A Flight of Arrows (17 page)

“What are you doing here? Did I not make it clear when you asked that I did not want you?”

Hurt flashed across her features like a sheet of summer lightning before thunderclouds of indignation gathered. “Am I a child to be told where I can and cannot go? And I am not
with
you. We happen to be traveling the same path at the same time.”

Speechless at this twisting of the situation, Two Hawks shot a look of appeal at Ahnyero, who seemed amused, and a little impressed, by this unwanted tagalong. “This girl is known to you then?”

“Yes.” Two Hawks turned back to her with his anger still hot, though not so hot as to make him ask why she wasn't busy planting corn in the women's fields. “Why are you not hunting for your mother and those Deer Clan women, as you like to do? Why are you wasting your time and ours following where you have no business going?”

The girl showed not the slightest sign of chagrin. “I did hunt for them. I got a good deer that will last many days. I got it quickly and so came fast to the fort. I learned you had left only that morning. I found your trail and followed. Did you know your right foot turns inward more than does your left?”

At that, Ahnyero laughed out loud. Strikes-The-Water looked at him and smiled. It was a dazzling smile. Even Two Hawks, who wanted to shake the girl, had to admit it.

“Never mind about my feet. You should go back home and stop following us and…you shot an arrow at me!”

That detail had sunk in at last.

Her smiled vanished. “I shot the arrow at the tree behind which you skulked. Had I meant to hit
you
, I would have aimed for you.”

Two Hawks made a derisive noise.

Her eyes flashed with ruffled pride. “Kanowalohale is my home too, threatened by this war. I have every right to protect it as do you.”

“I have never said you did not have that right. But you do not have to claim it by my side!”

Something moved in the girl's eyes when he said those words, something that struck Two Hawks deep enough to let in a bit of light to his thinking.
By his side
. Was that where this girl thought she wanted to be?

He was aware of Ahnyero watching, listening to their words. The humor on his face had faded. “Come, brother. Step aside with me. Sister, will you let us have this moment to speak?”

Strikes-The-Water glanced between them, wary, clearly hoping to get
her way even if they begrudged her presence. Two Hawks felt a stab of pity. Was this the way the girl had lived her life, fighting to be included where she was not wanted?

Not waiting for them to draw away, she took herself off to the trail they'd followed before they set their ambush and sat down on a stone beside it, pointedly not looking at them. Two Hawks put his back to her and waited for Ahnyero to speak.

“Brother, I am sorry, but you need to take this girl back to the fort.” The blacksmith raised a hand, silencing Two Hawks even as he started to protest. “Will she stop following if we bid her do so?”

“She will only be more careful not to be caught at it.”

Ahnyero looked past him to the girl waiting on the rock. “It is you she wishes to be with. She will go back if you go with her. Not happily. But she will go.”

Two Hawks stiffened his jaw, his every fiber in rebellion.

“Listen,” Ahnyero said. “I will go on and come as close to Montreal as I can. Maybe even go into that place called Lachine. Maybe I will see your brother's regiment.”

Two Hawks frowned. “That regiment is made up of Tories. Some could be your neighbors from Cherry Valley. You might be known there.”

“As you would not be?” A corner of Ahnyero's mouth rose. “Do not look at me so startled. I know this is what you hoped to do. Go into that place, among those soldiers, and find your brother.”

The weight in Two Hawks's chest felt like a stone, but he knew he was going to give way and do as Ahnyero bid. “Do not risk your life. Mine I would risk, but not—”

A commotion of branch breaking and a shout—of challenge, not fear—ended the conversation. Two Hawks whirled to see Strikes-The-Water on her feet, knife drawn, about to attack a half-naked white man staggering out of the wood. He was pale haired, coated in sweat-streaked grime, and bore the bruised swellings of a beating about the face; the
small, deliberate burns and cuts of torture on chest and arms. Blood crusted where it had flowed.

Two Hawks and Ahnyero reached Strikes-The-Water before she could further injure the man. Putting themselves between, they gave her the moments she needed to see the stranger was no threat to her, weaponless and outnumbered. Clothed in tattered breeches, the white man fell to his knees.

“You've a woman with you,” he said in the English of one born Yankee. “I heard you arguing. I didn't think you a war party, not with a woman…”

The man's eyes rolled toward Strikes-The-Water, still brandishing her knife.

Ahnyero took the man by the arm and hauled him to his feet. “Tell us who you are and what you do on Oneida land, and we will keep that one from getting near you again.” He jerked his chin at Strikes-The-Water, who pulled back her lips in a grin as fierce as it was lovely.

“You're Oneida? Thank every angel…” The man swayed on his feet.

Ahnyero gripped hard, keeping him upright. “We will ask the questions.”

The man winced at the grip on his damaged arm. Two Hawks took him by his other arm, equally bruised and spotted with burns. They lowered him to the rock Strikes-The-Water had vacated. She drew back a pace, wary and watchful. Silent for once.

“Have you water?” The man sounded parched. Two Hawks realized he was young, a few years older than him. Younger than Ahnyero, who put a hand to the ax at his belt.

“Talk first.”

The man licked cracked lips. “I'm on a mission—for your side. I went north to the British last summer, joined up with Johnson's Greens—as a spy, see? For the Americans.”

Two Hawks's heart leapt, a hard and eager beat that hurt his ribs. It was with great effort that he restrained himself from speaking as the man spilled his secrets, desperation in his voice.

“I volunteered to spy for the British, back to the Mohawk Valley, only so I could get to…” The man at last hesitated. “What's important is I managed to slip away from my party and made my report. I'd planned to make my way back to Lachine, give out as I'd been captured, only that's precisely what happened. Six of them caught me—Mississaugas, I think. Crown Indians, anyway. They tortured me before I escaped. Just north of…”

“The fort at the Carrying Place?” Ahnyero asked.

The man stilled, even in his distress seeming to weigh their faces, though there was little to be read on Ahnyero's. The man looked last at Two Hawks, blond brows drawn over narrowed eyes that filled with question. He shook it away and said, “Yes. Fort Stanwix.”

“We come and go from there. I have never seen you.” Ahnyero glanced at Two Hawks, brows raised.

“I have not seen this one before.”

The man sat straighter on the rock. “On account I never let myself be seen.”

“He ask name.” Strikes-The-Water came closer, slender fingers gripping the handle of her knife. “You not say.”

The man's eyes flashed to her, then with seeming reluctance, he said, “Sam Reagan. Out of Schenectady.”

Two Hawks's breath came sharp into his lungs. He knew this man, though he'd never seen him. This was the one who piloted bateaux for Aubrey until last summer, when he revealed his Tory sentiments then led William away over the mountains. Lunging for Sam Reagan, he shoved him to the ground, a hand to his throat, a knee to his chest. “You are a spy—for the British. You are telling lies!”

The chest beneath his knee heaved. The throat made a gurgling beneath Two Hawks's fingers. “I was sent north to Canada—a spy—enlisted—better to—troop movements—”

“You are choking him, brother,” Ahnyero observed calmly. “We will learn little from a dead man.”

Two Hawks released Reagan, who scrambled to his knees, coughing and gagging. When the retching passed, his bewildered gaze settled on Two Hawks, who saw questions flare again in the hazel eyes. Knowing he'd little time before Reagan saw past the shaved head and darker skin to the resemblance he bore William, Two Hawks thought quickly, scouring his memory for everything Anna Catherine had said about his brother's leaving.

“I am going to ask you a question. I will know by your answer whether what else you have told us can be trusted.”

Reagan's brows shot high. “Ask. Then whatever else you do, for pity's sake, give me water.”

“My question is about that one you led away to the British last summer.”

Reagan's gaze went momentarily blank. Sounding dazed he said, “You mean Aubrey? William Aubrey?”

Heart beating hard at the hearing of his brother's name, Two Hawks held up a hand for silence. The question he'd meant to pose was unneeded now to verify the man's identity. Still he asked it. “The bow that one has in his possession, where did he get it?”

“His
bow
?” The man gaped at him, long enough for Two Hawks's confidence to be shaken, to fear the man had been lying about everything, that this thread to his brother he was trying to grasp would slither from his fingers like pond weed.

Then the man said, “William brought it with him from Crickhowell—in Wales.”

Flooded with equal measures of relief and anger toward this troublemaker
turned up in their midst, Two Hawks shared a nod with Ahnyero. The latter unfastened the water skin he carried and offered it to the man, who took it and drank, long and deep. When he surfaced, chin streaming, water tracking grime and blood, Two Hawks asked, “That one who claims the Welsh bow, he is at Lachine? He is part of Johnson's regiment?”

“Aye. He is.” Sam Reagan stared hard at Two Hawks, the question on his battered face shifting, beginning to resolve into comprehension. “And just who is William Aubrey to
you
?”

May 21, 1777

Schenectady

R
eginald stepped onto the quay, where Lieutenant Colonel Marinus Willett, with the help of recruited river pilots, oversaw the loading of his 3rd New York regiment and their provisions into every bateau the Binne Kill could spare. Eager to commence the journey upriver to Fort Stanwix, where he would serve as second-in-command to Colonel Gansevoort, Willett adroitly sidestepped the men shouldering supplies across the quay to fetch up at Reginald's side, blue regimentals fresh despite the morning's sticky warmth.

“We'll be snug as barreled beef, but we'll make do. My thanks for the loan of your crewmen. Him especially.” Willett nodded toward Ephraim Lang, whose white head appeared briefly in a gap between boarding soldiers. “An old campaigner, I judge.”

“That he is,” Reginald confirmed. “We both saw the surrender of Fort William Henry.”

“A harrowing,” Willett said. “I'm grateful for an able pilot, but will you not reconsider making the journey as well?”

“Lang is glad for the going,” Reginald said, feeling suddenly older than the six or seven years that lay between him and this officer still visibly in his prime. He laid a hand to the hip that pained him continuously and could, if overtaxed, make rising of a morn a gritted act of will. Yet he couldn't deny a stir of longing. Willett's vitality, the sense of untainted
purpose and untarnished honor he exuded, put Reginald in mind of the officer—the man—he might have been if…

He shook away such thoughts. “Here is my place now.”

Willett nodded, scanning the ranks of waiting soldiers hugging what shade the warehouses afforded, then turned back to Reginald with a grin that belied his next words. “Moving the regiment and its kit is no light undertaking. Not with the terrain we'll face—as I'm sure you're aware.” A shout from a loaded bateau distracted Willett. A private flailed precariously over the vessel's side, saved a dunking by the quick reflexes of a comrade. Willett cupped his mouth and shouted, “Too late to swim for shore, soldier!”

Willett took his leave, bidding Reginald jovially to build more boats and be quick about it. As the first bateau pushed off from the quay, Ephraim Lang came to bid farewell, blue gaze fixing Reginald squarely.

“Wager you're wishing now you didn't run the lad off.”

Lang had made it clear he thought Reginald's judgment of Two Hawks hasty, its execution severe. But what should he have done? Pretend he hadn't seen what he saw? Yet Anna's misery was a noose about his neck, tightening as the days slipped past and the distance between them grew.

“We managed,” he said, indicating the emptying quay.

“You could do a deal better than manage, Major.”

Reginald watched Lang board the craft he would pilot. He'd see them off, then return to his work…though he could easily fall down where he stood and sleep for a week.

In the end he did neither, for Lang looked back at him, nodding at a point over Reginald's shoulder even as he gave the order to push off. As the fleet crowded the river, beginning the laborious journey westward, Reginald rounded to scan the thinning crowd. At its edge Lydia stood, clad in the blue gown that made her eyes appear the most vivid hue he'd ever seen in a woman's face. Though half that face was shielded by a
broad-crowned hat, he knew by the set of her mouth she wasn't there to see the regiment away.

Pain like a fist squeezed his chest.

“You haven't lost all. Anna loves you, else she wouldn't be so distraught
—
nor would she still be under my roof. She'd have gone with Two Hawks when you sent him away. She went after him, did you know? He refused to take her from you. Even so, Reginald
—
believe me in this
—
she'd have found a means of convincing him were it not for loving you…a love that's hanging by the merest thread, which you will snap if you do not take the utmost care now in its handling.”

There on the quay Lydia had spilled her heart in what felt like a final bid to heal the relationship that had been the cornerstone of her world since she was twelve; Reginald and Anna, her dearest friends. Her loves. The wound between them had festered with Reginald holed up in his workshop, Anna going about like one half-dead, miserable and much too thin.

“It isn't the family of your making that you now stand to lose but the family the Almighty has been making in spite of you. Stop resisting and let Him make it.”

The Almighty was weaving something beautiful out of Reginald's tangled mess. In the hearts of Anna and Two Hawks, uniting in love two families long embittered enemies. She could see it. She was fairly certain Good Voice and Stone Thrower had seen it, were at least open to the possibility of it. Why couldn't Reginald see?

“Is it that for so long you expected to die at Stone Thrower's hands, felt you deserved to die thus? Are you unable to face what their forgiveness granted you
—
life, and the living of it?”

She'd waited until the regiment departed to do this desperate thing.
She didn't know if her timing was inspired or her words were right. At least she'd convinced Reginald to abandon his shop and come to the house, sit down with Anna and talk. Now if only Anna, unaware of Lydia's errand to the Binne Kill, could summon the courage and grace to do the same.

Lydia let Reginald into the house. With his tired footsteps behind her advancing toward the kitchen where Anna worked, she was still imploring in her heart:
You've let one decision define you for too long. Here now is a new choice you can make. For Anna's sake, for your own, make the right one
.

At the last, she turned and whispered, “Perhaps it would be best to wait here, let me speak to Anna first.”

“Does she not expect me?” He clenched the hat he'd removed, running its brim through callused fingers. “Lydia, what are you about?”

“Please, Reginald. I'm sure she'll want to talk to you.”

He looked monumentally less certain than she'd managed to sound but did as she bid.

“You've brought him
here
?” Already pale, with sleepless bruises beneath her eyes, Anna's face went bloodless as she gripped the worktable where she'd been grinding fragrant rosemary in a mortar. “How could you, with things as they are?”

“With things as they are, how could I not?” Lydia raised her hands in helplessness. “You are miserable. Reginald is miserable.
I
am miserable for you both.” Her heart twisted at the brokenness in Anna's face, the stubbornness, the pride—more like Reginald than she knew. “Please, if only for my sake, will you go into the parlor and speak to your father?”

Tears glazed Anna's eyes. She put down the pestle, wiped her rosemary-scented hands on the apron covering the gown that hung loosely from her wasting frame, drew herself straight, and strode from the kitchen. Tense
with hope, Lydia followed into the parlor, where Reginald sat in a stiff-backed chair. At sight of his daughter, he rose, a clench of pain in his face that made Lydia wince.
Let me have done rightly
…

No sooner had she lifted the prayer than it was evident she hadn't.

“Why, Papa?” Anna demanded, striding into the room with fists clenched at her sides. “Answer me that at last. Why did you send him away so shamefully?”

Reginald flinched. “Shamefully? Do you tell me 'tis no shame
you
felt for his gawping at you in that tub yonder?”

Lydia reached for the doorframe.
No
, she wanted to shout.
Not this
. But it was Anna doing the shouting, or near to it.

“He barely caught sight of me before he looked away. If you were standing behind him as you said, you'd have seen that. I think you came upon him already turning away and assumed the worst. Of us both!”

Reginald took a step toward his daughter. “Anna. Look you, that is not how—”