War Path (7 page)

Tabid was a few years older than either Kasak or Lobal, but was obviously as anxious to continue the running battle for as long as it took. He wore a red coat stripped from the body of a man whose skull he had crushed with his war club. His buckskin breeches were stained with the blood of his enemies.

Lobal leaned on his musket and stood off to the side, as if reluctant to incur the wrath of Atoan should the sachem take offense at their intrusion. Even in the deepening night the younger braves could not help but notice the jagged scar that trailed down the sachem's neck and split his shoulder. How could one not be in awe of a man who bore such a mark, as if the gods themselves had touched with him with “the fire that falls from the sky”?

“Let them go. It will do us no good to lose more of our warriors.”

“But, father …?”

“Listen to me, Kasak. We can kill them all. But more will come. Let the rest of them return to their own kind, to tell of all that they have seen, the tale of our great victory. Fear will spread among them. And the English will lose heart. In this way we will drive them from our land.”

“Captain Barbarat has promised us many scalps, many guns if we do not let them escape,” Tabid spoke up. He was anxious to prove himself in battle and return with the spoils of war that he might offer to the father of a young woman he fancied.

“The Frenchman does not care how many of his warriors he loses. The great father in France will send him more, always more. They are like the English, as numerous as the stars.” Atoan glanced toward the three young men. “I know my people by name. My heart is wounded at the loss of any of my people. It ends here. We shall return to our village to sing of our victory and mourn our dead.”

“Atoan should join us at the ceremonial fire,” said Lobal, puffing out his chest. “None can stand before you in battle. The English fled from you like so many rabbits.”

“There was one who did not run.” The warrior folded his arms across his powerful chest, an image in his mind of the man with the hunting horn, rooted like a great oak in the center of the road, standing his ground while others rushed past, eyes ablaze, his rifle blazing, arms like thick limbs.

“I saw him,” said Lobal.

“I
remember
him,” Kasak added. “Stark.”

Atoan studied the distant fires. The French drummers were beating a call to stack rifles and take their evening meal. He thought of Barbarat. The alliance with the French was a necessary evil for now. It served its purpose. But when the Abenaki no longer needed them, Monsieur Barbarat and his kind too would suffer the same fate as the English troops and the colonial settlers.
Drive them all into the Great Water.

“My father is wise,” Kasak remarked, obediently. But there was a sense of resignation, a tone to the compliment that suggested “wise” was synonymous with “old.”

The Grand Sachem of the Abenaki watched his headstrong son lead his companions back the way they had come, following the deer trail to the clearing in the valley below. In the distance, the road to Fort Edward beckoned. Even a small band of defenders, if determined, could make a stand behind the fort's massive, earthen battlements. But no matter how formidable, if the English lost heart, then it too would fall.

He lost all track of time, there on the wooded slope, listening to the sounds of the warm night, mind racing through the events of the past few months. Kasak continued to worry him. The young man had too much courage. It caused him to forge ahead when he should pause to read the trail. He lived for today's victory and lacked the insight it took to make such a victory count for more than songs of glory. But that was the way of youth. So it had been with Atoan, before he learned to hear beyond hearing.

A flutter of wings, the rustle of branches, caught the warrior's attention. He looked up among the dark twist of branches, recognized the distinctive head and ashen gray plumage of a great horned owl. The bird began to call out in a high-pitched screech that softened to a low chortle Atoan had learned to mimic as a boy. The owl was a night stalker, cunning and quick, with talons to rend and a razor-sharp beak. And it was more than an owl, if one only had eyes to “see.”

“Atoan, son of Az the Hunter, I am here.”

“Welcome, Mahom, my Grandfather. So you come to me again.”

“Because your spirit walked in mine. So I have come to you.”

The sachem crouched on his haunches and, with a twig, traced in the dirt for a few moments as he collected his thoughts. The sound of his people, chanting, singing songs of conquest and brave deeds carried to him from the valley.

“It is good, Grandfather. I speak the words that are in my heart. Tell me. What will become of my people?”

“They will live, they will die, it is the way of things.”

“Today we have defeated the English. They flee before us like rabbits.”

“But there will be other days.”
The owl stretched its neck and craned its head from left to right. It dipped its head and preened yet it was always watchful, always hunting.
Beware of Kiwaskwek, the beast. For tomorrow he is born.”

“Should I fear an infant?”

“A storm is born. It rages. And the people tremble. How old is the first flood? Yet it washes you away.”

Atoan did not like the sound of this. There were hidden caves and lonely hilltops where superstition prevented the People of the White Pines from ever venturing. It was never a good thing to walk in the footsteps of the gods.
“How will I know this Kiwaskwek?”

“You have seen him, though he is not yet born. But he will be. And then you will know. For his father is fury, and his mother, blood.”

“Man or monster, how shall I find him?”

The owl shot from the branches and disappeared into the night, dropping out of sight into the depths of the forest where it sank onto its prey. A small animal uttered a pitiful cry as the night stalker made its kill. And in the distant dying echo, Atoan thought he heard the spirit creature reply.

“He will find you.”

7

F
ort William Henry, a once seemingly impregnable outpost, had been reduced to a shapeless pile of charred blockhouses, crumbled redoubts and cabins, collapsed walls, and shoveled-in trenches on the grassy banks of a startling blue lake. If it hadn't been for the shambles of the fort and the grisly discovery Stark made outside the fortifications, the site might have seemed pristine, with the morning sun climbing above the hills to his right and the cloud-swept sky and forested shoreline mirrored on the surface of the waters.

Yes, idyllic, Stark thought, a veritable Eden, but for the hellish scenes of destruction among the swaying oaks and sturdy pines, and the stench from the butchered remains of the garrison's former defenders who littered a field more than a hundred yards from where the fort once stood.

Johnny Stark had no formal military training but what had befallen the defenders was plain to see. One only had to read the sign, like tracking a deer, to find the truth as to what had happened here.

The troops and the families who made the garrison their home were arrayed along and to either side of the road leading out from the soot-blackened remains of the front gate that opened toward the lake. The corpses in the lead, like all the rest of the soldiers in tattered red uniforms and torn breeches, were unarmed. There was not a single musket or pistol to be found. He might have surmised the troops were looted but there was not even a cartridge case to indicate the men had left the battered walls carrying their weapons. And several of the lead soldiers still clung to makeshift flags of truce, the white banners blood-spattered and affixed to axe handles and lance shafts most of which were strewn about, shattered in most cases but still clutched by those grimed fingers now frozen in death.

The garrison must have surrendered and was probably paroled to Fort Edward, for that was where this road would take them. The English defenders would never have marched out from their beleaguered bastion and through the French redoubts unless they had been assured of safe passage. Their trust was obviously ill-placed.

Apparently, once the column of soldiers and civilians were well clear of the fortifications and the siege redoubts of the French lines, something had gone terribly wrong. Stark recognized the subsequent mutilations as the handiwork of Abenaki war clubs and tomahawks. Perhaps the French had been unable to control the bloodlust of their allies; or maybe they had been active participants and joined in the wholesale slaughter. Either way they must share in the blame.

And in the retribution.

Johnny Stark steeled himself as he removed a spyglass from his belt and surveyed the dead for any signs of life. There were more ravens here than he could count. The carrion birds were feasting on the remains of soldiers, Colonial Militia men, their wives and children. Stark gasped and averted his gaze for a moment, overcome by the enormity of the massacre. There looked to be more than a thousand casualties left to rot along the road.

He knew many of these homesteaders. Like his friends and neighbors around Fort Edward they too had moved close to Fort William Henry, assuming there was safety being so near the proximity of the British troops stationed within. It had proved to be a reckless gamble.

Stark continued to survey the crumpled, twisted forms, speaking their names beneath his breath as he recognized one then another, frozen in death, families with whom he had broken bread, children he had bounced upon his lap, older siblings he had taught the ways of the wilderness.
Oh, God, so many. Even the infants, their skulls shattered
. He wiped the moisture from his eyes on the sleeve of his fringed hunting shirt.

It was the children, their innocent remains discarded like so many rag dolls that brought Stark close to the breaking point. The horror of it all was more than any man should have to bear. Again he raised the glass to his eye and forced himself to continue the search. He owed the fallen this much. Eventually he altered his stance and began to study what little remained of the fortifications, but again found nothing salvageable. The English artillery had evidently been captured and carried off on French boats for
La Marines
of Fort Saint Frederick.

Stark grudgingly admired the thoroughness with which the French had completed the destruction of this English bastion. What their cannonades and axes had not accomplished was finished off by buried kegs of gunpowder under the direction of French engineers.

He heard a sound, a moan that seemed to drift toward him from out in the meadow, apart from the congregation of corpses. A pair of hungry ravens dropped out of the sky, intent on dining on the remains of someone or something out among the tall grass. An enormous paw batted them away. Stark heard a halfhearted howl, a protest of pain, then a weak but defiant growl. The ravens, startled and caught off guard by this new attack, decided they had business elsewhere and rose, protesting, into the sky.

Stark tucked his spyglass away and trekked across the field, gingerly stepping around the grisly forms, shot and hacked and scalped and now pecked at and partly devoured. The ravens lifted away from their feast as he passed, then alighted once more in his wake. As he drew close to the depression in the tall grass, a massive head rose up and gave him a warning growl.

The long hunter recognized the black mask and seamed jowls of an enormous mastiff and remembered the beast had not only been the property of the commanding officer but had served as a kind of mascot for the entire garrison. It was a huge and powerful bitch, weighing a little over two hundred pounds and standing nearly a yard tall at the shoulders and fully seven feet in length, from its black nose to the tip of its brindle tail.

The animal lay on its side, its flesh streaked with blood from half a dozen tomahawk wounds and a puckered bullet hole along its ribs. Perhaps the mastiff had been left to die of its wounds because those who had caused the death of its master were loathe to approach such a terrible beast and risk a maiming. Could the animal have feigned its own death?

As Stark approached, the beast tried to stand but its effort only increased the flow of blood seeping from the bullet wound. The mastiff sank back on its haunches. But its ears pricked up as Johnny spoke gentle words of encouragement.

“Easy, girl. You're a fine one, you are. If the heathen hasn't done you in by now then I'll warrant it was meant you should live.” He knelt by the animal, allowed the mastiff to catch his scent, then he stroked its neck. He fished in his possibles bag and found a strip of jerked venison and gave it to the animal and continued to talk while he drew his knife to probe the wound. While the mastiff devoured the venison, Stark dislodged the musket ball that had lodged beneath the puckered flesh. The mastiff's brindle coat was caked with dried blood, but his probing had opened the wound injury once more.

Stark dug in a pouch Molly had given him as he marched out from Fort Edward and found a poultice wrapped in sailcloth. Molly had concocted the poultice from a mixture of strong black tea and boiled, softened root of balsam fur that she had pounded into a paste. Stark unwrapped the concoction and smeared the paste over the animal's wounds and bound the worst with a torn piece of cloth and a length of leather string. The poultice would staunch the flow of blood and promote healing.

The dog watched him work with a curious expression as if the mastiff were weighing whether or not to chomp off Stark's arm clear up to the elbow. Eventually the animal decided the long hunter meant no harm and lay its head back upon the cool grass.

“Well then, I've done all that I can for you,” Stark softly said, sitting back on his heels. What was the animal's name? There was no telling. But a dog this big deserved no less than a title. “Now then, Duchess, will you stand?” The mastiff whined and protested. For the next few minutes Duchess made quite a show of attempting to stand then falling back. “Rise up. Come on. We dare not tarry in these parts. The Abenaki and their French allies will return. And woe to us both if those Stiff-rumps find us here. Come along.” He stood and started to cross toward the forest's edge. A glance over his shoulder told him the dog had the will to follow but had simply lost too much blood. Duchess rose up on all fours, managed a couple of steps, then collapsed, whining.