A Flight of Arrows (36 page)

“Good,” Watts was saying. “Fall in with McDonell's men. Now,” the captain went on, addressing the officers present, “the challenge will be getting in close to the rebels again. They hold the high ground between the ravines. Herkimer's corralled them into defensive circles, and not even the Indians are breaking through.”

William kept his face set, revealing nothing of his desperate hope. He wanted St. Leger's forces halted, an outcome that still seemed a possibility until Colonel Butler came rushing in with a handful of his rangers, bloodied from battle, wet from the rain. Watts deferred to Butler as the highest ranking officer in Sir John's absence. Taking in the presence of seventy Royal Yorkers fresh for the fight, Butler's grim countenance lit with a wolfish grin. He turned to the nearest private of Watts's command, which happened to be William, and barked, “Remove your coat, soldier!”

William gaped at the man. “Sir?”

Butler glared. “Take off…your…coat.”

“Aye sir.” Hastily, William removed his gear to comply, lowering musket, cartridge box, and the rest to the ground. The coat was still wet and clung. At last he wrenched his arms free of the sleeves, in the process reversing them. The lining of the green coat was white, soiled with grime and sweat. Unsure what to do, he stood there holding the garment, torso assaulted by the cooler air.

All to Butler's apparent satisfaction. Turning to Watts and McDonell, he said, “We've interrogated the prisoners. Herkimer expects a sortie from the fort. I say let's give it to him. Have your Yorkers reverse their regimentals so the white's out-facing—they'll appear hunting frocks from a distance. Rebels'll think we're come from Gansevoort to reinforce them.”

“Bayonets only,” Watts added, approving of the plan. “Until we've broken through.” He stared at Butler, then gave a decisive nod and raised his voice to carry: “Pass the word. Form up to advance—and every man reverse his regimentals!”

H
e'd turned his coat but hadn't betrayed his oath. A chill gripped William as memory of Joseph Tames-His-Horse, face painted by firelight, swam through his vision. Was
this
what the Mohawk had seen in his dream?

Watts, McDonell, and Butler granted no time to ponder it as the Yorkers advanced through the western ravine, picking their way through the morning's carnage. The creek ran red tinged, choked with bodies. Steam rose as they crossed the shallow water; the vapors, too, seemed tinged pink, as though the blood of the slain rose into the air, a crying unto heaven.

Find your brother. Your father
.

William's heart galloped, bruising to his chest. He could sense the fear coming off the men to either side of him as, formed up in a triple column, they marched toward the rebels dug in on the wooded slopes ahead. The leaden sky was lightening by degrees, but the air remained thickly damp and clinging. The reversed coat and the shirt beneath chafed with abominable discomfort.

They were soon spotted, as they were meant to be. Shouts rose among the rebels in the high wood, faces visible here and there as necks craned. Cries of welcome issued forth. One man broke from cover and rushed down to the road with hand outstretched, shouting a name in recognition and relief. Another chased after the man, shouting, “Get back! It's the enemy!”

Others emerged from hiding, certain the opposite was true.

“Capt'n—they're friendlies!”

“It's Gansevoort. He's sent us reinforcements!”

“Fools—get back!” Ignoring his own command, the captain reached the man who'd rushed to greet a familiar face and yanked him backward, nearly off his feet. A scuffle commenced. Afraid the ruse would be prematurely exposed, McDonell hurried forward and attempted to slay the dubious officer but was himself felled in the clash after another of the rebels ran forward to his captain's defense.

From the skirmish ahead a shout arose: “Fire! Fire!”

Some of the militia obeyed. Gunfire erupted. Smoke billowed. One man in the column fell. Watts gave the order; shouting as one, the Royal Yorkers charged forward into the trees and up into the enemy's fire.

William's legs screamed with the effort to propel him up the ridge for the second time that day. A blowdown loomed, trunks snarled like latticework. From a gap, a gun muzzle protruded, aimed at him. He hurled himself behind a yew tree before the ball whirred past and struck someone coming up the slope behind him. An Indian. Friend or foe William couldn't tell as he whirled, gaze raking oiled features obscured by black paint and pain.

The Indian had taken the ball in the leg but wasn't down. Oneida? Must be, coming at him like this. Searching the features—nostrils distended, lips snarled back, head plucked nearly bald—he waited almost too late to fire. The Indian was a step away, hatchet raised, when William's shot took him through the chest and he fell, sprawled lifeless across the slope.

His brother? His father? He'd no idea. And no time to look more closely. Rain-soaked militiamen hurled themselves over fallen trees and rushed from cover to attack the Yorkers with knives, hatchets, rifle stocks, furious at the ruse. Indians were in the mix on both sides. Another warrior grappled William, knocking aside his musket. William clamped a hand to a corded forearm while he groped free his belt ax. The Indian butted heads
with him. William's vision burst with bits of black and red. With a shout born of panic, he thrust the attacker away and swung his hatchet in a half-blind arc…at nothing.

He staggered, caught himself, shook his head clear. The Indian lay dead at his feet, shot through the head by Watts, already bounding away through smoke and writhing men. William hadn't heard the shot above the escalating clamor.

He heard the scream behind him, its pitch higher than other voices in the heaving fight. He jerked around. Another Indian was coming at him. Like most, this one clutched a rifle and tomahawk. Unlike most, this one had a full head of hair, half-straggled from a braid, flowing out wild and waist length. A woman's mane.

William stood transfixed as she rushed him, counting the crazed, pained beats of his heart. Her scream—and time—choked to a stop as their gazes locked, long enough for William to judge her young; beneath a layer of grime, her coppery skin stretched smooth over graceful bones. Her legs, bared as a warrior's, were muscled but slender. The blade in her hand flashed, raised to fall upon his neck.

She screamed again, a different sound than before—he'd have called it triumph if she'd made of him the easy kill he should have been, standing there too paralyzed by the sight of her to defend himself. But at the last instant she wrenched aside and sprang away with a panther's lithe grace, vanishing into a thicket, leaving him alive, if stunned.

Ahnyero was dead. Since the first guns' firing, Two Hawks had feared it was so. Not once had he seen his friend or heard his voice, or during the rain lull found anyone who could say with confidence he'd seen Ahnyero in the fight. Now he knew beyond doubt the scout and spy, the half-white blacksmith called Thomas Spencer, was gone out of the world. Out of
both worlds he'd straddled in life. He'd fallen across Ahnyero's body, dragged off the road into the brush, shot through the neck with an arrow.

Two Hawks fought on, shoving grief to the corner of his heart to wait for space to blossom there. It was his brother, maybe still living, he must be concerned with now.

Living where? Among those Yorkers who had fooled the militia with their turned-out coats?

The Tryon regiments were mingled now, fighting side by side against friend and kin, as the Oneidas fought Senecas and Mohawks, Cayugas, Onondagas, and Indians from farther off. Some wept as they killed. He had killed a Mohawk warrior. Though he hadn't wept to do it, he'd found a moment during the rain to be sick over it.

He had killed two Yorkers, fighting close with his hunting knife and tomahawk. Both times he'd nearly waited too long to meet the white man attacking with bayonet, for fear it was his brother coming at him. But neither soldier had worn the face his father carried. The face from Two Hawks's dream.

General Herkimer had made good use of the terrain. He had his men fighting in pairs now, one firing while the second reloaded behind tree or stump. Even so, the enemy had penetrated far among them, nearly to Herkimer himself. That brave man was still propped against his saddle with his shattered leg outstretched, giving orders, rallying his men. A chief worthy of following. But Two Hawks wasn't heeding his wisdom. He wasn't using the tree cover to his best advantage, not fighting with another watching his back. He was moving alone through the skirmishers, twisting, lunging, fighting off attack as it came, searching…as someone, it turned out, had been searching this killing ground for him.

“Two Hawks!”

He heard the shout a second before she slammed into his side, dodging so hard through smoke and trees she'd no room to slow herself. Her rain-wet hair had straggled free of its braid. There was a gash on her
brow. Another scored the knuckles that clenched her rifle. Otherwise she seemed whole. In body if not mind.

“Crazy woman!” He yanked Strikes-The-Water down behind two trees fallen together and shook her hard. “What foolishness brings you here?”

Glaring at him, she pulled free. Gunfire crackled around them, but even more shouting and thrashing as men fought hand to hand among the trees.

“I have seen him!” She panted for breath between the words, voice hoarse from screaming. “A white man with your face. A soldier with the turned-out coat who is your brother!”

The news left his anger hanging in shreds. “You saw him? Where? Alive?”

“Yes, alive—not a stone's throw from us now. I almost killed him!”

Two Hawks grasped her again, fingers closing over the sleeve of her shirt—she wore the breechclout of a warrior and nothing below but moccasins; her legs were bruised, scraped, smeared with earth and blood not her own. His mind spun with too many thoughts to sort out. He must get her out of this. He must find his brother. How could he do both?

“In which direction from this spot?” he demanded. When she pointed, he fixed what he saw in his mind, a gap beyond the end of a fallen tree where two small trees brushed the tips of leafy branches in an arch. “I see it. Now go. You should not—”

“I have more to tell you,” she shouted back. “More from that one you want to make your wife. She and the black-haired one are at your mother's lodge. She looks for you to say her father no longer stands against you.” Her face darkened as she shared this news. “You have his blessing—and that of your mother.”

Anna Catherine was with his mother, in Kanowalohale…and there was no one now who stood against them marrying? It was hardly possible to take it in. Two Hawks had a second, maybe two, to exult in the words
before a heavy body crashed over the felled tree behind which they hid. They started up, whirling to face an attack that didn't come. The soldier was dead, shot through the head.

Around them a pocket of stillness settled. The fight had passed over that spot and shifted down the slope. Two Hawks gulped acrid air through a raw throat to hiss, “This is no place for you. Go back to where it is safe.”

A muscle in Strikes-The-Water's jaw flexed. “I have killed three. I have—”

Two Hawks turned her, planted a foot against her rump, and shoved her back toward the militia lines. “Go!”

She staggered, caught herself, gave him back a scathing glare, and went. Finding the place he'd marked, those two young trees growing close, he started out of hiding to find his brother.