RIVERRUN
By Charles L. Grant
Writing as Felicia Andrews
A Rendezvous Press Production
Rendezvous Press is an imprint of Crossroad Press
Digital Edition published by Crossroad Press
Digital Edition Copyright 2012 Kathryn Ptacek
Copy-edited by: Christine Steendam
LICENSE NOTES
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Meet the Author
Photo by Jeff Schalles
Charles L. Grant taught English and history at the high school level before becoming a full-time writer in the ’70s. He served for many years as an officer in the Horror Writers Association and in Science Fiction Writers of America.
He was known for his “quiet horror” and for editing the award-winning Shadows anthologies. He received the British Fantasy Society’s Special Award in 1987 for life achievement; in 2000, he was the recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award from HWA. Other awards include two Nebula Awards and three World Fantasy Awards for writing and editing.
Charlie died from a lengthy illness on September 15, 2006, just three days after his birthday. He lived in Newton, NJ, and was married to writer/editor Kathryn Ptacek for nearly twenty-five years.
Book List
Horror
Novels
Black Oak: Genesis
Black Oak: The Hush of Dark Wings
Black Oak: Winter Knight
Black Oak: Hunting Ground
Black Oak: When the Cold Wind Blows
Fire Mask
For Fear of the Night
In A Dark Dream
Jackals
Millennium Quartet #1: Symphony
Millennium Quartet #2: In the Mood
Millennium Quartet #3: Chariot
Millennium Quartet #4: Riders in the Sky
Night Songs
Raven
Something Stirs
Stunts
The Bloodwind
The Curse
The Grave
The Hour of the Oxrun Dead
The Last Call of Mourning
The Nestling
The Pet
The Sound Of Midnight
The Tea Party
The Universe of Horror Trilogy
The Soft Whisper of the Dead
The Dark Cry of the Moon
The Long Night of the Grave
Collections
Dialing the Wind
Nightmare Seasons
The Black Carousel
The Orchard
Science Fiction
A Quiet Night of Fear
Ascension
Legion
Ravens of the Moon
The Shadow of Alpha
As “Geoffrey Marsh”
The Fangs of the Hooded Demon
The King of Satan’s Eyes
The Patch of the Odin Soldier
The Tail of the Arabian, Knight
As “Lionel Fenn”
The Quest for the White Duck Trilogy
Blood River Down
Web of Defeat
Agnes Day
668, the Neighbor of the Beast
By The Time I Get To Nashville
Mark of the Moderately Vicious Vampire
Once Upon a Time in the East
The Once and Future Thing
The Really Ugly Thing From Mar
The Reasonably Invisible Man
The Seven Spears of the W’dch’ck
Time, the Semi-Final Frontier
As “Simon Lake”
Daughter of Darkness
Death Cycle
Death Scream
He Told Me To
Shapes Berkley
Something’s Watching
The Clown
The Forever House
As “Felicia Andrews”
Moon Witch
Mountain Witch
Riverrun
River Witch
Seacliffe
Silver Huntress
The Velvet Hart
As “Deborah Lewis”
Eve of the Hound
Kirkwood Fires
The Wind at Winter’s End
Voices Out of Time
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RIVERRUN
BOOK ONE
The Road to Riverrun
1863
Chapter One
The farm lay in a shallow, quiet narrow valley that had been selectively cleared nearly a century before. It had been worked diligently, though not always profitably, by its three successive owners, but had never grown larger than its few score acres. The road that wound through the low surrounding hills passed in front of the main house, but those few horsemen and carriages trickling by saw little save a brief glimmer of fresh white behind a thick wall of hickory and willow. A cleanly hewn fence bounded the property stoutly, and a decorative false well marked the lane that swept under the trees to end at a wide, mown lawn. The fields themselves spread from behind the two-story wooden building on back to where the heavy forestland, now a tired green in the press of summer heat, resumed.
It was out of these woods that the uniformed rider came, late in the afternoon. He was slumped over his saddle, his right arm hanging uselessly at his side. The horse, a great gray gelding, picked its way carefully along a path between rows of what had once been corn before it had been snatched, unwilling and early, from its stalks. A crow rose squawking from the burnt-brown field, and the startled horse shied and snorted, pawing at the ground with a nervous forehoof. The rider, clutching grimly at the reins, wearily reached out to stroke the powerful neck, urging the beast on. Then he sagged forward, his shoulder pressing against the horse’s mane to prevent him from falling.
Closer to the house, a girl working in a small patch of vegetables heard the commotion raised by bird and horse, and looked up. The western sun glared into her eyes and she lifted a hand to shade her face. Her midnight-black hair was streaked with dust and tied into a loose bun at her neck, her work dress was drab and loose, and the sleeves had been pushed above her elbows. She leaned on her hoe, a strong hand gripping it lightly in anxious curiosity, but she made no move to reach for the gun that lay on the ground beside her foot. She waited instead until her eyes had ad
justed to the glare, then gasped and dropped the hoe as she broke into a run toward the horse.
She had recognized the rider, and his white-blond hair now caked with dust and blood.
“Geoff!” she called, and doubled her speed when there was no answer.
The gray veered at her approach, jerking its great head aside when she snatched for the reins. She scowled, stifled a curse, and kept her voice low and calming.
“Easy, Falcon easy, easy …” she said. The horse seemed to whimper its understanding as she stroked its velvet-soft muzzle and worked her way around its massive shoulder to grasp the man’s hand clutching at the pommel. At the touch he raised his head weakly, stared at her blindly for several long seconds before his pain-dulled eyes brightened in recognition.
His wan smile nearly wrenched a cry from her throat. “You’ll have to help me this time, Cass,” he said, and fainted.
Cassandra’s first impulse was to race back to the house for help, but as he swayed groggily, she changed her mind and put a shoulder to his side to keep him on his mount. Then, reins in hand, she walked the horse across the fields. She no longer cared how many of the plants the sharp hooves kicked up; as it was, there wasn’t much left to save even though it was only the early part of July. Soldiers of the Union army had been coming through on an almost regular basis for the past few weeks, taking what they needed and leaving her and her family only tiny scraps of paper as payment; signed by an unknown commander. The voucher script was, her father had been instructed, to be turned in to yet another commander who would pay them hard money. Mr. Bowsmith, however, had not yet verified this assertion. When it had all begun, he had said he would be only too glad to assist the Union cause. However, as the fields grew more bare and the farm’s larder dwindled, his grumblings grew louder and his already quick temper much shorter.
Cassandra stumbled and leaned hard against the horse for support. The rider still slumped, and she touched his blue trouser leg affectionately. Geoff Hawk was in fact the only officer her father had been civil to lately. The captain had ridden in nearly two weeks before with a three-man patrol in search of forage. When he had seen the state of the Bowsmith farm, however, he had backed off politely, and somewhat shyly.
“It’s obvious you’ve done more than enough, Mr. Bowsmith,” he had said. “I certainly can’t take the food from your mouths just when you’ve set it on your plates.”
His smile had been broad when he’d turned it to Cassandra, and she had flushed as she darted a quick glance at her father before returning with a smile of her own.
Hawkins was tall and solidly lean, his long hair almost curling to his shoulders. His face was dark from the sun and somewhat haggard from the fighting he had seen in Virginia and Maryland, but there remained the clear vestige of a young man’s rugged beauty that sparked within her a not unpleasant giddy feeling. She had been surprised by the feeling, and slightly disconcerted, the more so when he seemed to understand and his smile became a knowing grin.
It was, she had decided that first night, his eyes that marked him for such unusually intense reactions; though the rest of him was battle-hardened and he was obviously supported only by some continuing inner strength, his sharply blue eyes were years too young, gaily bright as though there was laughter inside patiently waiting to explode from his thin, pale lips. Cassandra became aware she had been staring and blushing when her father suddenly burst into laughter, backed away from the door, and invited the captain in for supper. When Hawkins had demurred graciously, the invitation had been extended to his men as well, and they had dined that night as if no war at all had torn the fabric of the country, as if no men at all were dying in fierce, close combat. Men like her brothers Rafe, and Greg.
When the evening had ended, she was pleasantly surprised to hear her father invite Captain Hawkins to come back, when he had the time.
“You shouldn’t have returned,” she whispered to the wounded man as she led the horse over a series of irrigation ditches her brothers had dug before leaving home. “You should have stayed away.”
But he hadn’t, and she knew she would not trade the memories of those nights for any of the treasures she had read about in her books.
He had returned as often as he could, lingering over the brandy longer each night, bestowing innumerable compliments on her mother for her cooking, her father for his provender, and on Cassandra herself for daring to take on the work of a man to keep the enterprise going. In return for the hospitality, he kept the other soldiers away, so they were no longer bothered by foragers raiding their meager crops.
Cassandra had had hopes that the interlude in the war would last forever. It had been too long since she had felt such stirrings about a man, and too long since a man had thought her more than just a girl who worked in the fields.
When she reached the gate in the fence at the back of the house, she touched Geoff lightly, as if this would prevent him from falling, then moved to lift the latch. As she did so, she remembered the last time she had seen him. It had been only four days before, on the first of July, and they had walked down the lane after supper, Falcon trotting obediently behind them.
“Are we winning, Geoff?” she had asked when suddenly she grew uncomfortable in the silence that had drifted down from the dark, overhanging trees. “Will this horrible thing be over soon?”
“I wish I could be more optimistic,” he’d answered quietly, “but that incredible man Lee refuses to back down. He just keeps moving, just keeps coming. Always. Just keeps coming.”
“There’s talk—we don’t get much news way out here where we are—but there’s talk that he’s invading the North.”
She sensed rather than saw his reluctant nod, and the chill in her arms and down her spine made her shudder strongly. “He’s an impossible man, Cass,” he said. “You think you’ve got him pinned down for good some damn place, and the next thing you know he’s up and gone somewhere else. He picks his places. We have to come to him. It’s a crime, Cass, he’s not on our side.”
There was no mistaking the admiration in his voice for the exploits of the Confederate leader, and Cassandra was puzzled by it, and more than a little angered because of it. Both of her brothers had volunteered for the Pennsylvania 3rd over her father’s loud objections, but when they had left the farm more than twenty months before, she had had the feeling they would be home in time for spring planting. When they stayed away, however, and the war dragged bitterly on, she began having nightmares of their dying, alone, under some uncaring sun; and there had been a number of anguished moments as she toiled over the crops when she had raised her sunburned fist to the sky and cursed both God and Satan for the carnage that never seemed to end.
Geoff sighed, then said loudly, “There’s going to be a fight soon, Cass… A bad one, this time. Troops are moving into the area by the thousands.”
“Lee?” she’d asked again, the chill returning.
“Lee,” he confirmed, and shook his head sadly. “It’s going to be a fine way to celebrate our Independence Day, isn’t it?”
They reached a break in the trees lining the lane, and the moon glinted brightly on Geoff’s polished buttons and the band of silver he wore around his uniform cap. It was an impressive and ghostly sight, and Cassandra became curiously aware more of herself than of the man she feared she was falling in love with. Her dress was of plain brown cotton, loose-fitting to keep the air moving about her as she worked at her brothers’ tasks on and off the field. She wished suddenly for a bright gold gown of silken brocade, with bows and ribbons and stiff underskirts to accentuate her hips. The neckline would swoop just enough to expose the thrust of her breasts, and a veil of faintly silvered lace would be tucked coyly around the bodice to hint at the fullness that lay beneath. Her black hair would be done in stylish ringlets which would brush her shoulders, and a tiara of the finest jewels would diminish the hauteur of her high forehead and match the glitter of her green eyes.
She had shaken herself, then, wonder
ing what it was that put such girlish nonsense into her head. She had been about to ask Geoff of news of the President when he suddenly took her arms in his hands. She stared at him frankly, and he seemed abruptly nonplussed. He turned his head away and gazed down toward the road. “Cassandra,” he said, “I didn’t need to come out here, you know. Any excuse would have done.”
She felt his hands trembling, and she stepped closer to him. She was trembling slightly herself, but she did not look away as he had done. Instead, she tried to get him to read her thoughts, to understand that she wanted him to release her arms and move his strong hands to her back. She wanted more than anything at that moment for him to hold her tightly; the talk of war so close to home had driven ice into her blood, and she wanted his comforting embrace.
“Geoff,” she said then, and her voice was high and childlike. He turned, stared, then grabbed her almost in desperation, kissing her hard until her lips ached with the pleasure of their touch, and her breasts protested the row of buttons pressing into their flesh. Her legs weakened and her arms slipped around his back, her fingers gripping his broad shoulders; for a dreamlike moment she knew nothing at all but Captain Geoffrey Hawkins and the night and the cool breeze and the warm press of his lips to hers.
It could have been hours, but had been only a few short seconds before he released her gently and brushed a tender hand through her hair, letting a finger trace lovingly along the sun-baked skin that was soft on her face. He toyed for a moment with the metal clasp at her neck, and looked into her eyes as the two halves parted and her throat was exposed. She said nothing. Her lungs filled with the soothing night air, and she said nothing, but only half-closed her eyes, when his hand drifted to the next clasp, and the next, until his hands could move unimpeded over her breasts. She gasped, bit at her lips, and muttered his name softly. He stopped then, and drew her slowly off the lane to the thick grass that edged it. He knelt and looked up to her, and when she had joined him his hands were already taking the dress from her shoulders, her waist, as her own fingers moved over the buttons of his tunic and released them.
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