Eye of the Raven (4 page)

The stranger glanced at Duncan self-consciously. "Everyone's a friend when you pay off your debts."

"Haudenosaunee," Duncan said.

"Sir?"

"Not Shawnee. He is of the Haudenosaunee. It means people of the longhouse."

The man's eyes went round with excitement. "The Iroquois! The noble empire of the north! I have journals from my dialogues with the Lenni-Lenape, the Susquehannocks, the Shawnee, the Stockbridge, all but a prelude for studying the Iroquois. My studies inexorably lead me toward the heart of their inner kingdom. Might you be an emissary of sorts? Is it true they have ten words for bear, depending on the age?"

Duncan might have found himself grinning at the stranger's odd combination of zeal, intellect, and naivete were it not for his worry for Conawago. "I seek an old Indian brought in today, under arrest." He paused as he saw a new uneasiness on the man's face, and he extended his hand. "Duncan McCallum," he ventured, "formerly of the Medical College of Edinburgh."

The man's countenance instantly lit, and he pumped Duncan's hand vigorously. "Johan Van Grut of the Hague. Formerly of the university at Louvain and Yale College in the Connecticut colony."

"My friend carries himself like an old monk, wears his hair in long braids in the traditional style, though he was long educated by Europeans."

Van Grut frowned. "New militia from Virginia did arrive with two long bundles like bodies. I only saw from afar as I was sketching a partridge. One was taken into the infirmary, the other dumped by the guardhouse." He pointed to an earthwork ramp that led to a buried structure.

Duncan straightened as he saw that the sentinels at the ramp included not only two infantry regulars with Brown Bess muskets but also a man in the clothes of a frontiersman, a red patch of cloth on his tricorn hat. He spun about, spotting for the first time half a dozen tents pitched in the shade of the oaks at the northeast corner of the fort. He offered the Dutchman a quick salute and strode away.

Moments later he was behind a tree near the northern palisade, studying the little camp, watching the company for signs of leaders, settling on a square-shouldered bearded man addressed by the others as sergeant whose raspy voice and heavy knife confirmed him as Duncan's assailant of that morning. He crept closer, surveying a line of weapons leaning against a rail lashed between two trees. An instant after he spied his own long rifle, he strode out of his cover, casually lifting his weapon and filling its firing pan from the small horn of priming powder he kept in his pocket. He kept his head down as he approached the sergeant, tapping him on the shoulder with the end of his rifle barrel. As the man turned toward him he slammed the side of his gunstock into his belly, dropping him to his knees, knocking the knife from his hand as he reached for it.

The fury in the sergeant's eyes slackened as he recognized Duncan, and he waved away the men who were circling him. "It's a miracle, boys," the sergeant sneered. "The garbage has been resurrected from the midden."

"So it was your idea to bury me in the infirmary's waste," Duncan growled.

The sergeant made a chagrined gesture toward his men. "That be northern gratitude for ye, boys. We gave him a free hand and here's how he repays us." Guffaws rose from the militiamen. "If they had a doctor or a butcher here we would have poured some fresh blood on ye," he added in a more treacherous voice.

"I'll have my kit."

The Virginian spat toward Duncan's feet, leaving a dark stain of tobacco on the ground. "Gonna to be auctioned off, with that of the savage, to pay for the coffin of our brave captain."

Duncan pulled the hammer of his gun to the half-cock position and aimed it at the sergeant. "I'll have the kit you stole from me, and that of my friend." He ignored the soldiers who began to close around him, keeping his gaze leveled at the bearded man.

"Your red friend is promised a neck-stretching party. All the same to us if you wish to join him in hell. A man who shares his mess with such filth ain't much better himself."

"Son of a caoineag!" Duncan spat. The Highland curses shot from Duncan's lips unbidden as he heard himself invoke not just the spawn of a banshee, but the uruisg, the glaistig, and the oneeyed direach, monsters who avenged the innocent. He was barely able to control his fury.

"We be keeping close watch of your heathen's health," the sergeant chided. "If he looks to be dying we'll string him up without the major's verdict. We'll not be cheated of our justice."

Duncan pulled the hammer of his gun all the way back.

"Ye ain't gonna shoot me."

"No," Duncan agreed, and he swung his rifle toward a keg beside a mound of small bundles. "I'm going to blow your powder and supplies. Of course the splinters from the explosion may take a few of you. Ever see a man with three inches of oak in his eye?"

The sergeant cursed. Half a dozen men with clubs began to surround Duncan. The sergeant was beginning to lift his knife from the ground when he froze. Two shadows appeared at Duncan's side.

"'Tis a bonny thing to be practicing maneuvers, to be sure," came a voice thick with a Highland burr. "But we cannot let ye have all the enjoyment."

The men who stepped to either side of Duncan were huge, the spiked halberds in their hands long and lethal. Each wore a scarlet waistcoat over the plaid kilt of a Highland regiment.

The militia sergeant spat a curse. He slowly rose, calling off his men with a flick of his hand.

"Our friend asked for the return of his property," boomed the soldier to Duncan's left, a big ox of a man with curly red hair overflowing from his Highland bonnet.

On a quick, muttered command one of the militiamen slipped inside a tent then reappeared carrying a familiar powder horn, two packs, and nearly all the other equipment Duncan and Conawago had been traveling with.

"An Iroquois battle ax. A red battle ax," Duncan said. It was, he knew, a favorite souvenir for soldiers. The sergeant cursed again and retrieved it himself from a bedroll.

They stepped quickly away from the militia camp. "Sergeant Colin McGregor at y'er service," declared the red-haired man as he thumped his chest. "Such a fine string of Highland invocations be like a salve to me homesick heart. Did I detect the lilt of the western coast?"

"For as far back as memory," Duncan replied, a small grin tugging at his mouth, "the McCallum clan dwelled nigh Lochlash and in the lesser islands to the west. Now my clan is but me and my brother and an old man in the New York colony."

"Y'er brother?" McGregor asked. "Surely not our own beloved Captain Jamie McCallum?"

Duncan paused to study the garb of the men and recognized the dark tartan of the famed Black Watch, the 42nd Regiment of Foot. "Captain of the 42nd no longer." His brother had been branded a deserter after leaving the battleground of Ticonderoga to save a band of Iroquois holy men from ambush and had been declared an outlaw with a sizable bounty on his head.

McGregor fixed Duncan with an inquisitive gaze. "He was reported dead in a skirmish with French Indians last autumn."

"He was reported dead," Duncan agreed, leaving the words hanging.

"Sometimes," McGregor suggested, "it can be difficult to identify bodies when the heathens have finished with them."

"It can be difficult," Duncan agreed.

The big Scot offered a conspiratorial smile, then McGregor gestured Duncan forward. A moment later Duncan halted as he saw he was being led into the headquarters building.

"I need to see the man they brought into the guardhouse today."

"The old Indian? Dead, more than like," warned McGregor.

Duncan clamped his jaw against a tide of emotion. "I need to know."

"Even if he's not ye'11 not get near the cell without the blessing of Major Latchford," added the Scottish sergeant. "You can perform your supplication during your interview."

"Interview?"

"Lad, as happy as I be to rescue ye from those damned southern planters, truth is we were sent to find ye." McGregor abruptly stiffened as an oily-looking junior officer appeared at the door in front of them.

"They will polish their boots until I say they are done," the officer snapped in a shrill voice to someone over his shoulder, then paused to study Duncan with a disdainful gaze. He dismissed Duncan's escorts with a cool nod then muttered a syllable to someone in the shadows. A bent, gray-haired soldier appeared with a heavy brush.

Duncan awkwardly let the officer's valet brush the back of his waistcoat, then gently but firmly took the brush from the man's hand and finished the job himself. The officer frowned, stepped aside, and gestured him through the door. Past two tables stacked with maps was an inner office at which a starched and powdered officer sat, sipping from a china cup as he perused an open journal book.

"Your mongrel, Major," the young officer announced in the tone of one expecting a grand entertainment.

The officer frowned, first at Duncan then at his escort. "Fodder, Lieutenant. How much fodder is needed to overnight another fifty animals?"

"I will look into it at once, sir," the lieutenant replied.

"And the junior officers must be moved into tents by tomorrow."

"Of course, sir." The lieutenant offered not a salute but a servile bow of his powdered head then slipped away.

Latchford fixed Duncan with an icy stare. "You think you can wander into my garrison without a by your leave?" he asked in a cool, well-educated voice. "Use our water, watch my troops like some spy, provoke our bereaved comrades in arms?" Latchford, Duncan realized, had had him under observation from the moment he had passed under the gate.

"If I am not mistaken, Major, I was brought into your establishment by soldiers under your command." He saw the gleam in Latchford's eyes and instantly regretted the words. A man like Latchford delighted in impudence, for all punishments were at his beck and call.

The officer lifted a quill and made a note in the journal. "You have not honored us with your name."

"McCallum. Duncan McCallum."

"I'll know, McCallum, why your friend killed this particular Virginian on this particular day."

Duncan weighed Latchford's words carefully. There was something more to the murder in the forest than he had understood. "My friend killed no one. You should look to the enemy. Last night we observed a Huron raiding party not twenty miles from here."

Latchford lifted a small bronze medallion etched with a tree on one side, a crude W on the other. The strap that until that morning had fastened it to Duncan's neck had been snapped apart. "Observed?" He dangled the disc toward Duncan. "For Woolford's rangers?"

"Nearly twenty men, including two or three French."

"I have had no reports of hostiles."

"The entire point of secret raiding parties, Major, is to operate secretly." Duncan clenched his jaw, chiding himself. Sometimes it seemed impossible not to lash out at such officers. It was privileged and powdered men like Latchford who had hanged his father for a rebel, skewered his younger brother with a saber, and raped his mother and sisters before bayoneting them.

The major's face flashed with anger. He slammed the medallion onto his desk and leapt up. Duncan braced himself, certain the officer meant to strike him, but Latchford moved to a side door, stepped halfway into the hall to bark out orders for a reconnaissance patrol. Through the rear window Duncan could see parties setting up a large campaign tent. The fortress was expecting visitors, ones important enough to worry the commanding officer. Duncan could not afford to linger if senior officers were coming, officers who might have experience in the New York theater.

When he looked back Latchford was at his desk again, lifting an elegant pistol with a metal butt from the desktop. He toyed with it a moment, sighting along the barrel. "Woolford's men are operating along the Saint Lawrence, the last I heard. And you do not have the look of a ranger, McCallum. We have reports of a solitary warrior and a European woodsman making mischief, always evading our patrols."

Duncan shrugged. "I am no woodsman. And Conawago is no warrior, just an old man looking for traces of his family."

The major extended the pistol, raising and lowering it as if practicing for a duel. "It is easy for a man to pretend a new identity so far from civilization. I have orders to deal harshly with deserters and spies."

"Wounds need to be cleansed every day to keep the filth from entering the blood," Duncan said abruptly.

Latchford's brow knitted. "I'm sorry?"

It was a desperate wager Duncan was making, based on the passing remark of the militia sergeant. "Your infirmary is without a doctor. But you have wounded. I attended medical college in Edinburgh."

"You are awonder, sir," Latchford sneered. "Ranger. Woodsman. Doctor. Murderer perhaps."

Duncan would not let himself be badgered. "Men with wounds can die without daily care. You have amputees. A man who has given a limb for his king does not deserve to die from neglect."

Latchford put the gun on the desk and leaned toward Duncan with a new, intense scrutiny. "If you lie to me," he hissed, "I shall use you for practice with my new pistol." Duncan silently returned his stare for a moment, then the major looked down. "We have half a dozen wounded from skirmishes, another five or six laid up with pox. Our surgeon was summoned to help with an outbreak at Fort Pitt. Our senior orderly is too fond of his rum."

Duncan resisted the urge to press for an explanation. "I can attend your patients in the infirmary."

"What proof do you offer of your competence?"

"Your arm," Duncan said. "Extend your arm."

Latchford smirked but humored his request, resting his free hand on the pistol.

Duncan began by pointing to a fingertip then worked his way up the arm. "Distal phalanx, phalange, metacarpal, carpal, radius, ulna, humerus." When he passed the elbow Latchford held up his hand to concede the point.

"The man with the freshest wounds lies in your brig," Duncan observed.

"You, McCallum, are a hair's breadth from being thrown in with him!" Latchford snapped. "If he dies it shall save us the nuisance of a trial."