Read Chapter 19: The Medal's Price

The rangers the deserter had brought moved through the trees like men who knew the forest, which Étienne did not like at all. Real rangers made noise, complained, slapped at mosquitoes. These men stepped where the moss was thick and the twigs were wet, and they kept their eyes everywhere but on the man who had led them here.

Étienne sat with his back against a fallen cedar, his calf wrapped in a strip torn from Gagnon's shirt, the wound burning dully. Jean-Baptiste lay nearby, fever-bright eyes half closed, and Corbeil crouched at the edge of the clearing, watching the newcomers with the flat expression of a man who trusted no one he hadn't bled beside.

"You're certain they're French?" Étienne said low to Gagnon.

Gagnon scratched at the stubble on his jaw. "They wear our coats. They speak our tongue."

"That's not what I asked."

The deserter—Laroche was the name he'd given, though Étienne didn't believe it any more than he believed the man's story—was squatting by the fire pit, tearing at a piece of salt pork with his teeth. He caught Étienne watching and grinned, grease shining on his chin.

"Worried, guide?" Laroche called across the clearing. "You should be resting. You want to walk with that leg, you'll be no good to anyone."

"I want to know how you found us."

Laroche shrugged, swallowed. "Tracked you. I told you. I ran to find help, and I found it, and I came back. That's the whole of it. You want to question my loyalty, go ahead. But the English have your brother's name on a roster now, and they'll have your fort back in a week if you don't move."

Étienne said nothing. His hand rested on the butt of his pistol, thumb tracing the worn brass. The medal hung against his chest beneath his shirt, a familiar weight he'd carried since his father died—a French officer's medal, passed down through his mother's line, the one thing Étienne had kept when he left the mission house.

"Roche," he said. "You served under him."

Laroche's grin flickered. "I served the King."

"You served the man who sold your garrison to the English."

The grin died. The rangers shifted, and for a moment the clearing went very still. Then Laroche laughed, too loud, and waved a hand. "Roche was a traitor. I'm not Roche. I bled for France same as you."

Jean-Baptiste made a sound low in his throat, a cough or a laugh, Étienne couldn't tell. "He never bled for anything but his own hide."

Laroche's eyes went hard. "You talk brave for a man who surrendered to the English."

"I talk true for a man who kept his eyes open in that cellar."

"Enough," Étienne said. He pushed himself up, ignoring the fire in his calf, and walked—limping—toward the fire pit. The rangers moved aside, which told him something else about them. Real soldiers didn't move aside for a wounded métis guide.

"Here's what I know," Étienne said, stopping in front of Laroche. "We had a plan. We moved at night, through the sewers, with the fort's own secret ways. The English were waiting. They knew exactly where we'd come through."

Laroche's jaw tightened. "You think I warned them."

"I think you're the only one who wasn't with us in the fort that night. I think you ran, and I think you ran to the English, and I think you came back because you didn't get what you wanted." Étienne reached into his shirt and pulled out the medal on its leather cord. "This. You want this. You always wanted this."

Laroche's eyes fixed on the medal, and Étienne saw it—the hunger there. The greed. He'd seen that look before, in men who would sell their mothers for a scrap of silver.

"It's just a medal," Laroche said, but his voice had gone thin.

"It's the King's seal, passed to my father for his service. It opens doors in Montreal, in Quebec, anywhere the French hold power. It's worth more than your life." Étienne held it up, letting it catch the firelight. "You thought you'd take it from my corpse and sell it back to the French on Roche's behalf. That's what this is. Roche is above ground, isn't he? He fled the fort when the English moved in, and he's waiting for you to bring him something to buy his way back into favor."

Laroche's hand went to his belt. "You don't know what you're talking about."

"I know a betrayer's smell." Étienne let the medal drop back against his chest. "I've been tracking them my whole life. Because that's what my father did. He tracked traitors through these woods, and he died with his boots on, hunting one. And you—" He stepped closer, right into Laroche's space. "—you're the same breed. You'd sell your own mother's grave for the price of a drink."

Laroche moved.

He was fast, faster than a man his size should have been, and his knife came up in a silver arc toward Étienne's throat. Étienne twisted, felt the blade kiss his shoulder, and then his hand was on Laroche's wrist and they were falling together into the dirt.

The rangers surged forward, but Corbeil was already moving, pistol drawn, and Gagnon had his musket up. "Hold!" Gagnon roared. "Hold, you sons of whores, or I'll put a ball through the first man who twitches."

Laroche drove a knee into Étienne's ribs. Étienne gasped, saw stars, and clawed for the knife as Laroche tried to bring it around again. They rolled, Laroche on top, the blade descending, and Étienne caught his wrist with both hands, arms shaking, the point of the knife an inch from his eye.

"You're dead," Laroche snarled. "You're dead and I'll have the medal and I'll—"

Étienne headbutted him. Laroche's head snapped back, blood bursting from his nose, and his grip loosened—just enough. Étienne twisted, got his leg between them, and heaved. Laroche went over, and the knife skittered away into the brush.

Laroche lunged for it. His hand closed on the hilt, and he came up—and Lunged for Étienne's chest. Not for his throat. For the medal.

His hand caught the medal, closed around it, and pulled. The leather cord snapped. Étienne felt the weight leave his chest, and rage flooded through him, blind and hot—

And then Laroche screamed.

He staggered back, the medal clutched in his fist, and his hand was smoking. He shook it, tried to drop the medal, but it stuck to his palm like it had grown there. The silver had parted along a seam no one had ever noticed, and inside, pressed into the metal, was a folded scrap of paper.

The fire caught it. Not a natural fire—an older fire, a trace of something that had been sealed in the medal for thirty years, waiting for an enemy's touch.

Laroche dropped to his knees, shaking his hand, screaming, and the medal fell to the ground at Étienne's feet, still smoking.

Étienne scooped it up. The heat faded as soon as it touched his palm, and he unfolded the paper with trembling fingers. The ink was faded, the hand shaky, but he knew that hand. His father's hand.

*To my son, when you are a man. You will not need me then, but you will need this. The old fort at the bend was built over something older—a French sally port, dug in the first war, hidden beyond the cellar wall. The English do not know it. The traitors do not know it. Only the river knows, and the river remembers. Use it well, and come home.*

Behind him, Laroche had stopped screaming. He lay on his side, clutching his burned hand, whimpering. The rangers stood frozen, unsure what they'd seen.

Étienne folded the paper carefully and tucked it inside his shirt.

"Sally port," he said, turning to Corbeil. "My father left us a door."