That was Johanna’s coach! The realization drove into Hal’s mind like a knife. If they got into that coach, they would get Johanna. What would they do with her? To her? No!
Hal jumped to the ground, swept out his sword and let out a yell that should have felled trees. He did not think about not having a padded jacket. He did not think about not having a mask. He did not think. He just moved.
His shout caught the attention of the men at the coach. They looked around to see Hal charging at them alone, sword drawn. The sight could not have worried them much, because only one of them moved to meet his attack. Hal parried the man’s thrust, then slashed down with all the strength he had. The woodsranger’s sword, and the hand along with it, went spinning to the ground. Hal scarcely noticed. He had to reach the coach.
The woodsranger at the door barely had time to realize what was happened before Hal was on him. The fury of Hal’s attack drove him away from the coach. Hal battered his blade aside, then drove two quick thrusts through chest and abdomen. The woodsranger crumpled to the ground.
Behind him, Hal heard the clash of steel on steel. He turned back to see Gustavus mounted on his big, black stallion. His blade dripped blood. The third woodsranger lay dead in the snow at the horse’s hooves.
“Well done, Hal!” Gustavus shouted.
“What?”
“I said, well done. Dammit, man, very well done!”
Hal shook his head. For all his words registered, Gustavus might have been referring to the dinner service on that first night. The only thought in Hal’s mind was still Johanna’s safety. He turned away from Gustavus to look back down the line of wagons. Men were fighting around them and on them, and bodies lay in the snow on all sides. Two woodsrangers, armed with swords, were pointing at them and the coach.
“Get her out of here!” Hal screamed over his shoulder to Gustavus. One of the guards, his left arm limp and dripping blood, ran past Hal to get to the coach. Hal turned and saw the man on the driver’s seat looking uncertainly at Gustavus.
“Go! Go!” Hal screamed. When he saw the driver raise his whip, he rushed to meet the now-advancing woodsrangers.
Again he was outnumbered and again he did not think about it. His sword moved like an extension of his arm. He knocked one woodsranger off balance, then attacked the other. Within seconds, the man’s blade was in the snow, blood running from a gash in his forearm. Now the first one was advancing again. Hal spun back to him, again moving to attack. With a lunge, Hal’s point took him in the throat. The remaining one was still on his knees in the snow, holding his wounded arm. Hal took the moment to look for Johanna’s coach, to see if it had gotten clear of the fighting. Then pain came crashing in on the side of his head. The world went white, then black.
15
Captured
HAL HAD THE sensation of being lifted and carried, then he was out again. A sensation of bouncing, uncomfortable. Then out again. When he came fully awake at last, he was lying on the ground, on a mat of some sort; it might have been a tent canvas. Light flickered against his eyelids and he felt warmth on his face. Voices nearby chilled any thought of experimenting with movement, though. They were speaking a language he did not understand. Then another voice joined them and the language shifted to English. Fragments of the conversation came to his ears.
“. . . still out, is he?”
“. . . my way, he would stay out forever. If . . .”
“. . . we’re told alive . . .”
“. . . maybe I don’t agree . . .”
“. . . our weinig moordenaar . . . blade be through your ribs . . .”
After a time the voices fell silent, or perhaps, just moved out of earshot. Hal experimented with moving his arms and legs. They all worked and, at the same time, he found that they were not tied. He opened his eyes and realized that he was outside. The source of the flickering light and heat was a fire, maybe ten feet from where he was lying. Beyond that, two other fires were burning against the darkness of the night. How long since he had been struck? People clustered around the other fires, possibly the same people he had heard speaking. More people moved around the edge of his vision.
He had been saved, but by who? He sat up to get a better look, a move he instantly regretted. His head had been throbbing and the movement made it feel as though a spike was being driven in above his left ear. To add to the pain, the ground now seemed to pitch and roll underneath him. He put his hand up to the focal point of the pain and found matted hair. What came off on his fingers looked like clotted blood. Under the matted hair was a large, very tender lump. One light touch was enough to dissuade him from further exploration.
He turned his attention back to the men he had seen. A small group stood around the fire to his left. All of them wore the leather outfits of woodsrangers. Woodsrangers!
He couldn’t be a prisoner—not unguarded, and with his hands and feet free. Maybe this was another group of woodsrangers that had saved him from the battle, for some reason. His hand checked for his sword. The sheath was empty. Probably lost it when I was hit, he told himself.
“Drink this,” a voice said. Bel’s voice.
He looked around quickly, then wished he hadn’t moved his head. He clamped his jaws and managed not to throw up. Bel stood above him, shrouded in a heavy cloak. In her right hand she held a steaming cup.
“What is it?” he asked.
“They call it soul-of-willow.”
“What’s it for?”
“Your head. It won’t take away the pain, no matter what people say, but you won’t mind it as much and it will help the dizziness.”
“I can’t imagine any way I could have this pain and not mind it,” Hal said.
“Sometimes, you just have to take the pain,” Bel replied without noticeable sympathy.
Hal felt ashamed of himself. How much pain had she endured when she got those scars?
Bel smiled at his silence. She took a swig of the cup herself before holding it out to him again. “It’s quite safe now, although you should agree that there’s no reason to go to the bother of poisoning you.”
Hal was grateful that the darkness hid his blush. “Thanks.” He took the cup.
The contents went down in one gulp because he could see she was turning away and he wanted her to see that he drank it. The taste was bitter, very bitter. It left a stinging sensation in his mouth akin to highly spiced food. Miraculously, it stayed in his stomach. After several minutes, the dizziness did recede and he began to feel more alert. His head still hurt but it was as though it were someone else’s head.
Now that he could think again, the question resurfaced: how had he come to be with these woodsrangers, and not as a prisoner? Bel had vanished into the darkness but Hal was willing to bet that if she were here, there would be one other woodsranger he would know. Sure enough, it took only a few minutes of looking around the campsite before he spotted the tall figure of Fons ten Eyck.
Ten Eyck had just settled himself onto a mat by one of the fires when Hal walked over. He did not seem particularly surprised to see Hal standing over him.
“Good evening,” said ten Eyck. “I am glad to see you on your feet. There is room for two on this mat. The underside is woven very tightly, I promise you. It will not be as cold as sitting on canvas and we will not get wet even if we have some melt here.”
Hal accepted the invitation by sitting down next to ten Eyck. “Thank you,” he said. “I am hoping you would answer some questions for me.”
“Possibly,” said ten Eyck. “Actually, since I am an old man who is known to like to talk, I should really say ‘probably.’ But, maybe not. It depends on what you ask.”
In spite of his pain, in spite of his dizziness, Hal had to grin. Fons ten Eyck put him at ease. “How did I get here?”
“That’s easy,” ten Eyck replied. “You were knocked unconscious during the fighting. We brought you along with us when we moved out after it ended.”
The unease returned to Hal’s stomach,
but it had nothing to do with the way his head felt. “Then you are the ones who attacked the wagons.” He hoped that, somehow, ten Eyck would refute it.
“Of course we did,” ten Eyck said. “What did you imagine happened?”
“I don’t know.” Hal fumbled for words. “I thought maybe you drove off those other woodsrangers, something like that.”
Ten Eyck chuckled and his face stayed friendly. “No, Hal, by no means.” He chuckled again. “I suppose if I could have divined that you would come up with an idea like that, I could have played along, but I don’t think it would have taken long for the truth to come out. Why do you look so surprised?”
Hal raised his eyebrows. “Why am I surprised? Good God, we were just fighting against one another. So why am I here? Am I your prisoner? I’m not tied up. What’s going on?”
“Slow down, Hal, slow down. You look like you’re going to be sick, and this is my mat you’re sitting on. You’re here because, when there was the opportunity to take you during the fight, Bel ordered that you not be killed.” Ten Eyck smiled at Hal. “It’s rather interesting, you know. Bel isn’t in command, far from it, but she said it was a matter of honor for her, after what happened back in Gap. So you got a knock on the head instead of a sword through your back. It’s not terribly popular with a lot of the men. We lost heavily today and they can see you’re dangerous. It doesn’t bother me, though. You helped us in Gap and if there’s a chance of persuading a good fighter to join us, I’m all for it.”
“Wait a minute. Just wait a minute,” Hal demanded. “None of this is making sense.” Hal Christianson had been called many things over the years, but ‘dangerous’ and ‘good fighter’ were not among them. “What do you mean, I’m such a good fighter that you want me to join you?”
“Oh, come on, Hal. You didn’t learn to use a sword like that waiting tables for Jack Slade. What happened at the inn, well, you could pass that off as a fluke. But here? Twice you attacked when you were outnumbered. The result? You killed two and wounded two. One of them lost his hand. We had to get you from behind. Doesn’t surprise me that plenty of men here would like to see you dead.”
Hal blanched. It was hard enough to believe people thought he was a warrior. The idea that his life was in danger because they thought he was too dangerous to leave alive was too much.
Ten Eyck saw his face and chuckled again. “I wouldn’t worry about it. Bel said she owes you for what you did and there’s nobody here crazy enough to cross her. I’m more interested in whether I can convince you to join us.”
“Join you?” It came out in a shout, maybe more of a shriek. All of a sudden, the events of the past days felt overwhelming. Hal was yelling more out of frustration at what had happened to his life than at ten Eyck, and with no thought for what he was saying. “Are you crazy? You lied to me in Gap when you said you were a trapper, in town to sell beaver pelts. God, what I did actually helped set up Gustavus to be ambushed. None of that would have happened if you weren’t a lousy, lying thief. Why should I join you? Because you’ll make me out to be an accomplice?” He would have spit, but his mouth was too dry. “You’re a murdering bandit, that’s all, and I won’t be that. I won’t!”
Hal stopped, out of breath and red in the face. That moment gave him time to start to panic as the realization of what he had just said sank in. He had just been told that the men in the camp would like nothing better than to kill him. So what did he do? He had just given ten Eyck the perfect excuse to do it.
Ten Eyck’s face was hard. For once, he was silent. Hal squeezed his hands against his temples as if that would hold the pulsating feeling in one place. What was happening to him? He was Hal Christianson, a freshman student at a top New England college, who had endured occasional taunts because he was not aggressive and was not successful with girls. He was not some mythic warrior in a never-never land that made no sense. He played characters like that in computer games. They weren’t real. This couldn’t be real. He needed to get back to what was real.
He waited, with his head in his hands, for ten Eyck to pronounce his death sentence. When he realized that ten Eyck had said nothing, he looked up again. What he saw was an old man looking at him with a tired face.
Finally, ten Eyck said, “We’re not bandits, Hal. We are fighting to overthrow the Provisional Government—the Provis—and to restore the rightful governor.”
Hal checked the next tirade before it spilled out of his mouth. From ten Eyck’s face, from the weariness in his words, Hal was sure the man was sincere. Ten Eyck did not see the woodsrangers as bandits. Should he agree with ten Eyck and hope his outburst would be forgotten? Besides, if ten Eyck was going to harm him, it would have already happened.
He wanted to know what was real. “Those wagons belonged to a merchant from New Sweden,” he said carefully. “If you’re only fighting the Provis, why did you attack him?”
“Because of the rifles.”
“Rifles?” Now Hal was more confused. “You attacked to take the rifles from Gustavus’ guards? They were the target?”
“You didn’t know, did you?” Ten Eyck stretched, then sighed. “Rifles are the real cargo your merchant Gustavus is carrying to Nieuw Amsterdam. Nya Sverige struck a deal with the Provis to supply rifles. Aside from the money, Nya Sverige would like to strengthen the Provis against Massachusetts, and more rifles in Nieuw Amsterdam and elsewhere will make those places much harder to take.”
Hal thought of the heavy crates in each of the wagons. “So, you woodsrangers are Massachusetts’ allies against the Provis? Is that it?”
“Us? Allies with the Holier-than-thous?” Ten Eyck gave a short laugh. “That’s not likely to happen. More likely never. Hal, we need those rifles for ourselves, for those who are our allies in restoring the rightful governor. If the Provis have those rifles pointing at us, our venture is that much more difficult.”
“Wait,” Hal said. “Massachusetts, the Puritans in Massachusetts, you call them the Holier-than-thous?”
That earned him a sharp look. “Ever met one?” ten Eyck asked. “Aye, it’s a common term for a Puritan although, in truth, nowadays all English are tarred with the same brush.” He scoured the bowl of his pipe with a stick before he went on. “This was the first shipment of rifles, destined for the provisional governor’s Lifeguard Regiment in Nieuw Amsterdam. We heard about it, never mind how, but we thought they were going by sea. That would have been the prudent thing to do. So we made arrangements with a certain privateer to take the ship. Too late, we learned that the rifles were not aboard. Either we have been compromised, or the Swedes made a lucky guess. No matter. We managed to find out that Gustavus was bringing them by wagon. It was a clever move. His company always has a winter shipment from the west on this route and bringing his daughter made the disguise better. It was almost too good. We didn’t realize it until he reached Gap. Our last chance for an attack was before he reached Nieuwmarkt—the country is too thickly settled farther east—but we needed time to gather a force. So we managed to delay him a few days.”
Hal thought of beaver pelts and broken wagon wheels. “That boy who helped you, did you know his farm was burned out, his family was killed?”
“No, I didn’t,” ten Eyck said, “but I’m not surprised. It’s typical.”
“You mean of Tewes?” Finally, Hal had some information that fit with what he had heard before.
“I mean the Provis in general,” ten Eyck answered. “They’ve done that, or worse, throughout Nieuw Netherlands. They burned my farm eight years ago and for what, you might ask? Because my wife gave succor to the wife and infant son of one of the grand patroons at the end of the revolt, a year before. I was away on the road at the time. I came back to devastation.” The emotion faded from ten Eyck’s voice as he talked. There was nothing more than a dry monotone when he finished.
“That’s horrible,” Hal said. “I’m terribly sorry.” A sudden image formed in his mind: himself returning to his parents’ home and finding . . .
that. He lifted a hand toward ten Eyck’s shoulder, then thought better of the idea and let it drop.
“It’s not for you to be sorry.”
Hal shrugged. “I am anyway. But, God almighty, where does it stop? I’ve heard the old governor was as bad as the Provis. If you win, is your new governor just going to start it all over again?”
“Just as bad? Do you really think that? Certainly, the governor was corrupt, certainly the grand patroons committed abuses. They stole, they probably murdered. But they are all dead. I don’t think a one of them escaped the collapse after the Hudson campaign. So, who are the Provis butchering now? The very people who supported them. The revolt is eating its own young. I was no patroon, just a gentleman farmer from up the Hudson. I had no cause to love the governor or his army. I did not care if you were English or Dutch or even a black man from the Indies, or even a Jew. To these Provis, though, if you are not English, you are beneath them. They want to see the whole continent English, clear to the Spanish in the south. The Swedes only support them now as a bulwark against the Massachusetts Puritans, who are worse.”
Ten Eyck sighed. “A quarrelsome and vexatious people, those Puritans. No savages left to fight up there—disease and some military skill saw to that—but more of the former whatever they say, so the Puritans tried to take Nova Scotia from the French. Couldn’t beat the French at Louisbourg or Québec, so they fought the Dutch under the governors. And if they think they can win, they’ll fight the Provis. Nieuw Amsterdam would be a prize. Finest harbor anywhere on the coast.”
Hal’s head threatened to start spinning again, but from politics, not the headache. “This does not make sense,” he said. “If Massachusetts is the aggressor and they want to fight the Provis and take Nieuw Amsterdam, won’t it be more likely to happen if you weaken the Provis? Then, maybe the Swedes would go to war too. Where does it end?”
Accidental Warrior: The Unlikely Tale of Bloody Hal Page 16
