The Fiery Cross - Diana Gabaldon [433]
The corner of her mouth trembled as she looked at me; I thought she meant it for a smile.
“He’ll be all right,” she said. “We’ll find him.”
“Yes,” I said, and let go her hand. “I know you will.”
I watched her hurry across the clearing, hands clenched in her raised skirts, and felt the counterweight of fear come loose, plunging like a stone into my belly.
68
EXECUTION OF ORDERS
ROGER WOKE SLOWLY, to throbbing pain and a sense of dreadful urgency. He had no idea where he was, or how he came to be there, but there were voices, lots of voices, some talking just beyond the range of comprehension, some singing like harpies, in shrill discord. For a moment, he felt the voices were inside his head. He could see them, little brown things with leather wings and sharp teeth, banging into each other in paroxysms of interruption that set off small bombs of light behind his eyes.
He could feel the seam along which his head must surely split under the pressure, a burning streak across the top of his skull. He wanted someone to come and unzip it, to let out all the flying voices and their racket, to leave his skull an empty bowl of shining bone.
He had no real sense of opening his eyes, and stared numbly for some minutes, thinking that the scene on which he looked was still part of the confusion inside his skull. Men swarmed before him in a sea of colors, swirling blues and reds and yellows, mixed with blobs of green and brown.
A defect in his vision deprived him of perspective and caused him to see them in fragments—a distant cluster of heads floating like a bobble of hairy balloons, a waving arm that held a crimson banner, seemingly severed from its body. Several pairs of legs that must be close by . . . was he sitting on the ground? He was. A fly droned past his ear and landed, buzzing, on his upper lip, and he moved by reflex to swat it, only then realizing that he was indeed awake—and still bound.
His hands had gone numb beyond any sense of pain, but the ache now throbbed through the straining muscles of his arms and shoulders. He shook his head to clear it, a terrible mistake. Blinding pain shot through his head, bringing water to his eyes.
He blinked hard and breathed deep, willing himself to grasp some shred of reality, to come to himself. Focus, he thought. Hold on. The singing voices had faded away, leaving only a faint ringing in his ears. The others were still talking, though, and now he knew that the sound was real, he was able to seize on a word here and there, and pin it down, flapping, to examine for meaning.
“Example.”
“Governor.”
“Rope.”
“Piss.”
“Regulators.”
“Stew.”
“Foot.”
“Hang.”
“Hillsborough.”
“Water.”
“Water.” That one made sense. He knew water. He wanted water; wanted it badly. His throat was dry, his mouth felt as though it was stuffed with . . . it was stuffed with something; he gagged as his tongue moved in an unconscious attempt at swallowing.
“Governor.” The repeated word, spoken just above him, made him look up. He fixed his floating vision on a face. Lean, dark, frowning with a fierce intent.
“You are sure?” the face said, and he wondered dimly, Sure of what? He was sure of nothing, save that he was in a bad way.
“Yessir,” said another voice, and he saw another face swim into view alongside the first. This one seemed familiar, fringed with thick black beard. “I saw him in Hermon Husband’s camp, palavering with Husband. You ask amongst the prisoners, sir—they’ll say so.”
The first head nodded. It turned to the side, and up, addressing someone taller. Roger’s eyes drifted up, seeking, and he jerked upright with a muffled exclamation, as he saw the green eyes looking down on him, dispassionate.
“He’s James MacQuiston,” said the green-eyed man, nodding confirmation. “From Hudgin’s Ferry.”
“You saw him in the battle?” The first man was coming into complete focus, a soldierly-looking fellow in his late thirties, dressed in uniform. Something else was coming into focus—James MacQuiston. He’d heard of MacQuiston