by Shawnee Moon
Sterling pushed her gently away, tossed the ax down, and took several steps backward. “It’s a copperhead,” he said quietly
She shuddered. The tone of his voice answered her question. She tried to say something, but her mouth was too dry. She licked her lips and managed to say, “Thank the Lord neither of us was bitten. I canna—”
He thrust out his right arm. Midway between wrist and elbow on the outside were four tiny spots of blood.
“It got ye.”
“Twice.”
“Mother of God.” This was a nightmare. Any second, she’d wake up and find that they were safe in their bed. “What shall I do?” She sounded breathless, as though she’d been climbing a steep hill. “Shall I run to the house for help?”
Sterling shook his head. “No, stay.” He dropped to his knees and then lay full-length in the grass.
She could not contain a small whimper of fright.
“I’m not dying yet,” he snapped. “I need to lie still to keep the poison from reaching my heart.” With his left hand, he drew his knife from his beaded scabbard. “Undo my belt and bind it tight just below my elbow,” he ordered. “Then use the knife point to cut slits directly over the bites.”
She untied his belt and removed the razor-sharp weapon with shaking hands. “How do ye feel?” Putting the knife between her teeth, she wrapped the leather around his arm and knotted it once.
“It burns like hell, but my mind’s still clear. If I pass out, remember to loosen the belt every quarter-hour. Too much pressure and I could lose the arm.” She made the knot tighter. “There, that’s good,” he said as she twisted the binding. “Now make the cuts.”
Gritting her teeth, Cailin poised the steel blade over his arm. Reason told her that what she was doing was dangerous and foolhardy. A knife used for surgery should be passed through fire .to drive away demons and cut the pain. She should have soap and bandages—men to hold him still while she did what must be done. But an older instinct bade her act before it was too late.
“Do it!” Sterling ordered.
Cailin swallowed hard. The area around the bites was already turning dark and swelling. Blood welled up as she pressed the keen steel into his flesh. The first slice went deeper than she wanted it to go, but Sterling didn’t flinch.
Tears clouded her vision, and she blinked them away. The second incision was easier. Yellow venom welled up on either side of the puncture as she dug into the wound. “Two more,” she said.
Sterling cursed, but kept up his courage. By the time she reached the last bite, his arm ran red, and she was afraid that she was going to be sick. “Done,” she said. He gave a sigh of relief. When she looked into his face, she saw that he was sweating profusely.
“Now run and get Isaac,” Sterling rasped. He put his mouth against the bleeding wounds and began to try to suck the poison out.
“Let me do that for you.”
He spat. “No. Go for help.”
“Are ye going to die?” It still seemed impossible. One moment, he was laughing and teasing her, and the next ...
He spat out another mouthful of blood. “Not if I can help it.”
“I can do that,” she said.
“Damn it, woman! For once, do as I say. Run!”
“Don’t ye die on me, you bastard. Don’t ye dare!” No longer able to hold back the tears, she turned and dashed across the meadow toward the path that led through the thick forest to the house.
She was ten yards from the tree line when she heard the first shots and then a woman’s scream, followed closely by a long, drawn-out, unearthly screech. She skidded to a halt, ran a few more steps, and stopped again.
Two more rifle shots rang out.
She glanced back over her shoulder, then plunged into the woods. Halfway down the trail, she heard the footfalls of someone running full out. Ducking off the path, she crouched in the shelter of a wind-damaged cedar tree.
Another whoop shattered the air. Then Franny’s ungainly form came pounding through the forest. Her dress was bloody and ripped to the waist. Half of her face was gone, and one big hand was a scarlet ruin. Right on her heels came two howling savages.
Cailin watched in horror as the lead warrior—a huge man with his face painted black and white to resemble a skull—hurled a tomahawk at Franny’s back. The bondwoman groaned, staggered to her knees, and then fell full-length on the forest floor. The ax handle quivered as Franny writhed in agony.
With a wild cry of triumph, the painted brave leaped forward and planted a moccasined foot on the dying woman’s spine. Franny uttered a bubbling groan, and her eyes rolled up in her head until Cailin could see nothing but white. Seizing a handful of Franny’s meager, graying hair, the Indian wrenched her head cruelly back until her neck snapped, and slashed down across her forehead with a fourteen-inch butcher knife.
Cailin shut her eyes. When she opened them again, Franny was motionless, and the skull-faced monster danced around her body brandishing a crimson mat of hair.
Cailin held her breath and remained motionless. The scent of crushed leaves and fear filled her nostrils. She perceived a salty taste on her tongue, then vaguely realized that it was her own blood. Exploring her inner mouth, she found she’d bitten the inside of her cheek, but strangely, she felt no pain. She felt nothing at all; she was numb all over.
Then the second warrior—a brave wearing a blue loincloth and tall red plumage at the back of his shaved head—pointed directly at her and let out a yelp of triumph. Instantly, both Indians lunged toward her hiding place.
She sprang up, whirled, and ran through the trees. Howling like wolves, they sprinted after her. She paid no heed to the sticks and briers, or the fallen logs and underbrush. Cailin yanked up her skirts and fled as if the hounds of hell pursued her.
Branches scraped her face and tore at her hair. She dodged under low-hanging tree limbs and dashed around obstacles. She sucked in gulps of air as her lungs screamed for oxygen. And when she saw the thick boughs of a cedar grove ahead, she plunged headlong into it. Ducking this way and that, she crawled and scratched her way deep inside the morass of evergreens.
It was only when she stopped for breath that she remembered she was still clutching Sterling’s knife. When she realized what she held, she almost laughed out loud.
She wasn’t defenseless.
The knife gave her strength. Hope flooded through her, and she began to think rather than just react for the first time since she’d seen Franny fleeing down the wood’s trail. She forced herself to take deep, quiet breaths, and she listened.
The shouts had ceased. Instead, she heard the buzz of men’s voices and the snap of branches. She looked down at her cumbersome skirts and sliced through the lacing of her gown without a moment’s hesitation. Pushing the garment off her shoulders and over her hips, she let it pool to the ground. Next, she cut through her petticoat strings, leaving her garbed in nothing but her shift and stays.
She wasn’t afraid of rape. She’d been raped once, and she knew that she’d die before she let men put their hands on her like that again. She had the means and the will to take her own life if she was backed against the wall. But she was far from suicide. The fierce legacy of millenniums of Highland warriors drummed in her blood. She was a Scot, by God. And if she forfeited her life to these painted barbarians, it would be at dear cost.
Her naked feet were bruised and wounded. A splinter as thick around as a quill protruded from her instep. She jerked it out and pinched the flesh shut to quell the bleeding. She ignored the throbbing. What was a little discomfort when Sterling’s life and her own hung in the balance?
He wasn’t at the farmstead. She’d left him in the meadow, by the river. He was sore hurt, true, but he was strong. He might well survive the snakebite, even without assistance. The war party couldn’t kill him if they didn’t find him. All she had to do was lead them away from the meadow. She simply needed to escape in the opposite direction. And when they were gone, she’d find her way back to S
terling, nurse him to health, and—
The boughs parted an arm’s length away, and the Indian in the blue loincloth backed into the shelter of the big cedar. One of his arms was raised as he tried to extricate his crested red topknot from a tangling branch. He was cursing the tree—at least it seemed so to her. She could comprehend none of the strange dialect he muttered.
Wide-eyed, she stared at his exposed back.
For no longer than the blink of an eye, she gazed at him. Then she drove Sterling’s knife up with all her might, plunging it into the savage’s flesh, just to the right of his backbone. By rights, his ribs should have deflected the blow, but in her haste, she’d turned the blade so that the steel slid between his bones.
He stiffened, gasped, and crashed forward. His weight nearly pulled Cailin’s arm from its socket, but her fingers were locked on the bone handle, and the weapon came free.
She gazed at her fallen enemy in shock.
“God forgive me,” she whispered in her native Gaelic.
And like Lazarus rising from the dead, the Indian lurched up and snapped his head in her direction. His eyes bulged, and blood ran from the corner of his mouth. He twisted around and clawed at his belly. Before she could move a muscle, his arm shot out, and bloody fingers clamped around her wrist.
She slashed at him with the knife. He screamed, and she twisted away. An answering shout came from the left. Cailin didn’t wait to see if her victim was dead or alive. She dived back into the hole she’d crawled through to reach this spot. Branches crashed behind her.
Then, a shriek of unbridled rage told her that Skull Face had discovered his companion. She kept going, found a break in the thicket, and burst out into the open forest again.
She began to run in earnest. Uncertain of direction, forgetting caution, she ceased to reason. She concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other and not dropping her knife. And when she heard the war whoop directly behind her rise into a bone-chilling bay, it was joined by a chorus of additional yowls from either side.
Cailin ran harder.
Chapter 16
Cailin ran until she thought that her heart would burst from the strain. She didn’t know how long she’d been running, but she knew that her pace was slowing and her hunters were growing closer with every step. Skull Face was twenty yards behind her, shrieking like some fiend from hell and swinging his tomahawk around his painted head. Two more savages closed in on her right. She didn’t know how many were on her left, but they were farther back.
A stitch in her side had become a red-hot poker that jabbed deeper into her vitals each time her foot hit the ground. Sweat and blood from scratches on her face ran into her eyes and threatened to blind her. Her fingers had clutched Sterling’s knife so long and with such fervor that she could no longer feel the bone hilt in her hand.
Her prayers had dwindled to a desperate litany consisting of a single word, uttered over and over with each strangled exhale. “God ... God ... God ...” She fixed her eyes on a single object, a tree, a fallen branch, or a pile of leaves. All she had to do was to run a few more feet, another wagon’s length ... an easy task, even for a clumsy child. And when she reached that goal, her gaze sought another, and that became her prize.
Still, she knew that she could not keep running. She must turn and fight. But where? How?
A swirl of bagpipes sounded in her head. For an instant, she smelled the smoke and heard the cannons of Culloden Moor. Madness ... Madness beckoned to her like a mirage of sparkling water to a woman dying of thirst. She had only to yield to the siren call of the piper’s tune, and she could rest beside the fallen Highlanders. She could laugh again with all those dear ones and feel the touch of her mother’s hand on her cheek.
Instead, she forced her weary legs to a burst of speed, leaped over a rotting windfall, and darted under a low branch to find herself in the wild strawberry meadow.
She stared around her in shock, then stumbled and nearly went down. She’d believed that she was leading her tormentors away from Sterling. Instead, she’d guaranteed his discovery and death.
“Yi-yi-ya-yee!” Skull Face cried.
She glanced back over her shoulder. He was so close that she could see the engraving on his silver nose ring. His nostrils were flared; his hooded ebony eyes gleamed with bloodlust.
Defeat sliced through her sinews and washed over her in a choking black tide. There could be no escape from Satan’s hellhound. Cailin opened her mouth to utter her death scream and watched as Skull Face tripped and sprawled full-length in the grass.
Her own bittersweet laughter lent wings to her feet. She sprang away and began to run again. Just ahead, not a hundred yards from the forest edge, a giant oak reared from the sea of wildflowers. There! There she could stop and make her stand with a solid wall at her back and Sterling’s steel blade in her hand.
She barely heard the war cries to her right. If she could just make the safety of the tree—
A musket blasted the serenity of the sunny meadow. Not a heartbeat later, Cailin heard the distinctive whine of a lead ball. Suddenly, a stripe-faced warrior appeared in front of her. She saw the gleam of an ivory spike as a jagged club hurled toward her head.
Running too fast to stop, Cailin threw herself to the ground and rolled, expecting at any instant to feel the crushing blow of the savage weapon. Instead, the brave screamed and vanished from her line of vision. She brushed a hand across her face. And when she looked again, a half-naked form stood over her with an ax in his hand.
She slashed out at his legs instinctively, then realized that somehow, in the midst of her fall, she’d lost her grip on the knife.
“Get behind me!” Sterling ordered.
She closed her eyes and opened them again. Had there been red paint spattered across his bare chest before?
“Get behind me!” he repeated.
On hands and knees, she tried to obey. Her knee struck something hard in the crushed grass. Scooping up the knife, she scrambled behind him. Another musket went off. More Indians rushed at them. Sterling’s broadax cut a terrible swath of vengeance.
“Back!” he commanded her.
A brave threw a tomahawk. It missed Sterling by a hairbreadth. Indians were all around them.
Somehow, the oak was behind her. Sterling was still on his feet, but his strength was clearly failing. A man with a stuffed raven on his head lunged at Sterling’s side. She jabbed the Indian with her knife. He let out a groan, then seized her arm and tried to twist the weapon from her fingers. Sterling went to his knees. Oiled copper-skinned bodies swarmed over them, and the blackness took her.
Something wet dripped down Cailin’s face. The rumble of cannon made her open her eyes. The flash of a lightning bolt nearby made her close them. Rain. The spatter of drops became needles. She groaned and tried to move, but she couldn’t. Her eyelids felt as though they were weighted down by lead coins.
Someone was crying.
She forced her eyes open and found that she was sitting on the ground. Her wrists were tightly fastened to the tall wheel of an oxcart, and her ankles were tied together. The rising wind carried the strong smell of charred wood. It was raining so hard that it was difficult to see more than a few yards away. But she knew that the figures moving around in the twilight were Indians.
She was cold. Soaked through. Her head hurt so much that it was impossible to think. Something ... something. She had to remember.
The wailing persisted. A baby. It sounded like a baby’s cry. But how ... Jasper. Was that Jasper crying? Cailin tried to focus, but the day was dying fast, and the increasing force of the wind gusts bent small saplings double and tumbled leaves and debris across the clearing.
Why didn’t Phoebe go to the child and comfort him? she wondered. She was a good mother. It I wasn’t like her to—Jasper stopped crying. Cailin heard nothing but the wind and the rain ... and the sound of her own teeth chattering.
Sterling. Where was Sterling? She wanted to scream his name, but eve
n as she parted her lips, she knew it was useless. She’d seen him fall. She’d seen him go down. He was as dead as all the rest. She was simply too much of a coward to admit it.
A paint-smeared image loomed out of the rain, inches in front of her. Skull Face. The white lines had run, and the circles around each eye had become only smudges, but she recognized him by the silver nose ring and the pronounced bump on the ridge of his nose that told of an old break, long healed.
“So. You not die so easy, Fire Hair,” he said in badly accented English.
She made no response, merely stared at him.
“You run good for woman.”
“Aye,” she answered defiantly. “Better than you.”
He backhanded her so hard that her head banged against the thick wagon spokes. “Hold tongue,” he growled. “Or Ohneya cut it out.” He tapped his chest. “Ohneya master. You slave. Obey master or die.”
She shut her eyes. Had that been blood dripping down his chin? she wondered. Had—
He pinched her arm cruelly. “Ohneya!” he shouted at her. She glared at him. “Ohneya,” he repeated. “Say it.”
“Ohneya,” she muttered. Her lip was swelling, and her jaw felt as though he’d cracked it when he hit her.
“Hmmph.” Then his expression became sly. He raised his left hand. In it, he held what looked to her like a piece of beef liver. Grinning, he took a bite and chewed loudly. “Not for woman,” he said. “For warrior.”
Had they slaughtered the oxen?
“O-wa-rough,” he said. “Rong-we ka-hon-ji.” Then he laughed again. “Brave enemy; eat spirit of enemy, make Ohneya strong.”
“Rot in hell,” she replied.
Ohneya struck her again. Then another warrior called to him in the guttural Indian language. Ohneya answered briefly, then walked purposefully away.
Cailin drew in a long breath and offered a silent prayer for the souls of those murdered by the war party. Tears trickled down her cheeks and mingled with the rain. She refused to think of Sterling. Not of his death, or of what they might have done to him after he’d ceased to breathe. For herself, she was beyond caring. Nothing Ohneya could do or say to her could hurt her more than she was already hurting inside.