The Outlandish Companion - Diana Gabaldon [250]
“Leave him go!” The woman’s eyes narrowed like a weasel’s, and her eyeteeth shone in a snarl.
I didn’t dare take my eyes away from the woman’s long enough to look at Jamie. I could see him, though, at the edge of my vision, head turned to the side, his neck gleaming white, exposed and vulnerable.
“Stand up and step back,” I said, “or I’ll choke him to death, I swear I will!”
She crouched over Jamie’s body, knife in hand, as she measured me, trying to make up her mind whether I meant it. I did.
The boy struggled and twisted in my grasp, his feet hammering against my shins. He was small for his age, and thin as a stick, but strong nonetheless; it was like wrestling an eel. I tightened my hold on his neck; he gurgled and quit struggling. His hair was thick with rancid grease and dirt, the smell of it rank in my nostrils.
Slowly, the woman stood up. She was much smaller than I, and scrawny with it—bony wrists stuck out of the ragged sleeves. I couldn’t guess her age—under the filth and the puffiness of malnutrition, she might have been anything from twenty to fifty.
“My man lies yonder, dead on the ground,” she said, jerking her head at the fog behind her. “’E hadn’t nothing but his musket, and the sergeant’ll take that back.”
Her eyes slid toward the distant wood, where the British troops had retreated. “I’ll find a man soon, but I’ve children to feed in the meantime—two besides the boy.” She licked her lips, and a coaxing note entered her voice. “You’re alone; you can manage better than we can. Let me have this one—there’s more over there.” She pointed with her chin, toward the slope behind me, where the rebel dead and wounded lay.
My grasp must have loosened slightly as I listened, for the boy, who had hung quiescent in my grasp, made a sudden lunge and burst free, diving over Jamie’s body to roll at his mother’s feet.
He got up beside her, watching me with rat’s eyes, beady-bright and watchful. He bent and groped about in the grass, coming up with the makeshift dagger.
“Hold ’er off, Mum,” he said, his voice raspy from the choking. “I’ll take ’im.”
From the corner of my eye, I had caught the gleam of metal, half-buried in the grass.
“Wait!” I said, and took a step back. “Don’t kill him. Don’t.” A step to the side, another back. “I’ll go, I’ll let you have him, but…” I lunged to the side, and got my hand on the cold metal hilt.
I had picked up Jamie’s sword before. It had been made for him, larger and heavier than the usual. It must have weighed ten pounds, at least, but I didn’t notice.
I snatched it up and swung it in a two-handed arc that ripped the air and left the metal ringing in my hands.
Mother and son jumped back, identical looks of ludicrous surprise on their round, grimy faces.
“Get away!” I said.
Her mouth opened, but she didn’t say anything.
“I’m sorry for your man,” I said. “But my man lies here. Get away, I said!” I raised the sword, and the woman stepped back hastily, dragging the boy by the arm.
She turned and went, muttering curses at me over her shoulder, but I paid no attention to what she said. The boy’s eyes stayed fixed on me as he went, dark coals in the dim light. He would know me again—and I him.
They vanished in the mist, and I lowered the sword, which suddenly weighed too much to hold. I dropped it on the grass, and fell to my knees beside Jamie.
My own heart was pounding in my ears and my hands shaking with reaction, as I groped for the pulse in his neck. I turned his head, and could see it, throbbing steadily just below his jaw.
“Thank God!” I whispered to myself. “Oh, thank God!”
I ran my hands over him quickly, searching for injury before I moved him. I didn’t think the scavengers would come back; I could hear the voices of a group of men, distant on the ridge behind me—a rebel detail coming to fetch the wounded.