Read Chapter 14: The Loyalist's Gamble

The ridge fell away in a cascade of scree and shadow. Étienne went down first, belly to the earth, reading the terrain the way his father had taught him—not with his eyes but with his whole body, feeling for the places where the ground would betray a footstep.

Behind him, Corbeil moved with the shuffled caution of a man who had spent more time in barracks than bush. The deserter was clumsy, but he was willing, and that counted for something. Étienne had worked with willing men before. He had also buried them.

The fort sprawled below them like a sleeping beast, its palisade walls black against the snow. English torches burned along the parapet, and he counted eight men visible in the intervals. More would be below, warming themselves by fires, thinking themselves safe inside a fort that had cost them nothing but treachery.

"The postern gate," Corbeil whispered, his breath fogging. "West wall. Roche had it built for his own escape, the coward."

"Roche built it?"

"Built it and boasted of it. Said a captain who couldn't leave his own fort was a prisoner in his own command."

Étienne filed that away. A man who built escape routes was a man who expected to need them. And Roche had needed one, hadn't he? He'd used it to hand this fort to the English, and then he'd walked out the front door as their commander.

They worked their way down the slope, keeping to the shadow of a frozen stream bed that cut toward the western wall. The snow had crusted here, and each step crackled like breaking bone. Étienne moved by touch, testing each foothold before committing his weight. His father's voice echoed in his mind from a decade gone: *The forest forgives many sins, boy. The ice forgives none.*

At the base of the wall, they pressed themselves into the angle where the palisade met a rock outcropping. Corpses in French uniform lay here, half-buried in snow and frozen to the stone. Étienne forced himself to look at their faces. Too frozen to recognize. Too still to be Jean-Baptiste.

"Gate's ahead," Corbeil breathed. "Twenty paces."

Étienne moved. He passed the bodies—five, six, seven—and noted the marks on them. Not English musket balls, those would have left blood scattered wide. These men had been cut down at close range, their throats opened or stabbed through the back. Killed by men they'd trusted. The snow beneath them was stained dark where the warmth of their blood had melted it, then refrozen into a red-veined sheet.

The postern gate was a man-sized door set into the wall, its timber grey and weathered. The lock housing had been replaced recently, the wood pale and fresh.

"Roche changed the lock too," Corbeil said. "After I left. Threw away the old keys himself, I heard."

Étienne examined the lock. It was English-made, heavy and new. A man with time and tools could open it. A man with neither would have to make other arrangements.

He looked up. The palisade rose ten feet above them, the logs sharpened to points. But a yard to the left, a dead French soldier's body had been propped against the wall, frozen solid. Étienne climbed onto it, testing its stability, then reached for the top of the palisade.

The points bit into his palms. He bit down on the pain and pulled himself up, hooking his forearms over the wall and dragging himself over. He dropped into the yard below, landing in a crouch.

The interior of the fort was worse than he had imagined. The barracks building stood open, its door torn from its hinges. Frozen clothing and papers littered the yard, ground into the snow by boots. The smell of smoke hung in the air—not hearth smoke, but the sharp stench of a building burned too long and then left to rot.

No voices. No fires burning at the interior windows. The English guards he had seen from above were the only living souls in the place.

Corbeil landed beside him with a grunt. "Mother of God," he breathed. "What did they do to this place?"

"Where are the French prisoners?" Étienne asked.

"If they were taken, they'd be kept in the magazine cellar. It's the only stone-built room, the only place a man couldn't dig out of."

They crossed the yard, keeping close to the walls. The bodies here were fewer but no less brutal. A woman lay near the cookhouse, her apron frozen stiff. The English had not spared even the servants.

Étienne's hand went to the knife at his belt. The cold rage in his chest was a familiar companion.

They reached the magazine building—a low, stone structure built half into the earth. The door was padlocked, but the lock was old, the same one the fort had used before. French-made and simple.

"The English didn't change the magazine lock," Corbeil said, surprise in his voice.

"Roche saw no need." Étienne knelt and examined it. It was a single-ward lock, the kind that yielded to a bent nail and patience. He pulled the nail from his pack and went to work.

The lock clicked open in less than half a minute. Étienne lifted the bar and pulled the door, but it moved only an inch before something—a heavy weight, a body—stopped it.

He pushed harder. The door ground against the ground, and he saw what blocked it. A man lay on the threshold, his face turned to the earth. A French uniform. Not Jean-Baptiste's size—this man was shorter, older. But alive. He was breathing.

Étienne hauled him aside and the man stirred, groaning. His face, when it turned toward the moonlight, was a ruin of bruises and dried blood, but his eyes were sharp and full of defiance.

"Who—" the man croaked.

"Étienne Roussel. Guide. And this is Corbeil, late of your garrison."

The man's eyes widened. "Corbeil the deserter?"

"That deserter," Corbeil said, "who came back to pull the English's teeth. Who are you?"

"Sergeant Gagnon." The man tried to raise himself, failed. "Second Company, garrison of this fort, until that devil Roche sold us to the English."

"Are there others?" Étienne asked. "Other French still alive inside this fort?"

Gagnon's laugh was bitter, a dry rasping sound. "Alive? In the cellar, only. The English killed the wounded. The healthy they marched north yesterday. All but one."

Étienne's blood went cold.

"One prisoner," he said. "Who?"

Gagnon's eyes met his, and in them burned a grim understanding. "A métis. Young, near your age. His name is something Gallant, or—

"Jean-Étienne," the man said, eyes widening. "Colin. My brother." Étienne's voice dropped to a whisper. "The English found a half-breed at the river crossing, trying to sneak messages through the pickets. They didn't kill him because he claimed he had information. Said he could tell them where the French supply caches were buried along the upper river."

"Did he tell them?"

Gagnon shook his head. "They broke his fingers to make him talk. Broke two before he stopped screaming and started laughing at them. Told Roche that if the English had to torture a boy to find out where supplies were buried, they deserved to starve all winter. Roche ordered him down to the cellar and locked him there." <etc.>

Étienne stared at the dark mouth of the cellar. The cold place inside him was not rage anymore. It was white-hot and focused.

"The English—Roche and the others—they're above," he said, "but right now, at this moment, there are only eight men on the parapet and how many asleep inside the barracks?"

"Five, maybe. They're not sleeping easy," Gagnon said.

"Good. That means they'll be awake enough to fight. Corbeil, you know the layout of the inside of the magazine. Give me the way down to the cellar."

He spoke to the fort as he worked, the plan settling into his bones like cold iron. He would go down. He would find his brother. And if Roche and his English masters had hurt Jean-Baptiste, Étienne would make sure the snows above this fort would thaw red and bitter come spring.

He'd made and remade his peace with God and King long ago. Now his reckonings, every last one, kept echoing back to this place. Whatever waited in the dark below, he would meet it with the blade his father had given him and the certainty of a man with nothing left to lose.

Gagnon caught his arm as he passed. "Careful, boy. There's a guard on the cellar stair. One of Roche's new English dogs. He didn't like the look of the prisoner, so he's taking his pleasures in small cruelties."

Étienne nodded once and drew his knife. It was slick in his hand—cold steel that seemed hungry for warmth.

He went down into the dark.