Read Chapter 30: The Outpost's Secret

The outpost stockade rose out of the spruce like a scar on the land, its sharpened logs gray with weather and neglect. Étienne circled it from the treeline for the better part of an hour before he was satisfied. No sentries on the wall. No smoke from the cookhouse chimney. A French flag hung limp from its pole, but it was stained and frayed at the edges, as if it had been flying through storms without anyone caring to replace it.

He pressed his good hand against the wound on his shoulder, feeling the throb beneath the wrapping. The two days of hard travel had cost him. Blood had soaked through the cloth twice, and he'd had to stop and re-dress it each time, using strips torn from his shirt. His brother would have scolded him for pushing so hard. Nathaniel had taken the eastern route, cutting across the high ridges to come down on the outpost from the flank. Étienne had taken the river path, slower but more direct, and he'd run most of it.

The gate stood ajar.

That was wrong. Whatever else this outpost was, it was still a military installation, even if only a dozen men garrisoned it. No officer would leave the gate unbarred at midday with enemies in the country. Étienne pulled his knife—the only weapon he had left, taken from the body of one of Roche's scouts he'd come upon sleeping by a cold fire—and slipped through.

The yard was empty. Three log buildings surrounded it: barracks, storehouse, and a long low structure that served as the commandant's quarters and office. A bucket sat overturned by the well. A pair of boots lay abandoned near the barracks door, as if their owner had stepped out of them and simply vanished.

The door to the office hung open.

Étienne crossed the yard in quick strides, keeping low, his eyes scanning the windows for movement. Nothing. He reached the doorway and pressed himself against the jamb, listening. From inside came a sound he knew well—the scratching of a pen on paper.

He stepped through.

A man sat at the desk, his back to the door, bent over a mess of documents. He was in shirtsleeves, his uniform coat draped over the back of his chair. His bald head shone in the thin light from the window. He did not look up as Étienne entered.

"You're the guide," the man said. His voice was flat, tired. "Étienne Roussel. They said you might come."

Étienne stopped. "Who said?"

The man turned. His face was lined, his eyes red-rimmed as if he had not slept in days. Lieutenant Governor Martin Dubois, by the insignia on his collar. Étienne had heard his name spoken at the fort—a career soldier, competent, unspectacular, known for running a tight post and obeying orders without question.

"The captain," Dubois said. "Captain Lemieux. He was here yesterday morning. He told me you and your brother had turned traitor. That you'd murdered French soldiers and sold the fort to the English."

Étienne's grip tightened on his knife. "And you believed him."

Dubois gestured at the scattered papers. "He carried orders with the Governor's seal. Documents ordering the transfer of my garrison to the south, to reinforce the positions along the St. Lawrence." He laughed, a hollow sound. "I had forty men here. I've sent thirty of them south at dawn."

Étienne felt the ground shift beneath him. "He's delivering false orders. That's not a reassignment—that's a withdrawal. It opens the supply route to the lake."

"I know." Dubois's voice cracked. "I know that now."

He stood and lifted a folded sheet from the desk, holding it out. Étienne hesitated, then took it and read. The letter was written in a clean, practiced hand, bearing the seal of the Governor of New France himself—though Étienne had seen Lemieux's work enough to know it could be forged. The orders directed Dubois to march his garrison south to the confluence of the rivers, where they would be met by a brigade under the command of a Colonel Marchand.

"There is no Colonel Marchand," Dubois said. "I know every officer in the colony. There is no Colonel Marchand."

"When did he leave?"

"Midday yesterday. He said he had another message to deliver further north. He took supplies, a fresh horse. He was in good spirits." Dubois's face twisted. "I let him walk out of here like a guest. I gave him my own horse."

Étienne crumpled the letter. Thirty men were marching south into the teeth of an English force that was already moving through the country. They would be cut off, surrounded, massacred—or captured and forced to talk. And the supply route they'd been guarding would sit open like a wound.

"What about your ten remaining men?" he asked.

"Wiry and honest, every one of them. I kept the ones I trust to watch me."

Étienne read the man's face and found no deception there, only the weight of a terrible mistake. Dubois had been played by a better liar, and now he was drowning in the consequences.

"Where did he go?" Étienne said.

"North. To the mission at Saint-Antoine. He said there was a courier there he needed to speak with." Dubois paused. "But before he left, he asked about the supply depot. The one at Lac Fourche."

Étienne went cold. Lac Fourche was a way station on the river, hidden in a bend of the country, stocked with powder and shot and hardtack for the winter. A week's travail north of here. It was a secret known only to the inner circle of the colonial command, and to the guides who served them. If Lemieux knew of it, he would go there next. The depot's store would arm Roche's force for a season.

There was no time. Thirty men were marching to their deaths. Lemieux was disappearing deeper into the wilderness, carrying secrets that could gut the colony's defenses. And Étienne stood in a deserted outpost with a knife in his hand and one good arm.

He looked at Dubois. "Your uniform. Your men. I need them."

Dubois blinked. "They're loyal to the colony. I won't have them used to chase a phantom on the word of a mixed-blood guide who—"

"Who saw the fort fall? Who watched his own rangers die to a traitor's ambush?" Étienne stepped closer. "Your garrison marched south on forged orders this morning. If I'm wrong about Lemieux, they'll arrive at the confluence and find a brigade waiting for them. But it won't be French."

Dubois stared at him. The silence stretched, broken only by the wind rattling the window frame.

"How do I know you're not the traitor?" Dubois said softly.

Étienne reached into his shirt and pulled out the folded letter his brother had given him—the copy of the false orders, dated from before the fort's fall. He placed it on the desk beside the forgery Dubois had shown him. The handwriting was identical.

"Because I've been chasing that man across half the country with nothing but a knife and the skin on my back," Étienne said. "And because your thirty men are marching into a trap while we stand here talking."

Dubois looked at the two papers. Then at Étienne's face. Something shifted in his eyes—a calculation, a weighing of trust against doubt.

He reached for his coat.

"How fast can you ride?" he asked.

"Faster than a man with my shoulder usually travels," Étienne said.

"Then take four of my men. Intercept the column before they reach the confluence. Bring them back." Dubois lifted a map from the desk and spread it flat. "And if you can't stop Lemieux before he reaches Lac Fourche—if he tells the English where that depot sits—then the whole winter campaign is forfeit. We'll lose the river by spring."

Étienne studied the map, tracing the route with his finger. The convoy was a day ahead. The depot was three days north. Lemieux had stolen a half day already. It wasn't enough time to do both.

But Étienne had spent his whole life learning to do what wasn't enough.

"I'll stop the column," he said. "And then I'll go after him."

Dubois shook his head. "You can't do both."

Étienne folded the map and tucked it into his shirt. "Watch me."