The Winterer at the Battle of Quebec

The three of us had gathered the man and his family outside of his farmhouse in the middle of the night, and by this time it was getting hard to think straight for all of the racket the woman was making. None of us spoke a bit of French, and, to be sure, none of this man’s family spoke a bit of English, but then there was Biggins, and what could be the point of talking the way he did? Being eighteen and more or less dumb, I hadn’t put much thought into the nature of these tactics. But my two comrades, who were criminals of the worse degree before taking the King’s Shilling, seemed to embellish a good farm razing. The man was on his knees, pleading for I don’t know what, and then Crawley gave him a boot right in the side of the poor bastard’s face. Of course the woman was right screaming by this point, and old Biggins shuffled over to her and gave her a whack with the butt end of his rifle. Biggins started giving both of them a lecture I dare not repeat about the downfalls of being an enemy of King George, when all of a sudden I saw that old look in Crawley’s eyes right at the poor farmer’s wife. 
I don’t mean my reader to get the wrong impression of me, for, like I said, I was eighteen and a rather dumb one to begin with. But, besides all of that, I wasn’t altogether as rotten as my two Red–Coated friends. I had read a few pages of the King James here and there, and Lord help me if I didn’t get a flutter in my heart at the scene before me.
I began to sweat an awful amount, and, for whatever reason, I perceived the woman not only recognized the advancing stare of my counterpart, but saw I may not have entirely agreed with the goings on. She and her two children were all looking at me – the man with the torch in his hand that was going to light up their house and farm – and began begging me for mercy, which made Biggins almost fall over laughing.
“I do think, Crawley, that our young friend Mr. Black has found some new friends.”
“Well,” he replied, still locked sinisterly on to the woman. “A friend in need is a friend, indeed.”
“True enough,” said Biggins, turning to me. “Now Anthony, let’s show them how we make friends in England.”
He kicked the Frenchman to the ground, and, with his foot on the man’s back, tossed me his sword. 

“Come on, Biggins,” I said. “Let’s just burn the place and leave them. They’ve done nothing.”
Biggins had a nose like a hawk, and was old enough to be my father. But that is where any patriarchal comparisons stopped regarding the deceased senior Black, who, from all accounts of my mother, was one of the few admirable men in all of England. Biggins on the other hand was a mean brute, with a capricious nature made even more foul when not agreed with.
“Well, see, that’s your problem, Black,” he said to me. “Normally I’d run through any man who interrupts how I soldier, but this being your first war, I’ll be lenient, because I do believe you think this is a matter of right and wrong. In about a minute, I’m going to fire my rifle into this farmers head. And then Crawley is going to take Mrs. Frog into the bushes and give her a proper introduction. But, before all of that, you are going to take the two little frogs and throw them back into that hovel and burn it to the ground, just like a good English gentleman.”
He pulled out the pistol from his belt, pointed it at me, and smiled. 
“And if you don’t, you bloody fool, I’ll kill you along with them.”
There was a silence that followed Biggins’ threat on my life, which I believed more than anything the man had ever said to me. 
Crawley thought the whole situation funny, and laughing, he advanced towards the woman, and grabbed her despite a fury of protest on her part. She could not have been more than a girl of sixteen, maybe seventeen, but she was much stronger than her small frame dictated. She broke free and slapped Crawley across the face.
“Having trouble, Crawley?” Said Biggins, looking at the spectacle in front of the farmhouse, but pointing his gun at me.
“Nothing I can’t handle,” he replied. He let fly at her with his free hand and she dropped to the ground, crying. She turned her body away from all of us, still on her knees, while Crawley grabbed her this time by the hair. 
It was at this moment that I no longer questioned the resiliency of the Canadien women, for, no more than twenty minutes prior, upon noticing three British regulars from her kitchen window, she concealed one of her husband’s small knifes in her stockings. 
Being held up by her hair now, with Crawley’s foul mouth kissing her neck, she lashed out her left hand holding tight to the small blade, which had previously been behind her, right into Crawley’s throat. 
Crawley let go of her and doubled over, gurgling blood with the knife in his neck.
I have to say the situation was rather fortunate, for Biggins turned toward the woman, in which time I mentally broke all ties with my homeland and fired a bullet into his chest. 
The Frenchman took a chance and grappled Biggins’ rifle free from his weakened grasp.
“Black!” He cried, falling to both knees, and then finally on his back.
I walked toward him, and with my sword drawn, watched him struggle for breath.
“Bastard,” he whispered, the colour leaving his face. His head fell to the ground, but his eyes, now lifeless, were still looking at me. 
A poor choice of last words if there was any, but nonetheless my last conversation with old Biggins.
It was then I realised I had never before killed a man, which left me bewildered and shaky. The children ran to their mother, and then she came and kissed me on both cheeks, which was also unfortunately my first kiss, leaving me more bewildered.
“Merci,” tears ran out of her dark brown eyes. “Merci!”
As hardy as the Canadiens may have been, I guess Crawley was cut from the same cloth, for it had not occurred to any of us that he would survive a knife to the neck. 
“Mama!” Cried one of the children at the sight of him.
Staggering around with his gun loaded, and mine empty, he said what he could to us, which was mostly unintelligible due to the amount of vital fluid escaping out of his mouth with each word. He pointed his rifle at the woman and her children, cocked the trigger and abuptly fell to the ground.
He collapsed forward on his face, revealing an Indian tomahawk in his back.
From the tree line west of their house ran a bearded man in a buckskin suit, fur cap, with two rifles slung around his back. His tall frame came towards us with rapidity. 
“L’hivernant!” The woman gasped. 
He looked over the farmer and his wife, and speaking in their native language seemed to have communicated that it was likely not safe for them anymore at their farm. 
The stranger had ice eyes.
“You are fortunate,” he said to me in English, surprisingly. 
“Had you not acted, you would have joined those other two.”
I gathered he had watched the entire situation, and all three of us may have been within the sight of his rifle all along.
“Who are you?” I asked.
“My name is K’evin Jacques, and you have a decision to make. Are you with us or against us.?”
The night was cool and clear and so was my mind. King George could go to hell for all I cared.
“I’m with you,” I said, and with that, my adventure with the one they call The Winterer had begun.