Lord John and the Brotherhood of the Blade

by Diana Gabaldon

  So Ferdinand's troops were on their way around the left flank, as planned, the French and Austrians caught in confusion, trying to turn to meet the attack. That was where he ought to be, commanding his men, in the thick of it. He glanced above him at the opposite bank in frustration--empty. God knew what was happening. Brett and Tarleton must have rushed off at once to tell someone--who? he wondered. His blood ran cold at the thought of Ewart Symington taking his command. He could only hope that the two ensigns had got to his brother first.

  He didn't bother worrying about what Hal would do to him. If he survived long enough to see his brother again, he'd think about it then.

  Three choices: sit here shivering and hope no one stumbled over him; walk out and surrender to the nearest French officer, if he managed to do that without being killed first; or try to make it to the end of the Landwehr, where he could cross the canal and rejoin his own troops.

  Right. One choice. He hesitated for a moment, wondering whether to discard his sodden red coat, but in the end, kept it. Coatless, he'd likely be shot for a deserter by either side, and it was possible that someone on the English side would spot him and lend aid.

  His scalp was tender and still oozing--his fingers came away red when he prodded it--but at least blood wasn't pouring down his face anymore. With a last reconnaissance, he left the shelter of his bush, crawling through the thin screen of foliage.

  He wanted desperately to go right, to find his own men. But they were nearly a mile away by now, and already fighting, if all was well. To the left, it was no more than two hundred yards to the near end of the Landwehr, and from what he could hear, the fighting there was mostly artillery. Much safer for a single man, moving on foot; if he didn't get close enough to a French gun crew for them to shoot him with their pistols, the odds of being struck by a random cannonball were reasonably low.

  All went well, bar minor alarms, until he came in sight of the footbridge that crossed the canal at the end of the Landwehr. A group of women was sitting on it, watching the battle with avid attention.

  Camp followers by their dress, and speaking German--but he couldn't distinguish their accents as Prussian or Austrian, God damn it. If they were Prussian, they likely wouldn't molest a British officer. Austrian, though--he remembered that pig, and the women's sharp knives. Only a couple of hours since the pig had died; it seemed much longer.

  He tightened his face into a forbidding glower, put a hand on his useless pistol, and walked toward the women. They fell silent, and five pairs of eyes fixed on him, sharp and bright with calculation. One of them smiled and curtsied to him--but her eyes never left him, and he felt the ripple of anticipation run through the others.

  "Guten Tag, mein Herr," she said. "You have been swimming?"

  They all cackled, in a show of bad teeth and worse breath.

  He nodded coolly to them, but didn't speak.

  "What are you doing here, English pig?" another asked in German, smiling so hard that her cheeks bunched. "You are a coward, that you run from the fight?"

  He stared blankly at her, nodded again. Two of them moved suddenly, as though to give him room to pass. Their hands were out of sight, buried in their skirts, and he could feel the excitement shivering in the air between them, a sort of fever that passed among them.

  He smiled pleasantly at one as he passed, then took his hand off the pistol, bunched his fist, and punched her just under the jaw. The women all shrieked, save the one he'd hit, who simply fell backward over the low wall of the bridge. He ran, seeing from the corner of his eye the woman's skirt, belled like a flower, floating in the water.

  Something went thunk! behind him, and he glanced back over his shoulder. A large piece of ordnance had struck the bridge dead center--half the bridge was gone, and so were most of the women. One was left, staring at him from the far side, the water rushing past beneath her feet, her eyes and mouth round with shock.

  He ran for the gun that had destroyed the bridge, trusting that his uniform would keep him from being shot. His lungs were laboring, the wet clothes weighing him down, but at least he was near his own lines.

  It was a small battery, three cannon, one of the gun crews English--he saw the distinctive blue of the uniforms. No one was shooting at him, but active guns on the French side were keeping them busy; a cannonball hurtled past him, low and deadly, before crashing through a small tree, leaving the butchered stump quivering.

  He was stumbling, barely able to breathe, but near enough. Near enough. He staggered to a halt and bent over, hands on his knees as he gasped for air. Men were shouting nearby, the rhythmic bark of a Prussian commander punctuated by an English voice, shrill with passion, screaming. He wasn't sure whether the screams were directed at the enemy or the English gun crew, and looked to see.

  The crew. Something had happened to demoralize them--a heavy ball dropped within ten feet of him, sinking into the earth, and his flesh shook with the impact. Their lieutenant was shrieking at them, trying to rally them.... Grey wiped a sleeve across his face, and turned to look back across the river. The woman on the shattered bridge was gone.

  A voice spoke suddenly behind him in a tone of absolute amazement, and he turned toward the lieutenant who had been screaming an instant before.

  A cannonball came skipping across the ground like a stone across a pond, struck a buried rock, hopped high, and smashed through the lieutenant's head, removing it.

  Blood fountained from the still-standing body, spraying several feet into the air. Ropes of blood lashed Grey's face and chest, blinding him, shocking hot through his wet clothes. Gasping, he dashed a sleeve across his eyes, clearing them in time to see the lieutenant's body fall, arms thrown wide in boneless grace. The sword he had been holding rolled from his grasp, silver in the grass.

  Grey seized it in reflex, and whirled on the gun crew, who had begun to edge away from the smoking cannon. The bombardier with the linstock was nearest; Grey fetched the man a blow across the side of the head with the flat of his blade that sent him reeling back across the gun's barrel, then bounded at the rammer, who stared at him as though seeing Satan sprung from hell, eyes white and terrified in a sooty face.

  "Pick it up!" Grey roared, stabbing the sword at the ramrod that lay fallen on the grass. "Do it, damn your eyes! You--back to your duty, God damn you--go back, I say!" One of the loaders had tried to slip past him. The man stopped, frozen, eyes rolling to and fro in panic, seeking escape.

  Grey grabbed the man by the shoulder, pushed him half round, and kneed him in the buttocks, shouting. There was blood in his mouth; he choked and spat, kicked at the loader, who was fumbling halfheartedly at the pile of cartridges beneath a canvas sheet. The sponger had already fled; he could see the man's blue coat bobbing up and down as he ran.

  Grey lunged in that direction by instinct, but realized that he could not pursue the deserter and turned instead ferociously on the remnant crew.

  "Load!" he barked, and snatched the linstock from the bombardier, motioning the soldier to replace the man who had fled. Sponger and rammer fell to their work at once, with no more than a hasty glance at Grey, blood-soaked and vicious. The erstwhile bombardier was clumsy, but willing. Grey barked them through the maneuver, once, again, forcing them, guiding them, and then felt them begin to drop back into the accustomed rhythm of the work and pick up speed, gradually losing their terror in the encompassing labor of serving the gun.

  His throat was raw. The wind whipped away half his words and what was left was barely intelligible--but he saw the crew respond to the lash of his voice, and kept shouting.

  Cannon were firing close at hand but he couldn't tell whether they were friend or foe; clouds of black powder smoke rolled over them, obscuring everything.

  His soaked clothes had gone cold again, and it was raining. He had taken the coil of smoking slow-match from the bombardier and tied it in its bag to his own belt. His fingers were stiff, clumsy; he had difficulty forcing the lighted fuse into the linstock, but forced himsel
f to keep the rhythm, shouting orders in a voice that cracked like broken iron. Sponge. Vent. Load cartridge. Ram. Load wadding. Ram. Check vent. Powder. Fall back! And the hissing small flame at the end of the linstock coming down toward the touchhole, sure and graceful, with no sense at all that his own hand guided it.

  That moment of suspended animation and the crash and buck of the gun. The first one left him deafened; he knew he was still shouting only because his throat hurt. He snatched a lump of damp wadding from the ground and hastily crammed some of it into his ears. It didn't help much.

  The rain grew momentarily heavier, cutting through the smoke and taste of blood with a freshness that eased his aching chest. The powder, was it covered? Yes, yes, the powder monkey was still at his post, a scorched-looking boy wide-eyed with fright but holding the canvas tight over the powder kegs, against the pull of the wind.

  "Sponge piece!" he shouted, and heard the word muffled inside his skull as though it came from some vast distance, far away. "Load piece! Ram!"

  He spared a moment to look before touching off the next shot--so far, he had been firing with not the slightest thought for attitude or effect--and forced himself not to blink as the gun went off with a jump like a live thing and the thunder that made you feel as though the ground shook, though in fact it was your own flesh shaking.

  The shot soared high, came down a dozen yards short of a patch of French artillery--smoke sucked suddenly away by the wind, he saw the red of their uniforms and the belch of black smoke from the French gun's barrel. The shot came wide of his own position and he made a hasty calculation of wind, already shouting orders to adjust the trunnions, lower the barrel...one degree? Two?

  Now he saw the milling blur of white, green, and blue, infantry massing behind the French cannon.

  Dare he try for that interesting maneuver whereby a cannonball was fired deliberately low, with the intent of bouncing repeatedly through an enemy phalanx? There was a seething mass of French and Austrian uniforms beyond the gun, perfect.... He would think the ground too soft with damp, save that he'd just seen the same technique employed successfully upon it. He gritted his teeth, but could not help but glance at the fallen lieutenant, noticing only now that the body had fallen at the foot of one of the stones marking the Stations of the Cross. "IX," it said, but he had no time to try to make out the picture on it.

  "Five!" he shouted, an eye on the moving French line, "and one degree west!" The rammer at once jammed his rod in the barrel and the powder monkey ran to lend his strength, as the loaders jerked out the trunnions and put them in again, then threw themselves against the cannon's limber, turning the barrel just enough...

  "Load!"

  The rain came and went in gusty squalls; it had stopped for a moment and he wiped his face again on his sleeve, feeling some liquid--water, sweat, blood--drip down inside his coat from his queued hair.

  "Fire!"

  By God, it worked, and a cheer went up from his crew as they saw the ball hop murderously across the field, knocking Frenchmen down like ninepins as it went.

  "Again, again!" he bellowed, striking his fist on the breech. The sponger was sponging like a maniac, not waiting for the order, and the loaders were already passing the next cartridge to the mouth.

  "Down!" he shouted, and fell flat along with the crew as a shot in reply thudded into the ground six feet away. They rose up again, yelling like demons and shaking their fists. The French gun crew was hopping up and down like fleas, gleeful at the effect of their shot. Grey was obliged to bellow and slap one man across the back with the flat of his sword again to bring his own crew to their senses.

  "Swivel! Swivel to bear on them! Hurry, damn you!"

  Suddenly realizing their precarious position of opportunity and peril, his crew fell to like fiends, swinging the barrel to bear directly upon the French cannon. The French abruptly stopped cheering and began hastily to serve their own gun.

  The French had the range already, were sure to beat them--Grey snatched the useless pistol from his belt and charged the French position, shrieking like a madman and waving both pistol and sword. The ground seemed to pitch and sway beneath his feet, a blur of grass and mud.

  It was perhaps two hundred yards between the English and the French cannons. He was close enough to see the Frenchmen's mouths hanging open when their officer suddenly realized what Grey was about and groped madly for his own pistol. Grey promptly turned and ran like a hare back toward his own crew, leaping low bushes and zigzagging, seeking cover in the drifting rags of powder smoke. He couldn't tell whether the Frenchman was firing at him or no; the air cracked with random fire and the sound of bugles. Goddamned cavalry, he thought. Always in the bloody way--

  "Duck!" came a faint cry, and he threw himself headlong in the sopping grass just as his own gun spoke near at hand. Without looking to see the possible effect of the shot, he scrambled up into a crouch and scuttled the rest of the way, arriving winded and wheezing to the cheers of his men.

  "Once more," he panted. "Give it them again!"

  The men were already at it; the linstock was thrust into his hand and he fumbled for the fuse, but his hand was shaking too badly to manage. The powder monkey seized the wobbling end of the slow-match and thrust it through the hole, slashing off the bit of fuse so hastily that the knife tip scratched Grey's hand, though he didn't feel it.

  "Fall back!" he gasped, and lowered the hissing match to the touchhole.

  There was an instant of breathless expectancy, and then the world disappeared in a blast of fire and darkness.

  He woke to a sensation of drowning and gasped for air, then froze, gripped by a pain so intense that he actually saw it, as a physical entity separate from himself. A red thing, shot with black, pulsing and whirling like a pinwheel. Sharp--he felt his lungs bursting and had to breathe, would have screamed if he'd had any breath, the knife edge of the spinning thing slicing through his flesh like butter. It cut straight through his chest and pressed him to the ground with a crushing weight.

  "Major! Major!"

  Someone touched him, and he flung out a hand, blind, grappling for help, God, help, he couldn't breathe...

  Something smaller than the pain pushed him, hard, and he was suddenly on his side, doubled up, coughing, jerking in agony with each involuntary cough, but had to, couldn't not, couldn't stop, and spikes of air stabbed his chest coming in, as though he'd breathed in a mass of drawing pins, went out in a blinding sheet of white-hot pain and black smoke.

  "Major!"

  "Oh, shit, oh, shit, oh, shit!" someone said nearby.

  He was in complete agreement with this, but couldn't say so. He was still coughing, but not as much; saliva was running from his mouth, making runnels in the soot, and he seemed to be making a whimpering noise with each jerked breath.

  Hands on him, he felt them, frantic thumps and grabs, pulling at his coat, his limbs. He made a frenzied noise of protest and felt bone ends grate--Christ, he heard them grate--and a mass of green and brown and blue and red spun past, and he realized dimly that his eyes were open.

  He blinked, tears streaming, saw the black spikes of his clotted lashes and cold gray stone by his face.

  Jesus Falls the Third Time, he thought. Poor bastard.

  Someone was bellowing overhead, meaningless sounds. Cannon was thumping somewhere near; he felt the ground shake, felt his heart stop with each crash, and wished it would stop once and for all, it hurt so when it started again....

  "Jesus! Look at the blood of him! He'll never last!"

  "His arm, let me bind his arm--"

  "No use, no use, it's blown clean off!"

  "It's not, I saw his fingers move, back off--back off, I said, God damn your eyes!"

  The voices seemed to come through a fog of noise, something rushing, like a waterfall that filled his ears. He still felt the thump of the guns, but that, too, had faded somehow, seemed safely distant. The pain had drawn in upon itself, and sat sullen in his chest, glowing like a lump of metal f
lung from a blacksmith's forge, molten and heavy.

  He hoped his heart would not come too close to it. He could see his heart, too, a pulsing dark-red thing, almost black by contrast with the brilliant crimson of the pain.

  They were saying something now about the gun--were they fighting the gun?--but he couldn't focus on the words; they all rushed past, part of a waterfall, loud in his ears. Water...warm water. It was rushing over him, his clothes felt sodden, he could feel the trickle of it down his neck, over his ribs, the feel of wet cloth stuck to his belly.

  "Oh, Jesus," said a voice above, despairing. "So much blood."

  He was in a room somewhere, filled with light. Wounded, he'd been wounded. By reflex, he grabbed for his balls. Their reassuring presence compensated in some measure for the rending pain that shot through his body with the movement, but it was still enough to make him gasp.

  Something moved across the light, and someone bent over him.

  "Me lord!" Tom Byrd's voice came loud in his ear, halfway between fright and hope. "Quick, quick! Get the earl--he's awake!"

  "Earl?" Grey croaked. "What...Hal?"

  "Your brother, aye. He'll be right here, me lord, don't you trouble yourself. D'ye want water, me lord?"

  He wanted water somewhat more than heaven, earth, or the riches of the fabled East. He was dimly aware of someone arguing about whether he should be allowed to have any, but his precious Tom snarled like a badger and elbowed whoever it was away.

  Cool pottery touched his mouth, and he gulped, half choking.

  "Slow, me lord," Tom said, moving the cup away, and put a hand behind his head to steady him. "Slow as does it. That's it, now. Lap it like a dog, now, just a bit at a time."

  He lapped, urgent for more, trying to will the water into the parched tissues of his mouth and throat, tasting the faint silver of blood from a cracked lip. For a brief period of ecstasy, nothing existed save the bliss of drinking water. The cup was drawn away, though, and Tom lowered his head gently to the pillow, leaving him blinking at the ceiling, panting shallowly.