Eye of the Raven Read Online Free Page A

uneasiness on the man's face, and he extended his hand. "Duncan McCallum," he ventured, "formerly of the Medical College of Edinburgh."
    The man's countenance instantly lit, and he pumped Duncan's hand vigorously. "Johan Van Grut of the Hague. Formerly of the university at Louvain and Yale College in the Connecticut colony."
    "My friend carries himself like an old monk, wears his hair in long braids in the traditional style, though he was long educated by Europeans."
    Van Grut frowned. "New militia from Virginia did arrive with two long bundles like bodies. I only saw from afar as I was sketching a partridge. One was taken into the infirmary, the other dumped by the guardhouse." He pointed to an earthwork ramp that led to a buried structure.
    Duncan straightened as he saw that the sentinels at the ramp included not only two infantry regulars with Brown Bess muskets but also a man in the clothes of a frontiersman, a red patch of cloth on his tricorn hat. He spun about, spotting for the first time half a dozen tents pitched in the shade of the oaks at the northeast corner of the fort. He offered the Dutchman a quick salute and strode away.
    Moments later he was behind a tree near the northern palisade, studying the little camp, watching the company for signs of leaders, settling on a square-shouldered bearded man addressed by the others as sergeant whose raspy voice and heavy knife confirmed him as Duncan's assailant of that morning. He crept closer, surveying a line of weapons leaning against a rail lashed between two trees. An instant after he spied his own long rifle, he strode out of his cover, casually lifting his weapon and filling its firing pan from the small horn of priming powder he kept in his pocket. He kept his head down as he approached the sergeant, tapping him on the shoulder with the end of his rifle barrel. As the man turned toward him he slammed the side of his gunstock into his belly, dropping him to his knees, knocking the knife from his hand as he reached for it.
    The fury in the sergeant's eyes slackened as he recognized Duncan, and he waved away the men who were circling him. "It's a miracle, boys," the sergeant sneered. "The garbage has been resurrected from the midden."
    "So it was your idea to bury me in the infirmary's waste," Duncan growled.
    The sergeant made a chagrined gesture toward his men. "That be northern gratitude for ye, boys. We gave him a free hand and here's how he repays us." Guffaws rose from the militiamen. "If they had a doctor or a butcher here we would have poured some fresh blood on ye," he added in a more treacherous voice.
    "I'll have my kit."
    The Virginian spat toward Duncan's feet, leaving a dark stain of tobacco on the ground. "Gonna to be auctioned off, with that of the savage, to pay for the coffin of our brave captain."
    Duncan pulled the hammer of his gun to the half-cock position and aimed it at the sergeant. "I'll have the kit you stole from me, and that of my friend." He ignored the soldiers who began to close around him, keeping his gaze leveled at the bearded man.
    "Your red friend is promised a neck-stretching party. All the same to us if you wish to join him in hell. A man who shares his mess with such filth ain't much better himself."
    "Son of a caoineag!" Duncan spat. The Highland curses shot from Duncan's lips unbidden as he heard himself invoke not just the spawn of a banshee, but the uruisg, the glaistig, and the oneeyed direach, monsters who avenged the innocent. He was barely able to control his fury.
    "We be keeping close watch of your heathen's health," the sergeant chided. "If he looks to be dying we'll string him up without the major's verdict. We'll not be cheated of our justice."
    Duncan pulled the hammer of his gun all the way back.
    "Ye ain't gonna shoot me."
    "No," Duncan agreed, and he swung his rifle toward a keg beside a mound of small bundles. "I'm going to blow your powder and supplies. Of course the splinters from the explosion may take a few