“That one of ourn or one of theirn?” a militiaman asked doubtfully, raising his musket to bear on Ian, just in case.
“He’s mine,” Jamie said. “Don’t shoot him, aye? Ian! Ian!” He didn’t run—his left knee hurt too much to run—but made his way toward his nephew as fast as possible and was relieved to see the glassy look in Ian’s eyes shatter and brighten into recognition at sight of him.
“Uncle Jamie!” Ian shook his head as though to clear it and stopped abruptly with a gasp.
“Are ye bad hurt, a bhalaich?” Jamie asked, stepping back and looking for blood. There was some, but nothing dreadful. The lad wasn’t clutching himself as though wounded in the vitals. . . .
“No. No, it’s—” Ian worked his mouth, trying to get up the spit to make words, and Jamie thrust his canteen into Ian’s hand. There was pitifully little water left in it, but some, enough, and Ian gulped it.
“William,” Ian gasped, lowering the empty canteen. “Your—”
“What about him?” Jamie interrupted. There were more men coming down the road, some of them half-running, looking back. “What?” he repeated, grasping Ian’s arm.
“He’s alive,” Ian said at once, correctly gauging both intent and intensity of the question. “Someone hit him on the head and left him in the bottom of yon ravine.” He gestured vaguely toward the scouts. “Maybe three hundred yards west o’ the bridge, aye? He’s no dead, but I dinna ken how bad hurt he may be.”
Jamie nodded, making instant calculations.
“Aye, and what happened to you?” He could only hope that William and Ian hadn’t happened to each other. But if William was unconscious, it couldn’t be he who’d taken Ian’s horse, and plainly someone had, for—
“Two Abenaki scouts,” Ian replied with a grimace. “The buggers have been following me for—”
Jamie was still holding Ian by the left arm and felt the impact of the arrow and the shock of its reverberation through the lad’s body. Ian glanced unbelievingly at his right shoulder, where the shaft protruded, and gave at the knees, his weight pulling him from Jamie’s grasp as he keeled over.
Jamie launched himself over Ian’s body and hit the ground rolling, avoiding the second arrow; he heard it rip the air near his ear. Heard the militiaman’s gun speak just above him and then a confusion of screaming and shouting, a group of his men breaking, running toward the source of the arrows, bellowing.
“Ian!” He rolled his nephew onto his back. The lad was conscious, but as much of his face as showed under the paint was white and ghastly, his throat working helplessly. Jamie grasped the arrow; it was lodged in what Claire called the deltoid, the fleshy part of the upper arm, but it didn’t budge when he shook it gently.
“I think it’s struck the bone,” he said to Ian. “No bad, but the tip’s stuck fast.”
“I think so, too,” Ian said faintly. He was struggling to sit up, but couldn’t. “Break it off, aye? I canna be going about wi’ it sticking out like that.”
Jamie nodded, got his nephew sitting unsteadily upright, and broke the shaft between his hands, leaving a ragged stub a few inches long with which to pull the arrow out. There wasn’t much blood, only a trickle running down Ian’s arm. Claire could see to getting the arrowhead out later.
The shouting and confusion were becoming widespread. A glance showed him more men coming down the road, and he heard a fife signaling in the distance, thin and desperate.
“D’ye ken what’s happened up there?” he said to Ian, nodding toward the noise. Ian shook his head.
“I saw Colonel Owen comin’ down wi’ his cannon all in shambles. He stopped to say a word to Lee and then came on, but he wasna running.”
A few men were running, though in a heavy, clumsy way—not as though pursuit was close. But he could feel alarm beginning to spread through the men around him and turned to them at once.
“Stay by me,” he said calmly to Guthrie. “Keep your men together, and by me. Mr. Bixby—say that to Captain Kirby, as well. Stay by me; dinna move save on my word.”
The men from Craddock’s company who had run after the Abenaki—he supposed that to be the source of the arrows—had vanished into the woods. He hesitated for an instant, but then sent a small party after them. No Indian he’d ever met would fight from a fixed position, so he doubted he was sending his men into ambush. Perhaps into the face of the oncoming British, but if that was the case, best he knew about it as soon as possible, and at least one or two would likely make it back to tell him.
Ian was getting his feet under him; Jamie bent and gave the lad an arm under his good shoulder and got him standing. His legs shook in their buckskins and sweat ran in sheets down his bare torso, but he stood.
“Was it you who called my name, Uncle Jamie?” he asked.
“Aye, I did when I saw ye come out of the trees.” Jamie nodded toward the wood, keeping one eye out for anyone coming back that way. “Why?”
“Not then. Just before this—” He touched the ragged end of the arrow shaft gingerly. “Someone called out behind me; that’s what made me move, and a good thing, too. I’d ha’ taken this square in the chest otherwise.”
Jamie shook his head and felt that faint sense of bemusement that always attended brushes with ghosts—if that’s what this was. The only strangeness of it was that it never seemed strange at all.