectors come nearer and nearer to the canyon at the foot of the Peaks of Silence, Athenois learns that an even worse fate awaits her there.

*later to rename himself Seth Athenor.