War Path Read Free Page A

trampled grass.
    Johnny Stark never broke stride but pressed on, he swung to right and left, whirling and battering and always moving toward the Medicine Staff. He had lost all sense of time and distance, he knew only the violence as he gulped in the pine-scented air, knew only the noise and sweat and the pain of glancing blows that failed to stop him, knew only his own iron will to survive.
    And then he reached Kasak.
    The younger man braced himself, brandished a war club and a French hunting dirk with a silver hilt and an eleven-inch blade of sharpened steel. Kasak lunged in low, expecting Stark to meet him head on. Kasak intended to rip open the long hunter’s belly with a single thrust. But Stark danced aside with a quickness uncommon for a man of his size.
    Kasak was fleet of foot and swifter by far than any of his peers and were this a footrace Stark would have been at his mercy. But this was a fight to the death. And it was in battle that Stark had the edge. He possessed an almost supernatural clarity of vision, the ability to read his opponent and know without understanding the how and why of it, what the man was about to do and in that instant begin to counter the move.
    It was his strength as surely as his corded muscles and powerful physique.
    Some men are born with a lot of quit in them, but not Johnny Stark. Early on in life he had learned there comes a time to run and a time to stand, and a time when nothing else will do but to suck up your courage, girdle your loins, and cry havoc. Committed to the struggle, Stark would continue to fight for as long as he drew breath.
    As he had cut a swath through the Abenaki war party lining the gauntlet, so did he batter aside Kasak’s defenses. The big man sensed the warriors gathering behind him and realized his time was running out unless he tried one last desperate gamble.
    Kasak thrust forward with the hunting dirk. Stark dropped the war clubs and caught the smaller man’s wrist and twisted until the brave’s arm nearly broke. Kasak loosened his hold on his weapon and Stark wrenched it from his grasp, spun him around, and placed himself between Atoan’s son and the advancing warriors. He grabbed Kasak by his topknot and yanked his head back and brought the French blade to the younger man’s naked throat. The gesture stopped the Abenaki in their tracks.
    The clearing fell silent.
    Now there was only the moaning wounded, the babbling brook to his right, the gentle soughing breeze and rustling of branches, the faint buzzing insects, and the labored breathing of the young man whose throat Stark was about to slit.
    The Abenaki drew back as Atoan walked though their ranks, past the injured and dying, down the slope and up the slight rise where his son had proudly paced and pranced like a young cougar. A trickle of blood seeped from the superficial wound left by the dirk’s cruel bite and trickled down his son’s coppery smooth chest. Kasak’s eyes were wide with alarm though he tried to remain calm, but the proximity of his own demise left a hollow pit in his gut. Gone was his bravado. Now he just wanted to see another sunrise.
    Johnny Stark faced them down, the lot of them, his gaze sweeping over the war party with their war clubs and tomahawks and leveled muskets. And silence reigned then, like the stillness after a storm. No bird called. Only the wind uttered a sigh as if nature had already become bored with the travails of men.
    â€œThere is no glory in fighting women. No songs live here,” Stark called out, his voice echoing throughout the clearing. He contemptuously shoved Kasak aside, as if the young warrior’s life was not worth taking. With an over-handed throw, the long hunter sent the French dirk spinning through the air. He buried the blade halfway to the hilt between Atoan’s feet. A lesser man might have flinched. Not the sachem. There was only a subtle shift in his expression, relief that he still had a son,