One
Susquehanna River
Maryland Colony, 1758
Three days, and I'm still alive . . .
Tess shifted her weight on her knees and lifted the heavy paddle, thrusting it into the river again. Droplets of icy water splashed up, wetting her and the savage seated in the bow of the birchbark canoe.
The Mohawk, Broken Tooth, turned around and barked at her in his guttural tongue, raising his palm in a threat to strike her. Tess lifted her chin a notch as if to dare him, and stared straight ahead, focusing beyond him on the very tip of the painted canoe.
Bastard . . . Three days ago this Mohawk with the decayed teeth, along with a dozen others, had attacked the hired carriage in which she and her cousin Jocelyn had been traveling. The beasts had killed the driver there on the road, but they had kidnapped Tess and Jocelyn.
Tess concentrated on paddling as the canoe sliced through the water. She knew that she had to walk a delicate line between standing up to Broken Tooth and making him so angry that he slit her throat and threw her overboard into the muddy river.
Tess didn't know why the red heathens had kidnapped her and Jocelyn, or what they intended to do with them. She didn't even want to consider the possibilities. She'd heard those whispered tales about other white women who'd been captured by Indians. Some were made slaves to hostiles up north, while others were sold to the French Canadians for whores.
All Tess knew was that she had to be brave. She had to be brave and tough. She had to want to live badly enough to survive this. That was what she had tried to tell Jocelyn.
Tess blinked back the tears that made her eye ache. She'd tried to help cousin Jocelyn. She'd tried to tell her that if she would just do what they said, Uncle Albert would come for them. He would bring soldiers and rescue them from the savages. They just had to hang on until help arrived.
But Jocelyn wouldn't listen. She wouldn't keep up. The Indians were traveling fast and they expected the women to do the same. Tess had kept her mouth shut and done as she was told. She had pretended she wasn't afraid. Jocelyn had cried. She had begged. She had laid down in the forest and refused to get up, sobbing that she was tired and hungry. Tess had tried to drag her, she'd tried to carry her, but Jocelyn had refused to cooperate. She'd told Tess she'd rather be dead than be a captive of these murderers.
The memories of Jocelyn's tortured screams echoed in Tess's mind, and gooseflesh raised on the back of her neck. She would never forget those sounds . . . not as long as she lived.
The second day after their capture, around midday, Jocelyn had sat down on a log, arranged her tattered traveling gown, and refused to get up. Broken Tooth had ordered her to rise or die. Tess had pleaded with her, but then the Mohawk had shoved Tess and told her to get back into line behind the other men. The Indians had continued walking, leaving Broken Tooth and Jocelyn behind. Tess had screamed for her cousin to get up and run to catch up; Jocelyn hadn't budged.
Tess had heard the first shrieks just after she and the other Mohawk had disappeared from Jocelyn's sight around a bend in the road. Tess had tried to turn back, but the men had caught her and wrestled her to the ground. They'd blackened her eye in the struggle and then tied her hands together to pull her on a tether.
It had seemed that Jocelyn's screams had gone on forever. But as frightening as those sounds had been, the silence afterward had been worse.
Tess felt her lower lip tremble. She tried to think about paddling the canoe and not about Jocelyn. It was too late to help her cousin now. Broken Tooth had a hank of blood-stained blonde hair on his belt to prove it.
Tess knew that at this point she couldn't help anyone but herself. She had to stop making herself crazy thinking about Jocelyn, and concentrate on escaping. These bastards had murdered cousin Jocelyn, but they wouldn't get her. Broken Tooth would carry no red-haired scalp on his belt. But Tess knew she had to figure out a way to escape soon. The further north they got, the weaker she would become, and the harder it would be for her to find her way home to her uncle's once she was free.
Tess shifted her weight from one knee to the other and back again. The little bit of water in the bottom of the canoe had wet her worsted-wool petticoat and stockings. She was wet and cold, and her feet ached with pins and needles. She glanced over her shoulder, her mind ticking.
There were three canoes paddling in a line, thirteen Mohawk in all. She was in the last canoe along with Broken Tooth and two others. She watched her paddle dip into the cold river water and come up again. Her arms ached from the exertion, but she was used to hard work. Any chambermaid in her uncle's house was used to hard work.
Tess' thoughts raced. She was a good swimmer. Why didn't she just jump and take her chances? The river was wide here, but they were still paddling close to shore. With a little luck, she could cause enough commotion diving overboard that it would take the Mohawk a minute or so to come after her. If she could reach the shore, she could quickly disappear into forest. Unbound as she was now, she could run.
Tess studied the back of Broken Tooth's head. His head was shaved bald save for the long scalplock of black hair that stuck up from the top of his head like a stiff cock's comb. God in heaven, what she wouldn't give to hang his filthy scalp on her own belt.
Tess went on paddling. If she did this, if she dove overboard, she'd only have one chance. She'd live or die by this one chance at freedom.
She stared at the water ahead. The river was widening. The canoes were veering off, paddling slowly toward the center of the river. If she waited much longer, she might not be able to make it to the shore before they caught up to her in their canoes.
Tess gripped the paddle, taking a deep breath.
Raven and his brother, Takooko, crept along the bank of the great Susquehanna River, following the band of Mohawk as they paddled close to shore in their painted birchbark canoes.
A white-skinned woman with hair of fire rode in the last canoe. She sat on her knees, her back ramrod straight, her paddle cutting into the water with the same rhythm as the men in the canoe.
Raven and his brother had been watching the Mohawk since dawn. They had come upon their camp and followed them, wanting to be certain the marauders were headed north to their homes and not south to attack Raven and Takooko's Lenape village.
"They cut toward the center of the mighty river, brother," Takooko whispered. "They head home. They have tired of their killing, stealing, and kidnapping, and yearn for the comfort of their lodges. They will not come our way. We must turn back."
Raven crept past his brother, his gaze fixed on the red-haired white woman in the last canoe. This morning when he and Takooko had come upon the Mohawk he'd considered trying to rescue the woman from them. Obviously she was a captive. But there were a dozen Mohawk and only two of them. Raven knew it would be suicide to enter the camp of Mohawk raiders without more men. Takooko had said it was the woman's fate to be taken by the enemy. He argued that the two of them couldn't be responsible for every captive the Mohawk took. Raven understood his logic, but still he couldn't stop thinking about her. What right did these men have to take her from her life?
The Mohawk of the Seven Nations were enemies to the Lenape. His people considered them filthy, disgusting creatures without souls.
Raven watched the redhead paddle as he crept along the shoreline. She kept glancing around her as if coming to some decision. He turned to his brother. "I think she will jump, brother," he said in the Algonquian tongue of his ancestors.
Takooko chuckled. "A white woman? They have no spines. They allow themselves to be dragged off. I would kill myself before I would let a Mohawk take me."
Raven glanced over his shoulder at his brother. Takooko was a great warrior, but he was still young—only twenty summers. He didn't understand the sanctity of life, nor the finality of death.
Raven cocked the trigger of his most prized possession, an English Brown Bess musket. He heard his brother behind him pull an arrow from his quiver and notch it in his bow.
"We shouldn't be getting involved in this, brother," Takooko warned.
"We're not involved, but should she jump, there's no reason why we cannot give her aid." Raven grinned crookedly. "Tell me you wouldn't like to see one of your arrows buried to the hilt in one of those dogs."
"Our responsibility is to return home to our village with word from the Assembly of the Clans. For a man who vies for War Chief, you forget your responsibilities to your people too easily."
Raven shook his head, walking faster as they came to a slight bend in the river. "Takooko, my brother, you—" He stopped in mid-sentence.
Just as the canoes made the turn in the river, the white woman stood up.
"I told you," Raven whispered.
The birchbark canoe rocked wildly. The Mohawk with the bad teeth was just turning around when she swung the paddle with all her might and struck him in the back of the head.
The Mohawk shrieked in pain and grabbed his head. Even from the shore, Raven could see the stain of blood. The other two Mohawk pulled up their paddles, but when they stood to reach for her, one fell out into the river, the other fell forward. The sound of splitting wood filled the air.
The red haired woman struck the Mohawk seated in the bow of the canoe a second time and then heaved the paddle skyward. She pulled something from the Mohawk's belt and dove into the muddy water.
She entered the river with barely a splash. The other two canoes were just maneuvering turns to paddle back toward the third canoe which was slowly sinking.
It seemed an eternity before the redhead broke the surface of the water, but when she did, she was a good twenty yards from the canoe. As she came up, gasping for air, a layer of women's clothing bubbled up and drifted away. The female had taken off her skirts to swim faster.
Chuckling to himself, Raven took in the scene. This woman needed no aid, she was doing fine on her own. The Mohawk who had been struck with the paddle was wildly shouting commands as his canoe sank lower in the water. The Mohawk in the river began to swim out after the woman. The Mohawk in the bow of the sinking boat was now signalling for one of the other canoes to come for him.
Raven couldn't resist a grin. The Mohawk was slowly gaining on the woman, but she was a swift swimmer. Raven lifted his musket to his shoulder and closed one eye, beading in on the Mohawk in pursuit. He would help her out. "A little closer, Mohawk dog," Raven murmured.
Without looking back at the man pursuing her, the redhead pulled herself through the water with hard, quick strokes.
The man was almost in reach of her. He put out one hand to grab her foot.
Raven touched the trigger and his musket belched smoke and fire. The sound of the gunshot caught the attention of the Mohawk in the canoes as the musketball struck the man in the water.
He sank like a stone.
Frightened by the musket fire the white woman dove under the water.
Raven began the process of reloading. A Mohawk from one of the other canoes had jumped into the water and begun to swim toward the woman, but when he heard the musket fire, he dove beneath the surface, closer to the canoes.
The man who'd been struck by the woman's paddle shouted another command and a shower of arrows flew through the air just as she dove. But the female was smart. She veered left, instead of swimming straight for the shore.
Takooko watched over his brother's shoulder. "The girl's got bullocks and brains," he murmured with a grin.
She had almost reached the shore now. Raven slung his musket over his shoulder and ran along the treeline, taking care not to let the Mohawk see him. Takooko ran behind.
Raven waited until she reached solid ground and scrambled up the bank. Only when she had disappeared from the Mohawk's sight into the forest, did Raven step out in front of her.
"White woman—" he called in accented English.
Tess screamed. Where in Christ's name had they come from? She whipped out the knife she had taken from Broken Tooth's belt, spraying the Indian with cold water. "Get back," she threatened, brandishing the skinning knife. The hostile took another step toward her and she slashed at him with the knife. His forearm immediately stained red.
Tess stumbled backward, turned and ran.
"Wait," cried the savage in English. "We mean you no harm."
Tess was panting heavily as she dove through the briars, panicked. The two men behind her weren't Mohawk, she knew that from their dress and long braided hair, but they were Indians weren't they? Murdering savages.
"Wait," the voice called. "My brother and I, we mean you no harm."
Tess could hear his footsteps behind her as she crashed through the brush. He was gaining on her. She didn't know how much further she could run. She'd not eaten in three days and she was weaker from the hard travel than she'd realized.
Suddenly the Indian had caught up to her. He grabbed her shoulder and swung her around. Tess sliced the knife through the air, but he blocked her arm, and she struck solid flesh, knocking the knife from her own hand.
"No," Tess moaned, beating him with her fists. She'd not let them take her again. Not while there was still fight left in her bones. "Let me go! Let me go!"
"It is all right," he soothed in a strange lilting voice. "It is all right. This man will not harm you, Fire Woman."
It didn't make any sense. The Indian was speaking English. He was saying he wouldn't hurt her, but he was still fighting her. Why didn't he let her go?
Both struck the ground and rolled. Dead leaves clung to her wet hair and sodden clothing. He pushed her over on her back, pinning her wrists to the ground. Tess struggled with the last bit of strength she could muster.
Their gazes met, her frightened brown eyes, his as black as the depths of hell.
"Stop this!" he said. "I tell you I won't hurt you."
"Then let me up!" Tess snapped.
His black-eyed gaze was mesmerizing. "Stop fighting me and I will," he said softly.