Read Chapter 20: Aftermath at the Camp

The rangers had dragged Laroche’s body to the edge of the clearing before the argument even started. Étienne watched them work in silence, their faces hard, their movements efficient. They did not ask permission. They did not look at him. They simply disposed of their own.

He stood apart, near the fire pit, the broken halves of his father’s medal cold in his palm. The message was burned into his memory now, every word, every scratch of the knife that had carved it into the thin sheet of lead. A sally port beneath the cellar. A way in that no one else knew.

His brother lay propped against a fallen log, his face pale beneath the grime, sweat beading on his brow despite the chill of the morning air. Jean-Baptiste had not spoken since they’d pulled Laroche off him. He watched Étienne with an unreadable expression, the same look he’d worn as a boy when their father had favored Étienne with a new knife and given him only a whetstone.

Étienne pocketed the medal halves and walked over. He crouched, setting a hand on his brother’s shoulder. The heat coming off him through the wool was unmistakable.

“You’re burning up.”

“I noticed.” Jean-Baptiste tried to smile. It came out as a grimace. “The English lead does that.”

“We need to get that wound cleaned properly. Boiled water, fresh bandages. I can—” Étienne stopped. He had no supplies. No medicine. Nothing but the forest and a handful of men who had no reason to trust him.

“Don’t.” Jean-Baptiste caught his wrist. His grip was weak, but his eyes were sharp. “Don’t start counting what you don’t have. You never did before.”

“Before, I wasn’t responsible for anyone.”

“You always were. You just didn’t want to be.”

The words sat between them. Étienne could have argued. He could have pointed out that Jean-Baptiste had chosen the soldier’s life, the uniform, the King’s service, while Étienne had chosen the river and the woods and the space between worlds where no one could command him. But that argument was old, worn smooth from years of repetition, and it had never once ended well.

Instead, he said, “Father’s message.”

Jean-Baptiste’s eyes flicked to the pocket where the medal halves sat. “I thought it was just a keepsake. Something he’d taken off a dead officer in the last war.”

“He carved the inside. A map. Not much of one—just a few lines, a mark for the cellar. He said the sally port was sealed when the English took Quebec the first time. Hidden behind a false wall, so the priests could escape if the Iroquois came.”

“And you believe it’s still there?”

“I believe he wouldn’t have written it down if he hadn’t been sure.” Étienne pulled out one half of the medal, ran his thumb over the scratched lines. “He was a cautious man. He never put anything in writing that wasn’t true.”

Jean-Baptiste was quiet for a long moment. The fire crackled. One of the rangers, a wiry man named Bouchard, was arguing with Corbeil in low, urgent tones near the treeline. Gagnon sat apart, his back against a birch, his eyes fixed on nothing.

“I didn’t trust you,” Jean-Baptiste said finally. “When they sent me to find you, I thought you’d sold yourself to the English like so many of our kind. The métis, the coureurs—they change allegiance with the wind.”

“Some do.”

“But not you.”

Étienne shook his head. “I chose France. Not because I love the King, but because the English don’t see me as a man. They see a half-breed to be used and discarded. The French at least pretend to look past it, even when they don’t.”

“And the French who do see you as a man—what of them?”

“They’re few. They die young. Or they get betrayed by captains who sell their forts for a pocket of gold.”

Jean-Baptiste winced, but not from his wound. “Roche. I know. I should have seen it. I trusted him because he wore the same uniform I did. Because he spoke of honor and duty and I wanted to believe him.”

“You were not the only one.” Étienne glanced toward Gagnon, who had not moved. “He knows something. About the letter, the one that sealed the dispatches. He’s been holding it inside since we pulled him from the river.”

“You should ask him.”

“I have. He says it’s not time.”

Jean-Baptiste laughed, a dry, ragged sound. “Then he’s a better soldier than I am. I would have told you everything the moment I saw you, if I thought you’d listen.”

“I’m listening now.”

The fire snapped. A gust of wind moved through the pines, carrying the smell of rain. No one spoke.

Étienne stood and walked to Gagnon. The older man looked up, his face gray with exhaustion, deep lines carved around his mouth. He’d been a soldier for thirty years, through two wars and a dozen sieges, and he looked like a man who had finally seen too much.

“We have a way in,” Étienne said. “My father’s sally port. It’s beneath the fort’s cellar. If it’s still there, we can take the garrison from inside.”

Gagnon nodded slowly. “And if it’s been found by now—sealed, collapsed, forgotten—then we’ve risked everything for nothing.”

“That’s why I need to see it. Tonight, before the English have time to bring reinforcements from the lake.”

“You can’t go tonight. You’re exhausted. You haven’t slept in two days.” Gagnon’s eyes flicked to Jean-Baptiste. “And your brother is dying.”

The word hung in the air like a blade. Étienne felt it cut into him, deeper than any lead ball could.

“He’s not dying,” he said.

“His wound is festering. I’ve seen it enough times. Without a surgeon, without clean water and poultices—” Gagnon stopped, shook his head. “I’m not telling you anything you don’t already know.”

Étienne turned back to Jean-Baptiste. His brother had closed his eyes, his breathing shallow and uneven. The flush on his cheeks had spread down his neck, and the bandage at his side was soaked through with dark blood and yellow fluid.

He had hours, maybe. A day if the fever broke.

“Then we move tonight,” Étienne said. “We take the fort, we get the surgeon, we save him.”

“That’s a fool’s plan,” Gagnon said. “Even if the sally port is there, even if we clear it without alerting the garrison, we’re eight men. Eight against forty.”

“Eight is enough if we surprise them. We hit the guardroom first, then the officers’ quarters. We lock down the armory. We hold the gate until the river patrol can see us and respond.”

“And if they don’t respond?”

“Then we die holding it.” Étienne met Gagnon’s eyes. “But we die on our feet, not running through the forest like wounded animals.”

Gagnon stared at him for a long moment. Then, slowly, he nodded. “You have your father’s stubbornness. He would have liked this plan. He would have called it reckless, but he would have liked it.”

Étienne almost smiled. “He called everything I did reckless.”

“He called everything you did brave and reckless. There was a difference, to him.” Gagnon pushed himself to his feet, groaning as his joints protested. “I’ll find the rangers, see who’s willing to follow a half-breed guide into a dead captain’s fort.”

“They came with Laroche. They don’t know me.”

“They know Corbeil. And they saw you kill the man who led them here to betray you. That counts for something.”

Gagnon walked toward the treeline where the rangers had gathered. Étienne watched him go, then turned back to his brother.

Jean-Baptiste’s eyes were open again. He looked at Étienne with an expression that was hard to read—sadness, maybe, or regret.

“I wanted to hate you,” he said quietly. “After Father died. I wanted to blame you for leaving, for never coming back, for letting him die alone in that cabin.”

“I was three hundred miles away. I didn’t know.”

“I know that. But it was easier to hate you than to admit I was afraid.” He swallowed, wincing. “Afraid that I’d become like you—caught between two worlds, belonging to neither. So I buried myself in the uniform. Made myself a soldier. Told myself that service to the King would give me a place.”

“Did it?”

Jean-Baptiste shook his head slowly. “It gave me a rank and a set of orders. But it didn’t give me a home. It didn’t give me a brother.”

Étienne crouched beside him again, taking his hand. The skin was hot, dry. He squeezed gently.

“You have a brother. You’ve always had one. Even when I was three hundred miles away, even when I told myself I didn’t care about the soldiers and their wars—you were my blood. You always were.”

Jean-Baptiste closed his eyes. A single tear tracked down his grimy cheek, cutting a clean line through the dirt.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered. “For the cellar. For doubting you. For everything.”

“Save your apologies for when we’re both standing in the fort’s courtyard, watching the English flag come down.”

“And if I’m not standing?”

Étienne tightened his grip. “Then I’ll carry you.”

Jean-Baptiste opened his eyes. For a moment, the fever seemed to recede, and he was the boy again, the one who had followed Étienne into the deep woods and swum the rapids with him, who had laughed at the cold and dared the current to take them.

“You always said you’d carry me,” he said, a ghost of a smile on his lips. “Even when we were children. Even when I was too heavy.”

“You were never too heavy. Just too stubborn to hold still.”

Jean-Baptiste laughed, a soft sound, and then his eyes fluttered closed. His breathing evened out into sleep, shallow but steady.

Étienne stayed beside him, holding his hand, watching the rise and fall of his chest. The forest was quiet around them, the fire crackling low. Corbeil came over, carrying a battered tin cup of water, and pressed it into Étienne’s free hand.

“He’ll make it,” Corbeil said. “The stubborn ones always do.”

Étienne drank. The water was cold and tasted of copper, but it cleared his head. He looked toward the north, where the river bend hid the fort behind its walls of timber and stone.

His father had built a way in. A door that no one else knew about, hidden behind a false wall in the cellar. It was a gift from the grave, a final act of provision from a man who had always been one step ahead.

He would not waste it.

“We move at dusk,” Étienne said.

Corbeil nodded. Across the clearing, the rangers were gathering around Gagnon, listening to him speak in low, urgent tones. Gagnon gestured once toward Étienne, and one of the rangers—Bouchard—nodded. He met Étienne’s eyes across the fire and gave a slight, almost imperceptible incline of his head.

They would follow him. Not for France, not for the King, but because he was the only one who knew the way in.

Étienne looked down at his brother, at the pale face and the sweat-soaked hair. He thought of his father, of the medal, of the hidden door beneath the fort.

He had a plan. He had a way in. He had eight men willing to follow him into the dark.

Now he just had to get there before the fever took his brother and the English took the river.