by Lori Benton
“Our enemy’s lines are thin. I made it through in the night.”
“When you were safe out of this? Why did you not go to Oriska with Two Hawks?”
“My son was watching and saw you chased inside this fort. He told me of it, and so I have come for you.”
“For me?”
Stone Thrower frowned. “Of course for you. There is a promise between us. But we must leave this fort to see it fulfilled.”
Hearing nigh the very words he’d spoken to Clear Day, the blood rushed from Reginald’s head so quickly he nearly swayed off his feet. He braced them wide. What he’d expected from the man he didn’t know, but this matter-of-fact readiness, this willingness to unite, as though he’d known all along this was how it would all unfold, struck him like a blow to the senses.
Deeper still. To the marrow of his bones. Where once had been desiccation there surged now something fresh, vital, blood-red strong.
“William. You’ve come to help me find him?” Every syllable seared his throat, squeezing past the lump formed there. It was an emotion he’d denied himself so long it took him a stunned moment to identify it. Hope.
Had he heard the Almighty after all? Had he done a right thing in coming upriver? Not a wholly selfish thing, a foolishly desperate, groping-blind thing?
“It is what we agreed to do,” Stone Thrower said simply. “Creator has brought our paths together again for His purpose. So let us be about the doing of it.”
Reginald found his voice again, forced the words past his tightened throat, afraid hope would slip away as quickly as it had formed. “How? We’re trapped now, the pair of us. Helpless to do anything for anyone, much less for William.”
“Helpless?” The Oneida warrior stared at him as if it were a word he didn’t know. “Do you still not understand? With Heavenly Father, that Great Warrior and God of all flesh, nothing is impossible. Even men trapped in forts He can set free if He wills to.”
The words smote Reginald like a hatchet to his chest. He looked into the dark eyes waiting for his response and saw all that his own hand had wreaked in the man’s soul, the suffering, the brokenness, the pain and grief. Healing now, but the wounds were there to see, would be for the rest of his days.
He’d known such was the case, but not until this moment had he truly comprehended the breadth and height and width of the pain that had lived behind the eyes of the warrior who’d chosen, in a clearing at the wood’s edge, not to take revenge but to offer friendship. Was still offering it now.
And more. He’d risked his life to fulfill a promise made with the giving of those white beads Reginald had carried upriver tucked inside his coat—those beads, and nothing less than his yielded soul. Submitted, at rest, and victorious. This was what the Almighty could do with a man, if he would only submit his heart.
The blade in Reginald’s chest twisted. He could deny it no longer. Not in the face of this obstinate grace, this unrelenting mercy, this encompassing peace. God had not abandoned him. Since Fort William Henry he had turned his back on the Almighty. He had closed his heart. He’d left his soul trapped and besieged in a fort that wouldn’t surrender.
Oh, Lydia. She’d tried so often, by so many means, to tell him as much. Yet despite his miserable failings, despite his neglect and rejection, the Almighty had preserved in her a love for him that seemingly knew no bounds, could not be quenched. He’d seen it in her eyes on the quay at their parting.
Grace again, boundless, outrageous. He didn’t deserve her. He didn’t deserve a God still standing there waiting outside the fort of his soul, arms outstretched to receive him. The Almighty had taken him back to a place as near as could be to that in which Reginald had turned his back on him. Another besieged fort. And to this man whose son he carried away out of the first. Standing before Stone Thrower, he opened his heart, yielded it, and let it break.
For I acknowledge my transgressions: and my sin is ever before me…
He bowed his head and wept.
Make me to hear joy and gladness; that the bones which thou hast broken may rejoice. Deliver me from my guilt, O Lord, for it was against You I sinned.
The touch of a powerful hand on his shoulder was gentle.
Reginald raised his head. Stone Thrower’s other hand was outstretched to him. He grasped it, full to bursting with words, unable to speak them. Not one.
William’s father looked at him, eyes narrowed in scrutiny. Outside the light of morning had brightened, silhouetting the Indian, obscuring his expression.
“Iyo,” Stone Thrower said, the word warm with satisfaction. “At last we are ready to find our lost one.”
32
August 5, 1777
Fort Stanwix
The sun rose, but William never saw it. Dawn’s gloom merely brightened, revealing the clouds that had obscured the stars. A haze hung over the fort, drifting down to the river with its abandoned bateaux. Once the light improved, Archie MacKay left their shared breastwork for other cover—or more desirable company. Morning passed, punctuated by rifle barks. William hoped no one noticed how often he fouled his aim or was looking elsewhere when someone made himself a target on the walls.
Late in the morning, an Indian came dodging out of the wood and took cover with him so abruptly, William thought himself under attack. Then he recognized Joseph Brant, who flashed him a grin made fierce by war paint and crested turkey feathers.
“They nearly had me,” he said, deep chest heaving in breath beneath a calico shirt, the tails of which bore the ragged passage of a musket ball.
“Who?” With his rifle trained, William’s gaze darted toward the tangle of grapevine-choked trees from which the Mohawk had appeared, expecting gray-clad militia to burst forth next.
Brant pushed aside the barrel of William’s rifle, then winced at its heat, shaking scorched fingers. “Oneidas. I was ambushed coming from St. Leger’s camp. But I fought my way free. They did not follow.”
Even so, William felt his belly seize. Oneidas. Had the war chief heard the tales of him spreading through camp? He scrutinized the broad, striking face of the man crouched beside him but saw no knowledge of it in his gaze.
One of the fort guns fired. The ground before the breastwork erupted in flying clods. Earth and grass showered down. Along the British line, shouts and whoops and rifles answered. Brant rose in a crouch and loosed a scream of defiance that set William’s scalp crawling. “You’ve come from St. Leger? Have you news?”
Settled back on his heels, Brant made a sound of derision. “That one will not let us go into the valley, even to raid. Now it is trenches he wants dug so he can drop his mortar shells into the fort.”
A reasonable step, all things considered. Before William could say so, an explosion of rifle fire from high in a nearby tree was followed by an agonized cry from within the fort. From the leafy foliage came a drift of powder smoke and an exultant whoop.
The warrior, Ki, had made another kill.
Since dawn William had kept one eye on the Indian marksman fond of firing from treetops. Ki was patient, and he rarely missed. He fired no more than twice from a tree before quickly descending to choose another perch—laughing while the garrison sent a harmless rash of return fire at the vacated branches. Now he was climbing a tree some twenty yards from William, nearer the fort than any he’d yet chosen. Ki was growing brazen.
So was someone on the ramparts. A particular soldier appeared to be taunting Ki, pacing back and forth across an embrasure, pausing to gaze out briefly before disappearing. Laughter floated on the smoke-hazed air; Ki had seen the sentry. So had those gathered below his perch, eager for another kill.
William watched the rampart, certain the soldier wouldn’t dare reappear in the opening…but he did. Leastwise his hat appeared.
Ki’s rifle barked. The hat fell as a scream rang out. Soldiers and Indians on the field erupted in cries of triumph. Ki lowered his rifle for a reload.
William kept his gaze fixed on the rampart, his heart constri
cted. A cannon crew had moved a gun into a new position, aimed toward the cloud of powder smoke still drifting from Ki’s tree.
A shout came from the wall. A spotter’s shout.
Brant gave a warning cry, but the cannon’s roar drowned it an instant before the upper branches of Ki’s tree were torn to pieces by a blast of grapeshot. So was Ki, who tumbled from his perch to land in a bloody heap. Others wounded by flying metal writhed on the ground. A new roar filled the muggy air: cheers from what sounded like the entire fort garrison, celebrating Ki’s demise.
Brant’s face was set in fury. “They will die beneath our blades,” he pronounced, nostrils flaring as he breathed his rage. “Every one of them.”
The Mohawk rose to take Ki’s remains from the field and see to those wounded from the blast. William held his position and didn’t watch him go.
After Ki’s death, some of the Indians quit the field to tend their wounded, but late in the afternoon William noticed a significant number of them abandoning the line, melting back toward the camps. Out of water and cartridges, William followed their lead.
Dashing between points of cover, he reached the Royal Yorker camp, where the explanation for the Indians’ withdrawal met him. A message had arrived for Brant, sent from his sister, Sir William’s widow, Molly. The Tryon County militia had mustered to relieve Fort Stanwix. They’d marched from Fort Dayton at German Flatts the previous day and had nearly reached Oriska, an Oneida town but a dozen miles eastward.
“St. Leger’s sending the Indians to meet them—with an ambush!” was the word from the general’s camp.
Unwilling to wait for an attack on his present position, to be joined by a sally from the fort, St. Leger had chosen to head off the Tryon militia at a distance. He’d ordered Colonel Butler to take his rangers and the Indians and prevent the rebel reinforcements getting through.
William watched them go, twenty rangers and upward of eight hundred Indians—two hundred Senecas, the rest Mohawks, other Iroquois, and Mississaugas from the Lakes. Though they’d left their colorful finery in camp, they’d painted themselves afresh and were fairly bristling with muskets, clubs, bows, and hatchets, weapons and scalp-locks bedecked with feathers of assorted hues. In the coming dusk they made a dazzling sight. William was both relieved he wouldn’t be fighting them and filled with dread at thought of a father and brother who might well be about to do so.
As the last of Brant’s warriors filed from camp into the shadowed wood, headed east toward the coming militia and their Oneida allies, he thought of Joseph Tames-His-Horse, who’d chosen not to fight this battle. Not for the first time he envied the freedom of an Indian to come and go as he saw fit, to change his mind if his heart was leading elsewhere…
He was turning reluctantly back toward that hateful breastwork—there was still light for shooting—when Captain Watts arrived in camp with word that Sir John had pressed his regiment’s services to bolster the ambuscade and was now in command of the detachment. Watts handpicked the men who would go, William among them. They’d time to gather their gear—William trading rifle for musket and bayonet—replenish their cartridge boxes, powder, rations, and canteens, before filing out on the heels of Brant and Butler.
William trudged through the gathering dusk, wishing mightily he’d heeded Anna’s pleading as night’s coming leached color from the wood enfolding him now. At least she was far removed from this, away in Schenectady with Lydia. Safe.
Or were they safe? With Reginald Aubrey trapped in the fort, who was watching over them? And his mother…was she somewhere safe, guarded by his father and brother? Or were those two among the approaching militia, destined to meet him at last across the barrel of his musket?
“You turned your coat.” Maybe it was within his scope to do so, he conceded now, but he mustn’t. What was left to him now but his honor, his duty? Cold companions both, he clutched them near and followed Captain Watts into the wood.
Two Hawks had spent the night in Oriska after making his cautious way east. As dusk fell again, he came out with other warriors gathered in the town to find the militia of the American general, Herkimer, camped nearby in their passage to the fort.
Spotty rain had fallen during the day. It hadn’t broken the heat that clung like a sopping blanket. Sunset brought fireflies lighting the brush through which they filed. From a distance that was what the small fires in a clearing off the road appeared to be—fireflies in the dusk. But when the warriors neared, they murmured over the small numbers they saw at the fires. Two Hawks heard a warrior talking, one who’d spoken to a militia colonel; over half the brigade was strung out miles down the rutted road that linked German Flatts to the Carrying Place.
While he made camp with Ahnyero and others—among whom he was pleased to find the Caughnawaga Louis Cook, whom he’d last seen at Oswego—Two Hawks learned the reason for this scattering. Many of Herkimer’s Tryon brigade had come long distances from their farms to muster at Fort Dayton. Already worn from travel, unaccustomed to marching in the heat with heavy packs, many had fallen out and pitched camp where they halted. Only the head of the command and the main column had reached Oriska.
Uncertain if these farmer-soldiers would prove equal to the British he’d seen at the fort—not to mention Thayendanegea’s warriors—Two Hawks left Ahnyero’s fire and made his way toward the militia clearing, situated across a narrow ravine. On his way he spoke to Honyery Doxtater and his wife, Two-Kettles-Together, who had made it through with old Skenandoah. He shared word of Stone Thrower, how he’d gotten inside the fort. In turn he learned the militia officers had sent runners ahead to Stanwix requesting Gansevoort send out a sortie to them if the sound of battle was heard on the morrow, and to fire the fort cannons three times when the message was received.
It was full dark before he descended the ravine, picked his way across a runlet at its foot, then climbed up through trees to the other side. No sentries challenged him.
Across the clearing, a large tent stood. Two Hawks supposed it belonged to the general over them all, Nicholas Herkimer. A few more makeshift canvases had been raised, but most of these men would sleep on the open ground.
Passing along the edge of shadow, Two Hawks studied these men slung with powder horns and shot bags, sitting in the smoke from their small fires to discourage mosquitoes. Not one dressed exactly like another. Some wore tailed coats and waistcoats, their heads topped with fine cocked hats. Many were clad in fringed shirts of rough cloth or deerskin, floppy hats stuck through with feathers, moccasins on their feet. Most were armed with muskets, a few with rifles, their belts thrust through with bayonets, hatchets, knives, and pistols besides.
The camp was subdued. No music, no singing, no laughter rang out. There was only the clank of a pot, the chop of an ax, the hiss of water on embers, low voices conversing about food or gear. Already some slept, rolled in blankets or laid out in trampled ferns.
He wasn’t the only Indian come over to the neighboring camp. Some Oneidas were friends with men here or had traded with them. A few were related through the marriages of sisters or daughters. As he would one day be, Heavenly Father willing.
Since leaving Kanowalohale, he’d tried not to think of Anna Catherine. Not too much. A warrior kept his head clear for battle. But he couldn’t stop the upswell of longing to be with her, living in peace. Many branches still strewed the path to that place and time. Her father. His brother. This war. His life had become a blowdown of timber, something waiting to trip him up whichever way he turned.
He supposed that was true for all these here. Around him at the fires were men who called themselves Germans going off to fight Germans in the army of St. Leger. Men who once called themselves Englishmen going to fight other Englishmen. Oneidas going along to face Mohawks, Senecas, Cayugas.
Me going to face my brother.
Stopping short, Two Hawks reached for a nearby tree, its trunk smooth beneath his hand. Of course he’d had the thought before. He’d often hovered round it as he di
d these white men’s fires, but until this moment he’d managed not to stare it straight on. Now all he could do was pray.
Let me find him—but not at the end of my gun barrel.
33
August 6, 1777
Oriskany Creek
The sun was rising toward another sweltering day. In their camps, warriors and militia had risen and readied themselves…still no distant blast of cannon came rolling over wood and ridge. Across the ravine in the soldier camp, General Herkimer argued with his battalion colonels over what to do. Two Hawks knew it. So did everyone with ears.
Militia companies had straggled in since before dawn. Some waited on the road, ready to march. Others crowded into the clearing, within hearing of their commanding officers’ rancorous words over whether to wait for the fort cannon’s firing or push on regardless. Herkimer wanted to wait. Most of his colonels wanted to hurry forward.
They should send us to scout while they decide. Two Hawks was about to voice the thought to Ahnyero when a soldier arrived to say the scout was wanted by the general. Ahnyero hurried away.
Two Hawks settled by the fire’s ashes and checked the powder, shot, and flints in the bag he wore at his side. Except for the bag and his weapons, he was stripped to breechclout and moccasins. Nearly all the warriors around him were painted red or black, the colors of strength and power. Two Hawks wasn’t painted. He intended more than fighting this day, more than standing between this enemy and those they threatened. Despite his father’s instruction, he meant to find William, if William could be found. Whether his brother would recognize his likeness in Two Hawks’s face, now his head was shaved, was doubtful. If he painted himself, there was no hope of it.
He leapt to his feet at Ahnyero’s swift return. On the road, dust was stirring. The militia column had started forward. Still he blurted in surprise, “They go ahead?”
