Firehawk by Nancy Morse

Author:Nancy Morse [Morse, Nancy]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Published: 2013-12-14T11:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 10

Alice awoke the next morning and walked sleepily to the door of the lodge. Outside, the dawn sky in the east washed the treetops with muted shades of yellow and gold. Two figures were crouched on the ground talking in hushed voices. She recognized the dark tangle of hair that fell onto the shoulders of Nathaniel’s deerskin shirt and the zigzag tattoos on Chango’s bare torso.

Nathaniel lifted his head and looked at her. The strain was visible on his face. She had stitched the open wound on his arm and bathed it in soothing herbs. In time it would heal. But what about the wound in his heart? The terrible, aching need inside of him? What would it take to heal a lifetime of painful memories and an unquenchable thirst for revenge? She could feel his tension from where she stood. She had seen him at his worst yesterday, at his most violent, and she wondered if she should be afraid for herself. No, she thought, as she watched his beautiful, sad face in the shifting light, it was him she was afraid for.

He rose and walked toward her.

“One of our runners returned with news,” he said. “Captain Rogers led a band of rangers and regulars on a reconnaissance mission from Fort Edward up to Fort Carillon at Ticonderoga, but the French were ready for them. The British troop was destroyed.”

She was close enough to touch him, yet as much as she wanted to, she didn’t. “And Rogers?” she asked.

“The French think he was killed, but he slid down the side of a hill onto the ice of Lake George and returned with the survivors to Fort Edward.”

“What does this mean?”

“It means we can’t use the trail that runs from Lake George north to Lake Champlain. Champlain reaches almost all the way to Montreal. I was thinkin’ to follow that trail, but there’s too much fightin’ goin’ on in those parts.”

“We’re not giving up, are we?” she asked, forcing a calmness into her voice that she did not truly feel.

“No, we ain’t givin’ up. But I gotta tell ya, Alice, it’s bad out there. Maybe I’d best go alone.”

“That wasn’t the plan,” she said. She made an effort to smile. “Besides, who’s going to tend those wounds of yours? That’s three times now that I’ve doctored you.”

“Aye, yer good at doctorin’. But ya ain’t good at fightin’, and if it comes to that—” He broke off, frowning.

She held his gaze, her look steady and uncompromising despite the gentleness in her voice. “I’ll have you to protect me, just like you’ve done from the start.”

“Yer countin’ too much on me,” he complained.

She shook her head adamantly, refusing to yield to the doubt she detected behind his tone. “I heard about German Flats. And the boy you saved from a Huron war party. And the farmer’s daughter you rescued from Abnakis. And the party you guided through enemy territory to Fort William Henry. At the Blue Bell they talked about those stories like they were myths.

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