Shadowbrook (31 page)

The silence told Quent the braves were dividing. If there were enough of them to fully encircle the clearing they’d come on Sampson and Ely and the game was over, he was betting there were not. Indians fought with stealth, in small raiding parties. Besides, a group of Huron large enough to deploy all the way around the paddock would have been bound to attract attention before they got there. There were probably fewer than a dozen, and some would enter the clearing from the main path. At the spot he had firmly fixed in his sights.

A few leaves moved.

Sweet holy Jesus. Huron war paint all right, and a scalp lock exactly as Sampson had described. But this brave wore buckskins. Not many Huron wore … Holy Christ. He squinted into the unnatural dark of the afternoon, forced to accept that he was looking at Lantak, the most feared renegade in all of New France. A man so crazed with hate that his own longhouse wanted no part of him. If he found Nicole … Quent’s heart thudded in his chest, probably loud enough for the murdering bloody bastards to hear. Except that the horses were making enough noise to give him cover. They had picked up the scent of the Indians and were truly agitated now, stomping and snorting.

Lantak and the two braves with him headed for the paddock. Quent’s finger
tightened on the trigger, but he didn’t shoot. He knew there were others and he wanted them in the open when the fight began, not hiding in the woods.

The braves had to cross six fathoms of open field to reach the horses. Quent kept Lantak in his sights, while he registered the silent arrival of six more Huron. He waited for the space of another few heartbeats. No more Indians appeared. There were nine in all; Lantak and two others had long guns, the rest muskets. If the man across from him were Cormac rather than old Ely Davidson, he’d figure they could take the lot in a couple of minutes.

“Stop right there, you thieving savages!” Big Jacob burst out of the woods and his voice rang out in the clearing. “You ain’t having these horses. These be—”

Quent fired at the same instant that Lantak spun to his left and loosed his tomahawk The head of the brave who had been behind the leader exploded in a shower of blood and bone. Ely Davidson took down another of the Indians. A third brave took Sampson’s musket ball in the shoulder and staggered before falling to his knees. By the time Quent reloaded and was ready to fire again, he couldn’t find a target. The raiders had all dropped to the ground and were rolling toward the woods.

Big Jacob lay on the ground, Lantak’s tomahawk buried in his forehead. The stink of gunfire hung in the unmoving air along with the musk of men. The only sound was the frightened whinnying of the horses. A long gun erupted. Quent figured it for Ely’s, but the shot, connected with nothing. Quent saw the brave closest to the paddock begin crawling toward the gate. If he loosed the horses, every Indian except maybe the one who was wounded would be astride in a heartbeat. Quent as well. But not likely Sampson or Ely. It would be just him chasing half a dozen murdering Huron. He tried to fix the crawling Indian in his sights.

A musket shot rang out, Sampson’s probably. Quent heard the ball crash in the woods. There was no answering fire. The Indians were battle shrewd, unlikely to waste ammunition on targets they couldn’t see. The brave trying to reach the paddock was almost there. He rose up slightly and stretched his arm toward the gate. It was enough. Quent’s shot took off the top of his head. A roan smelled the blood and screamed in terror.

A crack of lightning ripped across the blackened sky and the paddock was bathed in a strange blue light. The neighing and whinnying grew deafening. An Indian rose to his knees and another streak of light cut through the heavy air. This one was a flaming arrow that landed in the center of the paddock. One horse bellowed in agony. The others hurled themselves against the paddock fence and it gave beneath their combined weight. The horses were loose.

Quent threw himself forward and grabbed the mane of the first horse he could touch, a gray mare. She tried to shake free of him but he hauled himself up on
her back, then swung his body to the side so her flanks gave him protection. No way he could load and sight. The only weapon of any use was his dirk. And once he threw it, it was gone.

As he’d expected, every Huron still alive had managed to grab and mount a horse. There were six of them pounding across the clearing toward the main path. Lantak turned and his knife cut through the air, aimed straight for the forehead of Quent’s mare. Quent crouched, knowing his size made a target of him even so, and yanked the horse’s head down. The knife sailed over both of them.

He saw Lantak sprawl low over his horse, becoming almost one with the animal, and he knew the Huron’s knees were pressing into the animal’s sides, because he saw it leap forward. Behind them the paddock was starting to burn in earnest, the fire first creeping across the short, well-grazed grass, then fueling itself on the split logs of the fence and racing onward. Another flash of lightning split the sky. Quent saw Sampson start toward him across the clearing. “Head for the big house!” he shouted. “Tell Master John!”

Those few moments gave the Indians the advantage. They were well ahead of him now, thundering along the path. Quent rode after them. The rearmost brave had turned himself around, riding sightless, trusting the horse to follow the others. He fixed an arrow in his bow and let it fly. Quent rolled to the side. Two more arrows came in swift succession. Quent dodged them both. Before the brave could loose another, a low-hanging branch connected with his head and shoulders and knocked him off his horse. The horse reared up, startled by the sudden loss of the weight on its back. The brave rolled to avoid being trampled, and rose to his knees. Quent’s dirk caught him in the throat and he shuddered, then fell. Quent slung himself off the side of the mare, hanging on by the grip of his knees and one hand tangled in the horse’s mane. He drew level with the dead brave and retrieved his dirk, then righted himself and rode on.

The riderless horse was the roan gelding. Now it was between him and Lantak and his braves, all of them still well ahead. Five God-rotting murdering bastards too many. God curse them all to hell. Quent dug his heels into the mare’s sides, slapping her flanks with the palm of one hand. “C’mon, you she-witch! Run, damn you! Run!”

The path had been made wide enough for a small wagon so Big Jacob could break some of the horses to the harness and give them more training than the paddock clearing allowed. Now Big Jacob was dead at the hands of the most notorious Huron in Canada. How in Christ’s name had Lantak come to attack Shadowbrook? He’d told Sampson to find John. But perhaps John already knew.

Sped on by Quent’s ceaseless demands, the mare had finally drawn level with the riderless gelding. Quent reached out and grabbed the mane of the second horse. For a few seconds he controlled both horses with nothing but his bare
hands, then he hurled himself onto the gelding’s back, lying low over its head and urging it forward. “Go, you confounded bloody beast! Go!”

The five braves had opened still more distance between Quent and themselves and were approaching the place where the path intersected the big road. Quent could see them and he was near enough to get off a shot, but he’d lose more precious time reloading, and the brave nearest him wasn’t wearing buckskins. If he couldn’t be sure of getting Lantak himself—on the first try—it was better to wait. Now everything depended on which direction the raiders chose when they reached the big road. If they went right they were heading for the big house. Left meant they’d decided to retrace their steps.

The war party came to the end of the path and turned left. They were heading back the way they came, probably leaving the Patent for reasons as mysterious as those that had brought them here. God alone knew what was happening at the big house. Christ, maybe there was more than one war party and Shadowbrook was already in flames. He should get back there, back to his mother and his almost dead father, to a brother possibly more treacherous and evil than he had ever imagined.

Fear rose in him uncontrollably. Lantak was a butcher, a bloodthirsty madman. He told himself there was no way Lantak could suspect that Nicole was hidden in the cave behind the waterfall, and no reason for the Huron to care. But nothing else that had happened this day made any sense. Once before, he’d left the woman he loved alone in that same God-cursed clearing and she died before he could save her. Not this time, by Christ. Not this time.

Quent turned the gelding’s big head left and galloped away from the big house and after the braves. There was a rumble of thunder that sounded as if it rose from the bowels of the earth. Sweet Christ, if only it would rain. He turned his face up, praying to feel a drop or two, but the only moisture he felt was his sweat. Ahead of him Lantak and his renegades sped on, the wind of their passage the only movement in the heavy air. Quent urged his horse on, but the distance between himself and the Indians continued to widen. He was twice as big as any of the Huron; the gelding was willing, a big-hearted horse, but he simply had more to carry. Quent took his long gun from his shoulder and held it at the ready, even though he knew that by raising his body and moving he slowed his passage still more. If he was going to lose them anyway, maybe he could get off a single shot and make it count.

John rode along the perimeter of the blaze, and dismounted a quarter league southwest of the sugarhouse. There was fire as far as he could see, a line of flames that filled the space between the horizon and where he stood. Jesus God Almighty. They were ruined. He was ruined.

He thought of his merchant backers in New York City and a cold hand gripped his bowels and twisted. Nothing had been signed of course; he couldn’t sign anything as long as his father was alive. But there was an understanding. He’d given his word: the proceeds of this year’s harvest pledged as the down payment on the land in St. Kitts. Not just land, Goddamn it. Sugar land.

How many years had he argued with his father about it? You didn’t have to live in the God-blighted Caribbean to profit from sugar. The islands were a living hell ruled by the lash and burnt by the sun, a place where no white man could thrive, much less a white woman. No one but an African could tend and harvest cane in the remorseless heat of the bug-ridden islands, and even they only did it under the whip. But these days the plantation owners lived in the colonies or in London and left agents in charge of their business. As for the trade between the cane lands and the northern suppliers of the produce that fed everyone in the Caribbean, it was controlled by the ship’s captains who ferried the exchange. But if a man owned both, the cane land and the land that produced the food, that man was set for a fortune. But most of those around him were either too stupid to see the opportunity or too land-poor to seize it. Even, God help them, Ephraim Hale. “Morris does it,” John had told his father repeatedly. “So can we.”

Ephraim always gave the same answer: “Cane’s a filthy business. I want no part of it.” Never mind that without the sugar plantations to buy his flour and his vegetables and his beef, he’d be just one more farmer with dirt under his nails eking out a subsistence living.

John Hale did not intend to be that kind of farmer. And by Christ he wouldn’t doff his cap to the New York City lords, to the Morrises and the Livingstons and the Van Cortlandts and the like, with their education at Yale or Princeton and their fancy houses and besatined women. Money was the great equalizer. With enough of it a man could be as important as any other, whatever his name or his education. With land that produced cane as well as land that produced wheat, he would be … No, he would not. Not now. John shaded his eyes and gazed into the flames that were destroying all his dreams.

“Master John!” Six-Finger Sam had run the full distance from the gristmill. He was soaked in sweat and his no-longer-young legs were trembling with the effort. “Master Moses, he be sending me.” The slave was breathless and these were more words than he’d spoken together in as long as he could remember. But this was a perilous day. A bad, bad day. “Master Moses, he say to tell you we be soaking the mill and the sugarhouse and the rest until they can’t be holding any more water. He say maybe we should cut’”

John turned, and his hand cracked Sam’s cheek so hard he felt the shudder up to his own shoulder. “I’m not interested in what Moses Frankel thinks we should do, you God-blighted fool. I told you to stay put and make sure those buildings
were safe.” His hand hurt, but he felt better. John started to loosen his belt. “I’ll teach you to dis—”

Lightning crackled overhead, followed by a huge boom of thunder. The skies opened and blinding rain—salvation—poured from the heavens.