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I nodded and he vanished into the trees. I stared after him for a long moment, discontent, sympathy and confusion turning my already unhappy stomach. Then I fortified myself and set off.
My mother, Demery, Olsa and Illya waited beneath the larch. I listened as Anne reiterated the plan for the dozenth time and watched Olsa and Illya leave to scout. Finally, Rosser appeared with two sailors and Demery moved to confer with him.
Samuel Rosser glanced at me as if he had something he wished to say, but unlike Grant, he kept focused on his task.
For my part, I hesitated, recalling all I’d overheard in the hold just a few hours before. I wanted to tell him I knew the truth about him and Benedict now. I wanted to tell him that I thought him a good man. I sensed what those words would mean to him, but with Lirr, the coming battle and my own condition weighing upon me, I already felt vulnerable. I couldn’t summon the strength to expose myself any further.
So I smiled at him, if a little sadly. His expression gentled and he offered a nod in return, then he was gone into the snow and the shadows.
Finally, my mother and I lit a small fire, sheltered by the rock where the larch grew, and settled in. Trees moaned in the frigid wind, branches squeaking, bare limbs rattling. Loose snow raced across the crusted surface and I burrowed my chin in my scarf. I thought of the marksmen in the treetops, and Grant and Rosser at their posts. I wouldn’t be surprised if, come tomorrow, half the casualties were from cold.
Anne sat beside me and started to sing softly. The wind eased and the half-night quietened around us. Even the murmur of sleeping ghistings seemed to hush. If I hadn’t known this strange forest sheltered our small army, I would never have guessed it.
Their footprints in the snow, however, would betray them right away.
Anne kept singing, and as she did, words welled up in my throat too. I brushed my bottom lip across the frosty edge of my scarf for an indecisive moment, then pulled the scarf down and joined in.
The song was a common one, the kind Demery’s sailors sung to pass the time, but my mother made it into a gentler thing, with sweet minors and a subtle warning behind each word. I matched her tone and took on a natural harmony, hedging her words and echoing them.
As we did, the wind faded and it began to snow.
“Oh, now the storm is raging
and we are far from shore;
The poor old ship she’s sinking fast
and the riggings they are tore.”
Thick snowflakes drifted down from the sky above, thickening until I could barely see Tane’s larch, lording above us.
“The night is dark and dreary,
we can scarcely see the moon,
But still I live in hope to see
the Holy Ground once more.”
The snow thickened. Our song filled the Wold until every footprint, every trace of our forces was gone.
Snow continued to fall long after Anne and I stopped singing, piling up around us and clinging to our clothes. It hissed and evaporated in our fire, the only sound other than the rush of my blood and the whisper of my breath.
Finally, Tane spoke. She felt like memory or a fragmented dream, but truer and more familiar than either could ever be.
Sister, she hummed through my chest.They’re coming.
Gunshots erupted through the Wold.
FORTY-THREE
Black Tide Son
SAMUEL
Iunfolded from the shelter of a boulder and fired. My target fell like a sack of grain and I ducked to reload. On either side of me, my companions cracked off shots, the mist of their breaths mingling with gun smoke and snow in the north’s infinite dusk.
I fired again. This time an enemy musket ball clipped my forearm and I cursed, dropping back behind the boulder. Another shot slammed into the rock with a spattering of dust.
