Outside the barracks the fiddle still played a merry, yet also strangely melancholy tune. It suited the atmosphere Erin and Uncas found themselves in so very well.
Erin fed a little more wood to the fire and straightened, ready to continue her story, after what had been a prolonged and drawn out pause, both lost in their own thoughts. Uncas was stood by the fire, he had been stood there for a long time, gazing into the flickering flames as if seeing something significant in the glowing embers clinging to the wooden logs.
He looked strikingly photogenic, his skin washed in golden light, the effect making him look all the world in that moment like a bronze statue that would not have been out of place in the grandest museum.
Erin wanted to reach out and touch him gently upon the arm, to turn him away from whatever kept his expression so full of refined brooding, or at the very least stop him from burning himself from the fire's close proximity.
Instead she decided to speak. "Tomorrow just after dawn, the French cannons will breech the wall." She winced at the sound of her voice cutting through the silence. "Munro will be forced to parley. What he will not know is that, by then, the French will already have his return message from Fort Edward. They will not send men to help and will advise his surrender."
Uncas' look shifted, still steeped in deep concentration, his hand placed upon the warm stone above the fire, but he turned towards her, his free hand rubbing his thigh as if he had indeed been stood too close to the unrelenting heat.
Erin paused, taking a breath between her words. "This will mean your brother will not hang." Uncas' eyes flicked to hers, his look questioning. "He will be chained and leave the fort with everyone after the surrender," Erin continued, and saw his muscles relax just a little.
His brow was deeply furrowed as he tried to digest all this information.
"But..." The word fell from her lips and no more wanted to come.
"But?" Uncas pushed.
Erin sighed heavily. "The French have a man called Magua. He is the Huron that attacked Major Heywood's party on The George Road, when you saved them."
"Magua." He repeated the name. "I have heard this name before, Heywood told Munro of his betrayal."
"He is out for blood. His need for revenge consumes him."
Uncas' eyes narrowed, understanding the heaviness of those words.
"He seeks Colonel Munro for this?"
Erin shook her head. "Munro and his daughters. He would have them all dead."
Uncas looked perplexed by this information. "Why? What did the women do?" His posture became defensive, Erin assumed he was thinking about Alice.
"Nothing directly. They are Munro's children and that is enough for Magua, he wants to wipe out Munro's line. He blames the Colonel for all his suffering, the death of his own children and his abandonment by his wife."
Uncas looked solemn. "I have seen many suffer in this useless war. I see his pain." He touched his forehead in a gesture of respect. "He has become a man lost to the true ways. Killing two innocent women to feed his wolf of revenge will only make his soul more hungry."
Erin became aware he had lapsed into his own tongue somewhere in the conversation.
She concentrated hard and pushed out the words, trusting in her mouth to form the sounds.
"But... he will... eat... if he can." It was stilted and strange, but she had replied to him in his language and he stared at her a moment, eyes stunned wide as doubt rippled through his expression, disbelieving his own ears, and then the smallest bemused smile lit up his features.
The expression fell and he reached for her, his grasp tender upon her wrist. "Tell me how this comes to pass?"
"An ambush and... a massacre." She felt his fingers tighten on her skin. "The British will be set upon, many killed. Munro will be cut from his horse and Magua will kill him and... take his heart."
"The French will allow this after the surrender?" He sounded unconvinced.
"The French don't want to see the same soldiers in a few months time."
He understood her well.
"So, they will do nothing?"
She shook her head. "They will only intervene after the damage is done." She paused, wondering how much more she needed to tell him. "The French are using them, the Huron, Ottawa, and other Native allies, they promised all the warriors that fight for them the spoils of the English, but the French will let everyone here take everything with them, leaving nothing. Magua knows this and he will use it to stir up all those men into attacking."
Uncas considered all this in silence, his eyes drifting back towards the fire. Erin could sense a deep sadness in his expression, a knowledge that she never wanted to understand.
"Where is this ambush?" he finally said.
"A mile or so from the fort, in a place that has higher ground, wooded on either side to hide the attackers. I could maybe point it out on a map, although, I'm unsure, the landscape is not the same in my time. I've seen it on old maps though... I think I could show you."
"There will be many deaths?"
"Yes." He looked concerned and Erin rushed to reassure him with the only good news she did possess. "But you, your father and brother will escape with Cora and Alice. Unharmed."
He gave one nod of acknowledgement but she could see he was still uneasy. "Then? What more do you... know?"
"You'll escape on the lake, Major Heywood will find you, and together you will travel down the river and into a cave behind Glen Falls. But there is no escape. The Huron will come, and you, your father, and Nathaniel will be forced to jump into the river or die by their hands."
Again his grip tightened on her wrist, his head tilting, asking the silent question he feared to ask.
"You all survive the fall and the river." She felt his hand relax and he finally let go.
"What of the others?"
Erin assumed again he must mean Alice. "They are taken to a Huron village. Magua wants his justice to be witnessed and validated by the elders. He will want them burned in recompense for his own children." She stopped talking, her breath catching, she didn't want to tell him any of the next part.
Unwanted and unwilled, tears pooled in her eyes, it took him only a moment to notice her distress. He was unsure what to do for a moment, hesitating at the young woman suddenly so openly emotional before him when only moments ago all had been calm. Slowly his hands curled about her upper arms, the warmth of him offering comfort. He did not ask her to speak, but allowed her to silently cry, waiting patiently for her to continue.
"The elder refuses, but gives him Alice as a wife." She finally gasped the words out. "Magua is angry, he wants to take her to the next village, the next elder, so he can get his justice and the merit for being a great war chief. He wants her dead, but not without acclaim, only then will his revenge be complete."
She paused again, now attempting to wipe away the streaks of tears from her cheeks. "This is when you will die." She swallowed, feeling like there was something hard in her throat, and watched his eyes a moment. They were alert and upon hers, liquid honey in the soft light.
"You don't wait." She barrelled forward, knowing she could no longer delay the telling. "You are afraid for her, what they will do, no one knows if they will kill her right then on those high cliffs." She was breathing hard. "You are reckless, and headstrong, and stupid, and... brave." Tears came again.
"Your father can't leave Nathaniel, he too is in a dangerous situation." She saw his brows lift and rushed to reassure him again. "But they are fine. That is why you go alone, and you defeat many. You are so close to saving her... so very close." She reached for him too, hands resting at the crooks of his inner elbow as he held her. "Until you meet Magua."
"You said his hatred makes him a great warrior."
"Yes. He is just a little quicker and... you fail." She was sobbing fully now, tears sliding down her cheeks like constant streams as she tried to claim some semblance of herself back from the heavy knowledge that this man before her could die; that gentle, kind Alice Munro could die. The grief at the thought of their loss felt so much deeper from having spent time with these people.
His expression tightened in indignant perplexity. "I fail?"
"You must understand." Erin felt desperate, she wanted him to appreciate none of this was his making or Alice's fault. This was true tragedy. "By this point you are hurt, from the jump through the falls, you haven't slept since being here at the fort, you are tired and weary and he is not, not in the same way, and he has his anger to feed him."
This seemed to calm him a little and he relaxed.
"And then... Miss Munro..." His eyes were drawn back to the flames for a brief moment.
"She jumps, I think she is scared and... she has just seen you, her saviour, her hero, die. She doesn't know your father and brother are coming, that Cora is alive and well. She thinks you were her last... everything!"
He looked directly at her, his eyes flicking to each feature as if gathering the information he needed.
"Do you believe me?" Erin's tears would not relent.
His palms were upon her cheeks holding her in place, and she tried to shrink away from the familiar contact, but he didn't allow her to. After all that had been said there was no room for frivolous manners and decorum. Those piercing eyes were still searching as his thumbs gently wiped away the path of tears, the action calming her and stilling her sobs to little hiccupping sounds, as if she were a child being soothed after a painful tumble. He hushed her gently, knowing they would get no further if emotions ran rampant.
"I believe you believe these things and they are real to you. For that my heart is heavy for you," he said softly.
Erin felt a prickle of doubt. After everything, he didn't truly believe her then? What else could she do to convince him, to save him?!
"I will trust you when I can see it with my own eyes. If this night passes as you say, I will stand with you and face what is to come."
Again she was crying and she couldn't help herself, she threw her body into his chest, grasping him tightly as if he was the only thing left that made any sense; and it was true, he was her very last hope.
/
A/N
Hello, Friday again and I am back.
I know the last few chapters have been a lot of talking and not much action, but of course the closer we get to the surrender, the more the plot is going to quicken. I hope it has all still been a fun read.
I hope you are still enjoying. Thank you for your support, reads and reviews. I hope we can continue down a few more merry paths together :) Maybe it will go the way a few or you suspect or maybe not. I didn't know exactly where this story would end either until I had finished writing it and I'm hoping to keep some of that mystery going for you the reader.
Next week, I'm having a small break to go away for a few days, so there will be no Friday upload. I may try and upload it on Sunday, but it's unlikely I will find the time. My regular schedule will resume on June 23rd. See you all then.
