Battle Flag

Starbuck, his instincts as primitive as any savage, took the flag from Truslow and shook it in the air, spraying drops of blood from its fringe. "We did it!" he said to Truslow. "We did it!"

"Just us," Truslow said meaningfully, turning to where Medlicott was still hidden.

"I'm going to kick the belly out of that bastard," Starbuck said. He rolled the bloodied flag around its varnished pole. "Coffman!" he shouted, wanting the Lieutenant to take charge of the captured flag. "Coffman! Where the hell are you, Coffman?"

"Here, sir." The Lieutenant's voice sounded weakly from behind a fallen tree.

"Oh, Christ!" Starbuck blasphemed. Coffman's voice had been feeble, like that of a man clinging to consciousness. Star-buck ran over the clearing, jumped the tree, and found the young Lieutenant kneeling wide-eyed and pale-faced, but it was not Coffman who was wounded. Coffman was fine, just shocked. Instead it was Thaddeus Bird, kind Colonel Bird, who lay death white and bleeding beside the fallen trunk.

"Oh God, Nate, it hurts." Bird spoke with difficulty. "I came to fetch you home, but they shot me. Took my revolver, too." He tried to smile. "Wasn't even loaded, Nate. I keep forgetting to load it."

"Not you, sir, not you!" Starbuck dropped to his knees, the captured flag and Medlicott's cowardice both forgotten as his eyes suddenly blurred. "Not you, Pecker, not you!" Because the best man in the Brigade was down.

All across the field, from the slopes of Cedar Mountain to the ragged corn patches west of the turnpike, the rebels were advancing by the light of a sinking sun that was now a swollen ball of fading red fire suspended in a skein of shifting ca

The four guns named Eliza, Louise, Maud, and A

The four guns went on firing while the teams were fetched. A lieutenant, fresh from West Point, noticed a group of mounted rebel officers at the wood's margin. "Slew left!" he called, and his team levered with a handspike to turn Eliza's white-oak trail. "Hold there! Elevate her a turn. Load shell!" The powder bag was thrust down the swabbed-out barrel, and the gu

"No shell left, sir!" one of the artillerymen called from the pile of ready ammunition.

"Load solid shot. Load anything, but for Christ's sake, hurry!" The Lieutenant still watched the tempting target.

A round of solid shot was rammed down onto the canvas bag. The Sergeant pushed his friction primer into the touch-hole, then stood aside with the lanyard in his hand. "Gun ready," he shouted.

Eliza's limber, drawn by six horses, galloped up behind to take the gun away. "Fire!" the Lieutenant shouted.

The Sergeant whipped the lanyard toward him, thus scraping the friction rod across the primer-filled tube. The fire leaped down to the canvas bag, the powder exploded, and the four-and-a-half-inch iron ball screamed away across the smoke-layered field. The gun itself recoiled with the force of a runaway locomotive, jarring backward a full ten paces to mangle the legs of the two leading horses of the limber team. Those lead horses went down, screaming. The other horses reared and kicked in terror. One horse shattered a splinter bar, another broke a leg on the limber, and suddenly the battery's well-ordered retreat had turned into a horror of screaming, panicked horses.

A gu

"Go!" the Major said, "go, go, go!" and the black-muzzled Louise, Maud, and A

Captain Hetherington led the Reverend Doctor Starbuck past the abandoned gun and the bloody twitching mess that remained of its team. The preacher had lost his top hat and was constantly turning in the saddle to watch the dark gray line of men who advanced beneath their foul ba

A mile behind the Reverend Elial Starbuck, at the wooded ridge where the North's attack had surged, crested, and then been repulsed, General Washington Faulconer and his staff sat on their horses and surveyed the battlefield. Two brigades of Yankee infantry were retreating across the wide wheat field, their progress hastened by some newly arrived rebel ca

Swynyard alone remained in the open. He was on foot, ready to lead the Brigade's first line down the long slope. Other rebel troops were already a quarter-mile beyond the woods, but the Faulconer Brigade had started its advance late and had yet to clear the trees. Swynyard saw that Faulconer had disappeared into the trees, so he pulled out his flask of whiskey and tipped it to his mouth. He finished the flask, then turned to shout at the advancing line to hurry up, but just as he turned so a blow like the beat of a mighty rushing wind bellowed about him. The air was sucked clean from his chest. He tried to call out, but he could not speak, let alone cry. The whiskey was suddenly sour in his throat as his legs gave way. He collapsed a second before something cracked like the awesome clangor of the gates of hell behind him, and then it seemed to Swynyard that a bright light, brighter than a dozen noonday suns, was filling and suffusing and drowning his vision. He lay on his back, unable to move, scarce able to breathe, and the brilliant light flickered around his vision for a few golden seconds before, blessedly, his drink-befuddled brain gave up its attempts to understand what had happened.