A Flight of Arrows

by Lori Benton

  Beside him, his brother cleared his throat. “Stone Thrower…he’s risking his life for my…for Aubrey.” There was a question in those halting words. Why? It was a question he’d asked their father too. Two Hawks hadn’t found the words he needed to give answer before a twig snapped and his father’s voice spoke out of the dark.

  “I have said this once, but I will say it again. Listen now. The man you called father is a man I now call brother. We have the same Heavenly Father, he and I, and the sins for which I have been forgiven by that Father are no better or worse than his. What I do for him I would do for any brother. For my sons. Even for one who is not sure he wishes to be my son.”

  Two Hawks heard William’s intake of breath. He waited, but his brother didn’t speak. “What is happening in that camp? Are they killing prisoners?”

  “You do not wish to know what they are doing to their prisoners,” his father said.

  “Is he there?” William cut in. “Did you see him?”

  “I went among them and spoke to one who did not know me. I asked after a certain warrior—one of those who took Aubrey. That one and others have started for their town far to the west. They took one prisoner with them. That prisoner was Aubrey.”

  Two Hawks stood close enough to his brother to feel the shudder that went through him. “Which town? Ganundasaga?”

  “Yes, and that may be good for us.”

  “Good?” William asked. “How?”

  “It is good,” Two Hawks explained, “because our father once lived among the Senecas there. They take him to the women.”

  “What women?”

  “The clan mothers.”

  “Clan mothers?”

  So much his brother did not know! “All children born to an Oneida mother have a clan. We are Turtle Clan. You are Turtle Clan.”

  “I understand about clans,” William said impatiently. “But why mothers—women—at all? What have they to do with it?”

  “It is the women of a clan who decide the fate of captives,” Stone Thrower said without the exasperation Two Hawks had not kept from his voice. “Whatever fallen warrior those Senecas mean to avenge, that warrior’s women will decide Aubrey’s fate. If he does not slow them too much and they kill him on the way.”

  Two Hawks didn’t wait for William to react to that. “There is time to overtake them?”

  “Yes,” Stone Thrower said, but something in his tone gave warning of further evils.

  William sensed it. “There is more, isn’t there?”

  Stone Thrower told them what it was and Two Hawks felt a quailing in his belly as he listened. A council of headmen made up of Mohawks, Senecas, Cayugas, and Onondagas had decided to send a bloody hatchet to the Oneidas. “We are now enemies to those who called us brother. The Great Longhouse is torn down around us, and we are no longer a people bound together.”

  William said nothing. There was no knowing what he thought or felt, or if he understood the significance of this terrible thing. The Confederacy that had long held their nations together was in tatters. Perhaps even the Great Tree of Peace had been uprooted. Only time would tell about that.

  Many had seen this day coming and feared it. Now it was here.

  “What do we do?” William asked, and Two Hawks knew whatever was happening between the nations didn’t alter the path before them this night.

  “We do what I could not do for you the day you were taken—we follow those who took Aubrey,” Stone Thrower told his firstborn. “And, Creator willing, we take him back.”

  39

  August 7, 1777

  Oriska

  It didn’t need the fingers of one hand to count the loved ones Anna could name without attaching to them some dreadful anxiety. The rest stood in dire need of heavenly aid: Two Hawks, William, Stone Thrower. Papa. Even Lydia, who had roused by the time they’d carried her inside, only to stare unseeing at the fire in the center of the lodge they’d been given for shelter while Anna hovered and fretted, thoroughly ignored. It was Good Voice, with her refusal to despair, who brought Lydia back to herself.

  “Clear Day says Senecas took him,” she’d said, kneeling beside the pallet where Lydia sat ashen and mute. “For a time my husband lived with them. He has friends among them. That was a very bad time for us, but look now, Heavenly Father is using it for our good. And better even than friends among men, Creator is with my husband. And my sons are with him.” She’d uttered that last in a tone of wonder, though of them all she alone had yet to see William.

  Anna’s eyes welled as Good Voice reached for her hand, sharing that wonder with her. When they’d wiped away their tears and looked at her again, Lydia’s gaze, though still pain filled, had cleared.

  “William is with them? I’m glad for that.” She looked around at them all. “Pray with me?”

  Strikes-The-Water held back, but Anna, Clear Day, and Good Voice joined in beseeching heaven for the men they loved to be strong, to be brave, to be kept safe, to yield to the will of the Almighty as He revealed it, as the fire sent its sparks flying upward. Then Lydia straightened and looked about them, as if remembering what lay beyond the bark walls of their borrowed shelter. “How many wounded are here?”

  “Much wounded,” Clear Day said. “Some will not see another sun. Some will, with help.”

  Lydia firmed her jaw with purpose. “Where is my medical case? Come, Anna. Let’s go and see to them.”

  Everyone in Oriska who had strength to wipe a brow, change a dressing, hold a warrior steady while a broken bone was made straight did those things many times through the night, but none tended with more devotion than Anna Catherine and Lydia. Watching them, it came into Good Voice’s mind that every soldier or warrior they touched might have been Two Hawks, or William, or Reginald, for all the care they showed. Good Voice was doing her part, though she tired easily. To be with child again at forty summers…

  “Rest,” Lydia told her often. In turn Good Voice kept a watchful eye on Lydia. She wasn’t about to see her warriors bring Aubrey home to find this good woman had worked herself ill while they waited.

  Of them all, Strikes-The-Water had the least patience with the injured. At some point during that first night, while no one was looking, she had left Oriska. Probably headed back to that fort still under siege. That one would go into danger with the boldness of a warrior, stubborn and reckless. Good Voice had sighed over her but thought, She is as Creator made her. Still it would be good to see her joined with a husband soon, though it wouldn’t be with Two Hawks.

  Some white soldiers had been put into bateaux, the morning after the battle, to be taken downriver to Fort Dayton to be nearer their people. Anna Catherine oversaw their going. Many had taken comfort from her since the night hours when she came out of the lodge to see to their needs. She’d tended warriors too, those without people in Oriska to do for them. Anna Catherine was kind, gentle, steadfast, and brave. She would make a good wife and mother.

  Good Voice stood on the riverbank where a stream came down to meet it, in the morning when the air was cool. Mist came off the water in tendrils. A doe with her fawn stepped out of the trees to drink. The bateaux for the wounded soldiers were filling up and departing. Watching Anna Catherine moving among the wounded, Good Voice could almost see the last shreds of disappointment over the choices of her second-born, what they would mean for his children down all the generations to come, rising off her like the mist lifting from the stream. Rising and drifting away.

  Heavenly Father wove all things together for good, for those who followed His path. Did not the Book say it was so? That their families should be united now in love instead of hate…Was it not like a God of redemption to do such a thing?

  May it be so with my firstborn. May my eyes see him at last. May his heart find joy in seeing me.

  On the second day after the battle, the remainder of the injured militia departed Oriska. Lydia rose from the last of them, a young man whose badly wounded leg she’d managed to save, as he was lifted on a mak
eshift litter. He grasped her hand at parting, thanked her, then was carried to the waiting bateau, and Lydia found herself abruptly bereft of purpose. Most of the warriors still in need of care were those of Oriska; the Oneida healers had them well in hand. A few from Kanowalohale needing further time to heal would soon be making their way to that town.

  Bloodstained and bedraggled, Lydia swayed as she watched the bateau carrying her last patient being poled away from the bank. As the vessel caught the river’s current and was carried from sight, the fear she’d held at bay came crashing down with such force she nearly crumpled under it.

  As if they had anticipated such a happening, beside her swiftly were Anna and Good Voice. “Now it is time for you to rest,” Good Voice told her.

  Rest. Lydia couldn’t fathom the word. She closed her eyes but couldn’t close her ears to Anna’s plea.

  “Don’t lose hope, Lydia. They’ll find Papa.”

  “Will they?” Lydia searched for the hope that had so long sustained her. Reginald was free in his spirit—Clear Day had learned that much from Stone Thrower. Something had happened between those two inside Fort Stanwix, before they joined the battle. And there was that kiss…

  Or was that fleeting promise of love all she would ever embrace? A grasping at smoke.

  She wept. They helped her to the lodge, where she must have slept. Voices spoke, words beyond her comprehension. Firelight flickered. Sometimes a gentle hand stroked her brow. Anna’s, she thought. The next thing she truly remembered was hearing Clear Day speaking in Oneida, of which she understood nothing until the very recognizable name of General Benedict Arnold passed his lips.

  She sat up, blinking and disheveled. Clear Day sat by the fire, Good Voice on a bench nearby. On another Anna slept.

  “The messenger rode fast,” Clear Day said, switching to English as a courtesy to her, “coming to find Herkimer with the news.”

  Lydia had seen General Herkimer after the battle, but only briefly. He’d conducted himself with level-headed courage after the devastating ambush had been sprung—she’d heard it from the lips of nearly every man of his she’d tended—and was the saving of many lives. But his leg was grievously wounded, already festering. He’d been taken swiftly downriver to his home at the Little Falls Carry.

  “This war chief, Arnold,” Clear Day was saying, “him who Aubrey fought with on the lake last autumn, he will be coming with more soldiers to relieve those at the fort. He will scatter the British back to the west. This is what the messenger had to say.”

  There would be no invasion of the valley. Not now. God willing.

  Good Voice said, “I think, Uncle, we will return to Kanowalohale to await my husband and my sons, and the one they go to recover.”

  Almost Lydia spoke in protest of leaving Oriska, then reconsidered. “The warriors from Kanowalohale, the wounded ones, have they left yet?”

  Good Voice met her gaze. “Soon they go. I thought we should go with them. Help them along.”

  “I should rather do that than sit waiting.”

  “That is my thought as well.”

  “I will remain,” Clear Day said. “When they return I will tell my nephew and his sons where you may be found and come with them to you.”

  “Iyo.” Good Voice nodded toward Anna, lying with her hair fallen loose like a blanket, shining brown and gold in the firelight. “Let us wake this sleeping daughter of ours and make ready to return.”

  40

  August 8, 1777

  By sunset of the second day pursuing the Senecas, William had stumbled often enough to prove he wasn’t as recovered as he’d pretended. They were still a day’s travel from the village where Stone Thrower thought the Senecas were taking their prisoner. Leaving Two Hawks to mind William, he’d gone ahead, hoping to overtake the Senecas and locate their camp.

  William caught the flash of impatience on Two Hawks’s face as Stone Thrower loped off through the trees, leaving them at a stream coursing through a wooded draw. Now his brother crouched at the stream, filling a canteen. Perched halfway up the draw where a lip of stone made a shelf, William watched him, still finding it unnerving that this lean, brown-skinned figure clad in moccasins and breechclout shared his blood.

  Two Hawks ascended the slope and handed William the dripping canteen. He drank while his brother rummaged in a quilled bag, coming up with a pouch containing the parched corn he and their father seemed able to subsist upon. He offered it to William, who took a handful, chewed, then grabbed the canteen and drank again, feeling his belly churn and a cold sweat bead his brow.

  “You are white as rendered lard, Brother. Let me look at that gash before the light is gone.” Too slow to fend off the fingers parting his sweaty hair, William winced at the probing of the tender area. “It is nearly in the place of my scar,” his brother observed. “Did you somehow know I had it and wanted us to match?”

  Leaning away, he caught Two Hawks’s half-amused gaze. Since leaving Fort Stanwix, William had tried to match his twin’s woodland skills, all the while denying to himself that he cared how he fared in comparison. They weren’t sure yet what to make of him, these warriors—no more than he them—but he wanted to move past this awkwardness of knowing them as close in blood as men could be yet still strangers. Move past it to what, exactly, he wasn’t ready to decide.

  “I ask you to forgive me.”

  To William’s mind there was nothing to forgive. Not against Stone Thrower, who’d plainly stated his doubt over whether William was keen on being his son.

  That wasn’t true. Or he didn’t think it was. He was more than a little in awe of the man. He respected him for his bravery, his dedication, and couldn’t help but admire his astonishing selflessness toward Aubrey, who’d robbed him of so much. His son.

  I am his son. It was a notion as slippery as eels, impossible to grasp and think on with his head throbbing, his gut churning. Not with the clarity it needed. And deserved.

  “In this I’d have been content to let you best me.”

  He’d spoken wryly to his brother, acknowledging the rivalry, but Two Hawks didn’t smile. They’d been stealing looks at each other for two days, measuring, curious, half-wary. Now that dark, steady gaze proved discomfiting.

  “What?” William studied his twin in return, picking out subtle differences in their features beyond the shade of their skin. Did his own lips curve upward at the corners so? Not quite so much perhaps. Those prominent cheekbones were every bit his own, but did his eyes have that same slight tilt?

  “I was thinking of a dream I had,” his brother said. “Before the siege, while I was scouting. In this dream I sat on a slope like this, though the wood was not thick. You were beside me. Your painted face spoke to me.”

  “What? Was I got up in war paint like a…?” Like a savage, he’d almost said.

  Two Hawks’s eyes flared. “I meant the little face our father carries. You left it behind. Aubrey gave it to our parents. Our father keeps it with him always.”

  “We do what I could not do for you the day you were taken.” Stone Thrower’s words, spoken in darkness, had never been far from William’s mind. Like flint and steel they careened inside his injured head, sparking questions about them, his mother, their people. And Anna, their bridge.

  “I don’t know how long it’s been since you’ve seen her—Anna.” William hesitated. “She is well?”

  The forest sounds were those of night now, with the stream gurgling below. Shadows were thickening, still he caught Two Hawks’s sharpened look.

  “Anna Catherine was well when last I saw her.”

  He’d spoken guardedly, though William couldn’t fathom why. Anna had given the impression she and this brother of his were friends. “She never mentioned you all these years. Not once in all her letters to me. Did you ask her not to?”

  “It was her choice first to say nothing of me in her words to you. My choice later.” Before William could choose from among the questions that triggered, Two Hawks added, “An
na Catherine read your letters to me, until I learned to read them for myself.”

  “You read my letters?” A spurt of indignation rose, burning as bile.

  Two Hawks studied him, seemingly untroubled by guilt. “Nearly all, I think. Have you still the Welsh bow?”

  Surprise at the question held him silent for a heartbeat. His indignation simmered down, and he found himself, oddly, the tiniest bit pleased that his brother knew such a thing about him, that he had a bow. Or once had. “I looked for it, back at Johnson’s camp. It was grabbed during the sortie. I suppose some rebel in the fort has it now.”

  Two Hawks’s brows gathered in. “I would have liked to see that bow. It has much meaning for you.”

  William shrugged, unsure whether that was true now. Or was his brother merely testing him in saying so?

  He’d questions of his own more pressing. “How came you to be friends with Anna and no one knew until after I’d returned? How did you find us—or her?”

  His brother raised a brow. “She did not tell you this?”

  “No,” William said, irritated to be reminded again of his rash behavior the previous summer. “Not that I can remember.”

  “Then I will tell you of it,” his brother said, sounding pleased to do so. “It was our father’s uncle—him we left at Oriska—who found you.”

  As night deepened and they waited for Stone Thrower’s return, Two Hawks told the story of how Clear Day found himself in the apothecary shop that had belonged to Lydia’s father and overheard Lydia and Rowan Doyle speaking of Reginald Aubrey, all those years ago.