Battle Flag

by Bernard Cornwell

  "Nothing."

  Yet the noise was getting louder. It was the noise, Starbuck reckoned, of hundreds if not thousands of boots trampling down the undergrowth. It was the noise of an infantry attack designed to break through Jackson's line once and for all. It was the noise that foretold battle, and all along the railbed men pushed rifles over the parapet and cocked hammers.

  "Sumbitches don't give up," the man next to Starbuck said. He was one of those who had stayed and fought the day before.

  "What's your name?" Starbuck asked him.

  "Sam Norton."

  "From Faulconer Court

  House ?"

  "Rosskill," Norton answered. Rosskill was the nearest railhead to the Legion's hometown.

  "What did you do there?"

  Norton grinned. "Last job I had in Rosskill was sweeping out the county jail."

  Starbuck grinned back. "Unwillingly, I guess?"

  "Never minded sweeping it out, Major, 'cos once you'd swept out the jail you had to sweep out the sheriff's house and Sheriff Simms had two daughters sweeter than honey on a comb. Hell, I know men who robbed stores and stood rock still just begging to be locked up for a chance at Emily and Sue."

  Starbuck laughed, then went silent as the trampling of feet was translated into a sudden rush of men, hundreds of men who shouted their hoarse war cry and charged across the narrow strip of open land toward the embankment where Elijah Hudson's North Carolinians waited.

  "Fire!" Hudson shouted, and the embankment was rimmed with smoke.

  "Fire!" Starbuck shouted, and the Legion gave what flanking fire they could, but for most of the men the angle was too acute for their rifles to help the beleaguered Hudson.

  The Yankee charge reached the embankment's foot and surged up its face. Hudson's men stood up. For a second Starbuck thought the Carolinians had merely stood to run away, but instead they advanced across the flat railbed and met the Yankee charge head-on. They swung rifles, slashed with bowie knives, and rammed forward with bayonets.

  Starbuck stared into the woods directly opposite the Legion and saw no threat there. The noise of the hand-to-hand fighting to his right was terrible, an echo from the medieval days of men being butchered by steel and crushed by clubs. The bestiality of the sound was a temptation to leave well alone and stay in the railbed's cutting on the excuse that a second Yankee attack might come straight for the Legion's position, but Starbuck knew that assumption was merely an excuse for cowardice, and so he slung his rifle and jumped down to the spoil pit's floor. "Major Medlicott! We're going to help."

  Major Medlicott did not move. The men with him stared sullenly at Starbuck.

  "You heard me?" Starbuck asked.

  "It ain't our fight, Starbuck." Medlicott summoned his courage to articulate his defiance of Starbuck. "Besides, if we leave here the Yankees could attack straight into the pit again and then where would we be?"

  Starbuck did not answer. Instead he looked sideways at Coffman. "Go and send Sergeant Waggoner to me," he said softly so that only Coffman could hear, "then tell Truslow that he's got to hold the railbed with Companies G and H. He's to ignore my order to charge. Understated?"

  "Yes, sir." Coffman ran off on his errand. Medlicott had not heard the orders Starbuck gave but sneered anyway. "Sending for Swynyard?"

  Starbuck could feel his heart beating flabbily in his chest. "Major Medlicott," he said very slowly and distinctly, "I'm ordering you to fix bayonets and go to Colonel Hudson's assistance."

  Medlicott's big red face seemed to twist in a spasm of loathing, but he managed to make his answer sound respect­ful. "It's my judgment we should guard our own position," he said just as formally as Starbuck.

  "You're disobeying an order?" Starbuck asked.

  "I'm staying here," the miller said stubbornly, and when Starbuck did not respond immediately, Medlicott grinned in anticipation of victory. "No one's to move!" he called to his men. "Our job's to stay here and—"

  He stopped speaking because Starbuck had shot him.

  Starbuck did not really believe he was doing it. He was aware that the act would either seal the Legion as his regiment or else condemn him to a court-martial or a lynching. He drew the heavy Adams revolver and straight­ened his right arm while his thumb clicked the hammer smoothly back; then his finger took the trigger's pressure so fast that the look of triumph on Medlicott's face had scarcely started to change when the bullet struck him just beneath his right eye. Blood and bone made a cloud of droplets about the Major's shattering skull as he was thrown backward. His hat went straight up in the air while his body flew back three yards, twitching as it flew, then flapping like a landed fish as it thumped heavily onto the dirt. There the body lay utterly still with its arms out­stretched. "Oh, my God," Starbuck heard himself saying, "just lay me down." He began to laugh.

  Medlicott's ashen-faced men watched him. None of them moved. Medlicott's dead fingers slowly curled.

  Starbuck pushed the revolver into its holster. "Captain Moxey?" he said very calmly.

  Moxey did not wait for the rest of the sentence. "Company!" he shouted. "Fix bayonets!"

  Moxey's men ran south along the railbed to help Hudson's left-hand company. Medlicott's men still stared dumbly at the body of their officer, then up at Starbuck. This was the moment that Starbuck had half expected to turn mutinous, but none of the company made any move to avenge the dead miller. "Anyone else want to disobey my orders?" Starbuck asked them.

  No one spoke. The men seemed dazed; then Peter Waggoner ran up, panting. "Sir?"

  "You're a Lieutenant now, Waggoner," Starbuck said, "in charge of A Company. Take over, follow Captain Moxey, and get rid of those Yankees."

  "Sir?" Waggoner was slow to understand.

  "Do it!" Starbuck snapped. Then he unslung his rifle and pushed his bayonet into place. He turned toward the rest of the regiment. "Legion! Fix bayonets!" He waited a few sec­onds. "Follow me!"

  It was a risk, because if the Yankees were waiting to attack the Legion's positions, then Starbuck was giving them victory, but if he did not help the North Carolinians, then the Yankees would probably break through into the woods, and so he took three-quarters of the Legion down the railbed to help Hudson's men. Some of those men were out of ammunition and were hurling rocks at the Yankees, throwing so hard that the heavy stones drew blood when they struck on sweat-streaked faces.

  "Follow me!" Starbuck shouted again. Moxey and Waggoner were helping Hudson's left-hand companies, but the biggest threat was in the center of the Colonel's line, and Starbuck now led his reinforcements down the back of the embankment to where that Yankee pressure was fiercest. Some of the Northerners had gained the flat summit of the embankment, where they were struggling to take Hudson's two standards, and it was there that Starbuck intervened. "Come on!" he screamed, and he heard his men begin the terrible, shrill rebel yell as they scrambled up the slope and into the fight. Starbuck pulled his rifle's trigger as he neared the melee, then rammed the bayonet hard into a blue jacket. He was screaming like a banshee, suddenly feeling the extra­ordinary release of Medlicott's death. My God, but he had cut the rot clean out of the Legion's soul!

  There was a rebel on the ground trying to fight off a Northern sergeant who had his hands around the rebel's throat. Starbuck kicked the Northerner's head up, then sliced his bayonet back and upward so that the blade slit the man's throat open. The sergeant collapsed, gushing blood over his intended victim. Starbuck clambered over both men and rammed the bayonet forward again. Men were grunting and cursing, tripping on the dying and slip­ping in blood, but the Yankees were giving ground. They had been trying to fight up the embankment's slope, and the rebels had managed to keep most of them on that for­ward slope and at a consequent disadvantage until the Legion's arrival tipped the balance. The Northerners retreated.

  They went down the embankment, but they were not beaten yet. The woods here grew close to the railbed, so close that the Yankees could retreat to the tree line and still fire over o
pen sights at the rebel position, and once back among the trees they poured an immense fire at the embank­ment. The storm of bullets drove the rebel defenders back from the crest and down into cover. The bullets whistled and hissed overhead; they thumped into the bodies of the dead or else ricocheted off the embankment to tear through the leaves behind. Every few moments a group of Yankees would charge the apparently empty parapet only to be met by a sparse rebel volley, a shower of stones, and the sight of waiting bayonets.

  "They don't yield easily, do they? My God, Starbuck, but I owe you thanks. Upon my soul, I do." Colonel Hudson, his long hair matted with blood and his eyes wild, tried to shake Starbuck's hand.

  Starbuck, encumbered with a rifle, ramrod, and cartridge, fumbled the handshake. "You're wounded, Colonel?"

  "Dear me, no." Hudson pushed the long, blood-thick hair out of his face. "Other fellow's blood. You killed him, remember? Cut his throat. Dear me. But upon my soul, Starbuck, I'm grateful. Grateful, truly."

  "Are you sure you're not hurt, sir?" Starbuck asked, for Hudson seemed unsteady on his feet.

  "Just shocked, Starbuck, just shocked, and I shall be just dandy in a moment or two." The Colonel looked up at the railbed, where a rock had just landed. It seemed the Yankees were throwing the stones back now. Starbuck finished load­ing his rifle, wriggled up the bank, and pushed the gun between two bodies. He sighted on a blue jacket, pulled the trigger, and slid back to reload. He had five cartridges left, while most of his men were now reduced to just one or two. Elijah Hudson was similarly short of ammunition. "One more attack, Starbuck," the North Carolinian said, "and I suspect we're done for."

  The attack came almost as he spoke. It was a frantic, des­perate charge of tired, bloodied men who burst out of the woods to throw themselves up the embankment. For two days these Northerners had tried to break the rebel line, and for two days they had been frustrated, but now they were on the very brink of success, and they summoned their last reserves of strength as they scrambled up the scorched bank with fixed bayonets.

  "Fire!" Hudson shouted, and the rebels' last guns flamed as a barrage of rocks hurtled overhead. "Now charge, my dears! Charge home!" the Colonel called, and the tired men threw themselves forward to meet the Yankee assault. Starbuck thrust with the bayonet, twisted the blade, and thrust again. Coffman was beside him, firing a revolver; then he glimpsed Lucifer, of all people, firing his Colt. Then Starbuck's bayonet stuck in a man's belly, and he tried to kick it free, then tried to twist it free, but nothing would loosen the flesh's grip on the steel. He cursed the dying man, then felt a gush of warm blood on his hands as he unslotted the blade and pulled the rifle away from the trapped blade. He reversed the rifle and swung it overhand like a club. He was keening a mad noise, half exultation, half lamentation, expecting death at any second, but determined not to give an inch against the mass of men who pushed into the rebels' blades and rifle stocks.

  Then, suddenly, without any apparent reason, the pres­sure eased.

  Suddenly the great charge was gone, and the Northerners were running back into the trees and leaving behind a tide-line of bodies heaped on bodies, some of the bodies moving slow beneath their pall of blood, others lying still. And there was silence except for the panting of the wild-eyed rebels who stood on the embankment they had held against the charge.

  "Back now!" Starbuck broke the silence. "Back!" There might still be sharpshooters in the woods, and so he pulled his men back down the embankment into cover.

  "Don't leave me, don't leave me!" a wounded man cried aloud, and another wept because he had been blinded. The stretcher bearers went across the railbed. No one shot at them. Starbuck cleaned the blood from his rifle's stock with a handful of oak leaves. Coffman was beside him, eyes gleaming with a maniacal delight. Lucifer was reloading his revolver. "You're not supposed to kill Northerners," Starbuck told him.

  "I kill who I want," the boy said resentfully.

  "But thank you anyway," Starbuck said, but Lucifer's only response was a look of hurt dignity. Starbuck sighed. "Thank you, Lucifer," he said.

  Lucifer immediately grinned. "So I ain't Lucy?"

  "Thank you, Lucifer," Starbuck said again.

  A triumphant Lucifer kissed the muzzle of his gun. "A man can be whatever a man wants to be. Maybe next year I'll decide to be a rebel killer."

  Starbuck spat on the rifle's lock to help clean the blood clotted there. Somewhere in the woods behind him a bird burst into song.

  "It's quiet, isn't it?" Hudson said from a few paces away.

  Starbuck looked up. "Is it?"

  "It's quiet," the Colonel said, "so beautifully quiet. I do believe the Yankees are gone." The line had held.

  The Reverend Doctor Starbuck beheld a nightmare.

  He had spent a second day with Major Galloway's horse­men in the hope that he would have a chance to join in the pursuit of a broken rebel army. He was aware that the next day would be the Lord's Day, and he whiled away the waiting hours planning the sermon he would give to the victorious troops, but as the hours passed and there was still no sign of a rebel collapse, the prospect of the sermon receded. Then, in the afternoon, just after the firing in the woods had died suddenly away, a message came ordering Galloway's men to investigate some strange troops seen marching to the southwest.

  The preacher rode with Galloway. They passed trampled cornfields and orchards looted of their fruit. They crossed the turnpike where the battle had started two days before, splashed through a stream, then rode up a bare hillside to where two gaudily uniformed regiments of New York Zouaves were resting on the grassy crest with their rifles stacked.

  "All quiet here," the young, dapper commander of the nearer regiment, the 5th New York, proclaimed, "and we've got a picket line in the woods"—he gestured downhill to where thick woods grew—"and they're not being disturbed, so I guess it will stay quiet."

  Major Galloway decided he would ride as far as the New York picket line, but the preacher elected to stay with the infantry, for a moment's small talk had elicited the astonish­ing information that the 5th New York's commanding offi­cer was the son of an old colleague, and that old colleague, the Reverend Doctor Winslow, was actually the chaplain to his own son's regiment. Now the Reverend Winslow gal­loped across to greet his Boston friend. "I never thought to find you here, Starbuck!"

  "I trust I shall always be found where the Lord's work needs doing, Winslow," the Boston preacher said, then shook hands.

  Winslow looked proudly at his son, who had ridden back to his place at the head of the regiment. "Just twenty-six, Starbuck, but in charge of the finest volunteer regiment in our army. Even the regulars can't hold a candle to the New York 5th. They fought like Trojans in the peninsula. And your own sons? They're well, I pray?"

  "James is with McClellan," the Reverend Starbuck said. "The others are too young to fight." Then, wanting to change the subject before Winslow remembered the exis­tence of Nathaniel, the Boston preacher asked about the 5th New York's flamboyant uniform, which consisted of bright red baggy pantaloons, short blue collarless jackets with scar­let trim, a red waist sash, and a crimson cap rimmed with a white turban and crowned with a long golden tassel.

  "It's a copy of a French uniform," Winslow explained. "Zouaves are reputedly the fiercest fighters in the French army, and our patron wanted us to emulate their dress as well as their élan."

  "Patron?"

  "We're paid for by a New York furniture manufacturer. He paid for everything you see here, Starbuck; paid for it lock, stock, and barrel. You're seeing the profits of mahogany and turned legs at war."

  The Reverend Starbuck eyed his old friend's uniform and wished that he was able to wear such finery. He was about to inquire what arrangements Winslow had made to fill his pulpit while he served with the army but was distracted by a burst of gunfire in the woods. "Our skirmishers, I guess," Winslow said when the sound had faded. "They were prob­ably attacking a regiment of wild turkey. We ate a couple last night, and very good ea
ting they were, too." The resting regiment had stirred at the sudden fusillade, and some men retrieved their rifles from the stacks, but most just cursed for being half woken up, pulled the turbans over their eyes again, and tried to go back to sleep.

  "Your son said there's been no sign of the enemy here?" the Reverend Starbuck inquired, wondering why the hairs on the back of his neck were suddenly prickling.

  "None at all!" the chaplain said, staring toward the woods. "I think you might say we've drawn the short straw. Our part in the great victory is to be spectators. Or maybe not."

  His last three words were prompted by the appearance of a group of Zouaves at the tree line on the regiment's left flank. They were evidently skirmishers returning to their parent regiment, and they were agitated. "Rebels!" one of the men shouted. "Rebels!"

  "They're panicking!" the chaplain said scornfully.

  More of the Zouaves snatched up their rifles. A captain mounted on a nervous black horse cantered past the two pastors and touched his hat respectfully. "I think they're imagining things, chaplain!" the Captain called good-naturedly to Winslow, then put his hand to his throat and started making a mewing sound as he struggled to breathe. Blood began to seep through his fingers, and while the Reverend Starbuck tried to make sense of this strange apparition, he was suddenly overwhelmed by the sound of firing that had somehow taken a second or two to register on his stunned senses. Stunned because the hilltop was being swept by a typhoon of fire, a whistling whipping terror of bullets that crashed from the tree line where, appallingly, regiment after regiment of rebels now appeared. One moment there had been a summer's peace prevailing on the warm hilltop, where bees had sucked at clover blossoms, then there was death and screaming and blood, and the transition had been too abrupt for the preacher's mind to comprehend.