A Flight of Arrows (27 page)

Thunder had rumbled around them for days, at times so distant as to be barely noted, other times hard on their heels like the worrying of wolves, unnerving the horses and prickling the hairs on Anna's nape, making her glance over her shoulder—only to meet the uninviting gaze of Strikes-The-Water, riding behind Lydia's mare.

Anna wished for a deluge, willing to endure sodden garments for a blessed break in the heat, but the rain that threatened rarely fell, save in restless spatters. Halted at sunset, she'd yearned toward the distant rumbling, but once again the storm rolled past over the mountains, leaving the valley sweltering in its juices.

She lay now beside Lydia under the stars, clasping hands for comfort. It was alarming in the forest at night, no shelter between them and whatever rustled and prowled out in the blackness, save an aging warrior and a brooding girl with a musket across her thighs.

“Our last night thus.”

Anna turned at Lydia's whisper to see she'd also risked the top half of her face to the whining mosquitoes and was staring up at the stars, what could be seen of them through the tree canopy.

The journey had taken longer than anticipated. Anna suspected Clear Day of coddling them—stopping early, deliberately slow to rise come mornings. In some ways she was grateful. Sleeping on the ground had lost whatever novelty it initially held. Every joint ached. She'd lost count of the number of mosquito bites tormenting her or the wood ticks she and Lydia daily removed from their clothes and persons.

They would reach Kanowalohale tomorrow.

The thought stirred eagerness and apprehension. At long last she was entering Two Hawks's world. She would see where he'd returned to each time he'd left her at the border of her world. Know what he was choosing to leave for her, better understand the man she would call
husband
.

“Are you afraid?” Lydia asked, voice muffled.

It was stifling under the blanket. Worse to be bitten by the mosquitoes that swarmed in the dark. At first they'd resisted smearing on the grease Clear Day and Strikes-The-Water used to keep the insects at bay, but at last had given in—on their faces and hands. It helped, though it didn't prevent the needle pricks that pierced through clothing.

“A little. Mostly I just want to
see
him.” Anna was careful not to say Two Hawks's name aloud; Strikes-The-Water was doubtless awake. Anna had yet to discern how much English the girl understood.

“He may not be there,” Lydia cautioned.

“He and Stone Thrower might have returned,” Anna whispered back.

Clear Day hoped so. He wanted to give Stone Thrower warning that Papa was coming to find him. Clear Day wasn't happy about how his talk with Papa had gone. At least that was the impression Anna had. The old man would say little of it. But Clear Day's words—whatever they had been—had propelled Papa on his present journey to find Stone Thrower, and they had moved his heart to stop impeding her and Two Hawks building a life together. For this Anna was thankful beyond words. There would be impediments enough.
But not from Papa
.

So complete was her happiness that for a while even the shadow of war, and William's part in it, had receded to the back of her mind. Now, on the eve of reaching Kanowalohale, worry for William rose like a root pressing into her back, keeping her wakeful. She lay in the insect-buzzing dark, looking up through looming branches, wondering if William watched the same stars. Still clutching Lydia's hand, she prayed for William to come through this trouble and back to them, to find a way to forgive Papa, to see he was part of their family and always would be, no matter the circumstances that began it. He was her brother, and he was loved. Then she gave him into God's hands and fastened her thoughts on Two Hawks.

He was looking at the stars with her. She knew it as though he lay beside her instead of Lydia, who, to judge by her slackened grip, had fallen asleep.

Anna smiled into the dark and watched the stars wheel across the breaks between the trees.

The sky along the eastern rim of the world was graying as dawn approached. Two Hawks gave it a glance, then faced westward to watch the stars fade.

The old war chief, Skenandoah, was with him again. They were north of the Carrying Place, part of the ring of scouts Gansevoort had placed more thickly around the fort after a bad thing happened—three girls had been attacked while picking berries outside its walls. Only one made it back alive. Since then Gansevoort had sent the garrison mothers and children away east to Fort Dayton, at German Flatts. He had stationed militia soldiers outside the fort to protect the bateaux expected to come with supplies and more soldiers to strengthen the garrison. These would be a target of attack unless they arrived very soon.

Praise Creator Anna Catherine was safe, farther away than German Flatts. Even so, she had felt strangely near to him this night, part of which he'd sat wakeful while Skenandoah slept. Perched below the crest of a ridge—as they'd done back in autumn when he and Skenandoah and Ahnyero tracked the spies from Cherry Valley—he'd watched the wheel of heaven turn. Sometimes clouds rolled up to beat their drums, drop a little rain, then move on. Other times the stars shone hazily through the thick, damp air.

With his father he'd arrived at Fort Stanwix to find the men there furiously at work in the summer heat, strengthening the fort. Wood Creek was made impassable. It would take days to clear that creek, up which the British must bring their cannon and supplies or else spend days cutting a road for it. But enemies on foot could emerge from the forest at any moment. Rangers,
loyalists, warriors. Some of these had been spotted camped at the place where Wood Creek entered Oneida Lake. A small patrol coming ahead.

Was William part of that patrol, or was he back with the main force coming with St. Leger? Two Hawks hoped he'd come with this first wave of soldiers and warriors. He prayed he could find his brother, cut him from those others like a wolf its prey from a herd, get him away to their father and safety. It would be like that, he feared—the taking of prey that did not wish to be taken. He doubted William would come willingly, even if he knew it was his twin who sought to bring him away.

Two Hawks ran a hand over the dome of his head, plucked clean save for the swath from crown to nape. He hoped when at last they faced each other his brother would know him. His fingers traced the wound Lydia had stitched, healed now. One day it would be covered again. For now it lent him the look of what he needed to be. A warrior.

We are each what our lives have made us, but we are still one blood, Brother. I mean you to know it. Be ready for me
.

The old warrior near him stirred out of sleep. As Skenandoah rose in silence to pray in the coming dawn, Two Hawks found himself remembering that the man's daughters had been married, each in turn, to Thayendanegea, who now led their brethren into Oneida land against the fort the Oneidas had sworn to protect. Those daughters had passed from this life, but Two Hawks wondered how Skenandoah felt to be facing the father of his grandchildren as an enemy. For all he was assured in his convictions, sorrow clung to the venerable warrior as he knelt in prayer. It was the sorrow Two Hawks felt about his brother being over on that side of things. A knot in the chest that wouldn't unravel. He was seeking words to speak of it when he saw the Mississaugas—three of them—skulking through the wood across a gully opposite the ridge on which they camped.

Two Hawks put a hand to Skenandoah's wiry arm, interrupting his prayers. Wordless, the old warrior turned and saw their enemy.

August 2, 1777

Oneida lands, western frontier

T
he Mississaugas looked to be going away west, toward that patrol likely on the move now toward Stanwix. Two Hawks's heart beat like a drum. “Do we follow?”

Skenandoah pressed his lips downward. “Let them go. Only at the threat of my own, or yours if you are with me, will I take a life again.”

“My brother may be among those coming.”

“If so, how will you get to him without throwing away your life in trying?”

“I must try, Grandfather.”

Skenandoah's eyes, half-hidden in wrinkles, grew softer, but his mind on the matter held firm. “Creator will unfold it as He intends. Do not force it to come too soon. Await your time and you will know what to do. For now…” He nodded toward the vanished Mississaugas. “We do as those ones have done. Go tell what we have seen. And quickly.”

When it came to finding his brother, Two Hawks had spent his whole life awaiting his time. How much longer must he wait?

As he ran behind Skenandoah with the sun already hot on his face, memory of a dream he'd had in the night returned. A dream of William. He'd seen his brother's face—the face in the portrait their father carried next to his heart. That face had grown man-size and spoken to him under the stars, as a friend might sit and speak.
Be careful, Brother
, the face that was William's had said—in Oneida!
Be careful. Keep my father safe
.

That was all Two Hawks remembered. Was it a message from his brother's heart? If so, what had he meant by it? More than awaiting the chance to get him back, was Two Hawks meant to
do
something for William? And which father had he meant?

Dreams. His own had never made sense to him, not like that young Mohawk who lived awhile with them at Kanowalohale. Not like the dreams that one used to have. Tames-His-Horse. That Mohawk had been kind to Two Hawks, like a brother, that year Stone Thrower left them. He went under the water the same day Two Hawks and his parents professed faith in Savior Jesus, that day of his father's dramatic return from the Senecas. What had been that Mohawk's new name, given then?

Joseph
. A fitting name for an Indian so dream plagued. A dream took him back north to his people, Two Hawks recalled. A dream about a white girl waiting for him there. A girl whose eyes did not match. Two Hawks wondered how that turned out, if he'd found such a girl. He hoped so. But more, he hoped Joseph Tames-His-Horse wouldn't be among the Mohawks he might have to fight his way through to get at William.

They heard the stuttering cough of gunshots before they reached the edge of the cut-back forest surrounding the fort. Shouts followed. White men's shouts and the shrill cries of warriors. More sporadic shots.

They skirted northward, sweating as they ran, hoping to get round to the fort's sally port. When they did, Two Hawks grabbed Skenandoah's arm, turning the old man to view the fleet figures of Oneidas, one, two, more, slipping from cover, making for that small gate. Scouts and pickets like themselves, dodging fire from south of the fort, where powder smoke plumed from the trees. The British advance patrol was come.

“I will not be shut up in there.” Skenandoah held himself tense. “What good would that do anyone?”

Two Hawks agreed but didn't say so for just then a ball, shot high from the distant wood to the south, whirred past his ear and went rattling through the trees behind him, snapping leaves and twigs. He ducked
behind a holly bush, pulling Skenandoah down with him. Crawling forward, nose to the earth, he got a look along the river to the landing there. The long-expected bateaux had arrived. They were empty, supplies and soldiers gotten into the fort without a moment to spare.

Not so all their crew. The last of those were running hard up the track from the landing, beset by warriors. A hurled hatchet halted one man's flight in an arch of agony. In seconds a warrior was on him, taking his scalp with a victorious cry. Another two boatmen were captured and dragged away struggling. Others were still making for the fort, among them one who moved with a limp in his stride, though Two Hawks hadn't seen him hit. That limp was from an old wound, taken in another war. Two Hawks's eyes knew it well. It belonged to Anna Catherine's father.

William was trembling and trying to hide it. Lieutenant Bird was taking visible pains to master his own reaction at seeing the second goal of their mission fail before his eyes. They'd taken the lower river landing but arrived too late to capture the supplies and reinforcements sent upriver to the rebel garrison. If he mentally cursed the Indians for the delays they'd caused, Lieutenant Bird wasted no time voicing such resentment.

“Take whomever you need and go after Captain John and his warriors,” he ordered two nearby Yorkers in the forest south of the fort, where they'd regrouped. “Bring back those captive boatmen—while they can yet speak.”

Brant's warriors, sent ahead by St. Leger, just starting his advance up the timber-choked creek, were trickling in through forest paths. Brant himself, formidable in paint and feathers, carried a message from the general. Lieutenant Bird read it through, ordered camp pitched on the spot, then those not needed for the purpose stationed round the fort. “Shoot anything that moves on those walls,” Bird told his marksmen, Indian and loyalist. “Keep them pinned inside until General St. Leger arrives.”

William fell in with those pitching camp and saw to the raising of tents, the gathering of wood, the laying of fires, the gradual steadying of his hands and knees. Reconciling himself to what he'd seen down his rifle's barrel was another thing. With the rest of the Yorkers under Bird's command, he'd stationed himself behind a brushy stump and taken aim at the fleeing rebels, only to send his shot winging high over the last of the stragglers attempting to outrace their attackers—for the appalling realization that among them was Reginald Aubrey.

Sick with dread yet a telling relief, William had pulled himself together and was still helping with the camp setup amid the rising smoke of fires and the
chunk
of axes felling trees to fuel them, when his fellow Yorkers returned with the warriors and their prisoners, the latter white faced as they were marched toward Lieutenant Bird's newly erected tent.

Frozen in their path, William waited for the inevitable as the oldest prisoner, blood drying down his face, locked gazes with him as they passed. He knew the man by sight—a bateau captain called Martin. And the man, to judge by his sharpened gaze, knew William.

Spittle flew. Though too far away for that manifestation of contempt to touch him, William's face went tight with heat as if in the wake of a slap.

Anna Catherine's father was inside the fort. And that captain who'd been friendly to him, white-haired Lang, he was also among those trapped within. Two Hawks could understand about Lang. That man was often up and down the river. But what was Reginald Aubrey doing there when Clear Day had traveled far to speak to him? Had Clear Day never reached him? Who was watching over Anna Catherine, Lydia?

Questions swarmed like hornets in Two Hawks's skull. Should he stay and seek William, surrounded by enemies who would be streaming in
from the forest now, or find his father, praying he wasn't already closed up inside the fort too?

“Oriska,” said the old warrior beside him. “That is where I go. Word must be taken to the Americans to send men fast before more British get here.” Skenandoah didn't wait for Two Hawks to agree but set out through the forest.

Two Hawks followed, still making up his mind what to do.

They'd gone less than a mile when steps sounded on the path behind. Slipping off the trace into the wood, they waited in the still heat, rifles ready.

It was a woman, running fast. Skenandoah called out, “Sister, bide and speak to us.”

Two-Kettles-Together, wife of the warrior Honyery Doxtater of Oriska, drew up startled but unafraid, having recognized Skenandoah's voice. She'd news to share of interest to Two Hawks, beyond the word she meant to bring eastward about the siege.