Ghost Fire

by Wilbur Smith

  Theo stared up the ravine. It was long and narrow, strewn with boulders and hemmed in on both sides by high walls. “I would not want to get trapped in there. A dozen men with the advantage of height could hold it against an army.”

  Gilyard nodded. “Then we had best be on our guard. Ready your weapons.”

  They made a cairn to mark the pass, then entered the ravine. Rifles loaded, they scanned the heights for any sign of an enemy. The snow was thicker there, where the sun had not penetrated, but soft and sticky. It clung to their snowshoes in heavy clumps, making progress even harder. Struggling with the weight of his pack, Theo pulled off his furs to avoid overheating. For the first time in days, he had feeling in his fingers.

  He knew he ought to feel elated. Every step took him closer to his enemies and the chance for revenge. Instead he felt mounting dread, as if some dark and terrible animal was sniffing at his trail.

  “I do not like this place,” said Moses, beside him.

  “More evil spirits?”

  Moses frowned. “I do not need the spirits to tell me this place is bad.” He gestured at the high walls of the ravine. “If our enemies are up there, we will be trapped, like beavers in a frozen pond.”

  Theo glanced upward, checking the skyline for any hint of movement. Moses was right: a few marksmen on the heights would be able to pour fire into the ravine.

  “Ouch.”

  Theo had stumbled on a smooth rock under the snow. He swore and rubbed his foot.

  “The mouse who only watches for the hawk may not see the snake behind him,” said Moses, amused.

  Theo was about to move on, when something about the stone he had kicked made him pause. Under the scuffed snow, he could see a shape that was too smooth and regular to have been fashioned by nature. He crouched and started to clear away the snow. Moses joined in. The object was much bigger than he’d thought, as thick as a tree trunk and ten feet long, a cylinder tapering toward one end. It was neither stone nor wood, but cold, hard bronze.

  There was a stamp in the metal. Theo brushed away the last of the snow and saw it was the royal crest of King Louis XV of France.

  It was a twelve-pounder cannon.

  Theo called Gilyard.

  “That is why they have so many patrols,” Gilyard breathed. “They did not want us to see the truth of what they are planning.”

  “But what would they do with a cannon in this desolate place?” Theo asked. Excavating deeper in the snow, he found the splintered remains of a gun carriage. The wheels must have snapped on the broken ground as the French tried to haul it up the ravine, and they had not been able to lift it out.

  “I’ll wager a bottle of General Williams’s finest brandy that this was not the only gun,” said Gilyard. “The ridge ends in a high eminence above the fort. If they can get guns up there, they will have an impregnable battery commanding all the approaches. It would make the fort unassailable.”

  Theo tried to imagine the effort it must have taken. They were miles from the fort. The French must have dragged the guns all the way to this ravine, up the treacherous slope and then along the ridge. What sort of a man would drive his troops to such lengths?

  Something rose from the cliff above. Quicker than thought, one of the rangers trained his rifle and fired. The others dived for cover behind boulders, weapons bristling. The sound of the shot echoed like thunder between the rocks, so loud Theo thought it would bring an avalanche down on them.

  A crow fell dead to the ground.

  “Who was that man?” Gilyard demanded. He found the unfortunate soldier and snatched the rifle from his hands. “Do you want every Frenchman from here to Québec to know where we are?”

  “We should return to Albany,” said Trent. “General Williams must have this intelligence at once.”

  What he said was true. Theo knew it; so did Gilyard. The major nodded, though reluctantly. Theo could see his eagerness for battle chafing against his sense of duty.

  But if they left now they would never find Bichot.

  “One broken gun is proof of nothing,” said Theo. “We should go further and see if there are more.”

  Theo saw Gilyard hesitate.

  “The general needs to know what we have found,” Trent insisted.

  “The general needs complete information,” Theo countered. “Are we so afraid of the French that we will not complete our scout?”

  Gilyard thought for a moment. But Theo’s barb about being afraid had hit its mark.

  “Ready the men,” Gilyard said. “We will continue up to the ridge and see what the French have up there.”

  “A warm welcome, perhaps,” muttered Trent. But he could not disobey an order.

  They kept climbing. They were now so high Theo was sure they must be near the summit. Yet still the path wound upward, as tight and steep as ever.

  They came to a fork where the ravine split in two. A tributary stream flowed in from the right. In spring, it might be a roaring torrent, but now the streambed was a shallow thread of ice.

  “Which way?” said Gilyard.

  Moses pointed to the left. “This goes to the ridge. The other—” He had heard a sound, coming from around the corner of the right-hand fork. The sound of voices. “They are singing,” he said. The words were indistinct but the tune carried. It sounded like a marching song, sung by tired soldiers near the end of their patrol.

  Ten Frenchmen came into view. They were dressed like the rangers, in fur capes and hats, with snowshoes slung over their backs and muskets on their shoulders. They could not have expected to find Gilyard’s men there, but they were not slow to react. They turned and ran.

  The rangers were in no mood to let them escape. Before Gilyard could give an order his men charged after the fleeing Frenchmen, hungry for action at last.

  Theo was as eager for battle as any of them. He was about to follow, when a firm hand on his arm stopped him.

  It was Moses. “Something is not right,” said the Abenaki. “You would not find so few men far from their fortress, with little thought for their safety.”

  “They would never have reckoned on rangers in French territory,” Theo argued. His blood was up: he wanted to kill Frenchmen. Maybe Bichot himself was near.

  “Did you see how quickly they turned and ran? They knew they would find us.” Moses’s grip tightened on his arm. “They want us to follow them.”

  While they spoke, the rest of the company had disappeared around a bend in the gully. Shots were fired, snatched and sporadic, the sound of men taking aim at running targets.

  “This is no time—” Theo broke off. The tenor of the battle had changed. From down the gully came the sound not of rifles but of musketry: the massed blast of disciplined troops firing in unison.

  Excitement turned to horror. “It is an ambush,” he realized. In an instant, he saw it all. The French had men on the steep slopes above, able to pour fire down on the rangers in the gully.

  Moses pointed down the hill. “We should escape while we can and take the news to your general.”

  “No.” Theo did not even consider it. His loyalty was to his company. “We must save the men.”

  “Then we need to get up that slope.”

  The walls were steep, but Theo found a place where a rockslide made a path he could scramble up. Crouching low, he crept through the trees that lined the top of the gully. The sound of gunfire told him where to go, growing ever louder as he increased his pace.

  The gully dead-ended in a rocky hollow, where a frozen waterfall dropped down a cliff into a pool of black water and jagged ice. The trap had been well executed. The rangers were trapped like rats while the French rained fire down from three sides. More Frenchmen filled the entrance, blocking any escape.

  The rangers were being slaughtered. Their blood ran over the broken ice and stained the snow crimson. But they would not surrender. A knot of them had formed around Gilyard, pinned against the side of the hollow, as they fired desperately through the choking smoke.
r />   There was no time to plan. Every second Theo delayed meant more of his friends would die. Some of the Frenchmen were ahead, clearly visible through the trees. They had their backs to him. With a glance at Moses, to check he understood, Theo raised his rifle and fired.

  It was a good shot. A remarkable shot, considering his freezing hands and the chaos of the situation. It hit the Frenchman on the nape of his neck, shattering his spinal cord in an instant. The man slumped to the ground. To his left, another man was felled by Moses’s bullet.

  With the noise of battle, pouring their fire into the hollow, the other Frenchmen were slow to realize the danger. Theo and Moses had time to reload and fire again. Two more men went down.

  This time, their comrades were alerted to the new direction of fire. They had not expected an attack from the rear, but they were quick to respond. While Theo fumbled to reload, their guns were already primed. He ducked behind a tree as a hail of bullets came at him. Some flew past. Others struck the trunk. He felt the vibrations ripple through the branches.

  He rolled out from his cover, trained his gun on the first man he saw and fired. The man stumbled back and disappeared over the lip of the gully. His companions retaliated, but their bullets struck snow. Theo was already back behind the tree.

  Caught between the rangers below and Theo and Moses behind them, the French soldiers scattered in confusion.

  Theo let off another shot, then fixed his bayonet and charged forward. A Frenchman stepped out from behind a tree, ready to fire, but Theo’s bayonet impaled him through his belly before he could pull the trigger. He doubled over. Theo took the Frenchman’s musket, reversed it and shot him in the face. He withdrew his rifle and bayonet and kept running. Another man appeared and was felled by a shot from over Theo’s shoulder where Moses was covering him.

  Theo was at the lip of the slope, looking down into the hollow around the waterfall. There were no Frenchmen in this area, though a group of them kept up a steady fire from the far side and the mouth of the ravine. Below, the rangers were trying to climb the slope, clutching at exposed tree roots as they skidded on the thawing earth. They were easy targets.

  Theo took off his cross belts, looped one end around a tree stump and let the other hang down as a handhold. He turned his rifle toward the Frenchmen at the mouth of the gorge.

  Now he had the advantage of the terrain, with height and trees to shield him, while the French troops were exposed in the valley. When Theo opened fire, they could not see it was just one man. All they knew was that bullets were coming at them from above. Their discipline broke and they ran for cover. It gave the rangers enough time to scramble up to join Theo, adding their firepower to his.

  Gilyard was last. He brushed the mud from his coat, discharged his pistol toward a Frenchman who had shown himself, and crouched beside Theo. “Once again, Mr. Courtney, I find you where you are most needed.” He touched his hat, which had miraculously stayed on throughout the fight. “Now I need you for another task. I have decided we must make sure that news of what we have found gets back to General Williams. Take six men and make your way to the sledges we cached at the lake. I will hold off the French as long as possible, and then I will follow, but do not wait for me.”

  Theo stared. “With respect, sir, is it wise to divide our forces?”

  Gilyard bit off the end of a paper cartridge and tipped the powder into his pistol. “With respect, Mr. Courtney, you will obey my orders. Now go.”

  The only way down the mountain was through the ravine, which was blocked by the French.

  The clouds were lowering: a gray mist drifted down from the slopes above. Theo pointed upward. “We will make for the ridge and see if we can lose our enemies in the fog.”

  He found Moses, and five other men and struck out up the mountain.

  •••

  Theo put the men in pairs, one firing while the other ran and reloaded. Running, firing, ducking for cover and then running again. Meltwater turned the slope into a mire that sucked at their feet. The damp soaked the powder and made the rifles misfire.

  The battle had become a series of skirmishes, fought in the mud and snow. Theo did not know what had happened to Gilyard’s detachment, but they had not kept the French at bay for long. One by one, his men fell.

  The mist thickened. It hid them from their pursuers. Theo kept climbing. They had to be near the summit now. The ground grew rocky; the trees thinned. The shooting became sporadic. Gunfire sounded distant and muffled.

  Theo ran to a tree stump, crouched, reloaded—and waited.

  “Moses?” he called.

  There was no reply. He tried again, calling the names of all the men he had last seen alive. His only answer was silence.

  He was alone.

  A fine commander I make, he thought bitterly. I have lost all my men.

  He wondered whether to wait for them, but he was disoriented. He offered a quick prayer that they were safe and continued through the fog and snow, which lay thicker at that elevation. He supposed he was very high up, though there was no way of telling. He wished he had not discarded his snowshoes.

  Through the fog, he heard raised voices, a shot and a cry. He stumbled on in the snow toward the sound.

  A warm wind blew against his face. The mist parted, showing snatches of his surroundings. He was on the top of the ridge, on an exposed knoll that ended in a sheer cliff. He was lucky he had not gone over it.

  The splash of blood was like a crimson flower on the snow. There were footprints, too. Theo followed them. Every few feet he saw more bloodstains, marking the trail until it ended in a dark body sprawled on the ground. Theo ran to the man and rolled him over.

  It was Gilyard. His eyes fluttered open.

  “You were supposed to escape,” he grunted.

  “So were you,” replied Theo, fighting back the despair that threatened to overwhelm him. Gilyard had given him one task, to get away, and now they had blundered straight back into each other. Blood was seeping from Gilyard’s belly, spreading across his white smock. Theo tore off a strip of cloth and pressed it against the wound to staunch the bleeding. “I must get you down from here.”

  Gilyard shook his head. “No time. Save yourself.”

  “I will not.”

  Gilyard balled his hand into a fist and grabbed Theo’s coat. He pulled Theo close, his face scarlet with the effort of speaking. “Go.”

  Footsteps crunched in the snow behind Theo. Too late, he realized that the blood spilling from Gilyard’s guts was fresh and bright, the wound recently inflicted. He turned.

  Dark shapes glided out of the fog. A dozen men, all armed, fanning out so that Theo was trapped against the cliff. Wrapped in their furs, they looked like a pack of black bears.

  Their leader unwrapped the scarf that covered his face. He pulled off his hat and threw it on the ground. Lank hair spilled down around his scarred face, and the patch of bare red skin on the crown of his head seemed to pulse with anger. He smiled, showing yellow teeth as sharp as the wolf claws strung around his neck.

  It was a face from Theo’s nightmares, the man he had sworn to kill a thousand times in all those nights mourning Mgeso. And now that he was face to face with Bichot, he was on his knees and unarmed. The gods had deserted him.

  Theo’s eye drifted to the pistol in Gilyard’s belt. Was it loaded?

  There was only one way to find out. In a single motion, he drew it and leveled it at Bichot.

  The Frenchman stopped in his tracks. Theo stood. His legs trembled, but the pistol in his hand didn’t waver.

  “Don’t you recognize me?” he said in French.

  Bichot shrugged. Theo was dressed in his uniform. With his hair grown out and his piercings removed, he was very different from the Indian warrior he had been the last time they met.

  “I am Siumo, sometimes called Ahoma, of the Abenaki.” Theo spoke it loud and clear. “My wife was Mgeso, whom you killed.”

  Bichot’s eyes widened a fraction, before his face set
tled in a cold grimace. “I wonder—will you die as easily as she did?”

  Theo didn’t bother to answer. He pulled the trigger.

  The gun was loaded. The pan was primed. Bichot was barely ten feet away. Before he could react, the flint snapped forward and struck a spray of sparks. The powder in the pan ignited with a flash and a puff of smoke.

  Nothing else happened. Either the charge in the barrel was wet, or the touch-hole had been clogged with grit. The gun did not fire.

  A leer spread across Bichot’s face. His hunting knife was already bloody from the battle. He wiped the blade clean with his hand, and sucked blood off his finger.

  “You will not die as quickly as your wife,” he promised. “I will take my time and do the things to you I would have liked to do with her.”

  Theo stepped back. His heels felt the cliff edge. Beyond it was only cloud. There was nowhere for him to go. He glanced at Gilyard, but the major was lying still and cold in the snow. He was beyond help.

  Bichot loomed toward him. He sliced the air with his knife, laughing as he saw Theo flinch. Theo tensed himself to spring, but Bichot’s eyes betrayed him. He wanted Theo to attack. He was waiting for it.

  Theo could not fight him. All he could do was deny him the satisfaction of the kill.

  He stepped backward off the cliff.

  Constance had never known she could be so cold. February in Paris had been bitter. Crossing the Atlantic in October, while gales battered the ship and breaking waves soaked everything, had made her blood freeze. But winter in Québec made those look like fond memories. The drafty houses could not keep out the shrill north winds, while the snow that clogged the streets made stepping outdoors an excruciating ordeal. She had spent so long huddled close to the smoky fires, she feared she would turn into a haunch of ham.

  This was the place her new husband had brought her.

  They had married in haste, at his family home in Normandy, en route to join the fleet at Brest. On their wedding night, Constance had put on her most revealing négligé and steeled her body for what was to come. Mauvières’s brutality had left more than physical bruises on her.