A Breath of Snow and Ashes - Diana Gabaldon [164]
I CAME OUT of sleep again sometime later. Instantly, fully conscious, heart pounding. But it wasn’t my heart—it was a drum.
Sounds of startlement came from the direction of the fire, men rousing in alarm from sleep.
“Indians!” someone shouted, and the light broke and flared, as someone kicked at the fire to scatter it.
It wasn’t an Indian drum. I sat up, listening hard. It was a drum with a sound like a beating heart, slow and rhythmic, then trip-hammer fast, like the frantic surge of a hunted beast.
I could have told them that Indians never used drums as weapons; Celts did. It was the sound of a bodhran.
What next? I thought, a trifle hysterically, bagpipes?
It was Roger, certainly; only he could make a drum talk like that. It was Roger, and Jamie was nearby. I scrambled to my feet, wanting, needing urgently to move. I jerked at the rope around my waist in a frenzy of impatience, but I was going nowhere.
Another drum began, slower, less skilled, but equally menacing. The sound seemed to move—it was moving. Fading, coming back full force. A third drum began, and now the thumping seemed to come from everywhere, fast, slow, mocking.
Someone fired a gun into the forest, panicked.
“Hold, there!” Hodgepile’s voice came, loud and furious, but to no avail; there was a popcorn rattle of gunfire, nearly drowned by the sound of the drums. I heard a snick near my head, and a cluster of needles brushed past me as it fell. It dawned on me that standing upright while guns were blindly fired all round me was a dangerous strategy, and I promptly fell flat, burrowing into the dead needles, trying to keep the trunk of the tree betwixt me and the main body of men.
The drums were weaving, now closer, now farther, the sound unnerving even to one who knew what it was. They were circling the camp, or so it seemed. Should I call out, if they came near enough?
I was saved from the agony of decision; the men were making so much noise round the campfire that I couldn’t have been heard if I’d screamed myself hoarse. They were calling out in alarm, shouting questions, bellowing orders—which apparently went ignored, judging from the ongoing sounds of confusion.
Someone blundered through the brush nearby, running from the drums. One, two more—the sound of gasping breath and crunching footsteps. Donner? The thought came to me suddenly and I sat up, then fell flat again as another shot whistled past overhead.
The drums stopped abruptly. Chaos reigned around the fire, though I could hear Hodgepile trying to get his men in order, yelling and threatening, nasal voice raised above the rest. Then the drums began again—much closer.
They were drawing in, drawing together, somewhere out in the forest on my left, and the mocking tip-tap-tip-tap beating had changed. They were thundering now. No skill, just menace. Coming closer.
Guns fired wildly, close enough for me to see the muzzle flash and smell the smoke, thick and hot on the air. The faggots of the fire had been scattered, but still burned, making a muted glow through the trees.
“There they are! I see ’em!” someone yelled from the fire, and there was another burst of musket-fire, toward the drums.
Then the most unearthly howl rose out of the dark to my right. I’d heard Scots scream going into battle before, but that particular Highland shriek made the hairs on my body prickle from tailbone to nape. Jamie. Despite my fears, I sat bolt upright and peered round my sheltering tree, in time to see demons boil out of the wood.
I knew them—knew I knew them—but cowered back at sight of them, blackened with soot and shrieking with the madness of hell, firelight red on the blades of knives and axes.
The drums had stopped abruptly, with the first scream, and now another set of howls broke out to the left, the drummers racing in to the kill. I pressed myself flat back against the tree, heart chokingly huge in my throat, petrified for fear the blades would strike at any random movement in the shadows.
Someone