Ghost Fire

by Wilbur Smith

  They were close. To enter the creek that ran up behind the bluffs, they would have to pass close to the fort’s ramparts. On his expedition inside the fort when he had been imprisoned, Theo had carefully noted where the guns were positioned. Though most faced landward, toward the besieging army, a few had been left aimed at the lake, in case the British attempted an amphibious assault.

  In the thin bark canoes, it would take only one hit. Even a musket ball could pierce those fragile hulls.

  The men in the boat lay flat. The paddlers bent double, high enough to reach over the side.

  “Stop paddling.” They were at the mouth of the creek, under the fort’s guns. Theo saw a light blink on the walls. Probably a soldier lighting his pipe—but what if it was the match being applied to the touch-hole?

  Theo kept so still he hardly breathed. The canoes drifted agonizingly slowly with only the wind to drive them. Every time he risked a glance, they seemed barely to have moved.

  At last they were past. Theo relaxed a little. Trees came down to the bank again, hiding them from anyone inland, but they also acted as a barrier to the wind. Without the extra force it gave them, they had to paddle more vigorously.

  Theo glanced at the moon, now dipping toward the horizon. It had taken longer than he had expected to reach this point, and he did not know the distance to the cove. “Faster,” he said. General Williams would begin the main assault on the fort at dawn. If there were guns on the cliff, Theo would have to discover and disable them or the army would be slaughtered.

  He heard water rippling along the side as they gathered speed. The canoes behind followed their lead.

  “There,” Theo hissed. They had come around a bend. In the faint starlight he saw the massive cliffs, and a break in the trees where the shingle beach sloped to the water.

  There were men on the beach. Whether that was a normal precaution, or whether Theo’s scouting expedition had put them on their guard, he had not expected it.

  The rangers had to get rid of them—but if the men at the top heard shots, they would be prepared, and all the soldiers in the world would not be able to scale those cliffs against determined defenders.

  “We will go further upriver,” Theo decided, “see if we can find a landing place and circle back.” It would mean going past the men on the beach, but it was too late to change course. The canoes were traveling at speed: turning them would create wake and noise. All they could do was hold fast and hope the French didn’t see them.

  The rangers stared at the men on the beach and fingered their weapons. They were twenty yards away. It was impossible not to be seen—at that distance even the whites of their eyes might give them away.

  A shudder tore through Theo’s boat. The canoe’s progress was halted so suddenly that the men inside were thrown off balance. They had been closely observing the land, and did not see the submerged tree dead ahead.

  It ripped open the hull. Water flooded in. Men shouted and splashed, careless of the danger. Answering shouts rose from the beach as the French heard their cries. A lantern was lit, and soldiers rushed to the shore, training their guns on the creek.

  The men in the canoes behind saw what had happened. They could not rescue the men in the water—their own craft were already overloaded—but they recognized the danger from the shore. They opened fire. A volley of deadly accurate rifle bullets tore through the unsuspecting French. Some went down, others firing wildly into the darkness.

  Theo, treading water, could only watch helplessly as the plan unraveled. He could not order his men to stop firing. Now that the battle had begun, they had to see it through. He was a sitting target in the water.

  He swam for shore. Muskets and rifles were going off all around him. Some balls landed so close he heard the hiss as the hot lead met the cold water. Screams rent the air between the explosions of the guns. He could not tell which side they came from.

  The men in the canoes outnumbered the men on the beach—and they had been shooting since they were old enough to hold a rifle. They could hit a rat in the dark at two hundred yards. In a short time, the French defenders were pushed back and cut down.

  But at what cost?

  Theo scrambled onto the beach, dripping, like a dog. His rifle, ammunition pouch and powder horn were all lost or useless, though that was the least of his problems. He made a quick count as his men came ashore. One was wounded in the thigh, and another’s arm was bleeding. Otherwise, there were no casualties.

  “Take two men and follow the path back to the fort,” he told Moses. “If any of the French got away, kill them before they can raise the alarm. Quietly,” he added. They were downwind from the fort, and a good mile distant. Theo still dared to hope that the sounds of their skirmish might not have carried.

  He looked up and saw lights glowing at the top of the cliff. The men camped up there must have heard or seen the muzzle flashes. They could not know the outcome of the battle, but they would prepare for the worst.

  Speed and confusion were Theo’s only advantages.

  “Take what weapons you can,” he ordered. The rangers stripped the dead French of their muskets and ammunition, while Theo searched the fringes of the beach. He found the stone sill he had discovered the night he was captured—and there, rising away up the sheer cliff, was a path.

  By now, Moses had returned.

  “Did any get away?” Theo asked.

  “Yes—and no.” Moses held up two bleeding scalps. “They will not raise the alarm.”

  “Then let us press the attack while we still have hope.”

  The path wound between boulders, then climbed steeply up the cliff. Theo marveled at the men who had made it, let alone managed to haul supplies up it. In some places it was little more than a ledge. Elsewhere, gaps were filled with loose rocks that looked as if they might collapse at any moment. Sometimes Theo had to drop to all fours and scramble up a slope so sheer he feared he might fall off. And always the terror nagged of shots from the heights above.

  He looked down. The rangers were strung out behind him, like a knotted rope, trailing across the cliff. There was no space, and no cover. A single marksman at the top could have picked them off at leisure.

  So far no one had challenged them. Below, Theo saw the ribbon of the creek, the dark mass of the forest and the lights of the fort in the distance. Somewhere beyond that, Williams’s army would be priming their muskets and touching their lucky charms. Some of the scout companies would already have started their advance toward the French lines. He pushed on faster, ignoring the pain in his weary legs.

  “Qui va?” called a voice from the darkness.

  Theo froze. He scanned the path ahead, trying to see where the voice had come from. “C’est Jacques,” he said, as casually as he could manage.

  “What happened? We heard shots.”

  “A boatload of English soldiers tried to come up the creek. We gave them a warm welcome.” Theo reached into his coat and pulled out the small flask of brandy he carried. He shook it, so that the sentry could hear the liquid sloshing inside. “I came to toast our victory.”

  The sentry stayed hidden. But he must be cold and frightened, and the promise of liquor was too much to resist. He raised his head. A small movement, barely perceptible in the darkness. Enough to give away his position.

  Moses’s tomahawk sailed through the air and split the Frenchman’s skull between the eyes. Theo ran forward and slit his throat before he had time to cry out.

  “Perhaps he was the only one,” whispered Theo, hopefully. The eastern horizon was hidden behind the bulk of the mountain, but dawn could not be far off.

  Stone splinters erupted from the rock next to his face. They peppered his cheek and sliced his forehead; one just missed his right eye. He threw himself to the ground. A second bullet flew through the space where he had been and hit the cliff, raining more shards of rock on him.

  “They have seen us,” said Moses.

  There was nowhere to hide. The cliff was their onl
y protection. Theo ran a few paces to a hollow in the rock, where a small overhang offered a modicum of safety. He flattened himself against the cliff face.

  He was trapped. If he went down, he would expose himself to fire from the soldiers above. If he tried to carry on up the path, he would walk into a volley of lead.

  Below, the rangers had begun a brisk exchange of fire. A few had found rocks or crags to shelter behind, from where they could take aim at the French defenders. But too many were exposed in the open, where their only hope was the inaccuracy of the French muskets. Some lived. More died.

  “We cannot stay here!” Theo shouted to Moses, squeezed into the hollow beside him.

  Moses raised an eyebrow. “Does Siumo the hawk think he can fly?”

  “I can climb.”

  Theo turned, hugging the rock desperately. He reached up, feeling for places where he could find a grip. One hand closed around a knob of rock; his fingers wormed into a crack. He probed with his foot and found a solid foothold.

  Moses looked at him in wonder. “When you meet the ancestors, tell them I said you are crazy.”

  The Abenaki ducked out from behind the hollow, dropped to his knee and cracked off a quick shot to cover Theo’s ascent. There was a scream, but Theo didn’t hear it. He had started to climb.

  The rock was hard and almost sheer. But an aeon of winters had taken their toll. Ice had cracked it; meltwater had created tiny, almost imperceptible contours. It was enough for his desperate fingers to cling to.

  He could feel the endless emptiness below, like a weight around his ankles. The cliff at this point bulged out from the mountainside, overhanging the path. If he fell, it would be a long drop all the way to the beach.

  He closed his mind to the danger. He did not notice the bullets flying past. His total concentration was fixed on the climb, on the four small points where his hands and feet met the rock. They were all that anchored him to the world. The wind tugged at him. The void seemed to suck him backward, as if gravity itself was offended by his presumption. Every move risked disaster; every decision was an act of faith. He could not tell if a hold would bear his weight until he lunged for it.

  He did not know how far he’d climbed. He was aware that the rangers’ fire had eased off, but he could not tell if it was because they were winning or dying. He looked up. What he saw struck more fear into his heart than bullets or the cliff or anything else that night. The sky was lightening. It had turned from black to purple, while a band of dark blue advanced over the mountain. Dawn was breaking.

  The cannons on the ridge opened fire. Theo felt the vibrations through the rock, before the sound rolled down from the heights. He had been right about the guns, about the danger, about the trap General Corbeil had laid for the advancing British army. But he was too late.

  Despair coursed through him. He imagined the cannonballs that had been fired, the arc as they descended toward their targets. How long would it take them to strike home? Ten seconds? Twenty? They would strike the ordered ranks of British troops as they emerged from the trees into the killing ground around the fort. A direct hit would shatter a man’s head. Even bouncing along the ground, a ball might smash a body in two.

  The horrors flashed through his mind only for a fraction of a second. But his concentration had lapsed. His grip loosened. His foot slipped from the crack where he had lodged it, just as he reached for the next handhold. He tried to cling to it, but his fingers closed on thin air.

  •••

  In the fort, General Corbeil surveyed the battlefield from the top of the octagonal tower. He had not heard the first skirmish when Theo and the rangers landed on the beach, but he had seen the flashes of the gunfight on the cliffs. He was not concerned. The attackers had not come close to the summit, and five men could hold that path against five hundred.

  A deeper roar sounded from the mountain. The great guns opened fire. That was what he had been waiting for, months of effort leading to this moment. He had ordered the guns to be hauled up in the depths of winter, against the advice of his engineers. Fifty men had died in the effort, crushed when the cannon slipped their tackles on the ice, or freezing from cold on the exposed mountain top. Every life lost had been worth it for this. The end justified the means as in all wars. Winning was everything.

  He turned to Constance. He had ordered her to join him, to witness the destruction and to punish her for her wavering loyalty. Two soldiers hovered behind her, with orders to arrest her if she attacked her husband. Corbeil had seen the look in her eyes. They smoldered with hatred, like those of a cornered animal.

  He knew he should not provoke her further, but he could not resist twisting the knife. “Will you toast my victory?” he asked. “The plan you cooked up with your lover Bercheny has failed. The victory, and the glory, will be mine.” Corbeil was incandescent with rage, but he contained it with the self-control of a born killer.

  Across the cleared ground in front of the fort, where the forest started again, he saw flashes of red among the trees. He did not know how the British vanguard had come so quickly through the traps and trenches he had placed in the forest, but it did not matter. Now they had halted, thrown into disarray by the cannon fire on their flank. He had not expected to have to use his guns so soon, but as long as his men kept up their fire, the enemy was cornered.

  A pine tree exploded in a spray of wood as a cannonball struck it. The British soldiers around it scattered, some clutching their faces where splinters had lacerated their eyes. The tree tottered, then fell, crushing half a dozen beneath it. Corbeil felt euphoria spread through his veins.

  Soon the victory would be complete.

  •••

  Theo was falling. The cliff receded. He flung out his arms, flailing for a grip. His fingers scraped over the smooth stone, scrabbling at every imperfection as he gathered pace.

  Suddenly he halted so abruptly that the jolt almost pulled his arm out of its socket. He had managed to grab on to a lip in the rock. It was a precarious grip. His full weight drew down on his hand, trying to loosen the hold. He squeezed tighter, hanging on with every ounce of his strength.

  The strain was intolerable. The cannons fired again. In extremity his mind conjured images of Constance, Abigail, Caleb, and all the soldiers under those guns. He could not fail them.

  Drawing on strength he did not know he possessed, he hauled himself up one-handed. His muscles screamed with pain. His body felt as heavy as stone. Sweat stung his skin and seeped painfully into his eyes. His hand couldn’t take the strain. He felt it begin to slip.

  With a final heave, he lunged up. His left hand grabbed the ledge, just as his right could bear it no more.

  Now he was hanging two-handed. He felt some relief, but that would not last long. The only way out was to climb.

  He reached up with his left hand and felt a knot in the stone, no bigger than a crab apple. It was all he needed. He found a foothold, then another. His heart was beating hard enough to shake the mountain. All he wanted was to rest and recover his strength, but momentum was essential. He kept climbing, oblivious to the rifles and muskets spraying fire below and the rumble of the great guns.

  The mountain yielded. His hands reached over a ledge and he felt flat ground at last. He scrambled over it and sprawled in relief. His arms and legs ached as if they’d been stretched on a rack.

  There was no time to rest. He had come out on another section of the path, far above where he had started, higher than the French soldiers. He observed them below, spread out across the mountainside in their foxholes and hides. They had not seen him climb, and they were unaware of him as he bore down on them from behind. Having survived the climb, Theo found new strength. He killed one, severing his spinal cord with his tomahawk, then a second with a knife between the ribs. A third he threw off the cliff.

  The soldier had just loaded his gun. Theo took it, trained it on another marksman he could see ten yards away, and fired. He bellowed the Abenaki war cry, a deep howl that echoed
off the cliffs and froze the hearts of all who heard it.

  Moses knew what it meant. He burst from his cover and charged up the slope, firing his pistols as he ran. The surviving rangers cheered and came up behind, while the French on the heights above, confused by Theo’s attack on their rear, hesitated.

  Theo fired again. And again. The French did not know where to aim, and their indecision was all the rangers needed. They swarmed over the French positions, butchering them on the points of their knives and bayonets. The French reserves saw the slaughter and panicked. They turned and fled back up the cliff.

  “Do not let them regroup!” Theo shouted. By now, Moses had reached him. They ran on together, racing their enemies for the summit. A straggling Frenchman blocked their way, limping from a wound in his leg. Theo grabbed his shoulders and hurled him off the edge.

  Around the next bend he reached the top of the cliff. He prayed he was not too late.

  •••

  The British were suffering terrible losses. They had tried to sally out of the woods and paid a heavy price. The burned ground in front of the fort was filled with mangled corpses and the screams of dying men. Caught between the guns from the fort and the guns on the cliff, they had been pulverized. Those who had survived lurked in the woods, waiting for respite that would not come. Soon they would break.

  Corbeil had kept a battalion of men in reserve for this outcome. When the British fled, their retreat would become a rout. He could pursue them all the way to Albany—maybe even New York. A defensive campaign would become a glorious conquest. He imagined how he would mark his victory, perhaps like the Roman generals of old: impaling the defeated army’s severed heads at the roadside, one every mile from Québec to New York. He closed his eyes and smiled as he imagined the sight.

  “Take a message to the reserves,” he ordered one of his aides. “Tell them to prepare for pursuit.”

  The aide saluted and set off. The guns on the heights had gone quiet. Perhaps the British had retreated and his men no longer had any targets. Corbeil looked up at the mountain. The fighting seemed to be over, though a few puffs of powder smoke lingered, like cloud, around the cliffs.