The man was young and wiry and fought like an eel. Jamie, with the advantage of size and weight, managed to push him over, and they fell together and rolled about in the sedges and mud, clawing and thumping. The Indian caught Jamie’s long hair and yanked, bringing tears to his eyes; he punched the man hard in the ribs to make him let go, and when he did, butted him in the face.

Their foreheads met with a dull thunk, and blinding pain shot through his head. They fell apart, gasping, and Jamie rolled up onto his knees, head spinning and eyes watering, trying to see.

There was a blur of gray and a shriek of terror. Rollo gave one deep-chested, snarling bark, then settled into a rumbling, continuous growl. Jamie shut one eye, a hand to his throbbing forehead, and made out his opponent lying flat in the mud, Rollo poised over him, black lips drawn back to show all his teeth.

The splash of feet running through the shallows, and Ian was there, gasping for breath.

“Are ye all right, Uncle Jamie?”

He took his hand away and looked at his fingers. No blood, though he would have sworn his head was split open.

“No,” he said, “but better than him. Oh, Jesus.”

“Did ye kill the other one?”

“Probably not. Oh, God.”

Lowering himself to his hands and knees, he crawled a short distance away and threw up. Behind him, he could hear Ian sharply demanding to know who the men were and whether there were others with them, in Cherokee.

“They’re Tuscarora,” he said. His head still throbbed, but he felt a little better.

“Oh, aye?” Ian was surprised, but at once shifted into the tongue of the Kahnyen’kehaka. The young captive, already terrorized by Rollo, looked as though he might die of fright, seeing Ian’s tattoos and hearing him speak Mohawk. Kahnyen’kehaka was of the same family as Tuscarora, and plainly the young man could make out what Ian said, for he replied, stammering with fear. They were alone. Was his brother dead?

Jamie rinsed his mouth with water, splashed it on his face. That was better, though a lump like a duck’s egg was swelling over his left eye.

“Brother?”

Yes, the young man said, his brother. If they did not mean to kill him now, might he go and see? His brother was wounded.

Ian glanced at Jamie for agreement, then called Rollo off with a word. The bedraggled captive struggled painfully to his feet, staggering, and set off back along the shore, followed by the dog and the two naked Scots.

The other man was indeed wounded; blood was seeping through a crude bandage round his leg. He had made the bandage of his shirt, and was bare-chested, scrawny, and starved-looking. Jamie glanced from one to the other; neither could be older than twenty, he thought, and likely younger than that, with their faces pinched by hunger and ill-usage, their clothes little more than rags.

The horses had moved off a little, nervous of the fighting, but the clothes the Scots had left hanging from the bushes were still there. Ian pulled on his breeches and went to fetch food and drink from the saddlebags, while Jamie dressed more slowly, interrogating the young man as the latter anxiously examined his brother.

They were Tuscarora, the young man confirmed. His name was a long one, meaning roughly “the gleam of light on water in a spring”; this was his brother, “the goose that encourages the leader when they fly,” more simply known as Goose.

“What happened to him?” Jamie pulled his shirt over his head and nodded—wincing at the movement—at the gash in Goose’s leg, quite obviously made by something like an ax.

Light on Water took a deep breath and closed his eyes for a moment. He had a substantial knot on his head, as well.

“Tsalagi,” he said. “We were two score in number; the rest are dead, or taken. You will not give us to them, Lord? Please?”

“Tsalagi? Which?”

Light shook his head; he could not say. His band had chosen to stay when his village moved north, but they had not prospered; there were not enough men to defend a village and hunt, and without defenders, others stole their crops, took their women.

Growing poorer, they, too, had taken to stealing and to begging to survive through the winter. More had died of cold and sickness, and the remnants moved from place to place, now and then finding a place to settle for a few weeks, but then driven out by the much stronger Cherokee.

A few days past, they had been set upon by a party of Cherokee warriors, who had taken them by surprise, killed most of them, and taken some women.

“They took my wife,” Light said, his voice unsteady. “We came to—to take her back.”

“They will kill us, of course,” said Goose weakly, but with a fair amount of cheerfulness. “But that doesn’t signify.”

“Of course not,” Jamie said, smiling despite himself. “Do you know where they took her?”

The brothers knew the direction taken by the raiders, and had been following, to track them to their village. That way, they said, pointing toward a notch. Ian glanced at Jamie, and nodded.

“Bird,” he said. “Or Fox, I should say,” for Running Fox was war chief of the village; a good warrior, though somewhat lacking in imagination—a trait Bird possessed in quantity.

“Shall we help them, then?” Ian said in English. His feathery brows arched in question, but Jamie could see that it was a question in form only.

“Oh, aye, I expect we will.” He rubbed gingerly at his forehead; the skin over the lump was already stretched and tender. “Let’s eat first, though.”



IT WAS NOT a question of whether the thing might be done; only how. Jamie and Ian both dismissed out of hand any suggestion that the brothers might steal back Light’s wife.

“They will kill ye,” Ian assured them.

“We don’t mind,” Light said stoutly.

“Of course ye don’t,” said Jamie. “But what of your wife? She’d be left alone, then, and in no better case.”

Goose nodded judiciously.

“He’s right, you know,” he said to his glowering brother.

“We could ask for her,” Jamie suggested. “A wife for you, Ian. Bird thinks well of ye; he’d likely give her to you.”

He was only half-joking. If no one had yet taken the young woman to wife, the person who had her as slave might be persuaded to give her to Ian, who was deeply respected.

Ian gave a perfunctory smile, but shook his head.

“Nay, we’d best ransom her. Or—” He looked consideringly at the two Indians, industriously eating their way through the remainder of the food in the saddlebags. “Might we ask Bird to adopt them?”

That was a thought, to be sure. For once they had got the young woman back, by whatever means, she and the brothers would be in the same dire case—wandering and hungry.

The brothers frowned, though, and shook their heads.

“Food is a good thing,” Goose said, licking his fingers. “But we saw them kill our family, our friends. If we hadn’t seen it ourselves, it would be possible. But—”

“Aye, I see,” Jamie said, and was struck for an instant by mild astonishment that he did see; evidently, he had spent longer among the Indians than he supposed.

The brothers exchanged glances, obviously communicating something. Decision made, Light made a gesture of respect to Jamie.

“We are your slaves,” he pointed out with some diffidence. “It is yours to decide what to do with us.” He paused delicately, waiting.

Jamie rubbed a hand over his face, considering that perhaps he hadn’t spent quite enough time with Indians after all. Ian didn’t smile, but seemed to emit a low vibration of amusement.

MacDonald had told him stories of campaigns during the French and Indian War; soldiers who took Indian prisoners commonly either killed them for scalp money or sold them as slaves. Those campaigns lay a scant ten years in the past; the peace since had been frequently uneasy, and God knew the various Indians made slaves of their prisoners, unless they chose—for whatever inscrutable Indian motive—to adopt or kill them, instead.