Drums of Autumn - Diana Gabaldon [438]
He flung himself backward and lashed out with his feet, catching the Indian in the knees. The man went down with a cry of surprise, and Roger rolled, lurching and stumbling to his feet, running for his life.
He ran like a drunken spider, spraddle-legged, staggering toward the trees. Shadows, refuge. There were shouts behind him, and the sound of quick feet scattering leaves. Then something jerked his feet from under him and he fell headlong with a bone-shaking thud.
They had him on his feet before he had his breath back. No good to struggle; there were four of them, including the one Roger had knocked down. That one came toward them, limping, still holding the knife.
“Not hurt you!” he said crossly. He slapped Roger briskly across the face, then leaned over and sawed through the leather thong that bound Roger’s wrists. With a loud snort, he turned on his heel and went back to the horses.
The two men holding Roger promptly let go of him and walked off, too, leaving him swaying like a sapling in a high wind.
Great, he thought blankly, I’m not dead. What the bloody hell?
No answer to this presenting itself, he rubbed a hand gingerly over his face, discovering several bruises he’d missed earlier, and looked around.
He stood in a small clearing, surrounded by huge oaks and half-shed hickory trees; the ground was thick with brown and yellow leaves, and the squirrels had left heaps of acorn caps and nut hulls scattered over the ground. He stood on a mountain; the slope of the ground told him that, as the chill air and jewel-deep sky told him the time was near sunset.
The Indians—there were four, all men—ignored him completely, going about the business of camp-building without a glance in Roger’s direction. He licked dry lips and took a cautious step toward the small stream that burbled over algae-furred rocks a few yards away.
He drank his fill, though the cold water made his teeth ache; nearly all the teeth were loose on one side of his mouth, and the lining of his cheek was badly cut. He rinsed his face gingerly, with a feeling of déjà vu. Sometime earlier, he had washed and drunk like this, cold water running over emerald rocks …
Fraser’s Ridge. He sat back on his heels, memory dropping back in place, in large, ugly chunks.
Brianna, and Claire … and Jamie Fraser. Suddenly the confusing image he had sought so desperately came back unbidden; Brianna’s face, with its broad, clean bones, blue eyes set slantwise above a long, straight nose. But Brianna’s face grown older, weathered to bronze, rough-cut and toughened by masculinity and experience, blue eyes gone black with a murderous rage. Jamie Fraser.
“You bloody sod,” Roger said softly. “You bloody, fucking sod. You tried to kill me.”
His initial feeling was one of astonishment—but anger wasn’t far behind.
He remembered everything now; the meeting in the clearing, the autumn leaves like fire and honey and the blazing man among them; the brown-haired youth—and who the hell was he? The fight—he touched a sore spot under his ribs with a grimace—and the end of it, lying flat in the leaves, sure that he was about to be killed.
Well, he hadn’t been. He had a dim memory of hearing the man and the boy arguing somewhere over him—one of them had been for killing him on the spot, the other said no—but damned if he knew which one. Then one of them had hit him again, and he remembered nothing more until now.
And now—he glanced around. The Indians had a fire going, and a clay pot sitting by it. None of them paid him the least attention, though he was sure they were all aware of him.
Perhaps they had taken him from Fraser and the boy—why, though? More likely, Fraser had given him to the Indians. The man with the knife had said they didn’t mean to hurt him. What did they mean to do with him?
He looked around. It would be night, soon; already, the distant shadows under the oaks had thickened.
So what, sport? If you slope off after dark, where’re you going to? The only direction you know is down. The Indians were apparently ignoring him because