Caleb glanced around and saw nothing but more jungle. His internal clock informed him it was nearing noon. He couldn’t see the sky; the damned canopy was too thick. Accustomed to the wide expanses of the open sea, he was getting distinctly tired of the closeness of the jungle and the dearth of light. And the lack of crisp fresh air.
Phillipe had been walking with Reynaud in the rear; he came forward to halt beside Caleb. “Time to take a break.” Phillipe pointed through the trees. “There’s a clearing over there.”
Caleb fell in behind his friend, and their men fell in behind him. They trudged ten yards farther along; the track remained well marked by the tramp of many feet. The clearing Phillipe had noted opened to the left of the path. Their company shuffled into it. After divesting themselves of seabags, packs, and weapons, they sprawled on the leaves or sat on fallen logs, stretching out their legs before hauling out water skins and drinking.
Luckily, water was one necessity the jungle provided in abundance. They’d also found edible fruits and nuts and carried enough dried meat in their packs to last for more than a week. If not for the stifling atmosphere, the trek would have been pleasant enough.
Phillipe lowered himself to sit beside Caleb on a fallen log. With a tip of his head, he indicated the jungle on the other side of the path. “We’ve been angling along the side of these foothills for the last hour. The path’s still climbing. I’ve been thinking that, following the inestimable Miss Hopkins’s reasoning, the mine can’t be much farther. The children who were taken—certainly the younger ones—would be dragging their feet by now.”
Caleb swallowed a mouthful of water, then nodded. “I keep wondering if we’ve missed a concealed turn-off, but the traffic on the path is as heavy as ever, and it’s still going in the same direction.”
They’d been speaking quietly, and their men had, too, but Phillipe glanced around and murmured, “I think, perhaps, that when we go on, we should keep talking to a minimum.”
Caleb restoppered his water skin. “At least until we’ve found the mine. The jungle’s so much thicker here, we could turn a corner and find ourselves there. We don’t want to advertise our presence, and we definitely don’t want to engage.”
Phillipe’s long lips quirked wryly. “No matter how much we might wish otherwise.”
Caleb grunted and pushed to his feet. Phillipe followed suit, and three minutes later, their party set off again, tramping rather more quietly through the increasingly dense jungle.
Fifteen minutes later, their caution proved critical. Caleb caught a fleeting glimpse of something pale flitting about a clearing ahead and off the path to their right. Phillipe was in the lead. His eyes glued to the shifting gleam, Caleb seized his friend’s arm and halted. Their men noticed and froze.
Phillipe shifted to stand alongside Caleb, the better to follow his gaze. The intervening boles and large-leafed palms made following anyone’s line of sight difficult.
Caleb couldn’t work out what he was seeing—a gleam of gold, a flash of...what?
Then the object of his gaze moved, and Caleb finally had a clear view. “It’s a boy,” he breathed. “A golden-haired, fair-skinned boy in ragged clothes.”
“He’s picking those berries,” Phillipe whispered. After a moment, he added, “What do you want to do?”
Caleb scanned the area. “As far as I can tell, he’s alone. I can’t see anyone else, can you?”
“No. And I can’t hear anyone else, either.”
“If we all appear, he’ll take fright and run.” Caleb considered, then shrugged off the pack he’d been carrying and handed it to Phillipe. “Keep everyone here until I signal.”
Accepting the pack, Phillipe nodded.
Caleb made his way quietly toward the boy, dodging around trees and taking care not to alert his quarry. The lad looked to be about eight, but woefully thin—all knees and elbows. He was wearing a tattered pair of dun-colored shorts and a loose tunic of the same coarse material. It had been the bright cap of his fair hair, gleaming as the boy passed through the stray sunbeams that struck through the thick canopy, that had attracted Caleb’s attention.
The boy was circling a vine that had grown into a clump, almost filling one of the small clearings created when a large tree had fallen. The bushy vine bore plump, dark-red berries that Caleb and his company had already discovered were edible and sweet. His attention fixed on his task, the boy steadily plucked berries and dropped them into a woven basket.
Despite the boy’s bare feet, the basket suggested he hailed from a group of some kind; from the features Caleb glimpsed as the boy moved about the bush, the lad was almost certainly English.
He had to be from the mine.
Caleb reached the edge of the clearing. He hesitated, then said, “Don’t be afraid—please don’t run away.”
The boy jerked and whipped around. He grabbed up the basket, his knuckles turning white as he gripped the handle.
His blue eyes wide, the boy stared at Caleb.
Caleb didn’t move other than to slowly display his hands, palms open and clearly empty, out to either side.
The boy was poised to flee.
If he did, Caleb doubted he could catch him, not in this terrain. “I’ve been sent to look for people—English people kidnapped from Freetown.” He spoke slowly, clearly, evenly. “We think they’re being used as labor for a mine. We’re searching for the mine.” He paused, then asked, “Do you know where the mine is?”
When the boy didn’t respond, Caleb remembered that the mine was conjecture and rephrased, “Do you know where the people are?”
The boy moistened his lips. “Who are you?”
He wasn’t going to run—at least, not yet. Caleb was usually relaxed with children, happy to play with them, to join in their games. When convincing children of anything, he knew the literal truth was usually advisable; they always seemed to sense prevarication. “I’ve come from London. People have been searching for those kidnapped, but we’ve had to do it bit by bit—carefully. To make sure the bad people who are behind the kidnapping don’t get wind of us coming to help.” And kill all the kidnapees. He stopped short of voicing that truth.
The boy was still staring at him, but now he was studying him, his gaze flitting from Caleb’s face over his clothes, his sword, his boots.
“I’m going to crouch down.” Moving slowly, Caleb did. If he’d stepped closer to the boy, he would have towered over him—too intimidating. And laying hands on the lad from a crouch would be that much harder.
Sure enough, as Caleb settled on his haunches, the boy noticeably relaxed. But his gaze remained sharp; although he constantly glanced back at Caleb, watching for any threat, he started scanning the shadows behind Caleb. “There are more of you, aren’t there?”
“Yes. I asked them to stay back so we didn’t frighten you.” Caleb paused, then offered, “There are twenty-four more men back on the path.”
The boy blinked at him. “So there’s twenty-five of you all together. All armed?”
Caleb nodded.
The boy frowned; he seemed to have lost his fear of Caleb. After a long moment of calculation, the boy shook his head. “That’s not going to be enough.” He met Caleb’s gaze. “There’s more mercenaries than that at the mine, and they’re all fearsome fighters.”
So there is a mine. And it is nearby. Caleb tamped down his elation. “We’re not the rescue party. We’re the advance scouts. Our mission”—and he could almost hear his eldest brother, Royd, groaning