John Sevier frowned at him, but said nothing, and Campbell merely nodded.
“All Provincials, are they?”
“No, sir,” said another young scout, quickly so as to keep Sevier from sticking his neb in. “Near on half of ’em don’t have uniforms, at least.”
“But they do all have guns. Sir,” said the third scout, not to be left out.
“How many?” Jamie asked, and felt the words strange in his throat.
“A few more’n us, but not enough to make a difference,” Sevier replied, but in Jamie’s mind there echoed another voice: Frank Randall’s.
The forces were nearly equal, though Ferguson’s troops numbered over a thousand, as compared with the nine hundred Patriots attacking him.
A sort of murmur ran through the men: acknowledgment and satisfaction. Jamie swallowed, a taste of bile in his mouth.
“There’s more of ’em, but they’re trapped up there.” Cleveland put the sense of the meeting into words. “Like rats.” And he laughed and stamped a large boot as though crushing a rat into bloody mush.
Likely what he does for fun, Jamie thought. He cleared his throat and spat into the dead leaves.
It took no more than a few minutes to sort out whose men should take which direction. Jamie’s band would go with Campbell and several others, and he went back to gather the men and tell them how it would be.
ROGER HAD BEEN told off to mind me—or, as Jamie put it more politely, to wait until the attackers reached the saddle of the mountain.
“Ye’ll do most good comin’ in when folk will need ye most,” he’d said to us both, in the firm tone that meant he expected to be obeyed. My face must have expressed what I was thinking, for he glanced at me, smiled involuntarily, and looked down.
“Look after her, Roger Mac,” he said, then cupped my face in his hands and kissed me, briefly. His hands and face were pulsing with heat and I felt a sudden coolness when his touch left my skin.
“Tha gràdh agam ort, mo chridhe,” he said, and was gone.
Roger and I looked at each other with a perfect understanding.
“He told you, didn’t he?” I said, watching him disappear upward into the brush. “About Frank’s book?”
“Yes. Don’t worry. I’m going after him.”
The brush above was crackling and snapping as though the mountain was on fire. I could see men flickering through the leaves and trunks, reckless and purposeful. It was happening.
“The curse has come upon me, said the Lady of Shalott.” I hadn’t thought I’d spoken aloud, until I saw Roger’s startled look. Whatever he might have said, though, was drowned by William Campbell’s shout.
“Whoop, boys, whoop! Shout like the devil and fight like hell!”
The mountainside erupted and a panicked squirrel leapt from a branch above me and hit the ground running, leaving a spray of moist droppings behind it.
Roger did the same—minus the droppings—climbing as fast as he could through the trees on the slope, grabbing branches to help himself along.
I saw William Campbell, a little below where I stood, still mounted on his big black horse. He saw me, too, and shouted, but I didn’t listen and I didn’t stop, but hitched up my skirts and ran. Whatever happened to Jamie in the next little while, I was going to be there.
Roger
“YE’LL HELP NOBODY if ye’re dead, and ye may be useful if ye’re not. Ye may be God’s henchman, but ye’ll follow my orders for now. Stay here until it’s time.”
Jamie had clapped him on the shoulder, grinning, then turned on his heel and shouted to his men that it was time. Jamie had given Roger two decent pistols, in holsters, with a cartridge box and powder horn. And a large, hand-carved wooden cross on a leather thong, which he’d dropped over Roger’s head last thing.
“So nobody will shoot ye,” he’d said. “Not from the front, anyway.”
Claire, tense and worried, had smiled involuntarily, seeing the cross, then handed Roger a sloshing canteen.
“Water,” she said, “with a bit of whisky and honey in. Jamie says there’s no water on the summit.”
The men had been ready; they swarmed out of the trees and bushes at once, bristling with guns. Faces sweaty and gleaming under their hats, teeth showing, eager for the fight. Roger felt that eagerness hum briefly in his own blood, but his part in this fight would be later, among the fallen, and the memory of the battlefield at Savannah chilled his heart, despite the heat of the day.