Read Chapter 26: The Captain's Trail

The grey light of false dawn lay over the fort like a shroud when Étienne found his brother standing at the powder magazine door, Jean-Baptiste’s hand pressed flat against the oak planks as if he could feel the black powder sleeping beyond.

“You should be in a cot,” Étienne said.

Jean-Baptiste turned. His face was hollow, sweat still beading at his temples, but his eyes had lost the glassy distance of the past days. “I watched you cut that fuse, little brother. I thought my heart would stop.” He coughed into his sleeve, wiped his mouth. “You did what I should have done ten years ago.”

Étienne stepped closer. The brothers had buried their father in a shallow grave on the north shore of Lake Champlain, and for twenty years Étienne had carried the weight of an unanswered question. Now he knew the answer. Lemieux. The name burned in his chest like a coal.

“He’s out there,” Étienne said. “He’ll rally the English. He knows every approach to this river, every trading post that will still take his coin. If we let him reach Montreal with word of what we hold, the whole campaign shifts.”

Jean-Baptiste nodded slowly. He pushed off the door and stood straight, swaying only slightly. “Then we go.”

“You’re fevered.”

“I can ride.”

“You can barely stand.”

“Then I’ll ride lying down.” Jean-Baptiste’s mouth twitched. “But I’m not staying here to watch you chase him alone while I count barrels of powder. That man killed our father. He sold this fort and every soul in it. Whatever he has done to me—and I have not forgotten the lead he put in my side—the ending belongs to both of us.”

Étienne studied his brother’s face. The resemblance to their father was strong in the jaw, the set of the mouth. He had seen that same stubbornness break horses and bend men. He knew there would be no arguing.

“Then we take the rangers,” Étienne said. “Bouchard, Gagnon, two others. No more. The fort needs its garrison.”

“Deschênes will have our heads for stripping his defense.”

“Deschênes has fifty men of his own. We are not the garrison. We are the hounds.”

They moved through the fort in the growing light. The French tricolor hung limp from the flagstaff above the bastion, and below it, soldiers stirred from their bedrolls, men who had marched through the night to arrive in time. Étienne passed them without meeting their eyes. His business was not with them.

He found Bouchard by the west gate, seated on an overturned keg, honing the edge of his couteau de chasse. The ranger looked up as Étienne approached and grunted, reading the intent in his face before a word was spoken.

“Lemieux,” Bouchard said. It was not a question.

“He’s got six hours on us, maybe more.”

“He’s on foot.”

“He knows these woods.”

Bouchard slid the knife into its sheath and stood. “Then we move fast. I’ll wake Gagnon. Two more—Renaud and Petit, they’re good in the bush, quiet as mice.”

“Make sure they understand what we’re hunting.”

“They’ll understand when they see the tracks.” Bouchard clapped him on the shoulder and moved off into the shadows of the fort.

Étienne returned to Jean-Baptiste and helped him saddle his horse. It was a chestnut mare, strong in the chest, patient beyond her years. His brother leaned heavily against the saddle while Étienne cinched the girth, and for a moment the fever seemed to surge back into his face. Then Jean-Baptiste pressed his jaw, took a breath, and swung up into the saddle with the stubborn grace of a man who had learned to ride before he learned to walk.

Marguerite appeared as they were leading the horses toward the sally port. Her dark hair was tied back, her arms crossed, her expression unreadable. She looked at Jean-Baptiste’s pale face, then at Étienne.

“You’ll leave without saying farewell to the wounded?”

“You are in good hands,” Étienne said.

“Hands are not what I worry about.” She stepped closer and pressed something into Étienne’s palm. It was a small leather pouch, heavy with shot, warm from her body. “You come back, Étienne Roussel. There is no one else who can find me when I lose the trail.”

He wanted to say something. The words would not come. He simply nodded and slipped the pouch into his belt.

The sally port was still blocked by fallen earth and the deliberate work of whoever had sealed it, so they exited through the main gate, riding out over the slope where the grass had been churned by boots and hooves not twelve hours earlier. Deschênes stood on the bastion above, his silhouette sharp against the pale sky. He watched them go without a word, and Étienne felt the weight of his gaze like a hand on his back.

They picked up Lemieux’s trail within a quarter mile. The man had fled north along the river, moving hard through the alder thickets, and he had not bothered to hide his passage. Étienne read the sign easily: a broken branch here, a heel print gouged in soft mud there, the scraped bark where a man had stumbled and caught himself.

“He’s in a hurry,” Gagnon said, kneeling by a print. “Reckless. He knows we’ll come.”

“He wants us to follow fast and careless,” Étienne said. “He’ll set a trap.”

“Or he’s just scared,” Bouchard grunted.

“Both can be true.”

They pushed on through the morning. The forest here was old—towering pines and maples that filtered the light into a churchly gloom. The river muttered to their left, hidden by a wall of undergrowth. Jean-Baptiste kept pace, though the color had not returned to his face and his hand trembled when he gripped the reins. Étienne watched him from the corner of his eye, unwilling to say anything, unable to stop looking.

By noon they came to a clearing where the English had made camp two days before. Charred fire pits, the trampled grass of picketed horses, a torn rag of red wool hanging from a branch. Lemieux had stopped here. Étienne dismounted and read the ground.

“He met someone,” he said.

The rangers gathered around. There were two sets of fresh prints in the ash-flecked soil, both heading north where the older English tracks turned east.

“Soldier?” Bouchard asked.

“Messenger,” Étienne said, pointing at the narrow, quick prints. “Running. He was here maybe an hour before Lemieux, then doubled back to meet him when he heard him coming.”

“Bringing word.”

Étienne nodded. His chest tightened. The trail was no longer a lone man fleeing into the woods. It was a thread leading somewhere—toward other men, other purposes, other plans.

They followed the joined tracks for another half hour, the river drawing closer with each stride. The ground grew soft, then marsh, reeds rising head-high in swaying ranks. The horses slowed, picking their way along the hummocks. The air filled with the smell of standing water and rot.

“Étienne.” Gagnon’s voice was low, urgent. He had drifted ahead, standing now at the edge of the marsh, where the reeds gave way to open water.

Étienne rode up beside him. The river opened before them in a wide bend, slow and deep, and on the far shore, half-hidden by overhanging willows, was a canoe. It was freshly built, the bark still pale, and beside it, crouched low, a dark figure was watching them.

The figure rose. In the same instant, Étienne caught movement among the reeds to his left. Then the riverbank behind them erupted with shouted orders, and the sound of muskets being primed.

“Ambush,” Bouchard said, already drawing his weapon.

Gagnon’s high-ground perch made him the first casualty. The crack of a rifle split the marsh, and Gagnon toppled backward into the reeds with a grunt, clutching his shoulder. Bouchard swore. The rangers scattered, finding cover behind hummocks and fallen logs. The horses screamed and pulled at their reins.

Étienne grabbed his brother’s bridle and hauled the mare toward the cover of a thick oak clump. Lead balls whined past, clipping leaves, splashing into the black water.

Jean-Baptiste slid from his saddle, landing hard, his breath a ragged gasp. His face was a mask of sweat and pain. “There are too many,” he said between breaths. “They planned this.”

Étienne fired his musket at a muzzle flash among the reeds, then reloaded mechanically, hands moving from long practice. His mind raced. The canoe on the far bank—Lemieux was there, watching. He had his escape. He had been waiting for them.

The messenger. It had never been about a message.

It had been the bait.

A second volley crashed through the marsh, and Renaud let out a sharp cry and went down, clutching his thigh. The English were encircling them, tightening the noose. Étienne looked at his brother, saw the fever burning in his eyes, saw the plan dying in his own hands.

They were not the hunters here.

They were the hunted.