Jack Absolute (16 page)

‘Leaving so soon, Absolute?’ the officer drawled. Major Stephen Watts, of the Royal Greens, had a way of speaking that complemented
the slowness of his movements. He seemed to be in a perpetual yawn.

Jack felt a sudden anger. Good men were dying up ahead, Loyalist and Native, and this officer strolled. But he was Jack’s
superior, albeit an American.

‘Looking for you, sir. The action is quite hot ahead.’

‘Yes?’ The syllable stretched out. As swiftly as he could, Jack précised the situation.

‘Really?’ Watts yawned again at the report’s conclusion. Jack wondered if the man had been at the laudanum. ‘Well, no doubt
the Rebel will be hoping for a sally from the Fort to their aid. Let’s feed that hope.’ He waved his hand at a man beside
him. ‘Captain! Turn coats.’

‘Aye, Major.’ The officer faced the ranks behind, then yelled, ‘Turn coats!’

The cry was passed back down the lines. Men gave their
muskets to the man next to them and reversed their coats. From the green of a Loyalist they were transformed into something
similar to the men back in the valley, the buff uniforms of the Tryon County Militia.

When his ranks were once more organized – an agonizingly long process to Jack – Watts lifted his tricorn hat and waved it
above his head.

‘Strike me up one of those damn Rebel songs,’ he cried, and his fife and whistle players commenced a snail-like version of
‘Yankee Doodle’.

Gradually, though, the regiment advanced to the action. As they entered the ravine, Jack could see that the hillock had become
a Rebel rallying point, Seneca dead and dying scattered before it.

‘There, Major. There’s the centre of resistance. Break them and the field is ours.’

‘I can see that perfectly well, Captain.’ Watts’s tone was frosty, the emphasis on Jack’s rank deliberate. He lifted his tricorn
again from his head, waved it, and shouted, ‘For the Colonies! Freedom!’ His cry was echoed by his men as they marched cheering
towards the hill, deploying in a line as they came.

For a moment, the sight of the regiment brought near silence to the field. Men on each side squinted through the gunsmoke
at what they hoped were friends or feared were a new enemy. Hopes soared or sank as to their conclusions. Then a voice pierced
the near silence. It came from the centre of the Rebel-held hill.

‘Bollocks, lads! It’s a trick. Look in the front rank there – that’s Isaiah Herkimer, the General’s traitor brother!’

Jack sighed. It was always a poor plan, he’d felt. Too many connections in a civil war. Knowing what was coming, he moved
away from the main body of the troops, Até following. Behind them the advancing ranks halted.

‘And there’s my bloody cousin, Frank, Aunt Mary’s boy.’ Another voice came. ‘Always was a little bastard. Give ’em hell, boys.’

More recognitions, more voices rising, soon lost in ragged gunfire. It was not much of a volley; two men dropped in the front
rank. The rest prepared to return fire. But Watts was staring at his hat, until a moment before aloft above his head. He put
two fingers through two holes and it seemed to decide him.

‘Retreat, lads,’ he cried, clamping the hat on his head. ‘Regroup at two hundred paces.’

Then, with an alacrity he’d failed so far to display, he fled the field. Jeers and more bullets followed the buff backs. Jack
knew that they would not halt at two hundred or two thousand paces. They would halt back at their camps.

‘I think this fight is over, Daganoweda.’ Até jutted his chin towards the battleground. They watched as the Seneca withdrew
back up the slopes. To the left, the rest of Johnson’s Loyalist regiment were imitating their comrades and streaming back
towards Fort Stanwix.

‘They hold the field, Até. But we have stopped them, hurt them. They will not relieve the Fort, at least.’ Jack shook his
head. ‘But it could have been so much more. Shall we see if we can find our Wolves?’

On the higher path, Joseph Brant was leading his warriors back. Scattered among them, and roughly handled, were various Rebel
prisoners. Jack noted that the huge Scots Captain he’d duelled with was being dragged along, clutching his bloodied side,
cursing his captors continuously – and unintelligibly. Jack was surprised but, strangely, not altogether displeased to see
him alive.

Brant grunted in frustration when he heard Jack’s tale. ‘Our White Father across the water is served by some poor sons this
side of it,’ he muttered.

‘But not his Native sons.’ Até pointed to the slopes where the Iroquois – Seneca and Mohawk – were kneeling among the wounded
and the dead. Lamentations were being uttered, voices raised in anguish. The Condoling Time, the Iroquois way of mourning,
was beginning.

‘They fought like a marvel,’ said Jack, ‘in a way that was unfamiliar to them.’

‘And paid in blood,’ Brant said. The three men stood for a moment, as the agonized cries became more general, turning into
one song of despair. ‘The white man can afford to lose this many. His supply is like your name, Daganoweda – inexhaustible.
We …’

He did not need to go on, his gesturing hand falling slowly to his side. In their journey to Oswego, Jack and Até had already
noted how scattered were the nations of the Iroquois, how thinly spread its people. This loss of its manhood was an horrendous
blow.

‘Come,’ said Jack, ‘let us return to the camp. Maybe there’ll be some comfort for us there.’

They knew something was wrong long before they reached Fort Stanwix; they could smell it on the wind. A breeze, blowing from
the west, bore into their nostrils the taint of smoke. At first it gave them hope that somehow the inefficient artillery had
managed to set the Fort alight. But cresting the last rise, they saw that the black-grey columns spiralled up, not from the
wood and earthen structure but away to the east and south of it. From the Indian camps.

Jack, Até, and Brant began to run. Soon, other sounds added to their dismay. Not only the staccato crackling of flames but
the wails of men and women.

They sprinted into horror. The camp of the Iroquois was burning. Cedar-bark shelters and deer-hide tents were topped by crimson,
those that had not already collapsed. Some
warriors, newly returned from the fight, were rushing about desperately, seeking, calling. Bodies lay everywhere.

Jack bent to one. A young woman’s, curled up as if in sleep. Yet her deer-skin dress was not singed. It was neither flame
nor smoke that had killed her but the deep gash in her back.

Jack rose. His voice croaked and he had to clear it to speak. ‘Bayonet,’ he said, wiping blood on to his shirt.

An old man sat near, knees drawn up to chest, long white hair falling to his shoulders, and Brant knelt swiftly beside him.
‘What happened here, Sagehjowah?’

‘Soldiers came. From the Fort. They brought their fire and the knives on their guns.’

‘The Fort?’ Jack squinted through the smoke to where the tops of Stanwix’s palisades were just visible. Above them still floated
that strange banner of stars and stripes. ‘But they are under siege. How did they sally out? Weren’t the Regulars here to
protect you?’

Coughing racked the old man and Até bent down, gave him water from a canteen. When he had recovered, they had to lean in closer,
for he could only whisper. ‘The Green Ones guarded us, those who speak the language in the throat we cannot understand. One
came, made them move to the other side of the Fort. The door opened, the Yankee soldiers came out to our camp.’

Another fit of coughing took him and he slipped on to his side. Jack was staring again, this time towards the Regulars’ encampment.

‘German is a language of the throat. And the Jaegers wear green.’

Brant was only giving voice to Jack’s thoughts. With Até at his side, Jack began running again, towards the Union Standard.

A table had been set up outside St Leger’s tent. The
Colonel sat behind it, red-faced and sweating. Before him stood the two Loyalist commanders, Johnson and Butler, arguing furiously
with each other, with him. Behind him were grouped his own officers, including, leaning on a cane and sporting a livid red
bruise on his chin, the Count von Schlaben.

Jack strode straight into the centre of the group. ‘Who ordered the guard withdrawn from the Indian camps?’

‘Captain Absolute, how dare—’ St Leger was struggling to rise from his chair.

‘Who ordered the guard withdrawn?’

‘For shame, sir.’ Ancrum stepped forward, laying an arm on Jack’s. ‘You will not address your Commander in such a manner.’

Jack threw the arm off. ‘I care not a fig for that. Our allies’ camps are in flames, women and children lie massacred there,
families of men who just sacrificed themselves for our cause in that damned ravine. And you wish me to be concerned about
etiquette?’

A hubbub arose – the shocked Loyalists, the blustering St Leger, the reprimanding Ancrum. But it was a German voice, as ever,
that cut through it all.

‘I ordered my Jaegers into a new position, Captain Absolute, to cover the withdrawal from the battle in the ravine.’ Von Schlaben
stroked his jaw as if he could get it to function better. ‘I thought it the proper course to take.’

‘You thought it … proper?’ Jack rubbed his fingers together. They were still tacky with a young woman’s blood. ‘You allowed
these people to be slaughtered, you …’

He ran out of words, anger choking them in his throat. As he tried to regain breath, as he took a step towards the German,
St Leger finally managed to stand.

‘Your superior’s orders are not yours to question, Absholute,’ he slurred. ‘It was sound tactical thinking on the
Count’s part. It may have had somewhat unfortunate results but—’

‘Unfortunate? Colonel, this tactic … that man … may have cost you more than half your army. If the Natives stay—’

A hand at his elbow halted him. Até jerked his head back the way they had come. Jack listened. A drum had begun a frenzied
beat. Within the keening of loss, the wails of lamentation, an uglier noise was building.

‘Oh no,’ Jack murmured, ‘no.’ He turned and began to run, ignoring the immediate cries of ‘Captain Absolute’ that pursued
him.

They arrived back at the smoking camp too late – and just in time. A gauntlet had been formed, two lines of warriors of all
the Iroquois nations and others beside, men and women, united at last – in vengeance. They clutched war clubs, knives, brands
snatched from the flames of their ruined shelters. They used these and their fists and feet to strike at white men, prisoners
from the battle, and some Oneidas too, forcing them to run between the lines. Many had not made it, lay broken to the side
where they’d been dragged. Those who did were knocked down at the gauntlet’s end, their heads pulled back, throats slit. A
group was bottlenecked at the start, waiting their turn, some on their knees praying loudly, some crying, most just standing
there staring, disbelieving.

One was roaring. The Scots Captain was leaning on a smaller comrade, still clutching at the jacket that Jack had shredded
with his sabre. As warriors ran to spit at him, to curse, he spat and cursed back. He was a few men away from the run to death.

Jack did not hesitate. Their earlier duel bound the Scot to him, somehow. ‘Mine!’ he yelled. Plunging straight in, he grabbed
the huge man’s jacket, began to pull him from the crowd. The man he’d leaned on clung to him, two others saw the gap and followed
in the wake.

Two furious warriors leaped before them. ‘Ours! Ours!’ they screamed, ripping Jack’s guiding hand away, trying to shove the
men back. More warriors started to push nearer, anxious not to be deprived of their prey. The four white men were bunched
into a group, Native hands grabbing, jerking.

Jack stepped away to give himself room. Then he drew his sabre, waved it above their heads if not straight at them.

‘See where my sword has cut him.’ He gestured to the slash still oozing in the huge man’s jacket. ‘I marked him for death.
Only I can claim him.’ Reaching down, he stuck his fingers into the Scotsman’s wound.

The man groaned, cried out, ‘Gan awa, ya loon.’

He tried to swing at Jack but the blow was weak and Jack ducked it. Swiftly, he used the blood to mark the faces of the four
men.

‘Mine. They bear my mark. I will take them and only I will kill them or make them slaves. I am Daganoweda of the Mohawk and
it is my right.’

With that, he raised his sword again, let all see it, then rested it on his shoulder. With his other hand he grabbed the Militia
Captain, then elbowed the biggest, most argumentative warrior out of his way. Screams from behind drew the attention of the
others. Turning, they saw that there were still plenty of white men to kill, revenge easier to take. With a final glare and
a spit, they let Jack and Até pass.

They did not turn back, did not stop until they were in the shelter of the woods. There the prisoners fell, three of them
sobbing, to the forest floor. The trees were a screen to the sights only, some trick of sound making it seem as if they were
still in the very midst of the shrieks of agony, the death wails, the cries of cruel triumph. In one of the lower reaches
of hell.

Jack looked down at the Militiamen, two little more than boys, weeping for their mothers, the third older, near tooth-
less, hands clasped before him in prayer. The fourth, the Scotsman whose life he’d tried to take and now had saved, because
of some strange sense of honour, was clutching at his side, fresh blood once more running down to join a huge stain on his
breeches. Despite his size and obvious strength, he looked as if he was about to faint.

‘Come on,’ said Jack, raising his voice above the din. ‘There’s something useful the King’s army can do. At least they can
stitch a prisoner’s wounds.’

He bent, put his arms under the big man’s, helped him to rise. The effort made him suddenly realize how tired he was, how
his back, forgotten this while, ached where he’d been struck.

The Scotsman leaned on Jack. He truly was enormous, and bulky with it, his hair as red as his blood, his eyes loch blue.