He slung the rifle onto his back and once more leaped, fingers digging desperately into the unpeeled log. They slipped, splinters running up under his nails, and pain shot through his hand like lightning but now he had his other hand up, grabbed his right wrist with his sound left hand, and locked his grip round the log. His feet slid on the loose-packed dirt, and for an instant he swung free, like a squirrel hanging from a tree branch. He pulled upward against his weight and felt something tear in his shoulder, but couldn’t stop to favor it. A foot, he had his foot braced on the underside of the log now. A wild swing with his free leg and he was clinging like a sloth. Something chunked into the log he clung to; he felt the shiver through the wood.
“Hold on, Red!” someone screamed below him, and he froze. Another chunking sound and something came down on the wood an inch from his fingers—an ax? He didn’t have time to be scared; the man below fired past his shoulder—he heard the ball whiz past, buzzing like an angry hornet—and he pulled himself toward the base of the log in a rush, hand over hand as fast as he could, worming his way between the logs, clothes ripping, and his joints, too.
There were two Hessians lying just above his gap, dead or wounded. Another, ten feet away, saw his head pop through and reached into his sack, teeth bared beneath a waxed mustache. A bloodcurdling yell came from behind the Hessian, though, and one of Morgan’s men brought down a tomahawk on his skull.
He heard a noise and turned in time to see a corporal step on one of the Hessian bodies, which abruptly came to life, rolling up with musket in hand. The Hessian struck up with all his force, the blade of the bayonet ripping up through the corporal’s breeches as he stumbled, tearing free in a spray of blood.
By reflex, Jamie seized his rifle by the barrel and swung it, the motion snapping through his shoulders, arms, and wrists as he tried to drive the butt through the man’s head. The jolt of collision wrenched his arms, and he felt the bones of his neck pop and his sight go white. He shook his head to clear it and smeared sweat and blood from his eye sockets with the heel of his hand. Shit, he’d bent the rifle.
The Hessian was dead for good, a look of surprise on what was left of his face. The wounded corporal was crawling away, one leg of his breeches soaked with blood, his musket slung onto his back, his own bayonet blade in his hand. He glanced over his shoulder and, seeing Jamie, shouted, “Rifleman! Your back!”
He didn’t turn to see what it was but dived headlong and to the side, rolling into leaves and trampled earth. Several bodies rolled over him in a grunting tangle and crashed against the palisades. He got up slowly, took one of the pistols from his belt, cocked it, and blew out the brains of a grenadier poised to throw one of his grenades over the edge.
A few more shots, groans, and thumps, and as quickly as that, the fight died down. The redoubt was littered with bodies—most of them green-clad. He caught a glimpse of Arnold’s little mare, white-eyed and limping, riderless. Arnold was on the ground, struggling to stand.
Jamie felt nearly unable to stand himself; his knees had gone to water and his right hand was paralyzed, but he wobbled over to Arnold and half-fell down beside him. The general had been shot; his leg was all-over blood, and his face was white and clammy, his eyes half-closing from the shock. Jamie reached out and gripped Arnold’s hand, calling his name to pull him back, thinking even as he did so that this was madness; he should slip his dirk into the man’s ribs and spare both him and the victims of his treachery. But the choice was made and past before he had time to think about it. Arnold’s hand tightened on his.
“Where?” Arnold whispered. His lips were blanched. “Where am I hit?”
“It’s your leg, sir,” Jamie said. “The same where ye were hit before.”
Arnold’s eyes opened and fixed upon his face.
“I wish it had been my heart,” he whispered, and closed them again.
DEATHBED
A BRITISH ENSIGN came just after nightfall, under a flag of truce. General Gates sent him to our tent; Brigadier Simon Fraser had learned of Jamie’s presence and wished to see him. “Before it’s too late, sir,” the ensign said, low-voiced. He was very young and looked shattered. “Will you come?”
Jamie was already rising, though it took him two tries to get up. He wasn’t hurt, beyond a number of spectacular bruises and a sprained shoulder, but he hadn’t had the strength even to eat when he staggered back after the battle. I’d washed his face for him and given him a glass of beer. He was still holding it, undrunk, and now set it down.
“My wife and I will come,” he said hoarsely.
I reached for my cloak—and, just in case, my kit.
I NEEDN’T HAVE bothered with the kit. General Fraser lay on a long dining table in the main room of a large log cabin—the Baroness von Riedesel’s house, the little ensign had murmured—and it was apparent from a glance that he was beyond any aid I could offer. His broad face was almost bloodless in the candlelight, and his body was wrapped in bandages, these soaked with blood. Fresh blood, too; I saw the wet patches slowly spreading, darker than the patches of dried blood already there.
Absorbed by the dying man, I’d only dimly registered the presence of several other people in the room and had consciously noticed only two: the surgeons who stood near the bed, bloodstained and white-faced with fatigue. One of them darted a glance at me, then stiffened a little. His eyes narrowed, and he nudged his fellow, who looked up from his contemplation of General Fraser, frowning. He looked at me with no particular comprehension and went back to his fruitless meditation.
I gave the first surgeon a straight look, but without any hint of confrontation. I did not mean to intrude on his territory. There was nothing I could do here, nothing anyone could do, as the surgeons’ exhausted attitudes clearly showed. The second man hadn’t given up, and I admired him for it, but the scent of putrefaction in the air was unmistakable, and I could hear the general’s breathing—long, stertorous sighs, with a nerve-wringing silence between them.
There was nothing I could do for General Fraser as a doctor, and there were people here who could offer better comfort than I could. Jamie, perhaps, among them.
“He hasn’t long,” I whispered to Jamie. “If there’s anything you want to say to him…”
He nodded, swallowing, and went forward. A British colonel at the side of the impromptu deathbed narrowed his eyes but, at a murmur from another officer, stepped back a little so that Jamie could approach.
The room was small and very crowded. I kept back, trying to stay out of the way.
Jamie and the British officer murmured together for a moment. A young officer, no doubt the general’s aide, knelt in the shadow on the far side of the table, holding the general’s hand, his own head bowed in obvious distress. I pushed the cloak back over my shoulders. Cold as it was outside, the air inside was beastly hot, unhealthy and suffocating, as though the fever that was devouring General Fraser before our eyes had risen from the bed and spread through the cabin, unsatisfied with its meager prey. It was a miasma, thick with decaying bowels, stale sweat, and the taste of black powder that hung in the men’s clothes.
Jamie bent, then knelt himself, to come closer to Fraser’s ear. The general’s eyes were closed, but he was conscious; I saw his face twitch at the sound of Jamie’s voice. His head turned and his eyes opened, the dullness in them brightening momentarily in recognition.
“Ciamar a tha thu, a charaid?” Jamie asked softly. How are you, cousin?
The general’s mouth twitched a little.
“Tha ana-cnàmhadh an Diabhail orm,” he replied hoarsely. “Feumaidh gun do dh'ìth mi rudegin nach robh dol leam.” I have the devil of an indigestion. I must have eaten something that disagreed with me.
The British officers stirred a little, hearing the Gaelic, and the young officer on the far side of the bed looked up, startled.
Not nearly as startled as I was.
The shadowed room seemed to shift around me, and I half-fell against the wall, pressing my hands against the wood in hopes of finding something solid to hold on to.
Sleeplessness and grief lined his face, and it was still grimed with smoke and blood, smeared racoonlike across his brow and cheekbones by a careless sleeve. None of that made the slightest difference. His hair was dark, his face narrower, but I would have known that long, straight nose and those slanted blue cat-eyes anywhere. He and Jamie knelt on either side of the general’s deathbed, no more than five feet apart. Surely, no one could fail to see the resemblance, if…
“Ellesmere.” A captain of infantry stepped forward and touched the young man’s shoulder with a murmured word and a small jerk of the head, plainly telling him to leave the general’s side, in order to give General Fraser a moment’s privacy, should he desire it.
Don’t look up! I thought as fiercely as I could in Jamie’s direction. For God’s sake, don’t look up!
He didn’t. Whether he had recognized the name or had caught a glimpse of that soot-smeared face across the bed, he kept his own head bent, his features hid in shadow, and leaned nearer, speaking very low to his cousin Simon.
The young man rose to his feet, slow as Dan Morgan on a cold morning. His shadow wavered on the rough-cut logs behind him, tall and spindly. He was paying no attention to Jamie; every fiber of his being was focused on the dying general.
“It is gladness to be seeing you once more on earth, Seaumais mac Brian,” Fraser whispered, bringing both his hands across with an effort to clasp Jamie’s. “I am content to die among my comrades, whom I love. But you will tell this to those of our blood in Scotland? Tell them…”
One of the other officers spoke to William, and he turned reluctantly away from the bedside, answering low-voiced. My fingers were damp with sweat, and I could feel beads of perspiration running down my neck. I wanted desperately to take off my cloak but feared to make any movement that might draw William’s attention to me and thus toward Jamie.
Jamie was still as a rabbit under a bush. I could see his shoulders tight under the damp-dark coat, his hands gripping the general’s, and only the flicker of the firelight on the ruddy crown of his head gave any illusion of movement.
“It shall be as you say, Shimi mac Shimi.” I could barely hear his whisper. “Lay your wish upon me; I will bear it.”
I heard a loud sniff beside me and glanced aside to see a small woman, dainty as a porcelain doll despite the hour and the circumstance. Her eyes shone with unshed tears; she turned her head to dab at them, saw me watching, and gave me a tremulous attempt at a smile.
“I am so glad that your husband is come, madam,” she whispered to me in a soft German accent. “It—it is a comfort, perhaps. That our dear friend shall have the solace of a kinsman by his side.”
Two of them, I thought, biting my tongue, and by an effort of will didn’t look in William’s direction. The awful thought came suddenly to me that William might recognize me, and make some effort to come and speak with me. Which might well mean disaster, if…