Go Tell the Bees That I Am Gone
- Автор: Гэблдон Диана
- Серия: Outlander #9
- Год: 2021
- Язык: английский
- Год: Delacorte Press
- ISBN: 978-1-473-51900-8
- Жанр: Исторические приключения
Электронная книга - «Go Tell the Bees That I Am Gone». Краткое содержание книги:
The past may seem the safest place to be . . . but it is the most dangerous time to be alive. . . .
Jamie Fraser and Claire Randall were torn apart by the Jacobite Rising in 1746, and it took them twenty years to find each other again. Now the American Revolution threatens to do the same. It is 1779 and Claire and Jamie are at last reunited with their daughter, Brianna, her husband, Roger, and their children on Fraser’s Ridge. Having the family together is a dream the Frasers had thought impossible. Yet even in the North Carolina backcountry, the effects of war are being felt. Tensions in the Colonies are great and local feelings run hot enough to boil Hell’s teakettle. Jamie knows loyalties among his tenants are split and it won’t be long until the war is on his doorstep. Brianna and Roger have their own worry: that the dangers that provoked their escape from the twentieth century might catch up to them. Sometimes they question whether risking the perils of the 1700s—among them disease, starvation, and an impending war—was indeed the safer choice for their family. Not so far away, young William Ransom is still coming to terms with the discovery of his true father’s identity—and thus his own—and Lord John Grey has reconciliations to make, and dangers to meet . . . on his son’s behalf, and his own. Meanwhile, the Revolutionary War creeps ever closer to Fraser’s Ridge. And with the family finally together, Jamie and Claire have more at stake than ever before.
They did. One of the bear hounds threw up his head and made a deep, eager arrooo, arrooo sound, and lunged forward. Gillebride loosed him at once and he shot up the slope into the trees, followed by Bluebell and the other hound, the three of them swift as water, calling as they went.
And they were all running then, the dogs and the men after them, as fast as they could through the crunching leaves. Roger’s chest began to burn and he could hear the boys gulping air and panting, but they kept up.
All the dogs had the scent and were baying with excitement, long tails waving stiff behind them.
Ian and Jamie were swarming up the slope, long-legged, hurdling fallen logs and dodging trees. Gillebride was laboring alongside Roger, now and then finding enough breath to shout encouragement to the dogs.
“Sin e! An sin e!”
Roger didn’t know which man had shouted; Jamie and Ian were well out of sight, but the Gaelic words rang faintly through the trees. There! There it is!
Aidan made a high choking noise, put his head down, and began to run as though his life depended on it, plowing his way up the slope. Roger grabbed Jemmy’s hand and followed with Germain, jabbing his staff hard into the ground to help them along.
They crested the slope, lost their balance, and slid and tumbled down into a small dell, where the dogs were leaping like flames around a tall tree, yammering and howling at a large—a very large—dark shape thirty feet off the ground, wedged in the crotch between two trunks.
Roger scrambled to his feet, shedding dry leaves and looking for the boys. Aidan was nearby; he’d got halfway up and was frozen on his hands and knees, looking up. His mouth moved, but he wasn’t talking. Roger looked round wildly for Jemmy.
“Jem! Where are you?”
“Right here, Da,” Jem said from behind him, through the noise of the dogs. “Is Aidan okay?”
He felt a thump of relief at sight of Jem’s red head; his plait had come undone and his hair was full of pine needles. There was a scrape on his cheek, but he clearly wasn’t hurt. Roger patted him briefly and turned to Aidan, crouching down beside the boy.
“Aidan? Are ye all right?”
“Aye.” He seemed dazed, and no wonder. He’d not taken his eyes off the bear. “Will it come down and eat us?”
Roger gave the bear in the tree a wary look. It bloody well might, for all he knew.
“Himself and the others ken what to do,” he assured Aidan, rubbing the boy’s small, bony back in reassurance. He hoped he was right.
“If it comes for ye, hit it across the snout as hard as ye can,” Jamie had told him. “If it makes to bite, drive your stick down his throat …”
He’d lost his staff, tumbling down. Where—there. He scrambled down the slope, keeping an eye on the bear, a solid black blob against the blue sky. It didn’t seem disposed to move, but he felt much better with the stick in his hand.
The hunters had gathered together a little way off and were regarding the bear, narrow-eyed. The dogs were ecstatic, leaping, clawing the tree, barking and yelping and plainly willing to keep doing it for as long as it took.
“Come on.” Roger gathered the boys and led them up the slope, behind Jamie and the others. Now that he’d got them safely in hand, he had a moment to actually look at the bear. It was moving its head restively from side to side, peering down at the dogs and clearly thinking, What the hell …? He was surprised to feel a sense of sympathy for the treed animal. Then he remembered Amy and sympathy died.
“… canna get a decent shot,” Jamie was saying, sighting along his rifle. He lowered it and glanced at Ian. “Can ye move him for me?”
“Oh, aye.” Ian unslung his bow, unhurried, and with no fuss at all, nocked an arrow and shot it straight into the bear’s backside. The bear squealed with rage and backed rapidly halfway down the trunk, gave the dogs a quick glance, and then with an amazing grace jumped to another tree ten feet away, grabbing the trunk.
The men all shouted and the dogs instantly swarmed the new tree, just as the bear started down. The bear, the arrow sticking absurdly out behind it, went back up, looked to and fro for a better idea, and not finding one, jumped back to its original tree. Jamie shot it, and it thumped to the ground like a huge sack of flour.
“Crap,” said Jemmy, awed. Germain grabbed his hand. Aidan gave a howl of rage and lunged toward the fallen bear. Roger lunged, too, and grabbed Aidan’s collar, but the worn shirt ripped and Aidan ran, leaving a handful of cloth in Roger’s grasp.
“Fucking stay there!” Roger shouted at Jem, who was staring openmouthed, and went after Aidan, crashing through fallen branches and twisting his ankles and scraping his shins on stumps and deadfalls.
The other men were all shouting and running, too. But Aidan had got the knife from his belt and was roaring in a high treble as he stumbled the last few feet toward the bear. The dogs had already reached it and were snapping and tearing at the carcass—if it was a carcass.
Gillebride was belting down the slope, spear in both hands and bellowing at the dogs. The bear rose suddenly, swaying, and swatted Bluebell away. She crashed against a tree with a yelp and fell and Aidan stabbed his little knife into the bear’s side, screaming and screaming, and then Roger had him, grabbed him round the middle and flung himself away with Aidan beneath him and heard behind him the thunk! of the spear and a long, long sigh from the bear. Leaves flew up as the bear hit the ground. They touched Roger’s face and one of the dogs galloped across him, its nails digging into his back as it launched itself at the dead bear.
“Dad! Dad! Are you okay?” Jemmy was pulling at him, yelling. He dimly heard Gillebride and Ian beating the dogs away from the carcass and felt a big, hard hand under his elbow, pulling him upright, and the forest spun.
“The dog’s all right,” Jamie was saying, and Roger wondered whether he must have asked without realizing it, or whether Jamie was just making conversation. “She’s maybe cracked a rib, nay more. The wee lad’s fine, too,” he added. “Here.” He took a small flask from his sporran and wrapped Roger’s hands around it.
“Daddy?” Jem was kneeling by him, anxious. Roger smiled at him, though his face felt like melted rubber, unable to hold its shape for more than a few seconds.
“It’s all right, a bhalaich.”
The strong smell of the bear mingled with the scent of whisky and dead leaves. He could hear Aidan sobbing and looked for him. Ian had him, an arm round the boy, cuddled against his side as they sat in the yellow leaves against a fallen log. He saw that Ian had thumbed some of the white paint mixed with bear fat from his own face and streaked it across Aidan’s forehead.
Jamie and Gillebride were by the bear, examining it, Germain peeking cautiously from behind his grandfather. With a great effort, Roger got to his feet and held out a hand to Jem.
“Come on.”
It was a beautiful thing, in spite of the wounds. The softness of its muzzle, the colors of the body, and the perfect vivid curves of claws, pads, huge rounded back, brought him close to tears.
Jamie knelt by the bear’s head and lifted it, the heavy skull moving easily as he turned it and thumbed the lip away from the big teeth, fingers moving along the jaw. He grimaced and, reaching gingerly into the bear’s maw, drew out a tiny scrap from between the back teeth—something that looked like a fragment of some plant, something dark green. He spread out his palm and touched the thing, spreading it open, and Roger saw that it was a scrap of dark-green homespun, tinged black at one edge. The wet black seeped out onto Jamie’s palm, and Roger could see that it was blood.