Battle Flag tnsc-3

by Bernard Cornwell

  "Every damned man who's died in this war said that,Coffman," Starbuck reacted angrily, "and I want you to shave before you're shot. So stay close to Truslow."

  "Yes, sir," Coffman said meekly.

  An artillery bolt smacked through pine tops to the right of the road, leaving the branches whipping back and forth above the spray of needles that sifted down to the dust. Wounded men, all rebels, were lying on both verges. Some had already died. A man staggered back from the fighting. He was barechested and his suspenders were hanging loose beside his legs. He was clutching his belly, trying to keep his guts from spilling into the dust. His forearms were soaked in blood. "Oh, golly," Coffman said again and went pale. The blood on the dusty road looked blacker than the tobacco stains. The sound of rifle fire was splintering the afternoon that smelt of pine resin, sulfur, and blood. The shadows were long, long enough to give Starbuck an instant's wild hope that night might fall before he needed to fight.

  Starbuck led the company on across the open land and into the cover of the second belt of timber. The leaves here flicked with the strike of bullets, and fresh scars of yellow wood showed where artillery bolts had sheared limbs off trees. An ammunition wagon with one wheel smashed was canted at the side of the road. A black teamster with a bloody scalp sat leaning against the abandoned wagon and watched Starbuck's men pass.

  The trees ended not far ahead, and beyond, in the smoky open, Starbuck knew the battle was waiting for him. Common sense told him to slow down and thus delay his entry onto that bullet-riven stage, but pride made him hurry. He could see the gunsmoke sifting through the last green branches like a spring fog blowing out of Boston Harbor. He could smell the smoke's foul stench, and he knew it was almost time for the Legion to deploy. His mouth was powder dry, his heart erratic, and his bladder full. He passed a man whose body lay splayed open from the strike of an artillery shell. He heard Coffman retch dryly. Flies buzzed in the close air. One of his men laughed at the eviscerated corpse. Starbuck unslung his rifle and felt with a finger to check that the percussion cap was in place. He was a captain, but he bore no signs of rank and carried a rifle just like his men, and now, like them, he pulled his cartridge box around to the front of his rope belt, where it would be handy for reloading. His broken right boot almost tripped him as he left the shadow of the trees to see ahead a shallow valley scarred and littered by battle. The low land was rifted with smoke and loud with gunfire. Beside the road a horse lay dead in a dry ditch. Coffman was white-faced but trying hard to look unconcerned and not to duck whenever a missile howled or whipped overhead. Bullets were whickering through the humid air. There was no sign of any enemy—indeed, hardly any men were in view except for some rebel gunners and Colonel Swynyard, who, with Moxey beside him, was sitting his horse in a field to the left of the road.

  "Starbuck!" Colonel Swynyard shouted. "Over here!" Starbuck led the company across the brittle corn stubble. "Form there!" Swynyard called, pointing to a spot close behind his horse; then he turned in his saddle to stare northward through a pair of binoculars. Captain Moxey was fussily ordering H Company to align themselves on his marker, so Starbuck left him to it and walked forward to join Swynyard. The Colonel lowered his glasses to watch the battery of rebel six-pounders that was deployed just a hundred yards ahead. The smoke from the small guns was obscuring the fighting beyond, but every now and then a Yankee shell would explode near the battery, making Swynyard grin in appreciation. "Oh, well done! Good shooting!" Swynyard called aloud when an enemy shell eviscerated a team horse picketed fifty paces behind the guns. The horse screamed as it flailed bloodily on the ground, panicking the other tethered horses, which reared frantically as they tried to drag their iron picket stakes out of the ground. "Chaos!" Swynyard said happily, then glanced down at Starbuck. "Yankees are damned lively this afternoon."

  "Guess they were waiting for us," Starbuck said. "Knew we were coming."

  "Guess someone told on us. A traitor, eh?" Swynyard offered the suggestion slyly. The Colonel was a man of startling ugliness, much of it the result of wounds honorably taken in the service of the old United States, but some of it caused by the whiskey that generally left him comatose by early evening. He had a coarse black beard streaked with gray and crusted with dried tobacco juice, sunken eyes, and a tic in his scarred right cheek. His left hand was missing three fingers, and his mouth was filled with rotting, stinking teeth. "Maybe the traitor was a Northerner, eh?" Swynyard hinted clumsily.

  Starbuck smiled. "More likely to be some poor drunken son of a bitch needing cash for his whiskey . . ."—he paused—"Colonel."

  Swynyard's only response was his cackling laugh, which hinted at madness. Remarkably, despite the lateness of the day, he was still sober, either because Washington Faulconer had hidden his whiskey or else because Swynyard's small remaining shred of self-protection had convinced him that he had to function efficiently on a day of battle or else lose his job altogether. Swynyard glanced up at the gunsmoke, then looked back to the notebook in which he was writing. On his right sleeve he wore a square patch of white cloth embroidered with a red crescent. The symbol was from Washington Faulconer's coat of arms, and the General had dreamed up the happy idea of issuing the badges to every man in his Brigade, though the idea had not been wholly successful. Some men refused to wear the patch, and generally it was possible to tell Faulconer's supporters from his detractors by the badge's presence or absence. Starbuck, naturally, had never worn the crescent badge, though some of his men had patched their pants' seats with the convenient square of cloth.

  Swynyard tore the page out of his notebook, put the book itself away, and then drew out his revolver. He began slipping percussion caps over the firing nipples of the loaded chambers. The barrel of the gun was pointed directly at Starbuck's chest. "I could have an accident," Swynyard said slyly. "No one could blame me. I'm three fingers short of a hand so no wonder I fumble sometimes. One shot, Starbuck, and you'd be buzzard meat on the grass. I reckon General Faulconer would like that." Swynyard began to thumb the hammer back.

  Then a click sounded behind Starbuck, and the Colonel's thumb relaxed. Sergeant Truslow lowered the hammer of his rifle. "I can have an accident, too," Truslow said.

  Swynyard said nothing but just grinned and turned away. The nearby battery had ceased firing, and the gunners were hitching their weapons to limbers. The smoke of the battery dissipated slowly in the still air. The rebel guns had been fighting a duel with a Northern battery, a duel that the Northerners had won. "The Yankees will be raising their sights," Swynyard remarked, staring through his glasses. "They've got four-and-a-half-inch rifles. Can't fight four-and-a-half-inch rifles with six-pounder guns. We might as well throw rocks at the bastards."

  Starbuck watched the Southern guns wheel fast away to the rear and wondered if he was now supposed to fight four-and-a-half-inch rifled cannon with rifles. His heart seemed to be beating too loudly, filling his chest with its drumbeats. He tried to lick his lips, but his mouth was too dry.

  The sound of musketry slackened, to be replaced by Northern cheers. Yankee cheering was much deeper in tone than the blood-chilling yelp of attacking rebels. The cannon smoke had thinned sufficiently to let Starbuck see a belt of woodland a half-mile ahead, and then to see a sight he had. never dreamed of witnessing on one of Thomas Jackson's battlefields.

  He saw panic.

  Ahead and to the left of Starbuck a horde of Southern soldiers were pouring out of the woodland and fleeing southward across the shallow valley. All discipline was gone. Shells exploded among the gray-jacketed soldiers, adding to their desperation. A rebel flag went down, was snatched up again, then disappeared in another flame-filled burst of shell smoke. Horsemen were galloping through the fleeing mass in an attempt to turn the men around, and here and there among the panic a few men did try to form a line, but such small groups stood no chance against the flood of fear that swept the majority away.

  Swynyard might be a drunkard and a foul-tempered brute, but he had been
a professional soldier long enough to recognize disaster. He turned to see that Captain Medlicott's G Company had formed alongside Starbuck's men. "Medlicott!" Swynyard shouted. "Take these two companies forward! You're in charge!" Medlicott, though much older than Starbuck, had less seniority as a captain, but Swynyard had given him the command of the two companies as a way of insulting Starbuck. "See that broken limber?" The Colonel pointed toward a shattered vehicle that lay two hundred paces ahead, where a strip of grass marked a divide between a patch of harvested corn and a wider field of wheat. "Form your skirmish line there! I'll bring the Legion up in support." Swynyard turned back to Starbuck. "Take this," he said and leaned down from the saddle to hold out a folded scrap of paper.

  Starbuck snatched the piece of paper, then shouted at his men to advance alongside G Company. A shell screamed overhead. It was odd, Starbuck thought, how the debilitating nervousness that afflicted a man before battle could be banished by the proximity of danger. Even the day's stifling heat seemed bearable now that he was under fire. He licked his lips, then unfolded the scrap of paper that Swynyard had given him. He had supposed it would be written orders, but instead he saw it was a label for a dead man. Starbuck, the paper read, Boston, Massachusetts. Starbuck threw it angrily away. Behind, where the rest of the Legion hurried into ranks, Swynyard saw the gesture and cackled.

  "This is madness!" Truslow protested to Starbuck. Two companies of skirmishers could not stand against the tide of fear that was retreating from the Yankee guns.

  "The rest of the Legion will help," Starbuck said.

  "They'd better," Truslow said, "or we're vulture meat."

  Company G was advancing to Starbuck's right. Medlicott seemed unworried by the odds, but just stumped ahead of his men with a rifle in his hands. Or maybe, Starbuck thought, the miller just did not display his fear. "Keep the ranks straight!" Starbuck called to Coffman. "I want them steady." He felt in his pocket and found the stub of a cigar he had been saving for battle. He borrowed a lit cigar from a man in the ranks, lit his own, and drew the bitter smoke deep into his lungs.

  Lieutenant Coffman had drawn ahead of H Company and was holding a brass-handled bayonet like a sword.

  "Get back, Mr. Coffman!" Starbuck called.

  "But, sir—"

  "Your place is behind the company, Lieutenant! Go there! And throw away that toy sword!"

  The first Northern soldiers suddenly appeared at the tree line on the valley's far crest, which blossomed with the small puffs of white rifle smoke. A shell exploded ahead of Starbuck, and pieces of its casing whipped past him. To his left the field had been partly harvested, so that some of the wheat was standing but most was drying in stooks. Small fires flickered where the shell fire had set the dry crops alight. There were patches of corn stubble among the wheat and two rows of standing corn, where a group of rebel soldiers had taken cover. The tasseled corn shivered whenever a bullet or shell whipped through the stalks. A Northern flag appeared at the far trees. The standard-bearer was waving it to and fro, making the stripes flutter brightly. A bugle was sounding, and off to the west the rebel infantry was still running. Rebel officers still galloped among the fugitives, trying to stem their flight and turn them round. General Jackson was among them, flailing with his scabbarded saber at the panicked men. More Northerners were at the tree line, some of them directly ahead of Starbuck now.

  Another shell landed close to Company H, and Starbuck wondered why Medlicott did not order the two companies into skirmish order. Then he decided to hell with military etiquette and shouted the order himself. Medlicott echoed the order, thus shaking the two companies into a loose and scattered formation. Their job now was to fight the enemy skirmishers who would be advancing ahead of the main Yankee attack. "Make sure you're loaded!" Starbuck called. The Northern line had halted momentarily, perhaps to align itself after advancing through the trees. The Southern fugitives had disappeared behind Starbuck's left flank, and it suddenly seemed very quiet and lonely on the battlefield.

  It also seemed very dangerous. Captain Medlicott crossed to Starbuck. "Is this right, do you think?" he asked, gesturing at the scatter of isolated skirmishers who were alone in the wide field. Medlicott had never liked Starbuck, and the red crescent patch on the shoulder of his uniform coat marked him for a loyal supporter of General Faulconer, but nervousness now made Medlicott seek reassurance from Faulconer's bitterest enemy. Close to, Starbuck could see that Medlicott was not hiding his fear at all; one cheek was quivering uncontrollably, and the sweat was pouring off his face and dripping from his beard. He took off his brimmed hat to fan his face, and Starbuck saw that even the miller's smooth, bald, chalk white pate was beaded with sweat. "We shouldn't be here!" Medlicott exclaimed petulantly.

  "God knows what's happening," Starbuck said. A Northern battery had appeared where the road vanished among the farther trees. Starbuck saw the guns slew round in a shower of dirt. In a moment, he thought, that artillery will have us in their open sights. Dear God, he thought, but let it be a clean death, quick as a thought, with no agonized lingering under a surgeon's knife or dying of the sweated fever in some rat-infested hospital. He turned to look behind and saw the Faulconer Brigade streaming off the road and forming into ranks. "Swynyard's coming soon," he tried to reassure Medlicott.

  The Northern infantry started forward again. A half-dozen flags showed above the dark ranks. Three of the flags were Old Glories, the others were regimental flags carrying state badges or martial insignias. Six flags translated into three regiments that were now attacking two light companies. Captain Medlicott went back to his own men, and Sergeant Truslow joined Starbuck. "Just us and them?" he asked, nodding at the Yankees.

  "Swynyard's bringing the rest of the Brigade forward," Starbuck said. Shells from the newly deployed battery screeched overhead, aimed at the Faulconer Brigade. "Better them than us, eh?" Starbuck said with the callous indifference of a man spared the gunners' attentions. He saw George Finney aim his rifle. "Hold your fire, George! Wait till the bastards are in range."

  The Northern skirmishers ran ahead of the attacking line. Their job was to brush Starbuck's men aside, but soon, Starbuck thought, the rest of the Faulconer Brigade's skirmishers would advance to reinforce him. Another salvo of shells thundered above him, the cracks of their explosions sounding a second after the percussive thump of the guns themselves. Starbuck began looking for enemy officers among the approaching skirmishers. Yankee officers seemed more reluctant than Southerners to abandon their swords and glinting rank badges and bright epaulettes.

  A second Northern battery on the crest opened fire. A shell screamed just inches over Starbuck's head. For what we are about to receive, he thought, may the Lord make us truly thankful. He could hear the beat of drums sounding from the Yankee infantry. Was this to be the breakthrough battle for the North? Were they at last to batter the Confederacy into surrender? Most of the rebel forces in Virginia were seventy miles away on the far side of Richmond with Robert Lee, but it was here that the Northerners were attacking, and if they broke through here, then what was to stop them marching south, ever south, until Richmond was cut off and the whole upper South split from the Confederacy? "Hold still now!" Starbuck called to his men as he walked slowly along his scattered skirmish line. Another minute, he thought, and the Yankee skirmishers would be in range. "You see that red-haired son of a bitch with the hooked sword, Will?" Starbuck called to Tolby, one of the Legion's finest marksmen. "He's yours. Kill the bastard."

  "I'll take care of him, Captain!" Tolby eased back the hammer of his rifle.

  Starbuck saw the enemy cannons disappear behind a blossom of gray-white smoke, and he anticipated another flight of shells overhead, but instead the missiles slammed into the field all around Starbuck's men. One of Medlicott's sergeants was flung backward, his blood momentarily misting the hot air. A shell splinter whipped into the broken limber, which carried a stenciled legend announcing that the vehicle belonged to the 4th U.S. Artillery, evidence that t
he rebels had pushed the Yankees back across the valley before being routed in the far woods. Or perhaps, Starbuck thought, the limber had been captured earlier in the war, for it seemed that at least half of the rebels' equipment was of Northern origin. A solid shot landed close beside Starbuck, then ricocheted up and back. The nearness of the shot made him wonder why the Yankee gunners were aiming at a scattered skirmish line when they could be firing at the massed ranks of the Faulconer Brigade, and that curiosity made him turn to look for Swynyard's promised reinforcements.

  But Swynyard had vanished, and with him the whole Faulconer Brigade, leaving Starbuck and Medlicott alone in the field. Starbuck turned back. The Northern skirmishers were close now, close enough for Starbuck to see that their uniforms were smart, not patched brown and gray like the rebels'. The Northerners were advancing in good style, the sun reflecting off their belt buckles and brass buttons. Behind the skirmish line a battalion trampled down a row of standing corn. There were a half-dozen mounted officers at the rear of the Yankee formation, evidence that at least one of the attacking regiments was new to the war. Experienced officers did not invite the attention of sharpshooters by riding high in saddles. But nor did two companies of skirmishers stand to fight against a whole Yankee brigade.

  "Fire!" Truslow shouted, and the Legion's skirmishers began their battle. The men were in pairs. One man would fire, then reload while his companion looked for danger. The red-haired Yankee was already down, clutching his chest.

  Truslow ran across to Starbuck. "I was never a religious man," the Sergeant said as he rammed a bullet down his rifle's barrel, "but ain't there a story in the Bible about some son of a bitch king sending a man to die in battle just so he could riddle the man's wife?"

  Starbuck peered through the veil of rifle smoke, saw a Yankee go onto one knee to take aim, and fired at the man. A Northern bullet whipsawed the air a few inches to his left. Behind their skirmish line the Northern brigade advanced stolidly beneath their bright flags. He could hear their boots crushing cornstalks, and he knew that as soon as the marching line reached the further edge of the wheat field, they would stop to take aim, and then a killing volley would scream over the field, with every bullet aimed at the two stranded companies of the Legion. There was nothing to check the Yankees out here in the open. No rebel guns were firing, there were no bursting shells or clawing sprays of canister to fleck the wheat field red. Tom Petty, an eighteen-year-old in Starbuck's company, turned round with his mouth open and his eyes wide. He shook his head in disbelief, then sank to his knees. He saw Starbuck's eyes on him and forced a brave smile. "I'm all right, sir! Just bruised!" He managed to stand and face the enemy.