Read Chapter 24: The Captain's Face

The sally port tunnel was a throat choked with stone. Étienne had cleared what he could in the gray half-light of dusk, working with his bare hands until his fingers bled through their wrappings, but the collapse went deep—deeper than a man could dig in a night. He stood at the mouth now, breathing hard, the smell of wet earth and rot filling his lungs. Behind him, Gagnon and the rangers waited in the treeline, their faces painted with soot and expectation.

“It’s no good,” Étienne said, stepping out of the hollow beneath the oak. “Whoever did this knew what they were doing. The whole run is caved in past the first bend.”

Gagnon spat. “Then we go over the wall and take our chances.”

“And lose half the men before we reach the yard.” Étienne looked west, where a column of smoke rose thick and black against the failing light—Roche’s fire, eating the forest. The English garrison had sallied out to meet the French relief column, leaving the fort thin, but not empty. Not dead.

“There’s the culvert,” said Bouchard, stepping forward. The man had been quiet since the river, watching Étienne like a hawk watches a snake. “Runs under the north wall. Drains the yard when the snow melts. A man could crawl it if he didn’t mind the cold and the shit.”

Étienne turned. “You know the fort?”

“I was stationed here two winters back. Before the English came.” Bouchard’s jaw tightened. “Before the captain sold us out.”

The name hung in the air. Captain Moreau. The man who had locked the gates, who had welcomed the English flag, who had killed his own sentries to prove his loyalty. Étienne had heard the story from Jean-Baptiste’s fevered lips, but the face had always been a shadow, a rumor with epaulettes.

“The culvert,” Étienne said. “It feeds into the yard?”

“Near the magazine. Ten paces from the cellar door.”

Étienne looked at the sky. The first stars were pricking through the smoke haze. The English garrison was fighting the relief column somewhere beyond the ridge—he could hear the distant pop of muskets, the dull thunder of field guns. They had maybe an hour before the garrison either won and returned, or lost and the whole field collapsed into chaos. An hour to get inside, find the traitor, and stop the fuse.

“Take me there,” he said.

The culvert was a stone throat slick with mud and the memory of winter. Étienne went first, flat on his belly, his rifle useless at his side, his knife in his teeth. The water was ankle-deep and cold as a corpse’s kiss, and the stone pressed close enough that his shoulders scraped on both sides. He crawled blind, feeling ahead with his hands, counting his breaths to keep the panic at bay.

Behind him, he heard Gagnon’s grunt, and then Bouchard’s quiet curse. Three of them. The rest had stayed to watch the forest and to give covering fire if it came to that.

The culvert ended at a grate. Étienne pushed at it, felt the iron give—rust-eaten, ill-maintained. He worked it loose with his knife, pried it outward, and slid through into the darkness of the yard.

The fort was silent. Wrongly silent. The English had left their campfires burning, their tents standing, but the men were gone—all but the skeleton watch on the walls, who faced outward toward the sound of battle. Étienne pressed himself against the storehouse wall and scanned the yard. The magazine stood at the far end, a low stone building with a heavy door, and beside it, the cellar entrance that led down to the powder stores.

A figure moved at the cellar door. Tall, broad-shouldered, wearing a French officer’s coat with the scarlet sash of a traitor’s bargain. He held a lantern in one hand and a coil of slow-match in the other.

Captain Moreau.

Étienne’s blood went cold, then hot. He left the cover of the wall and moved across the yard at a crouch, knife still in his hand, his father’s broken medal cold against his chest. The message inside had told him where the sally port was, but it had not told him this—had not told him that the man who had sealed it, the man who had betrayed the fort, the man who had killed his father, was the same man who had ordered the river crossing where his father died.

Moreau did not see him until Étienne was ten paces away. The lantern light caught his face—lean, weathered, with eyes the color of river stone. He smiled.

“The métis,” Moreau said. “I wondered when you’d crawl out of the dark. Your father did the same, you know. Crept into my camp one night, thinking he could take back what he’d lost.” The smile widened. “He died on his knees.”

Étienne stopped. The knife felt light in his hand, too light. “You killed him.”

“I hanged him.” Moreau’s voice was calm, almost conversational. “Not a soldier’s death. But then, he wasn’t a soldier, was he? Just a half-breed tracker who thought his loyalty meant something.” He gestured with the slow-match coil. “You’re just like him. You came back for a fort that doesn’t want you, a flag that never flew for you.”

“Your flag flew for gold,” Étienne said. “That’s the only difference.”

Moreau laughed. In the same motion, he dropped the lantern, and the flame caught the slow-match with a hiss. The fuse line ran from his hand, snaking across the yard toward the magazine door, already burning.

Étienne lunged.

Moreau drew his saber in one clean motion, and the blade caught Étienne’s knife, sent it spinning into the dark. Étienne went in low, under the guard, and drove his shoulder into Moreau’s gut. They went down together, rolling in the mud, Moreau’s fists finding Étienne’s ribs, Étienne’s thumbs finding Moreau’s throat.

For a moment they were locked, two men who had been moving toward this same patch of ground for years, and Étienne saw his father’s face in the flickering light of the burning fuse—saw the pride, the sorrow, the love that had never been spoken and never needed to be.

Then Moreau’s knee came up, hard, and Étienne’s grip broke. He rolled away, gasping, and Moreau was on his feet, saber raised, already backing toward the gate.

“The fuse burns fast, tracker,” Moreau said, breathing hard. “You can chase me, or you can chase it. Pick one.”

He was gone into the dark before Étienne could answer.

Étienne turned. The fuse was a streak of white fire across the yard, eating toward the magazine door. Behind him, he could hear Gagnon’s voice, shouting his name, and the distant crack of muskets growing closer—the garrison, returning too soon.

The fuse burned.

The door stood open.

Étienne ran.