by Wilbur Smith
The rangers charged in behind the Abenaki, fighting alongside them with the frenzied energy of dead men offered a last reprieve. Theo found Moses peeling the scalp off a dying French lieutenant. He embraced his friend. “I thought you were dead.”
Moses gave a smile that was more relief than joy. “I found their trail in the forest. I persuaded them to come back.”
“But how—?”
Malsum emerged through the smoke obscuring the ravine. “After I let you go from the fort, I was troubled,” he said. “Deep spiritual blackness came over me, like I had never encountered before. I spoke to the sachem, who reminded me of the dream he had the night before you arrived in our village. That you are the hawk who would save our children from the wolf.”
Theo felt the world had spun from its axis. So much had happened, he could hardly understand.
“The sachem said the French would lose this battle,” Malsum continued. “He said that the British would be cruel victors to those who fought with the French, but that those who aided them would be treated with honor. The British are the way of the light. The sachem said he has a strong soul connection with your people, that your values of humanity and compassion are as deep as the earth. You are on the side of the ancestors. I felt the darkness lift from inside me when I listened to his words. He said you would speak for us to the British general. Now we fight with you as allies.”
Theo had no idea if this talk of dreams and destiny, light and darkness was sincere, or merely justification for switching allegiances when it appeared the Abenaki had picked the losing side. Right now it didn’t matter. The battle was decided, and Theo had his own decision to make. Malsum would always be responsible for Mgeso’s death. But Malsum had loved her, maybe almost as much as Theo, and he would carry that guilt for the rest of his life. Nothing Theo could do would relieve that burden. Malsum had tried to kill him, but twice he had saved him. He had paid his debt. It was time to put their quarrel aside.
They embraced. Two blood-soaked warriors, victorious in battle.
“Mgeso named you well,” said Malsum. “Truly you are Siumo the hawk, the hunter who falls like lightning from the sky.”
But Theo only half heard him. Already, he was scanning the battlefield.
Where was his sister?
•••
Corbeil watched the carnage in disbelief. He did not care about the men—they were expendable—but the destruction of his hopes cut him to the bone. How could he have lost the battle?
What mattered now was saving his skin. When the line broke, he had been quick to leap into the gully. Before he could get very far, he was overtaken by the mass of soldiers fleeing down the mountain. It was chaos. Men slipped on the loose rocks and broke their legs: they begged their comrades for help, but no one would waste a second on the wounded. They were left where they fell.
Soon only the dying remained. And there was Constance. Corbeil had left her when the battle started, in a shallow depression a little way down the ravine. The guard he had set over her had fled, but Constance remained. She was bent over the rope that tied her to a tree, trying to sever it with her teeth.
She saw Corbeil arrive and spat out a mouthful of fibers. “You have lost,” she said. “Everything.”
“Not everything.” Her spite gave him strength, a reason to keep fighting. “I still have my wife.”
He cut the rope with his sword and jerked her forward so that she fell on her knees.
“I am not finished yet,” he told her. “I will drag you all the way back to Québec if I have to.”
Swift footsteps crunched on the stones. Corbeil put up his sword, then lowered it when he saw Bichot approach. The trapper had been in the thick of battle. His hair was matted, and the scalping scar throbbed like a giant boil. Blood dripped from a wound at his wrist.
“We must escape at once,” Corbeil said. “You know the paths. Find one that will get us over this mountain.”
Bichot spat on his hands. He combed his greasy hair with his fingers, so that it covered his scar again. “I know a path over the mountain,” he said. “But what is it worth to you?”
Corbeil stared. “Worth? It is worth both of our lives, you fool.”
“I do not need anyone to show me the path. And you will only slow me down. I need compensation.”
Screams echoed down the ravine from the ridge above. The Abenaki were scalping their victims. Before long, they would descend to pick off any survivors in the ravine.
“What do you want?” Corbeil asked.
Bichot’s black eyes traveled across to Constance. “Her. For myself.”
Corbeil did not hesitate. “When we reach safety, I promise you can do whatever you want with her.”
Bichot scratched his armpit. Spittle dripped from his yellow teeth and ran down his chin. He slipped his hand inside Constance’s dress, and squeezed her breast until she gasped. He ripped the sleeve off her dress and put it to his face before throwing it to the ground. He traced his fingers over her bare shoulder.
“I will look forward to it,” he murmured.
He pulled her to her feet and beckoned Corbeil. “Come.”
•••
Theo searched the piles of dead. He could not believe there were so many. The cries and sobs of the wounded followed him everywhere, but he could not help. The Abenaki trailed him, stripping scalps from the corpses.
Constance would have been behind the lines. He plunged down into the ravine. The bodies lay thick on the ground: though the fighting had not been so frenzied here, many had been trampled and crushed underfoot.
It was almost too much to take in, too much to believe that Constance might have survived. He kept going, checking every corpse until their faces swam before his eyes, like a living nightmare.
“Siumo.”
Moses’s voice broke into Theo’s despair. The Abenaki beckoned Theo to a tree growing in a hollow in the wall of the ravine. A loop of rope was tied around the trunk, its blunt end showing where it had been cut. There was blood on it. Moses pointed to a strip of white cloth on the ground. Theo picked it up, felt its softness in his hands. It was the sleeve of a dress. He lifted it to his nose. It had a feminine scent.
“Who else would have been tied up in the middle of the battle?” said Moses.
“And who cut the rope?”
Moses fingered the rope end. “See how clean it is? No fraying. This was done with a long, sharp blade.”
“Where could they have gone?”
“They will try to find another way across the mountain.”
And suddenly Theo knew exactly their destination. He turned and ran.
“Wait!” Moses called.
Theo was impelled by what some might deem a sort of madness. He was exhausted, terrified. He’d witnessed and been responsible for so much death and destruction that he had to find his sister to assuage the demons eating away at his soul. His life had been a series of abandonments, his loved ones killed or murdered. Rescuing Constance would be his salvation. She needed him. He didn’t listen to Moses. He scampered down the ravine, nimble as a goat, hurdling the bodies of the dead and dying. Everything looked different than it had in the snow, but he remembered the geography from that terrible winter’s day. He rounded a corner, and there was the fork where the gully joined the ravine. It was the place where Bichot had ambushed them all those months ago.
Moses ran down the slope behind him, struggling to keep pace. “You should let the others catch up. If the general has your sister, who knows how many men may be with him?”
“I will not let them escape this time.”
Observing with the eyes of an Abenaki, Theo missed nothing as he ran up the other fork. A smear of blood on a rock where a cut hand had pulled itself up. A snapped twig and scuffed leaves. A long strand of golden hair caught on a branch.
Theo held it up to Moses. “You see? We must be close.”
•••
Constance was doing everything she could to slow Corbeil’s prog
ress. If they didn’t get too far ahead, she was convinced Theo would rescue her. But now she was so tired, she could hardly keep upright. Rocks grazed her knee; branches snagged her hair.
They climbed out of the gully by a waterfall and entered forest again. She could not see a path, but Bichot led the way unerringly. Corbeil followed, using the rope that bound her hands as a halter to tug her always forward.
She fell painfully, forced herself up and fell again. This time, she was finished. She could not get up.
Corbeil jerked the rope. He swore and kicked her, but she remained motionless. He dragged her on her stomach, like an animal carcass, through the mud. She tasted earth in her mouth.
Constance was slim and light. Corbeil had the strength of the devil. But even he could not pull her far. “We should leave her,” he said.
Bichot was breathing hard. “You promised me I would have her as my prize.”
“She’ll be no use to you if you are dead. When we reach Québec, I will give you enough gold to buy so many women your cock will fall off,” Corbeil promised.
“But none of them will be like her.”
Corbeil rolled his eyes. “If you want to stay and screw her until the Indians scalp you, that is your affair. Otherwise, finish it.”
Reluctantly, Bichot drew his scalping knife. He grabbed a fistful of Constance’s hair, wrapped it around his hand and yanked her onto her knees. He pulled her head back, exposing her pale throat. She seemed to have lost consciousness.
“I would so much have enjoyed taking more time with you,” he murmured in her ear. “But c’est la guerre.”
He stroked his knuckles across her face, then pulled away, screaming. The knife fell to the ground. Blood poured from his hand.
Constance spat out a fat lump of flesh she had bitten off. Blood dribbled down her chin.
“You bitch!” Bichot shouted. “You’ll regret that as I inflict slow pain before you die. You will truly suffer.” He slapped her face so hard she fell to the ground. Still sucking his wound, he pushed up her skirts to expose her creamy thighs. He cut the ties around her wrists to spread her body and held her hands above her head. Bichot undid his belt and pulled down his breeches, revealing a great tangle of dark hair.
“Put away your manhood. There is no time,” said Corbeil, angrily. “The enemy will be on our trail.”
“The British could never follow us, and the Indians will be too busy scalping the dead.”
The point of Corbeil’s sword pricked the back of his neck. “If you waste one more second on her, I will run you through.”
Bichot scooped the knife off the floor and turned to face him. “Do not threaten me, monsieur. Without me, you will never find your way off this mountain.”
“If you plan on tarrying until the English take us, neither of us will get out alive. Make yourself decent and let us be away.”
Bichot buttoned his breeches. He cut a strip off Constance’s dress and bound his bleeding hand.
“Death is too kind for you,” he hissed, as he raised the knife again.
•••
The trees were thinner at this altitude. Theo saw his quarry from a hundred yards away, the flash of Constance’s white dress among the brown of the forest.
He was still running, pushing himself to physical extremes he hadn’t known existed. Cramp tormented his side, like an open wound. Every step was agony. Still he forged ahead. Moses was lagging behind. If he was lost, or simply exhausted, Theo didn’t know. He had no time to find out. If he stopped moving, even for a moment, he knew he would never have the strength to pick himself up again.
He had no plan. The woodcraft he had learned from the Abenaki was useless in his current state. He felt as if he was blundering through the forest as noisily as a buffalo. His enemies would surely hear him coming.
Except—for some reason they did not. Perhaps his Abenaki instincts made him quieter than he thought. He could see them plainly in a clearing where the trees opened out. There was General Corbeil, and also a man Theo had never expected to see again. A man he thought he had consigned to the depths of a frozen lake. Bichot.
It was as if all his enemies had been summoned from his nightmares, but Theo had no time to wonder how Bichot had survived. The trapper and Corbeil faced each other, blades drawn. Constance lay on the ground beside them, unmoving.
Was she dead?
Theo still had the pistol in his belt loaded with the single bullet. Otherwise, he was unarmed. He did not stop to think about it. He burst into the clearing so suddenly that—for a moment—Corbeil and Bichot could only stare in horror.
Then Bichot reacted. He sprang at Theo, knife raised. Theo jerked up the pistol he carried, though he had no powder for it. Bichot’s blade struck the barrel with an angry ring of metal that sent shock waves down to the hilt.
With his bandaged hand still bleeding, the impact jarred the knife from Bichot’s grip. It fell to the ground. Theo moved in and smashed him in the face with the pistol. Blood sprayed from the trapper’s mouth.
But Bichot had been brawling all his life. He punched Theo in the stomach, then kicked his shins. Theo stepped back. Out of the corner of his eye he could see Corbeil lifting his sword to strike. Against two adversaries Theo wouldn’t stand a chance.
But the blow never came. Theo raised his pistol to strike Bichot again, but he was slow and the Frenchman was quicker. Bichot grabbed Theo’s arm and, with a practiced movement, snapped his wrist.
Theo gritted his teeth against the pain. He brought up his knee, aiming for Bichot’s groin, but the Frenchman dodged the blow. While Theo was off balance, Bichot delivered two sharp punches that sent Theo reeling. He caught his foot on a branch and fell.
Bichot was on him in an instant. He straddled Theo, pinning him to the ground and raining blows all over his body. All Theo could see was Bichot’s open mouth, the yellow teeth flecked with blood, drooling over him.
Bichot spat out a tooth that Theo must have knocked loose. “I will send you to meet your Indian whore,” he hissed. “You thought you had drowned me? You can never kill me.” His knife lay a few feet away, but he did not go for it. He meant to beat Theo to death with his bare hands.
Theo’s vision blurred. Sweat and blood mixed in his eyes. A white nimbus seemed to surround Bichot, and Theo wondered if it was the ancestors coming to claim him. He thought of all the times he had laughed at Moses when he spoke of them.
I will not feel ashamed in their company now, he thought.
Perhaps he was already dead. He could no longer feel Bichot’s blows. The weight that pinned him down had lifted. Was his soul drifting away?
He tried to move his arm. Pain stabbed through his wrist. Surely the dead did not feel pain. Holding his limp hand as best he could, he wiped his eyes.
Bichot still straddled him, but he was lifeless. A cascade of blood poured down his face, gushing from the open wound where a tomahawk had split his skull. The weapon was buried in the bone up to its hilt.
Bichot collapsed to his side. Theo scrambled out from underneath the dead weight of the body.
“You fly fast, Siumo. Maybe too fast.” Moses put his foot on Bichot’s back and levered out the tomahawk. “A pity. I have ruined his scalp.”
Theo was speechless, almost tearful with gratitude. He glanced around the clearing. “Where is Constance?”
She had vanished. So had Corbeil.
“I saw them go that way.” Moses pointed to a gap, where Theo could see open sky beyond the trees.
He felt barely alive. He felt agony in places he had not known could hurt. His right hand was useless, his left arm numb, and stabbing pains shot through his leg each time he moved it.
He tucked Bichot’s knife in his belt and found a long stick. He leaned on it for balance as he staggered toward the clearing. Moses had already gone ahead.
The forest ended abruptly at a great shelf of rock that protruded from the mountainside. A cliff fell away below, giving immense views of the great wilderness b
eyond. Moses stood beyond the trees, while Constance and Corbeil faced him with their backs to the cliff.
Moses had dropped his tomahawk and put his arms at his sides. Theo could not understand why—until he saw Corbeil’s sword at Constance’s throat.
“One step closer and I will kill your sister!” the general shouted.
Theo didn’t move. He thought he was hallucinating. Figures merged, so that he did not know if he saw Constance and Corbeil, or Bichot and Mgeso. It was as if his nightmares from the past had come to life.
“Put down your weapon!” Corbeil called.
“Don’t, Theo!” Constance cried. The wind whipped at her golden hair. “I’d rather die than let him take me away. My life will be worse than death.”
Theo believed her. The despair in her voice was all too real. He turned the knife in his hands, stricken by the choice he had to make. He stared at Corbeil, at the hooked nose, and small black eyes that sneered at the world. Across continents and oceans, the general had taken from Theo almost everything he held dear.
“Release her,” Theo said. “Your fort is destroyed and your army is lost. Hand over your sword and, under the proper terms of surrender, the British will treat you with the respect deserving of your conduct and rank.”
Corbeil laughed and tightened his grip. A thin drop of blood ran down Constance’s flawless white neck. “Do you take me for a fool? Even if I could trust you, I would not let myself be taken in chains back to London, to be paraded as a captive.”
“If Constance dies, you will not live one second longer,” Theo said.
“If she dies, your life will not be worth living.”
And that was not far from the truth. With his black heart, his unerring instinct for human weakness, Corbeil had recognized it. Theo had left Constance for dead once before. He could not do it again.
A wave of desolation and exhaustion broke over him. He had found his sister halfway around the world, but now he could not keep her safe.