Gunwitch (24 page)

Umoya’s flat face showed no emotion, but Ducoed could sense the man’s satisfaction, his sense of superiority. They did not hate each other. They disdained each other, each man seeing the other as beneath him, not worthy of hate. They were partners, unequals, equal only under orders from the masters they both served.

“I risked nothing,” Umoya said. He did not raise his voice, but he cut off Ducoed as surely as if he had shouted. “A man surrounded, with no hope of retreat, fights to the death. A man outnumbered, but with a way of retreat open to him, still hopes. And dies easier.”

Ducoed covered his flash of anger, the hatred mushrooming inside him–at being interrupted, at being lectured, at seeing that Umoya was right again–with a tight smile, baring his teeth. “I see,” he said. He turned his back on Umoya, then said over his shoulder, “Send out patrols of ithambofis, anyway. Make sure that there were no survivors. We don’t want word getting back to New Venezia.”

“As you say, Duke Blackwood.”

Ducoed nodded and walked away. Umoya was useful. For now.

Chapter 12

Rose

Henkel Farmstead

1742 A.D.

Rose and Chal stood at the edge of the clearing and looked at the remains of the house, the broken pier, the trampled vegetable garden. The farm did not look attacked. It looked … ground under foot. There was no smoke. Fire had not been used here. If there had been a stove lit in the house, it had been put out by whatever had smashed through the roof.

Major Haley stepped up on Rose’s left, opposite Chal. “Just like the others,” he said.

Rose nodded.

In her past, marching with the armies of England, she had seen burned-out farms and razed villages. That had happened here. Old World or New World, armies in enemy territory plundered and consumed as they moved.

But a fresh catch of fish lay dead on the ground near the splintered remains of the pier, mouths gaping, flat eyes staring. Beside the fish, a bloody rifle. The garden had been stomped into green and yellow mush, not harvested. The carcasses of chickens and a pig could be seen, pushed into the dirt and mud. Farm implements and tools had been dropped and left where they lay.

Only the people who lived here had been taken. Except for the blood on the rifle, there was no sign of any living human. Or what had once been a living human.

The trail of the attackers was plain. Rose and Chal and Major Haley and Janett had been following the trail since encountering it, because the trail pointed due west, a straight line toward Fort Russell. The forest, like the farm, had been trampled nearly flat. At least five grunzers and several hundred feet, bare and shod, walking in a mass, unconcerned with stealth. Sweeping up the farms and homes in its path, leaving in its wake everything any other army–any human army–would have called valuable. Sometimes also leaving shredded flesh in coagulating pools of blood, but never bones, and never a corpse.

She did not want to follow the trail, but it was the fastest way to Fort Russell. And this small army of … whoever or whatever it was … had not left anyone to watch its back. Neither she nor Chal had detected any watchers or scouts, nor any messengers sent back. This army was only interested in where it was going. And it seemed to be marching to the same place Rose was taking Janett and the major. The force was at least half a day ahead of them.

After Chal’s wave, the four of them had run up the east side of the lake, then continued north for miles until they had crossed this path. Their going had been slow, because Chal had been too weak to assist, and Rose had refused to stop. She had wanted as much distance between them and Ducoed’s unnatural army as possible. At least the major and Janett had been up to it. Major Haley had helped Chal walk when Rose got too tired. Janett, surprisingly, had said very little after realizing that Rose had come back without Margaret, only cried and clung to the major for a while. Since then Janett had walked on her own, keeping up in silence.

They had stumbled into this path with no warning. As she had stared west, Rose had found herself as scared as she had been in the midst of Ducoed’s camp, seized by a cold-fleshed little girl dressed in Margaret’s clothes, unable to pry the viselike grip of the girl’s fingers free. Because this was the trail of a new force, just as unnatural and even larger than Ducoed’s.

That had been yesterday afternoon. They had marched in the sunlight along the southern edge of the path, and camped inside the line of trees when the last gray of twilight had disappeared from the sky.

Again, Janett had surprised Rose by curling up on the ground next to Major Haley and going to sleep, holding the major’s hand clasped to her bosom. No complaints, and no demands. Only the slightest whimper just before she fell asleep. Rose felt the stirrings of sympathy for the girl. The major had tried to catch her eye, but she had looked away.

She had built three simple snares, but in the morning they were untripped and empty. The army they followed had frightened off the game. As the four of them had continued their march even the birds were subdued, keeping their calls to one another short and low, and staying behind the cover of leaves and branches.

Rose forced herself to approach the remains of the farmhouse. She picked up the rifle and checked it. The gun had been fired and discarded. It was an old gun, and seen a lot of use. Still, it would fire.

Chal walked past her to the farmhouse as she gave the gun a quick cleaning. When she had finished, she loaded the gun, then handed it to Janett. “Cock it by pulling back the hammer,” she said. “Then point it and squeeze the trigger.”

Janett looked shocked, then scandalized, her mouth opening to say something as she took the rifle in both hands. Then she closed her mouth again and met Rose’s eyes. The girl only nodded and held the gun awkwardly in front of her.

Chal pointed with her chin and Rose peered through the broken doorframe. In the far corner, lit by the gaping hole in the roof, bloody handprints were on the wall, and streaks, as if someone had tried to grab the bare wall while being pulled up. A grunzer had lifted the roof off the house, and pushed it out of the way. Then it had reached in and grabbed whoever had been cowering there, probably the woman of the house. Rose saw nothing in the debris to indicate any children had lived here, only a fisherman and his wife.

Rose’s heart went cold again at the thought of Margaret. The clutching corpse of the little girl had not been Margaret. She had been bait. In a trap for Rose. She knew Ducoed had not killed Margaret. She did not know what Ducoed had in mind, but she was sure that Margaret was still alive. If Margaret had been dead–or harmed or worse–then Ducoed would have used Margaret’s own corpse to bait the trap.

It was small comfort.

And that small comfort did nothing to ease the shame and fear that had settled into Rose’s gut. Humiliation at being anticipated so completely, and being made to flee for her life. Shame that Chal had had to reveal herself. Guilt at having to leave Margaret for still longer in Ducoed’s clutches. And scared as hell at what Ducoed and whoever–or whatever–it was he had now allied himself to might subject the girl to. Death was not always the worst thing that could happen.

Rose turned her back on the house. “Let’s move,” she said. They had to reach the fort. Colonel Laxton would have the troops to hunt Ducoed down. The reinforcements from New Venezia might have reached Fort Russell by now. At worst, they were still a day away. Either way, their only hope lay in the fort.

* * *

The path they followed turned southwest less than a mile after the destroyed house.

“Peculiar,” Major Haley said, leaning against the shovel he carried. “If they aren’t headed to attack the fort, where are they are going?”

“To cut off the fort,” Chal said.

Rose looked down the trampled path as far as she could, and for the one hundredth time that day calculated troop movement rates marching upriver with a full supply train. “They turned to join with Ducoed’s force,” she said. “Then they’ll attack the reinforcements. At the rate they’ve been marching, they reached the river last night. If we move fast, maybe we can reach the fort before they do.”

“No!” Rose said. “We’ll get the major and Janett to the fort. Then you can slip out and head inland, and we’ll find each other again, like before …” She let her voice drift off as Chal shook her head.

Chal held out her left hand and Rose took it in her right. Electricity ran up her arm and the warmth of magic bloomed in her chest and reached back into Chal, forming a link. She blinked and shook her head as the link made her hear and see double, through Chal’s ears and eyes as well as her own.

“Major,” Chal said, holding out her right hand.

Rose looked at Janett. “Take my hand,” she said. Janett hesitated, then shifted her grip on the rifle and took the hand Rose offered.

“How is this going to help?” Major Haley asked. “We’re still too far from the fort to run all the way.”

Rose forced a smile. “Major,” she said. “You should know better by now. Just don’t let go.” Then she added. “And don’t lose that shovel.”

* * *

They ran, the four of them hand in hand, like friends and lovers out on a spring day, the trees and plants bending to make room, the small streams and ponds dividing themselves so they stayed on dry land. The sun moved overhead, peaked, and began climbing down the western sky in front of them. And they never slowed.

The exertion burned in Rose’s chest and turned her fingers and toes to ice. She held both Chal’s and Janett’s hands with unfeeling fingers, hoping that the cold did not hurt them. She could feel Chal’s strain, as well as her own, but with the link they bolstered each other’s strength and kept each other going.

Smoke appeared over the tops of the trees in front of them and shown red and black in the last light of the day. Rose and Chal slowed to a walk. It was difficult not to stop altogether. Major Haley and Janett did try to stop, but Rose and Chal pulled them back into motion.

“We are … nearly dead … on our feet … Sergeant,” the Major said. He was using the shovel as a heavy, one-handed walking stick, leaning on it every other step.

Janett, surprisingly, said nothing. Rose looked at the girl. Janett was panting like the rest of them, but she was walking almost in step with Rose. With the butt of the old rifle cradled in her left hand, barrel propped on her shoulder, she made Rose think of new recruits at the King’s Coven. Except that even after days spent in the rough, Janett still looked more like a lady–a real lady–carrying a gun than like any soldiers Rose had known. Maybe there was some strength in the girl, after all.

“We’re almost there, Major,” Rose said. “I expect we’ll see the outworks soon.”

The sounds and smells of booming guns and burning wood and shouting men penetrated the woods so they heard and smelled the siege of the fort before they saw it.

Rose let go of Janett’s hand, then Chal’s. “Wait here,” she said. She unslung her pack and dropped it to the ground next to where Chal seated herself. She was stepping through the underbrush, moving slowly and carefully to avoid any sound, even as the Major let out a groan and dropped his shovel behind her.

The clearing around the fort had been expanded since her last visit to make room for the besieging force. She spotted Swedish banners, and Italian, and whispered a short prayer of thanks that Ducoed’s force had not beaten them to the fort.

Fort Russell was a squat earthen and wooden structure built on top of a rocky hill that had diverted the waters of the Misi-ziibi around it to the west. The river and tall cliffs protected the fort on the north and west. Bastions protruded from the three inland corners of the fort. A barricade of piled earth eight feet high was the first layer of defense on the south and east sides. The inner wall had started as another earthen wall, but had been reinforced with upright tree trunks inside and out, and extended all the way around the fort. There were two towers, one on the northwest corner, overlooking the bend in the river. The other tower, built within the bastion of the southeast corner, provided a view of the clearing around the fort.

When Rose had last seen the fort, the clearing had extended two hundred yards, a no man’s land of dirt and tree trunks that had been cut and burned out of the surrounding forest. Now the edge of the forest was at least four hundred yards from the walls of the fort, and at least five hundred men had dug in. A network of trenches with reinforced earthen battlements zigzagged across the clearing and up the slope toward the fort. There were two primary trenches, Rose saw, one starting on the south, where the Swedish forces had made their camp, and one on the east, where the Italians had bivouacked. Close to the fort, about one hundred yards from the walls, the two trench networks had connected. Between the two networks, in the southeast part of the clearing, was another camp, but one without banners and laid out very differently from those of the Europeans: Amerigon natives. Rose saw symbols of the Ni-U-Kon-Ska, the U-Mo’n-Ho’n, and others that she didn’t recognize.