Disclaimer: I do not own these characters. This is for entertainment only; no profit is being made.
She knew by the smoke rising above the hills that it was already too late. She had come as quickly as she could, pushing her horse to its limits and beyond, but it hadn't mattered. The battle was all but over now; here and there a random musket fired, a sharp, echoing pop, bright behind the drifting smoke. People screamed and shrieked and moaned as they lay dying. There was no bravado now, only the sorry aftermath of war.
She could see them through the acrid smoke, slivers of blue and blots of fire red. Soldiers on opposite sides of an idea now commingled their lifeblood as it seeped into the muddy earth. They had taken from the Great Mother, and she was reclaiming what was hers. It made no difference whether they rendered their offering freely; they could not stop her now. Some of them sensed her groping fingers, or so it seemed, for they cried out to her in strangled voices, begging her for reprieve, or, if that could not be had, a quick end to the suffering of reunion.
She nudged her tired horse closer. She would not stay here long; there was no purpose anymore. What was done was done. All she could do now was look for him among the survivors, and if she could not find him there, then she would search for him among the dead. She hoped he had not fallen, but she knew in her heart that he had. If he yet lived, he would still be roaming the pitted, muddy field upon his steed and savaging his enemies. No living cloud trod the earth, trampling blue-clad devils beneath powerful hooves. No regal plume tickled the sky. He was gone.
She dismounted at the edge of the field near the body of a British soldier sprawled facedown in the mire. She wondered briefly if it were him, but dismissed the thought. Too, thin, too swarthy. Just to be sure, she nudged him with the toe of her moccasin, rolling him onto his back. The face was gone, shattered by a murderous musket ball. Where the eyes and nose should have been was only a gaping raw hole, spiked with fragments of grey bone. The lower jaw dangled toothlessly. She stared at the mess dispassionately before letting her eyes drift to the eerily untarnished scalp. Blond. Not him. She left the corpse and moved on.
She was no longer surprised by the horrific things the white men did to one another in the name of ideals and right. They had been squabbling amongst themselves ever since they set foot on this land, fighting to divide and claim earth that did not belong to them. Fences and fistfights between the trappers that wandered the traditional lands of her people grew into larger disputes. Soon, they turned their hate on the long-established tribes that had dwelt here since the Great Spirit had birthed the nations of men, and then, just as they succeeded in pushing her people back, driving them from ancestral homes, the boats had come. Boats larger than any she had ever seen, filled to the brink of capsizing with the red-coated men.
With the men had come guns, and with the guns had come greater violence. Her tribe had grown accustomed to the crackle of gunfire and the grinding, bellowing roar of the cannon. They sang at the sound of the white man's anguish, pleased that the cup of gall from which they had been forced to drink for so long had returned to haunt the bearer. They gutted their trout and skinned their deer and waited to see which side would emerge the victor, waited to see who would become their newest enemy.
Once, a badly wounded soldier had crawled to their encampment. His scalp hung in bloody rags. Blood and skin coated his face in a slick crimson mask. His left hand was gone; his arm ended in a ragged, charred stump. He had crawled through the woods into the clearing by the cooking fire and collapsed into the dirt, screaming pitifully for someone to help him. The people there had stopped what they were doing to watch. Children ceased their play and old women looked up from their weaving. No one moved.
"Please…please, for God's sake help me," he had begged, holding out his remaining hand in supplication.
A child cried out before being hushed by its mother. The fire crackled and sizzled as fat from the roasting deer dripped into the flames. The people continued to watch, frozen in fascination. It was a rare thing to watch an Englishman die. She found they did not do it with grace. They fought it, railed against it, and even when it came for them, they did not accept it. They did not close their eyes and rush joyfully to the Great Father. They screamed and clawed their pale hands into the earth, defiant until the last breath. They feared their God, and perhaps they should. As far as she could tell, he had brought them nothing but despair.
When his initial plea went unheeded, the man cried out again. This time, one of the children ran to him and squatted beside him. Smiling, the child prodded a finger into the blackened stump. The man screamed and writhed, his body pulling taut, like a bowstring about to snap. The child, frightened by this reaction, recoiled and burst into tears, scampering to hide behind its mother. No one else made a sound.
When no aid was forthcoming, he cursed them and spat upon the ground. "Damn you, you merciless heathens!"
This bought him no help. The people watched him. It was interesting to see a white man die. The old women returned to the weaving, and the young women went back to tending the fire. The children resumed their play. The men sat in the openings of the wigwams and smoked. They blew acrid smoke rings from their mouths and thick plumes from their noses, dragon gods watching the sacrifice. Chatter resumed, but eyes always returned to the interloper dying so inconveniently in front of them.
It took a long time for him to die. He alternately begged and raged against them. He wept and gibbered. Sometimes, he lapsed into momentary unconsciousness only to awaken with a piercing scream. Dusk darkened to true night, and still he lived. He would fall silent for a spell, his breath rasping out of the darkness. Then a shout would shatter the stillness.
Finally, one of the braves emerged from his wigwam with a hatchet in his hand. Whether moved by compassion or annoyance at having his slumber disturbed, he was going to put an end to it. Soft footsteps, the whickering rush of a stone hatchet cleaving the air, the dull thud of rock on shattering bone, and it was over. Silence, blessed silence, descended. In the morning, the men disposed of the stiffening body. The kept the coat-a brilliant red one-as a souvenir.
She thought about the coat and the soldier often. Was he one of the men in his battalion? Had he once protected him? She doubted it. The uniforms weren't the same; he wore red with green. The man she had watched die wore only scarlet. Still, it was possible. Perhaps he had been of inferior rank. It didn't matter now. The man was long gone and so was he.
She stepped over a body, careful not to slip in the cooling entrails. So much waste. He had tried to explain why they were fighting once. They were lying nestled beneath a warm bear skin, his arm draped possessively over her bare breasts. His breathing was slow and easy. His lips grazed the sensitive flesh of her neck. She had turned her head and gazed into those crystalline blue eyes.
"Tavington?" she had purred, logy from the warmth.
"Yes?" Rich, cultured, as exotic to her ears as the taste of her flesh was to his tongue.
"Why do you fight?" She had rested her head on his chest.
"They no longer want to pay what they owe to the king of England. They defy him."
"Why?"
"They think they desire freedom, equality. They cannot survive on their own. We must bring them to heel and protect them from themselves."
She had not understood, still did not. They fought for strange things, useless things. They did not fight for food or shelter, space or vengeance. They fought for thoughts, things that could not be held or measured or bartered. The things they fought for would not save them from winter's harshness or summer's torpid heat. In the end, they could not save them from themselves.
"I do not understand."
"I know."
He had stopped her mouth with an ardent kiss, and his hands spoke a language she did understand. Warm white hand roving bronze skin, caressing supple flesh, coaxing whimpers and moans of forbidden delight. He knew how to use her, to pleasure her while deriving his own, and when he pushed into her with an authoritative thrust, she had forgotten every loft precept in favor of more primal needs.
She kicked over another body. Maggots wriggled from its nose. She wasn't sure why she was out here looking for him. They were lovers and no more. She was a diversion to him, a plaything. He would no marry her, not even as a trophy wife. There would be no fine house with pretty things. He had not told her so, but he had not needed to. She had known even before he took her for the first time.
He might not have loved her, but she had grown fond of him. He was an exotic bird, content to stay with her for a time but soon to fly away. It was the eyes that had captured her, led her to his bed. They were unusual, even for a white man. Blue as the sky and clear as the spring where she bathed. They were penetrating; they peeled away the layers of her flesh until her soul was naked before him. When he looked at her, she could refuse him nothing, not even herself. Sometimes he would pin her arms above her head and pin her beneath his gaze as he took her, sure and smug in his British supremacy. She should have hated it, hated the smirk, the sense of entitlement, but his eyes were an aphrodisiac, and she could only cry out as climax wracked her again and again, unashamed before those eyes.
He was self-centered, arrogant, and full of swagger, but he had never been unkind. He had never hurt her, slapped her, or taken her against her will. He always treated her with courtesy. He arrived a little after dusk each time, a majestic silhouette perched upon his elegant white horse. He would enter her wigwam without invitation and sit on the bearskin rug. She would make food for him. Sometimes, they would talk, but most of the time he only watched. After the food, they would hunker beneath the blankets and he would whisper in her ear while his nimble fingers undid her clothes. After it was over, they would talk about anything but the war, and gradually they would drift to sleep. He would be gone when she awoke in the morning.
Occasionally, he brought her things. Meaningless bits and baubles. A swatch of bright fabric for her hair. A string of colorful beads. A bar of chocolate. The last time, the week past, he had presented her with a lily. She was surprised. It was a much more sentimental gift than usual. She was even more surprised when he offered her his arm for a stroll by the creek. They hadn't said a single word during the walk, but he'd seemed at peace in her presence, and when they had returned to her wigwam, he had been especially gentle, caressing and murmuring platitudes throughout the night, even when the passion was over. In the morning he was gone, only the lily to mark that he had been there at all.
She froze. There, in the trampled muddy grass. Facedown, one arm outstretched towards a sabre that twinkled dully in the muted sunlight. She recognized the weapon well. It was his prize possession, and when he was in an especially fine humor, he would take it out and show it to her, smiling indulgently as she marveled at its craftsmanship. Its finely honed tip was covered in tacky congealing blood.
Maybe it is not him.
The thought was tempting, but she knew better. He would never have been without it. She picked among the dead in her way, shoving aside a headless, legless torso. If it really were him, she would treat him with more dignity than she had the others. He deserved that. She dropped to her knees. Her eyes took in the plaited mahogany tresses. Many times she had plaited his hair. She slipped her hands beneath the body and mouthed a hopeless prayer. Then she rolled it over.
Clear blue eyes stared sightlessly back at her. She fell back with an anguished cry. As much as she had known the truth, it still struck like a hammer blow. His killer had ravaged him. A jagged tear slashed across the throat, uneven and glistening pink. Blood still oozed sluggishly from the rend. There was another gaping hole in his stomach, and his entrails peeked through like white tumor. She turned away, suddenly queasy.
She retched into the upturned face of a dead flag carrier, and his staring eyes glared up at her in silent accusation. She wiped her mouth with the back of a trembling hand and turned to face Tavington. She brought her clean hand to his face, her fingers shaking so badly that his head jittered softly. He was cold but not yet stiff. A few hours, then. She waved angrily at the flies that buzzed hungrily about his head. He was too fine a thing for them, his flesh too dear.
Her fingers trailed over the fine nose, the cool ivory skin. They traveled to the lips that had once kissed her so feverishly, now caked with blood. Back up the nose and to the eyes. In death they were no longer beautiful. They were glazed, as lifeless as scoured pebbles. She could not bear to see them that way, so she closed them, blinking back tears. Then she placed her head on his silent chest.
That so lovely a thing should die so cruelly made her insides burn with anger. It wasn't fair. It wasn't right. They killed for nothing. After this war would come another. And another. They would never stop fighting and killing. They would never know peace.
She sat up. The sabre winked in the sun. She reached out and picked it up. For all its fine craftsmanship, it had not saved him. She briefly considered hunting down the one who had killed him and driving it into their heart, then tossed the idea aside. There was no way to know who had killed him. The culprit could already number among the dead. Even if he weren't, there was little she could do. She would be shot before vengeance could be taken, or perhaps captured, and her captors would not treat her with Tavington's dignity. She tossed the sabre aside.
She tucked her hands beneath the body and struggled to her feet. It was dead weight in her arms, and she staggered as she began to pick her way back down the path she had traveled. It was going to be a long difficult walk, but she would manage. He was a warrior, and she would not leave him here to rot in the fields. She would bury him near the creek where they had strolled so peacefully, and she would plant a lily there.
She staggered on. She was the only thing moving on the plain, and as the sun beat down upon her, she offered a prayer for Tavington's soul, the song carrying across the field like the voice of a weeping god.