Read Chapter 21: The Forgotten Path

The dusk air hung thick with the smell of wet earth and rotting leaves. Étienne moved through the undergrowth like a shadow, his moccasins finding the soft places between twigs and dry brush. Behind him, Corbeil and Gagnon followed at intervals, their breathing shallow, their eyes scanning the treeline for English patrols.

The fort rose ahead, a dark mass against the fading sky. Its timber walls had been scorched by the earlier fighting, and smoke still curled from a chimney somewhere within. But what drew Étienne’s eye was the ground itself. He had been circling the fort for the better part of an hour, searching for the marker his father’s message had described—a flat stone set at an angle beneath an old oak that had been split by lightning.

“There,” he whispered, pointing.

The oak was dead, its bark peeled away in long strips. Its roots, exposed and blackened, clawed at the earth like skeletal fingers. At the base, half-buried under decades of leaf litter, was the stone. It was no larger than a breadboard, its surface rough and unremarkable—until you looked closely and saw the faint chisel marks worn smooth by time.

Étienne knelt and pressed his palms against the stone’s edges. It did not move. He dug his fingers into the cold mud around it, feeling for the gap his father had described. Nothing. The earth had settled, packed tight by years of rain and frost.

“It’s wedged,” he muttered.

Gagnon crouched beside him. “Can we shift it?”

“Not by hand. We’d need a bar, and even then the noise would carry.” Étienne sat back on his heels, surveying the ground. The sally port had been sealed for decades, meant to be forgotten. Whoever had closed it had done their work well.

Corbeil crept forward, his eyes on the fort’s walls. “How far does the passage run?”

“Forty feet, maybe less. It comes up in the cellar under the old storehouse.” Étienne traced a line in the dirt. “If the tunnel has collapsed, we’ll have to dig. If it’s still intact, we just need to clear the entrance.”

“And if it’s discovered?”

Étienne looked at him. “Then we die in that hole.”

The silence stretched. Somewhere above, a bird called out, startled from its roost. Étienne’s eyes snapped to the fort’s wall. A sentry stood at the parapet, his musket resting on the rail, his head turned toward the treeline. For a long moment, the man did not move. Then he spat over the wall and turned away.

Étienne let out the breath he had been holding. “We need daylight to see what we’re working with, but we can start clearing the top layer tonight. Quietly. By hand.”

“And the others?” Corbeil asked.

“They stay with Jean-Baptiste. He’s in no shape to be moved unless we have a clear path.”

Gagnon’s jaw tightened at the mention of the name, but he said nothing. Étienne watched the old ranger’s face for a moment, reading the tension there. There was something Gagnon was not telling him, something about the official in Montreal, but now was not the time to press.

“I’ll go back and bring the tools,” Corbeil said.

“No. I’ll go.” Étienne rose, brushing the dirt from his knees. “You two keep watch. If the English come, you know the signal.”

Corbeil nodded. Étienne slipped back into the trees, moving fast and low. The camp was a quarter mile off, hidden in a hollow where an old beaver pond had dried up. When he arrived, he found Bouchard and the other rangers gathered around a small fire, their faces lit by the flames. Jean-Baptiste lay on a bed of pine boughs, his skin pale and slick with sweat.

His brother’s eyes flickered open as Étienne knelt beside him. “The entrance?”

“Found it. It’s sealed, but we can clear it.”

Jean-Baptiste coughed, the sound rattling in his chest. “The cellar… it had a false wall. Behind the wine racks. Father showed me once, when I was small.” His voice was thin, barely a whisper. “I had forgotten. I am glad he told you instead.”

Étienne squeezed his brother’s hand. “Rest. We’ll do the rest.”

“Roche will be watching the river road. He expects an attack from the front, not from beneath his feet.” Jean-Baptiste’s eyes found his brother’s. “He will not look down.”

“Then we go up.”

The tools were scarce—a hatchet, a fire iron, and a length of iron bar that had once been part of a cart. Étienne gathered them and wrapped them in cloth to muffle any sound. As he turned to leave, Bouchard stepped into his path.

“I have been thinking about what you said,” the ranger said quietly. “About the English reinforcements. If they come before we move, we are finished.”

“They are coming. The question is when.”

“Then we do this tonight.” Bouchard’s eyes were hard. “The men are ready. The wounded will stay with your brother. The rest of us will go with you.”

Étienne studied him. Laroche’s rangers had been a risk, a gamble born of desperation. But Bouchard’s voice carried something that had been absent before—resolve.

“You trust us now?” Étienne asked.

“I trust your aim.” Bouchard’s mouth twitched. “And I saw how you killed Laroche. A man who hesitates the way you did, with that medal in his hand—he is not a traitor.”

Étienne said nothing. The memory of Laroche’s burned hand, the smell of his own father’s flesh cooking against metal, was still sharp.

“Stay with my brother,” Étienne said. “If he worsens, send Gagnon for me.”

Bouchard nodded and stepped aside.

Étienne moved back through the forest, the iron bar cold against his shoulder. By the time he reached the oak, full dark had fallen. The moon was a thin crescent, barely enough to see by. Corbeil had positioned himself at the tree line, his eyes fixed on the fort. Gagnon was waiting at the stone.

“No movement,” Gagnon said. “The sentry changed at the bell, but the pattern is the same. Every half hour, one passes. The rest stay on the south wall.”

“They do not expect trouble from the river side,” Étienne said. He crouched, pressing the tip of the iron bar into the crack beneath the stone. He leaned his weight onto it, slow and steady, feeling the bar bite into the packed earth. A shiver of movement. He pulled back, waited, then pressed again.

The stone shifted, a pale grinding sound that seemed too loud in the dark. Étienne froze. He counted to sixty. No alarm.

“Again,” Gagnon whispered.

They worked in silence, each grain of earth dug out with bare fingers, each inch of stone levered upward. Sweat rolled down Étienne’s back despite the cold. The smell of damp rot rose from the gap beneath the stone, old and musty.

After an hour, the opening was wide enough for a man to squeeze through. Étienne lay flat on his stomach and peered into the darkness. A tunnel sloped downward, its walls lined with crumbling stone. He could not see the bottom.

“It holds,” he said. “For now.”

Gagnon handed him a candle stub. Étienne lit it, shielding the flame with his palm, and lowered himself into the tunnel. The air closed around him, cold and heavy. He slid down, his boots finding purchase on the slick stone floor. The tunnel bent sharply to the left, then opened into a chamber no larger than a closet. The ceiling dripped. Root tendrils hung down like dead fingers.

And there, directly ahead, was the wall.

It was not the cellar wall. It was a collapse—tons of earth and stone that had given way at some point in the past, sealing the passage to the fort completely. Étienne pressed his palm against it. The dirt was damp but packed hard. It would take hours to clear, if not a full day.

He climbed back out, covered in mud, and gave the news to the others.

“The tunnel is blocked,” he said. “Not caved in from above—something inside brought it down. Deliberately, maybe. Someone cut the passage.”

Gagnon’s face went still. “If the English found it, they will have posted guards.”

“No. It’s been sealed a long time. The dirt is undisturbed.” Étienne’s mind raced. “The blockage is old. It was sealed before Roche took the fort. Maybe before the English came.”

“Then who sealed it?”

Étienne looked back at the fort. His father's message had given him the entrance, but it had not warned him of this. Which meant his father had not known. Which meant the sally port had been lost not to memory, but to treachery—sealed by someone who wanted it forgotten.

"Whoever sealed it," Étienne said slowly, "knew the fort's secrets well enough to hide one of its exits forever."

He rolled the stone back into place, covering the entrance with loose dirt and leaves. As he worked, a figure emerged from the trees. It was Gagnon's nephew, a young man named Simard who had been sent with Corbeil to watch the fort's eastern approach. He was breathing hard.

"The loyalists," Simard gasped, bending over. "They're alive. They escaped the English and are hiding in the marsh. One of them got out to find us. He says Roche has discovered that we escaped by the river and is burning the forest to the west to flush us out."

Étienne straightened. The map in his mind rearranged itself. The fort was a trap. The sally port was dead. And Roche was hunting them.

He looked at the dark shape of the fort above them, and for the first time since his father's message had revealed its secret, he felt the walls pressing in.