“Come on, ol’ man,” Dougal said, offering his friend a hand up. He nodded at the captain as he led John outside, and the older man returned the greeting. Dougal smiled. He could tell the officer knew John was drunk, and on any other night he expected John—as well as a number of others in the same situation—would be punished. But this was their first night in the colonies. It was a night for celebration, and even the strictest of officers understood that.
CHAPTER 26
Into the Woods
The army spent the night in Charleston, wherever they could find lodging. The city didn’t open their arms to the soldiers, providing them instead with only the most basic of lodging. Those soldiers who didn’t warm a woman’s bed or curl up in a hayloft headed past the city’s centre and onto an open field. Dougal and John ended up there as well, stretched out in a six-man tent with another soldier.
Early morning sunshine baked the side of the tent, warming the little shelter until it was too stifling to tolerate. Dougal hadn’t slept well as a result of John’s inebriated snores, but stepped from the tent and stretched, cheered by the sounds of morning. He made his way out to a campfire, started and tended by sentries during the night, and joined others for breakfast. An hour later all the men were awake and lined up for roll call.
“Ye dinna look quite yerself,” Dougal said to John.
John sniffed, then spat to the side. “I’ll do,” he muttered.
The camp was dismantled, the battalions reassembled, and the marching began. Montgomerie’s Highlanders were to be stationed in the Carolinas, their first assignment to protect settlers from ongoing Indian raids. Dougal was looking forward to the change of pace. It wasn’t what he considered to be real battle, but at least it was something that felt more familiar than constant drills. But their destination always seemed to be hundreds of miles away, through thick, smothering forests roped by branches and roots, waterways that soaked through the men’s plaids, rocks determined to tear through black leather shoes. The forests were so crowded they rarely found flat enough areas in which to set up their hundreds of tents, so the Highlanders resorted to the ancient way of sleeping, rolling up in their plaids at the gnarled feet of trees.
In the morning, they washed in any available water they could find, combing their hair and shaving with razors or dirks. Their weapons and uniforms were always cleaned the night before so that when they awoke, they slipped into the cleanest shirts they had, wrapped on their plaids, and set their bonnets at the particular angle required by protocol. It didn’t seem to matter where they were, the British army required a ridiculous standard of presentation. It seemed an awful waste of time to Dougal, but he had to agree that he and his cohorts did smell better than they had when they’d marched together before Culloden.
When they weren’t breathing in the miasma of swamps and battling tangles of forests, the soldiers cut roads so their supply wagons could follow, and built small strategic forts by waterways or portages. The humidity of the land was such that the Scots spent more time wiping their brows than speaking.
“Ye must have delicious blood, my friend,” Dougal said to John.
The day was sweltering, waking the hunger in swarms of ravenous mosquitoes. Dougal was fortunate in that the creatures seemed less enamoured by his blood than they were with others’. John suffered greatly, his neck swelling on one side until it looked twice as large as it should have. His fingers constantly scratched until the bites opened and bled, providing him with no relief.
“Aye, well,” John grumbled. “I’m miserable with these devils. Miserable! They’ve come straight from hell, they have. An’ they can go right back.”
Fighting the back woods of the colonies was a never-ending drudgery, a constant state of slogging through life. For variety, Dougal and the others occasionally disappeared into the woods, which teemed with wildlife. The army provided no more than the daily rations of bread, potatoes, dried peas, mutton, or beef, but the forests and rivers easily gave up the rest. Despite the generous hunting, it soon became clear the land didn’t welcome them any more than the people had.
“MacClanach doesna fare well,” John muttered one day, stooping beneath the heavy branch of a water oak.
Dougal glanced over. MacClanach did indeed look poorly. He was one of the grenadiers, tall and fiery haired, big enough to intimidate most enemy soldiers. But he had wasted away, caught by the sickness that had grabbed so many of them. It had started with twenty men ill, but seemed ten times that now.
MacClanach looked like so many of the others had before they had given up the fight. But he was a stubborn bugger, not about to lie around complaining when he should be working. Over the past two days his skin had taken on a pasty white tinge that looked almost green in the right light, and it was always slick with sweat, night or day. Dougal saw him stumble and reach for a tree for support, but the tree in MacClanach’s mind wasn’t really there. He collapsed and made a halfhearted grunt when he landed. One of the others went to help him up and Dougal saw the big man try to wave help away, then resign himself to the need for assistance.
“Two days for the poor bugger,” Dougal guessed.
John nodded and slapped irritably at a mosquito scouting for an open patch of skin on his neck. “I’ll be dead from these devil creatures long before then.”
Occasionally the army came upon the remains of homes and farms that had been plagued by Indian attacks. Sometimes all they left behind was burnt debris and smoking corpses. It was at times like these that Dougal had trouble with his rage. Yes, he had joined the 77th Highlanders voluntarily, but it had been for the ulterior motive of searching for Glenna. Walking through these devastated places, seeing the death all around, brought back so many horrors he’d seen in his homeland. Everything there had been caused by the English, and now he fought for the English army. And he hated himself every day for that. Here the Highlanders were called upon to get the Indians under control and defend the white settlements. It weighed on Dougal that the English had come across the sea and were now dedicated to controlling the native people here, as they had in Scotland. And now Dougal was a part of all that.
Dougal had seen Indians before, since some travelled with the Highlanders as scouts, guiding them through the thick forests. But those were calm, curious men, more interested in the army’s coin than in their scalps. These marauders, though he’d never seen one with his own eyes, were obviously vicious. Their attacks, or at least the evidence of them, left a clear message that white men were not welcome in this land.
The men took turns as sentries. Those on duty were stationed around the camp, alert and silent. Their Indian guides had warned that they were never alone, and they should be prepared for anything. They thought they had been, but woke one morning to the awful discovery that they had underestimated the enemy. At some point during the night, five soldiers had been silently removed from the camp. Their bodies were found not far away, their heads scalped, their throats slit.
“Which did they do first?” John asked in a hushed voice.
“God, I hope the throats,” Dougal said, rubbing his own in sympathy for the dead men.
“That means they’d have done the scalpin’ after the lads were dead. Who does that to a dead body? What kind of man thinks that way?”
“Men we’d do best to avoid,” Dougal replied. His eyes scanned the forest, looking for anything that didn’t belong. Except that wouldn’t help him, he thought. The Indians were a part of the woods and would have blended as well as the trees within. The realisation sent a thrill of fear up his spine, but his Highlander blood boiled with anger for his fallen comrades.
John evidently felt it as well. “I’ll no’ stand by an’ let them slaughter us like hogs,” he said, his hand resting on the hilt of the sword on his left hip.
Two days later, Dougal, exhausted and craving sleep, took his turn as sentry. He sat near the campfire outside his tent, using the fire for light because clouds blocked the moon. Settling on a supply box, he took
out his dirk and started engraving his initials on his powder horn, feeling comfortably lethargic.
Dougal loved this time of night. As much as he enjoyed the company of men and the raucous laughter in taverns, he also loved the quiet. He closed his eyes for a moment, ingesting the tiny nighttime sounds of the forest. A cricket chirped nearby, louder than the thousands singing in the woods. There was a short scuffle he identified as an owl dipping low to pluck a scurrying meal from the undergrowth. The quiet hiss of a breeze through brittle autumn leaves reminded Dougal of home, and he missed it with a physical ache. All those times he and Andrew had slept beneath the stars, dreaming of battle, of saving Scotland from the plague of sassenachs . . . all empty dreams, but they’d been done under a full sky forever painted with promise in Dougal’s mind. Their father had shown them how to follow stars if they were ever lost; their mother had taught them the legends behind the constellations.
But there were no stars tonight. It was peaceful and calm, and yet . . . something in the air kept distracting his attention from the carving in his hands. A twig snapped and Dougal looked up sharply, peering into the darkness, emptying his mind to hear whatever thoughts flitted through the air. He could make out no words, no distinct thoughts.
But there was something. A message he wasn’t supposed to understand. He stared at the jumping silhouettes of trees and tents, lit by scattered campfires. Nothing else moved, no further sounds came from the darkness. For a moment he wondered if the vague voices he heard actually belonged to the forest creatures themselves. Maybe he’d only heard one of the other men relieving himself in the woods. Dougal cleared his throat and tried to return his concentration to his carving.
His hand cramped from the intricate work and he paused to rest it. When he yawned, his jaw clicked, and he caught himself staring at nothing. So, so tired. He closed his eyes, then rested his face on his hands. It would be so easy, he mused, just to fall asleep for a few minutes. The sounds, words, and voices that swam through his head were soothing, quiet. But if he slept, would he wake in time? He knew he couldn’t give in, couldn’t chance endangering the others, but oh, the thought was appealing.
“Dougal.”
He shot to his feet, eyes wide. It was the voice he had waited so long to hear again, half hoping, half fearing its tones.
Every hair on Dougal’s body stood erect, his nerves sizzled. His mind tuned to the babble of voices and he understood. Not soothing at all. Secret. Coming from within the trees. He slid two fingers into his mouth and whistled softly to the other sentries. Two short blows. Dougal sensed the quick response of his cohorts, saw them stand to attention by their separate fires.
Dougal took five silent steps backward, his eyes trained on the forest, then crouched by the opening of his tent.
“Up, lads,” he said quietly. “We’ve guests.”
CHAPTER 27
Voices in the Forest
John had just crawled from the tent when Dougal became aware of the quiet shushing of feet through the long, cool grass. The thoughts came louder now, still unintelligible, but their meaning was clear. A spark exploded in the campfire and for an instant Dougal saw the whites of a dozen Indians’ eyes as they emerged from the forest. Their faces and bodies were painted to blend with the darkness, their long black hair ribboned with equally black feathers. They had crept close to the camp in utter silence and hadn’t counted on being detected, so when one appeared a few feet before Dougal, he yelped with surprise, then shrieked a stream of unintelligible orders to his fellows.
Dougal acted without thinking, swinging his sword in an arc so that it sliced across the man’s belly, drawing blood. The Indian roared, seeming to gain strength from the cut. Injured or not, he seemed unconcerned about the dark red seeping down his belly. One of his hands held an ax over his head, and the arm supporting it was roped with muscle. He bared his teeth then lunged toward Dougal, eyes wide and flickering with the flames of the campfire. Dougal swiped again with his sword, using his superior reach to fend off the wicked strike, and managed to jar the ax from the man’s grip. It fell to the ground and the Indian hopped backward, avoiding the sword. Without missing a beat, he charged Dougal and bowled him over. The two rolled on the ground, both grunting with effort, both stretching their fingers around the other’s neck.
The Indian straddled him, jamming his thumbs into Dougal’s throat until stars flew and the man’s face blurred in Dougal’s vision. The Indian glared down at him, teeth clenched, sweat beading on his forehead as he pressed. Air became harder to find and Dougal’s struggles weakened. Suddenly the Indian let go and replaced his hands with one knee, pinning his weakened foe and closing off Dougal’s airway. Through vision gone red, Dougal saw the shape of the man as he reached to the side, grabbing a large granite rock with both hands and holding it, poised over his head.
Dougal closed his eyes, gasping like a fish, waiting for the strike. But John was there first, discharging his pistol before the granite reached its target. Dougal shoved the dead Indian to the side and scrambled to his feet. He nodded to John, then the two ran to see what was happening elsewhere.
The other Indians had raced back into the woods, finding safety in the dark. A group of soldiers took chase, shooting as they ran, but were left in the Indians’ wake. They returned to camp empty-handed.
John and Dougal stared at the corpse of the man John had slain. The pistol had blown a hole in his chest, just beneath a necklace of what looked to Dougal like the nails of the claw of a bear: long, curved, and the colour of cream. There was no red wool jacket to soak in the blood, no white linen shirt to stain, because the man wore nothing but a loincloth, leggings, and the feathers in his hair. Dougal squatted beside the body and examined the necklace, then studied the man’s face. So this was an Indian warrior. A celebrated one, if this necklace were any indication. About the same age as Dougal. The man’s face wasn’t so different from his own: strong-boned, lean, with full lips and dark lashes, though for the Indian they were now forever closed.
John stood beside him, looking down. “What is it?” he asked.
“Oh, I was only thinkin’ that if no’ for the ocean, this could have been me.”
“What? Dead?”
“Aye, dead, but also livin’ rough like him, maybe even dressin’ like him.”
John chuckled. “The ocean an’ perhaps a few other things. The man’s a savage.”
“So they say. But what makes him so different from me? Would I no’ have done the same thing he did? When the English took our land, did we no’ fell them wi’out hesitation? An’ I’d do it again in a moment, as would you, I reckon. So what makes me better than this poor fellow?”
John squatted beside him and studied the body. “Well,” he said slowly, “for one thing, ye’re no’ dead.”
Dougal eyed him sideways.
“All right, Plato,” John said. “I suppose ye’re right. The English say we’re much like these Indians, wi’ their clans an’ all. An’ this land is no’ so very different from where I grew up. So when ye—”
They were interrupted by the appearance of more soldiers approaching from beyond their tent. The newcomers stopped when they saw the fallen Indian.
“Ye’ve another one, have ye, MacDonnell? That makes four, I reckon,” said one, puffing his chest with bravado. “They’ll think again afore they attack us, aye? These savages are none so fierce.”
Dougal frowned up at him. “Ye fought one yerself, did ye, Hamish?”
“Well, no,” Hamish admitted, looking to the side. “But Stewart here saw—”
“Then ye’ll no’ ken the truth o’ the matter.”
Hamish paused. “Maybe no’. But I like the look o’ that wee bauble around his neck. Here. Let’s have a look.”
He squatted beside Dougal and John and stretched his fingers toward the necklace, but Dougal stopped him with a quick elbow jab. “Dinna touch that.”
“Oy!” Hamish rubbed the spot on his chest where Dougal had struck. He glared a
t Dougal, then spoke slowly, as if to a child. “Right then. If it’s yer kill, ye can have the thing. I only wished to see it.”
“It’s no’ mine,” Dougal said. “If spoils go to the victor, then it’s John’s.”
John reached for the necklace and held the string, still around the brave’s neck, in the palm of his hand. His thumb caressed the smooth white claws. He looked from the dead man to the forest, then to Dougal.
“What think ye of returnin’ this man to his fellows?”
The others looked at him, confused.
“It’s only, well, these men are warriors. They ken battle an’ death, an’ from what I heard, they have strong beliefs about what happens after they die. So I reckon we have a choice. I could take the man’s trophy as my own an’ show any interested Indians that we’ve the power to kill as well as they do. Or we could return the man to his family, wi’ the necklace still ’round his neck. A sign o’ respect, I reckon, wouldna go amiss.”
Dougal nodded, a slow smile creeping over his face.
“We’ve seen the scalpin’,” John continued. “We’ve seen what they did to our own dead. Should we do the same?”
“Aye, we should,” Hamish huffed. “Else they’ll think we’ve no’ heart in us.”
One of his companions shifted, then sniffed and gazed into the starless sky. “I agree wi’ John,” he said. “Maybe they’d be less inclined to come after us if we give the man his dignity.”
“Dignity?” sputtered Hamish. “This is war, lads! The savages would skin us as quick as a rabbit, an’ here we consider their honour above ours?”
“No’ above ours,” Dougal said. “But it shows we have honour.” He turned to John. “So what will ye do?”
“We’ll leave the man to his necklace an’ carry him to the forest.”
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