Law, Susan Kay (27 page)

Maybe there was still time. Jon jerked open Hitchcock's coat,
shoving aside the powder bags and broken cross-straps.

Blood. Dark, sticky, thick, it covered Hitchcock's chest and
belly. He peeled back the remains of the sergeant's shredded shirt, and sucked
in his breath. God, it couldn't be all his, could it?

Jon stripped off his own jacket and shirt, vaguely surprised to
find them stained with blood on the back as well as the front. He tore the
shirt into long strips, grateful, for once, for his size. At least there was a
lot of fabric. He was going to need a lot.

Lifting Hitchcock slightly, Jon ran his hands down the man's back,
checking to see if wounds were there too. No exit holes. The balls must still
be inside him, then, but all Jon could hope to do was keep the sergeant alive
long enough to get him to the surgeon.

But he had to stop the bleeding. He packed the holes with wadded
linen, pressing down hard as blood soaked through the fabric and covered his
fingers. There wasn't even the slightest flinch from the sergeant when Jon
pushed at his chest although the pain must have been excruciating. The man was
out cold—or dead; Jon leaned over and put his ear close to Hitchcock's mouth.

Shallow breaths, too rapid, too weak, but breath. Jon
straightened. Grabbing another handful of cloth strips, he carefully wound them
tightly around the sergeant's chest.

He hadn't even noticed, while he'd been busy tending to Sergeant
Hitchcock, that the hail of bullets around him seemed to have stopped. The
colonials were in full retreat, out of his sight over the hill, and only the
faintly muted sounds of firing reached him.

His company was going after them at full charge; they'd taken
enough today and were determined not to let their tormentors get away
unscathed. Unfortunately, it meant they were out of earshot; there was no one
he could holler to for a medic.

Taking another rag, he reached for his canteen and tried to open
it, but his fingers were slippery with blood, and he couldn't get a good grip
on the canteen. He wiped his fingers on his breeches and tried again. The water
was warm from the sun. He splashed it on the cloth and began to wipe the grime
from the sergeant's face.

Perhaps the moisture and soothing strokes penetrated the injured
man's stupor. The sergeant gave a low moan, and his eyelids fluttered open
slightly.

"Lie still," Jon said quietly.

"Hurt," Hitchcock managed to rasp out.

"Yes."

"Bad?"

"Yes," he said simply, knowing his sergeant would accept
nothing but the truth. "If you promise you'll be still, I'll try and go
get a doctor."

"No matter." Hitchcock coughed, spewing out a stream of
blood and foam.

Ah, damn. His lung. They'd hit his lung. And no doctor was going
to get here soon enough to help.

"Hang on." And then there was the anger, hot and acid,
against the useless, stupid, futility of it all. What would it change? What
would it help for this man to die? A good man, a fair man, a man who had
patience and tolerance with every soldier in his company, including a
slow-witted lieutenant.

"Hang on," Jon said urgently. "I'll get help."

Hitchcock coughed again, his whole body shaking. "Soldier.
Always knew... die... like a soldier."

His head rolled back limply. Jon couldn't have said how long he
stayed there, staring, sitting by the sergeant's body as night swept in and
obscured the horrible aftermath of battle. Quiet, blessed coolness; it was almost
peaceful. Hard to believe that in the morning the sun would rise to illuminate
again ground churned up by artillery fire and strewn with dead soldiers.

Jon's hand trembled as he reached over and finally closed
Hitchcock's eyes. The body was already growing cool, acclimating itself to the
temperature of the dead, not the living.

Slumping back against the bush, Jon dug the heels of his hands
into his eyes, which stung from the smoke of the battle. He rubbed hard,
painfully.

There was no escaping war. There was no escaping death.

And there was no escaping that this whole bloody carnage was his
fault.

The moon stared down
from the ebony sky like a malevolent,
unblinking yellow eye. It illuminated the black, twisted shapes of the trees
and limned the old abandoned fort in sickly yellow.

High summer night. Heat radiated from the ground; the air was
heavy, close, so thick it felt to Jon as if he should be able to reach out and
grab a fistful of it. It was a labor to draw a full breath.

Trying to let a little air get to his overheated skin, Jon tugged
futilely at the thick padding that upholstered his waist, wincing at the
pressure on the still-tender spot where the bullet had grazed his side. He
hadn't discovered his wound until long after the battle, when his company had
returned to find him still hunched beside the limp body of Sergeant Hitchcock.

It had taken nearly a week for him to return to full strength, a
week in which he'd lain in bed and had too much time to think—far too much.

All he'd ever tried to do was the right thing.

He'd been so sure he'd known what it was. As a young lieutenant
stationed in Boston, he'd been appalled at the Crown's treatment of those he still
considered his own people. The massacre had been the last straw, and he'd begun
feeding tidbits of information to Samuel Adams. Little had he known what it
would lead to.

He'd been sure of who was right and wrong, who was enemy and who
was friend. He'd been so confident, so damn self-righteous, absolutely certain
he knew all the answers.

But the answers hadn't prepared him for the reality, and the
reality was, people died. People who weren't his enemy, people who weren't evil
or cruel or wrong. They were people just like him, doing their jobs, following
orders, trying to do the right thing.

No matter how much he tried to cloak it in terms of honor and
country, there was no getting around the fact that he'd provided the
information that caused too many of those deaths. If he hadn't pulled the
trigger, he wasn't sure that his culpability wasn't all the greater.

Worst of all, he saw no way out. He could only continue to do his
job and pray that somehow the knowledge he gathered would hasten the end of the
war. It didn't help that he knew neither side would surrender before they'd
been beaten into the ground.

He could only cling to what he had left: duty, and the
overwhelming loyalty that had led him down this path in the first place.

It would have to be enough. But in the dead of the night, when he
remembered a dying man in his arms, it didn't seem like enough. Oh, not nearly
enough.

He hunched his shoulders in the tight, rich brocade of his coat.
The part he played tonight was a new one: a middle-aged Boston merchant who'd
grown plump and lazy on his sales to the British soldiers stationed there. The
merchant placed commerce above country but showed a bit of defiance in choice
of his wig, which was heavily powdered and had thirteen curls trailing down the
back, a la Independence. Just enough resistance to keep the British from
suspecting more.

Jon rarely went to so much trouble just to deliver his
information. But then, rarely was his information so important.

That was the reason, too, that rather than use his usual channels
in Boston, he'd chosen to come here to pass on the packet of papers stuffed
inside the padding that created his ample girth. He was taking no chances.

He'd spent months piecing it all together. In the last two weeks,
once he'd been given a clean bill of health, he'd worked like a madman, day and
night, driven by the possibility that, this time, it would be enough to end it.
He had little else to hold on to.

There was no sign of movement down at the fort. All was still, the
walls and rough structures skeletal in the humid air. The fort had been empty
since his company had been sent back to Boston. Except for the length of the
ride to get here, it was the perfect meeting site. No one would bother with the
abandoned, useless place.

Shouldn't his contact have been here now? He'd made sure very few
people knew about this drop, and he was using his best courier. But there was
no sign of the old peddler who'd been able to move in and out of Boston and
Cambridge without suspicion.

He carefully approached the perimeter of the fort. His steps
raised a swarm of insects, and he resisted the urge to slap them away from his
neck, knowing the sound of his palm hitting his skin would stand out in the
quiet like a gunshot.

And it was quiet—too quiet, he thought. The only sound he could
pick up was the persistent buzzing of mosquitoes. Not even a bird called, as if
even they couldn't bestir themselves in the oppressive heat.

Nerves prickled at the back of his neck. He reached the outer wall
of the fort and slid silently along it, counting on the dark bulk to hide his
presence.

What was that? He stilled, his ears straining. Nothing. Lord, even
his own breathing sounded too loud to him.

He squeezed through the open door and into the center courtyard.
Empty. He scanned the inner wall, looking for the telltale rough outline of a
man. He couldn't make anything out. The ugly yellow glow cast by the moon
seemed to cloak as much as it illuminated.

"Halt." The order hung in the air, heavy and terrible.

They came from the walls of the building, emerging from the
blackness as if materializing right out of the thick, dark heat.

Soldiers, at least half a dozen.

Jon went cold. They'd found him. Somehow they'd known about the
meeting.

Did they have the peddler already? Involuntarily, his hand went to
the place where he'd hidden the dispatches.

If they already had him, there was nothing he could do for the
peddler now, little to be gained and much to be lost by waiting around trying
to find out.

Jon lifted his hands as if in surrender. He saw the soldiers relax
almost imperceptibly and begin to walk toward their prisoner.

He turned and ran. Oblivious of the shouts behind him, he pelted
across the barren clearing in front of the fort, heading for the woods. The
heated air burned his lungs as he breathed.

Crack.
A ball whined by his left ear. God, please let them be poor shots.
Heart pounding painfully in his chest, he redoubled his effort, heading for the
hidden entrance to the path where he'd once followed Beth and her soldier
pursuer.

He knew he could more than likely outrun any soldier following
him, but he seriously doubted he could outrun a musket ball.

The blow hit him behind his left shoulder. It sent him flying with
its force. He slammed into the ground, tasting dirt. Pain exploded down his
spine.

Clamping his jaws together, he sucked air in through his teeth and
forced himself to his feet. He shuddered, just once, against the searing,
stabbing heat in his shoulder. Pain was acceptable. Capture was not.

More sharp cracks rent the air behind him. He narrowed his focus
to the edge of the forest. Thick with leaves and new growth, it looked very
different than it had last winter. He selected a likely looking bush, hoped for
the best, and plunged in.

Thank God. It was the right one. He ran on, branches scratching
his face and scraping at the wound in his back. He staggered once when the pain
ripped down his body, all the way to his knees.

All he had to do was get to his horse. They'd taken after him on
foot, and by the time they realized he had a mount and went back for their own,
he'd be long gone.

Lord, it hadn't seemed this far away when he'd set out. Sweat
trickled into his eyes. Wiping it away with one forearm, he threw up his other
to block a low-slung branch.

Damn, if only he could breathe. The trail was so narrow. He felt
the edges of his world begin to close in.

Finally.
As always, he hadn't tied his horse,
just in case he needed to get away quickly. The huge, sturdy beast, his reins
looped loosely over his neck, had been contentedly cropping the thick grass in
a tiny clearing. He raised his head at the sound of Jon's arrival.

Jon reached to grab on to the saddle and pull himself up, and
found his left arm didn't work. No time to worry about it. Hanging on with his
right hand, he shoved his foot into the stirrup, and heaved, barely managing to
swing his right leg over the horse.

God, he felt weak. His clothes were wet with sweat and blood, but
he was shivering as if chilled. He knew it meant he'd lost too much blood
already.

He tugged on the reins and banged his heels against the horse's
sides, heading him down the trail before Jon slumped over his neck.

There was no way he was going to make it back to Boston. After
tonight's fiasco, he didn't know who he could trust—on either side.

There was only one person he dared go to now. He had no right to
ask, but he had little choice. Closing his eyes briefly against the pounding in
his brain, he hung on to his horse, praying he'd make it in time.