Read Chapter 31: The Debt's Choice

The trail of the marching column was plain enough—thirty men did not move through this bush without leaving a scar. Étienne followed it at a loping run, his shoulder screaming with every stride, the four garrison soldiers strung out behind him like beads on a snapped cord. They were good men, Dubois had seen to that, but they were garrison men. They did not know how to move quiet.

He did.

The column's tracks bent west along the ridge, toward the low ground where Roche would have set his ambush. Étienne knew that ground. He had hunted it as a boy, when the river ran high and the deer came down to the flats. If Lemieux's orders had pulled those thirty men into that bowl, they would not come out again.

He pushed harder. The shoulder wound wept fresh blood through the binding, and he did not care.

He caught sight of them through a break in the pines—French coats, ranked and marching in good order, still unaware. The head of the column had already begun its descent into the bowl. Beyond them, maybe half a mile further on, he could see the dark movement of men among the trees. Roche's vanguard, waiting.

Étienne cut left, off the trail, and ran the high line to come down in front of the column's lead. He broke from the treeline with his hands up, knife sheathed, heart hammering.

"Hold!" he shouted. "Hold your march!"

The lead officer reined up, startled. Behind him the column faltered. Étienne saw the man's hand go to his pistol, saw the suspicion in his eyes.

"I bring word from Lieutenant Governor Dubois at the outpost. There is an ambush in the bowl below. You march into English guns."

The officer's eyes narrowed. "Dubois sent two couriers at dawn. You are not one of them."

"The man who brought those orders is the one leading you into the trap. The orders are false."

Ten seconds of silence. The officer's jaw worked. Étienne watched the man's eyes, waiting for the pistol to come up, waiting for the argument that would cost them everything. But the officer was a soldier, and soldiers know the smell of a bad ground.

He turned in his saddle. "Column, halt! About face! Back up the ridge, double time!"

The men moved. They were good men. They would live.

Étienne did not wait to see them go. He was already running again, back along the high line, toward the place where Lemieux would have gone next. North. Toward Lac Fourche. Toward the depot.

He found the captain's trail an hour later, and it was not what he expected.

Blood. Fresh and dark, smeared on the leaves. A drag mark, then a stagger, then a low place where a man had sat and pressed a hand to a wound. The trail led off the main path, stumbling toward a deadfall of old cedar where a man could hide.

Étienne drew his knife and went in slow.

Lemieux was propped against the trunk, his coat open, his shirt sodden dark from a bullet wound high in the chest. His face was gray. His pistol was in his hand, but it hung loose, and he did not have the strength to raise it.

"You," Lemieux said. The word came out wet.

"Roche's men found you before you could run."

"Roche's men." Lemieux laughed, and blood came with it. "No. Not Roche. Your brother."

The words landed like a knife between Étienne's ribs. "Nathaniel?"

"He caught up with me at the fork. Put a ball in my chest." Lemieux's eyes found Étienne's, and there was something in them that Étienne did not want to read. "Said it was for the men in the gorge. For the ones I killed."

Étienne crouched, watching the dying man. The captain's breathing had gone shallow, rattling at the edges. He did not have long. A man with that wound had hours at best, and less if he tried to keep moving.

"You know what I am," Lemieux said.

"I know what you did."

"I know what you are. Half. Not one of them and not one of us." The captain's hand tightened on the pistol, but it was a gesture without strength. "They will use you. In the end, they will bury you in a place that has no name."

"You chose your side, Captain. I am choosing mine."

Lemieux coughed. Blood ran down his chin. "Then choose it. Kill me or not. But you have a brother out there who put a ball in my chest without a word. You understand what that means."

Étienne heard the sound then. Movement in the trees, coming up the slope. He turned, knife in hand, and saw Nathaniel step out from the pines.

His brother's musket was empty, smoke still curling from the muzzle. His face was a mask of dust and fatigue and something else beneath it. He looked at Lemieux, then at Étienne, and stopped.

"You found him."

"He said you shot him."

"I did." Nathaniel's voice was flat. "He killed our men. He would have killed the column. I had the shot and I took it."

"You were supposed to intercept him. Not execute him."

"He would have run. You know he would have run. The depot is forty miles upriver. You could not have caught him with that shoulder, and I could not have taken him alone." Nathaniel glanced at the captain, then back at his brother. "This was the only way."

Étienne looked down at Lemieux. The captain's eyes had closed. His breathing was a wet rattle now, fainter by the moment. The pistol had slipped from his fingers and lay in the leaves.

"Go," Étienne said. "End him."

Nathaniel stepped forward, drawing his knife. He knelt beside the captain. Lemieux's eyes opened—clouded, far away—and looked up at the blade.

"I am going to tell you something," Lemieux said, so quiet it was barely there. "Because someone should know, before I die. Your brother did not find me at the fork by accident. He knew where I would be. He has known all along."

Nathaniel's hand did not move.

"He was the one who let me into the fort the first time you caught me. Three nights before I escaped. He found me in the forest. He told me where the powder stores were. He told me where I could slip through. He thought I would kill Roche's men, not the French." A wet, broken laugh. "He was wrong."

Étienne was on his knees in the leaves, staring at his brother's back. "Nathaniel."

"Nathaniel did not kill the rangers," Lemieux whispered. "Nathaniel set me loose to kill them. He is the one who sent Bouchard to the gun deck."

Nathaniel's knife hand moved. The blade punched down, and Lemieux died with the words still wet on his tongue.

Nathaniel stood, wiping the blade on his thigh. He did not turn.

"Brother," Étienne said.

And Nathaniel turned.

And there was nothing in his face that Étienne had ever seen before.

"You should have let me kill him," Nathaniel said. "You always did talk too much."