held was so blurred until he raised his arm to his eyes and wiped away blood.
Lucas offered the brandy again. This time Wingfield got it down.
Healing warmth spread from his middle. Then he remembered what had happened with one sim while he fought the other, and he went cold again.
'Anne!' he cried.
He looked about wildly, and moaned when he saw a blanket-covered form on the floor not far from him. 'No, fear not, Edward, she is but stunned,'
said Allan Cooper's wife Caite, a strong, steady woman a few years older than Anne. 'We cast the bedding over her to hide her nakedness, no more.'
'Oh, God be thanked!' Wingfield gasped.
'But, ' Cooper began, then looked helplessly at his wife, not sure how to go on. He seemed to make up his mind. He and Lucas bent by Wingfield. Together, they manhandled Wingfield to his feet, guided his stumbling steps over to Joanna's cradle.
He moaned again. It was empty.
Anne sat on a hard wooden chair, her face buried in her hands.
She had not stopped sobbing since she returned to her senses. She rocked back and forth in unending grief. 'God, God, God have mercy on my dear Joanna,' she wailed.
'I will get her back,' Wingield said, 'or take such a vengeance that no sim shal dare venture within miles of an Englishman ever again.'
'I want no vengeance,' Anne cried. 'I want my darling babe again.'
The colonists' first efforts at pursuit had already failed. They had set dogs on the sims' trail less than an hour after`
the attack. With the blood Wingfield had drawn, the trail had been fresh and clear. Only for a while, though: the ground north of Jamestown was so full of ponds and streams that the dogs lost the scent.
Further tracking had to wait for daylight and with every passing minute, the sims took themselves farther away.
'Why?' Anne asked. The question was not directed at anyone.
'Why should even such heartless brutes snatch up a defenseless babe?
What are they doing to her?'
Wingfield's imagination conjured up a horde of possibilities, each worse than the one before. He knew he could never mention even the least of them to his wife.
But her first agonized question puzzled him as well. He had never heard of the sims acting as they had that night. They kil ed, but they did not capture he felt heartsick anew as he worked out the implications of what Caleb Lucas said, 'I fear me they but sought special y tender flesh.' He spoke softly, so Anne would not hear.
Wingfield shook his head. The motion hurt. 'Why take so great a risk for such small game?' He gritted his teeth at speaking of Joanna so, but went on 'They would have gained more meat by waiting until one of us stepped outside his cabin to ease himself, striking him down, and making away with him. If they had been cunning, they might have escaped notice till dawn.'
'Wherefore, then?' Lucas asked. Wingfield could only spread his hands.
'What do you purpose doing now?' Al an Cooper added.
'As I told Anne,' Wingfield said, rising. His head stil throbbed dreadfully and he was wobbly on his feet, but purpose gave his voice iron. 'I will search out the places where the sims encamp in their wanderings, and look for traces of Joanna. If God grant I find her living, I'll undertake a rescue. If it be otherwise, '
Henry Dale stuck his head in the cabin door. His lips stretched back in a savage grin. ', Then kill them all,' he finished for Wingfield. '
'Twere best you do it anyhow, at first encounter.'
'No,' Wingfield said, 'nor anyone else on my behalf, I pray you.
Until I have oertain knowledge my daughter is dead, I needs must act as if she yet lives, and do nothing to jeopardize her fate. A wholesale slaughter of sims might well inflame them al .'
'What cares one pack of beasts what befalls another?' Dale asked scornful y.
Allan Cooper had a comment more to the point.'Should you fare forth alone, Edward, I greatly doubt you'd work a wholesale slaughter in any case, more likely the sims would slay you.'
That set off fresh paroxysms of weeping from Anne. Wingfield looked daggers at the guard. 'I can but do my best. My hunting has taught me somewhat of woodscraft, and bul et and bolt strike harder and farther than stones.' He spoke mostly for his wife's benefit; he knew too well Cooper was probably right. Still, he went on, 'You'd try no less were it your Cecil.'
'Oh, aye, so I would,' Cooper said. 'You misunderstand me, though. My thought was to come with you.'
'And I,' Henry Dale said. Caleb Lucas echoed him a moment later.
Tears stung Wingfield's eyes. Anne leapt from her chair and kissed each of his friends in turn. At any other time that would have shocked and angered him; now he thought it no less than their due.
Yet fear for his daughter forced expedience from him. He said; 'Henry, I know your skill amongst the trees. But what of you, Al an? Stealth is paramount here, and clanking about armored a poor preparation for't.'
'Fear not on my score,' Cooper said. 'Or ever I took the royal shilling, I had some nodding acquaintanoe with the Crown's estates and the game on them.' He grinned slyly.
Wingfield asked no more questions; if Cooper had made hisliving poaching, he would never say so straight out.
