Walk in Hell

Marberry cursed at him and tried to kick one of the men who held him. They dragged the planter off behind some trees. A pistol shout sounded, and then a moment later another one. The two Negroes came out. Jubal Marberry didn't.

With considerable satisfaction, Cassius nodded to the impromptu court. "You done fine," he told them. Agamemnon and Cherry headed off, both of them obviously well-pleased with themselves. Scipio started to leave, too. One of these days, he was going to let his feelings show on his face despite the butler's mask of imperturbability he cultivated. That would be the end of him. Even as he turned, though, Cassius said, "You wait, Kip."

"What you want?" Scipio did his best to sound easy and relaxed. The Congaree Socialist Republic went after enemies of the revolution within its own ranks as aggressively as it pursued them among the whites who had for so long oppressed and battened on the Negro laborers of the area.

But Cassius said, "Gwine have we a parley wid de white folks officer. We trade de wounded white folks sojers we catches fo'de niggers dey gives we. You gwine talk wid de officer." His long, weathered face stretched into lines of anticipatory glee.

Scipio didn't need long to figure out why. With a deliberate effort of will, he abandoned the Congaree dialect: "I suppose you will expect me to speak in this fashion, thereby disconcerting them."

Cassius laughed and slapped his knee. "Do Jesus, yes!" he exclaimed. "You set your mind to it, you talk fancier'n any o' they white folks. An' you don' git angried up in a hurry, neither. We wants a cool head, an' you got dat."

"When we do dis parley?" Scipio asked.

"Right now. I take you up to de front." Cassius reached into his pocket, pulled out a red banda

The front was just that, a series of trenches and firing pits. Both the black soldiers of the Socialist Republic and their Confederate foes were in large measure amateurs, but both sides were doing their best to imitate what the professionals from the CSA and USA had been doing.

Cassius took Scipio to a tent where the white officer waited. "Ain't gwine let you cross out of de country we holds," he said. "Cain't trust white folks not to keep you an' give you a rope necktie."

Considering what had just happened to Jubal Marberry and to many others, Scipio reckoned the barbarism equally distributed. Saying so, however, struck him as inexpedient. And he knew he should have been grateful that Cassius worried about his safety rather than pla

The tent was butternut canvas, captured Confederate Army issue. Scipio pulled the flap open, ducked his head, and went inside. A man in Confederate uniform sat behind a folding table. He did not stand up for Scipio, as he would have on meeting a U.S. officer during a parley.

"Good day," Scipio said, as if greeting a guest at Marshlands. "Shall we discuss this matter in a civilized fashion, as it involves the well-being of brave men from both sides?"

Sure enough, the Confederate major's eyebrows rose. He wasn't a gray-bearded relic like a lot of the men the CSA was using to try to suppress the revolution; Scipio judged he would have been fighting the Yankees if he hadn't lost a hand. "Don't you talk pretty?" he said, and then, as if making a great concession, "All right, I'm Jerome Hotchkiss. I can treat for Confederate forces along this front. You can do the same for your people?"

"That is correct, Major," Scipio answered. "For the purposes of this meeting, you may address me as Spartacus."

Hotchkiss let out a bark of laughter. "All you damn Red niggers use that for an alias. Best guess I can give about why is that maybe you reckon we won't know who to hang once we've put you down. If that's what you think, you're dreaming."

Scipio feared the major was right. Showing that fear, though, would put him in Cassius' bad graces. Cassius being more immediately dangerous to him than were the forces of the CSA, he said, "I suggest, Major, that it is wise to kill your bear before you speak of ski

"You want to watch the way you talk to me," Hotchkiss said, as if rebuking a Negro waiter at a restaurant.

"Major, you would be well advised to remember that you are in the sovereign territory of the Congaree Socialist Republic," Scipio returned. Hotchkiss glared at him. He looked back steadily. The shoe was on the other foot now, and the white man didn't care for the fit. Scipio understood that. He'd spent his whole life not caring for the fit. He said, "Shall we agree to put other matters aside for the time being, in the hopes of coming to terms on this one specific issue?"

"Fair enough," Hotchkiss said, making a visible effort to control himself. "Some of our wounded who got left behind when we had to pull back…When we advanced again, we found 'em chopped to bits or burned alive or…Hell, I don't need to go on. You know what I'm talking about."

"I also know that your forces are seldom in the habit of taking prisoners of any kind, wounded or not," Scipio answered. "How many Negroes have been hanged, these past days?"

Plainly, the thought in Hotchkiss' mind was, Not enough. "Negroes caught in arms against the Confederate States of America-"

Scipio surprised him by interrupting: "Lackeys of the oppressors caught in arms resisting the proletarian revolution of the Congaree Socialist Republic…" The Marxist rhetoric he'd learned from Cassius came in handy here, no matter how low his opinion of it commonly was. He went on, "Our causes being as repugnant to each other as they are, is it not all the more important to observe the laws of war with especial care?"

"That'd mean admitting you have the right to rebel," Hotchkiss said.

But Scipio shook his head. "The USA did not admit the CSA had that right in the War of Secession, yet treated Confederate prisoners humanely."

He could see Hotchkiss thinking, White men on both sides. But the major didn't say that. What he did say was, "Maybe."

Taking that for assent, Scipio said, "Very well. We undertake to exchange under flag of truce men too badly wounded to go on fighting at a place and time you may choose, said men to have been treated as well as possible by the side capturing them. Is it agreed?"

"Agreed," Hotchkiss said, "but only as a war measure. It doesn't mean we say you have any right to do what you're doing. After we smash you, you'll still hang for rebellion and treason."

"First catch the bear, Major," Scipio answered. He'd done what Cassius wanted. He thought it would bring some good. How much? For how long? He wished he knew how the revolution fared across the rest of the Confederacy.

The adobe farmhouse outside Bountiful, Utah, sat on a low rise, so that it commanded the ground in front of it. The Mormon rebels against the authority of the United States had had months of hard fighting in which to learn their craft. They'd learned it all too well, as far as Paul Mantarakis was concerned. When they found a position like this, they fortified it for everything it was worth, then stayed in it and fought, sometimes men and women both, until U.S. forces finally overwhelmed them.

A machine gun inside the farmhouse opened up, spitting death down at the trenches Mantarakis and his comrades had dug. He ducked, making sure the top of his head was below the level of the parapet. The fancy new helmet he wore didn't keep out direct hits. People had found out about that the hard way.

He waited till the machine gun's fire was directed elsewhere along the trench, then stood up on the firing step and popped a couple of rounds from his Springfield at the adobe. He didn't think they were likely to accomplish much: the mud brick in a lot of these Utah farmhouses was thick enough to stop a bullet, though it had been intended to keep out heat and cold, not flying lead. And, for good measure, the Mormons had put up corrugated iron sheets over the windows, turning them into first-rate firing slits.