by Lori Benton
Ahnyero stood silent a moment, then came and settled on his haunches near Two Hawks, rifle resting in the crook of his arm. “Peter Gansevoort is a friend to the People. It is good he is come to command. He will lead well when attack comes.”
When. Not if.
The new fort commander was an imposing white man, tall and thick chested, not yet thirty. He and the first of his New York regiment had arrived before Two Hawks and Ahnyero set out to scout northward. Gansevoort had taken swift charge of the fort’s repairs and planned to improve the road running east to Fort Dayton at German Flatts. Something was also happening west of the fort, which occupied the Carrying Place between Wood Creek, passage to Fort Oswego on Lake Ontario, and the Mohawk River, passage to Albany and the Hudson.
“As we were leaving,” Two Hawks said, “I saw the party he sent to Wood Creek. Why does he risk men out that way?”
“He has them felling trees across the water. The British will need to move all those trees from their path to bring their cannon and supplies to the fort, if they try to come that way. Like the path you wish to clear, eh?” Ahnyero wasn’t referring now to the clearing of a creek. “Tell me what weighs on you, brother. Then maybe you can sleep.”
Though his belly churned with the bad feelings he’d carried away from Anna Catherine, Two Hawks was glad to be prodded to speak of it.
“I did a shameful thing. Her father caught me.” He told Ahnyero how Aubrey found him watching his daughter bathe, though he’d done so only for the time it takes to draw a startled breath. A breath too long. He told how Aubrey ordered him, not yet healed from saving his boats, to leave. “I went to that place wanting to remove every branch from the path between my heart and his,” he said, hearing the bitter current in his voice. “Instead I felled a great tree between us.”
He was glad no one but Ahnyero heard these words. He’d held them inside, unable to tell even his mother, afraid to see relief in her eyes. She liked Anna Catherine, but he knew in her heart she wished him to marry a woman of the People. He thought of Strikes-The-Water but shook the image of her away.
“What have your parents said about this thing that happened?”
“I did not tell them.”
Ahnyero let his silence speak to that. After a moment, he said, “It seems to me it was not a thing you meant to do, nor a thing for which you should feel shame. You did what a white father would want you to do. You looked away. He was too harsh about it, I think.”
“Her father did not know what was in my heart.” Two Hawks surprised himself by defending the man. “But if I could find my brother, maybe I could convince him to come back and that would clear a whole forest between Aubrey and me. If Creator wills it,” he hastened to add.
Beside him in the darkness, Ahnyero made a low sound. Laughter. “That is why you are with me now? To help Creator’s will along?”
Two Hawks frowned, unsure whether he’d been reproached. Out in the dark, a branch cracked. Ahnyero stiffened, then relaxed when a raccoon trundled into starlight, chittered at them, then hurried on its way.
Ahnyero squeezed his arm. “Sleep, brother. Or if you cannot for thinking, talk to the Almighty about it.” Concern warmed the blacksmith’s voice, mingling with wryness as he added, “Only do your praying in your heart. I would like some quiet.”
Next morning they met scouts coming south. Two were Oneidas from Oriska Town, known to Two Hawks. The third was known to him by reputation alone.
Born to an African father and an Abenaki mother, adopted by Caughnawagas, Louis Cook had fought against the British in their war with the French. Two Hawks watched the dark-skinned man with his head shaved to a feathered crest and ears heavily pierced as he spoke of what he’d seen in Montreal, a place he could enter with safety, being fluent in French and known as a Caughnawaga.
“The British are at Lachine, preparing to push up the St. Lawrence from that place. They will gather at Oswego, on the lake.”
It was momentous news, no matter how long expected.
“When will it begin?” Ahnyero asked.
“Before summer is much advanced. That is all we three know at present.”
They spoke a little longer before Two Hawks dared interject, “What of Johnson’s regiment? Are those soldiers at Lachine?”
Louis turned dark eyes on Two Hawks. “They are. Have you business with them, young brother?”
“It is a brother I have with them. The brother born with me that I have never seen.”
Recognition lit the warrior’s gaze. “You are the son of that woman captured and held at the British fort, who gave birth to two but brought away only one?”
“I am that one she brought away.”
Louis regarded him. “I am heading south now and cannot turn aside, nor say where my path will take me in coming days, but if it takes me again among the ranks of Johnson’s Greens, would you have me look for him, this one who wears your face?”
Two Hawks stiffened his knees, weakened with a wash of gratitude. He hadn’t looked for such a thing from this great warrior. “I would. He is called William Aubrey. I am told he does wear my face, but as a white man wears it. His eyes are blue.”
“If ever I am among those Royal Yorkers, I will look for him. If I find him, what would you have me say?”
“Tell him of me, of our parents, that we want him to return to us. Tell him so, and if he will come away with you…”
Louis Cook gripped Two Hawks’s arm in farewell. “If he will come, then I will lead him home.”
At midday they paused to eat a handful of parched corn and drink from a burbling stream. They continued north, bearing a little west on a path that cut back and forth across the stream, skirting stretches of swamp. Beside them ran a series of ridges. Ahead rose higher peaks, patches of late snow clinging in their shadows.
Behind them someone followed.
It took no more than a shared glance to confirm what both had sensed. Moments later, when Ahnyero veered off the path at a place where the ground was moist but passable, Two Hawks guessed what he intended. With a fierce surging of his blood, he followed. Skirting the marshy place, they made a wide, staggered turn, following the terrain of a hillside, weaving through downed timbers, heedless of tracks left in the wet ground. Thus they circled back until they reached their own tracks on the trail they’d abandoned.
There were three sets of footprints now.
They set their ambush simply, each sheltering behind a tree, one to either side of the trail. There they crouched, rifles primed, and waited. Perhaps they would watch and let the tracker pass. It was only one enemy and they were two. Maybe killing wouldn’t be—
The arrow thunked into the tree inches from Two Hawks’s face. He felt his bowels seize, then caught Ahnyero’s gaze and knew their trap was prematurely sprung. Two Hawks hesitated, waiting to let Ahnyero be the first to fire.
In that moment a voice called out in a tone that hinted of humor, “Shekoli. It is one you know who follows you!”
Two Hawks knew the voice well. Motioning Ahnyero to hold his fire, he stepped out from behind the tree to see Strikes-The-Water stepping from behind another tree, a second arrow fitted to her bowstring. In the time it took Two Hawks to reach her, astonishment worked itself into vexation so hot it clogged his throat.
“What are you doing here? Did I not make it clear when you asked that I did not want you?”
Hurt flashed across her features like a sheet of summer lightning before thunderclouds of indignation gathered. “Am I a child to be told where I can and cannot go? And I am not with you. We happen to be traveling the same path at the same time.”
Speechless at this twisting of the situation, Two Hawks shot a look of appeal at Ahnyero, who seemed amused, and a little impressed, by this unwanted tagalong. “This girl is known to you then?”
“Yes.” Two Hawks turned back to her with his anger still hot, though not so hot as to make him ask why she wasn’t busy planting corn in the women’s fields. “Why are you no
t hunting for your mother and those Deer Clan women, as you like to do? Why are you wasting your time and ours following where you have no business going?”
The girl showed not the slightest sign of chagrin. “I did hunt for them. I got a good deer that will last many days. I got it quickly and so came fast to the fort. I learned you had left only that morning. I found your trail and followed. Did you know your right foot turns inward more than does your left?”
At that, Ahnyero laughed out loud. Strikes-The-Water looked at him and smiled. It was a dazzling smile. Even Two Hawks, who wanted to shake the girl, had to admit it.
“Never mind about my feet. You should go back home and stop following us and…you shot an arrow at me!”
That detail had sunk in at last.
Her smiled vanished. “I shot the arrow at the tree behind which you skulked. Had I meant to hit you, I would have aimed for you.”
Two Hawks made a derisive noise.
Her eyes flashed with ruffled pride. “Kanowalohale is my home too, threatened by this war. I have every right to protect it as do you.”
“I have never said you did not have that right. But you do not have to claim it by my side!”
Something moved in the girl’s eyes when he said those words, something that struck Two Hawks deep enough to let in a bit of light to his thinking. By his side. Was that where this girl thought she wanted to be?
He was aware of Ahnyero watching, listening to their words. The humor on his face had faded. “Come, brother. Step aside with me. Sister, will you let us have this moment to speak?”
Strikes-The-Water glanced between them, wary, clearly hoping to get her way even if they begrudged her presence. Two Hawks felt a stab of pity. Was this the way the girl had lived her life, fighting to be included where she was not wanted?
Not waiting for them to draw away, she took herself off to the trail they’d followed before they set their ambush and sat down on a stone beside it, pointedly not looking at them. Two Hawks put his back to her and waited for Ahnyero to speak.
“Brother, I am sorry, but you need to take this girl back to the fort.” The blacksmith raised a hand, silencing Two Hawks even as he started to protest. “Will she stop following if we bid her do so?”
“She will only be more careful not to be caught at it.”
Ahnyero looked past him to the girl waiting on the rock. “It is you she wishes to be with. She will go back if you go with her. Not happily. But she will go.”
Two Hawks stiffened his jaw, his every fiber in rebellion.
“Listen,” Ahnyero said. “I will go on and come as close to Montreal as I can. Maybe even go into that place called Lachine. Maybe I will see your brother’s regiment.”
Two Hawks frowned. “That regiment is made up of Tories. Some could be your neighbors from Cherry Valley. You might be known there.”
“As you would not be?” A corner of Ahnyero’s mouth rose. “Do not look at me so startled. I know this is what you hoped to do. Go into that place, among those soldiers, and find your brother.”
The weight in Two Hawks’s chest felt like a stone, but he knew he was going to give way and do as Ahnyero bid. “Do not risk your life. Mine I would risk, but not—”
A commotion of branch breaking and a shout—of challenge, not fear—ended the conversation. Two Hawks whirled to see Strikes-The-Water on her feet, knife drawn, about to attack a half-naked white man staggering out of the wood. He was pale haired, coated in sweat-streaked grime, and bore the bruised swellings of a beating about the face; the small, deliberate burns and cuts of torture on chest and arms. Blood crusted where it had flowed.
Two Hawks and Ahnyero reached Strikes-The-Water before she could further injure the man. Putting themselves between, they gave her the moments she needed to see the stranger was no threat to her, weaponless and outnumbered. Clothed in tattered breeches, the white man fell to his knees.
“You’ve a woman with you,” he said in the English of one born Yankee. “I heard you arguing. I didn’t think you a war party, not with a woman…”
The man’s eyes rolled toward Strikes-The-Water, still brandishing her knife.
Ahnyero took the man by the arm and hauled him to his feet. “Tell us who you are and what you do on Oneida land, and we will keep that one from getting near you again.” He jerked his chin at Strikes-The-Water, who pulled back her lips in a grin as fierce as it was lovely.
“You’re Oneida? Thank every angel…” The man swayed on his feet.
Ahnyero gripped hard, keeping him upright. “We will ask the questions.”
The man winced at the grip on his damaged arm. Two Hawks took him by his other arm, equally bruised and spotted with burns. They lowered him to the rock Strikes-The-Water had vacated. She drew back a pace, wary and watchful. Silent for once.
“Have you water?” The man sounded parched. Two Hawks realized he was young, a few years older than him. Younger than Ahnyero, who put a hand to the ax at his belt.
“Talk first.”
The man licked cracked lips. “I’m on a mission—for your side. I went north to the British last summer, joined up with Johnson’s Greens—as a spy, see? For the Americans.”
Two Hawks’s heart leapt, a hard and eager beat that hurt his ribs. It was with great effort that he restrained himself from speaking as the man spilled his secrets, desperation in his voice.
“I volunteered to spy for the British, back to the Mohawk Valley, only so I could get to…” The man at last hesitated. “What’s important is I managed to slip away from my party and made my report. I’d planned to make my way back to Lachine, give out as I’d been captured, only that’s precisely what happened. Six of them caught me—Mississaugas, I think. Crown Indians, anyway. They tortured me before I escaped. Just north of…”
“The fort at the Carrying Place?” Ahnyero asked.
The man stilled, even in his distress seeming to weigh their faces, though there was little to be read on Ahnyero’s. The man looked last at Two Hawks, blond brows drawn over narrowed eyes that filled with question. He shook it away and said, “Yes. Fort Stanwix.”
“We come and go from there. I have never seen you.” Ahnyero glanced at Two Hawks, brows raised.
“I have not seen this one before.”
The man sat straighter on the rock. “On account I never let myself be seen.”
“He ask name.” Strikes-The-Water came closer, slender fingers gripping the handle of her knife. “You not say.”
The man’s eyes flashed to her, then with seeming reluctance, he said, “Sam Reagan. Out of Schenectady.”
Two Hawks’s breath came sharp into his lungs. He knew this man, though he’d never seen him. This was the one who piloted bateaux for Aubrey until last summer, when he revealed his Tory sentiments then led William away over the mountains. Lunging for Sam Reagan, he shoved him to the ground, a hand to his throat, a knee to his chest. “You are a spy—for the British. You are telling lies!”
The chest beneath his knee heaved. The throat made a gurgling beneath Two Hawks’s fingers. “I was sent north to Canada—a spy—enlisted—better to—troop movements—”
“You are choking him, brother,” Ahnyero observed calmly. “We will learn little from a dead man.”
Two Hawks released Reagan, who scrambled to his knees, coughing and gagging. When the retching passed, his bewildered gaze settled on Two Hawks, who saw questions flare again in the hazel eyes. Knowing he’d little time before Reagan saw past the shaved head and darker skin to the resemblance he bore William, Two Hawks thought quickly, scouring his memory for everything Anna Catherine had said about his brother’s leaving.
“I am going to ask you a question. I will know by your answer whether what else you have told us can be trusted.”
Reagan’s brows shot high. “Ask. Then whatever else you do, for pity’s sake, give me water.”
“My question is about that one you led away to the British last summer.”
Reagan’s gaze went mom
entarily blank. Sounding dazed he said, “You mean Aubrey? William Aubrey?”
Heart beating hard at the hearing of his brother’s name, Two Hawks held up a hand for silence. The question he’d meant to pose was unneeded now to verify the man’s identity. Still he asked it. “The bow that one has in his possession, where did he get it?”
“His bow?” The man gaped at him, long enough for Two Hawks’s confidence to be shaken, to fear the man had been lying about everything, that this thread to his brother he was trying to grasp would slither from his fingers like pond weed.
Then the man said, “William brought it with him from Crickhowell—in Wales.”
Flooded with equal measures of relief and anger toward this troublemaker turned up in their midst, Two Hawks shared a nod with Ahnyero. The latter unfastened the water skin he carried and offered it to the man, who took it and drank, long and deep. When he surfaced, chin streaming, water tracking grime and blood, Two Hawks asked, “That one who claims the Welsh bow, he is at Lachine? He is part of Johnson’s regiment?”
“Aye. He is.” Sam Reagan stared hard at Two Hawks, the question on his battered face shifting, beginning to resolve into comprehension. “And just who is William Aubrey to you?”
17
May 21, 1777
Schenectady
Reginald stepped onto the quay, where Lieutenant Colonel Marinus Willett, with the help of recruited river pilots, oversaw the loading of his 3rd New York regiment and their provisions into every bateau the Binne Kill could spare. Eager to commence the journey upriver to Fort Stanwix, where he would serve as second-in-command to Colonel Gansevoort, Willett adroitly sidestepped the men shouldering supplies across the quay to fetch up at Reginald’s side, blue regimentals fresh despite the morning’s sticky warmth.
“We’ll be snug as barreled beef, but we’ll make do. My thanks for the loan of your crewmen. Him especially.” Willett nodded toward Ephraim Lang, whose white head appeared briefly in a gap between boarding soldiers. “An old campaigner, I judge.”
