by Glen Craney
Cleburne arose from his stump and began walking away.
Broody sensed that his mention of Cuchulain had distressed the general for some reason. Yet he was cursed with the old Irish fault of never being able to leave a story unfinished, so he followed on Cleburne’s heels and persisted. “Forgall was dead set against the marriage and sent Cuchulainn off to the land of Alba to endure a dozen ordeals in war to prove himself worthy of Emer. Forgall figured Cuchulainn would just get himself killed, and problem solved. Devil was, Cuchulainn not only made it back alive to Ireland, he’d been trained as the greatest warrior on the isle to boot.”
Cleburne raised his field glasses again to scan the approach into Franklin. “That’s a grand saga, but I don’t see what it has to do with me.”
“Twelve tribulations, sir. That’s what Cuchulainn had to overcome to get his lass. Now, from what I been told, you survived Shiloh, Richmond, Perryville, Stones River, Chickamauga, Chattanooga, Ringgold Gap, Pickett’s Mill, Kennesaw Mountain, Peachtree Creek, and Ezra Church. Ciphering ain’t my strong suit, but by my count, you got one more tribulation to overcome, and then you’ll gain the hand of your Emer. Just one more, General, and we’ll win the war and off you go to wed Miss Tarleton. After what you been through these past four years, one more tribulation ain’t nothin’.”
Cleburne lowered his field glasses and stared at Broody, as if not quite sure what to make of the strange fable. He began walking off again toward his horse tied to a tree a hundred yards away.
Broody waited for orders. “Sir? Am I to come with you?”
Cleburne stopped and pulled from his coat pocket a small dispatch journal. He wetted the tip of a nib with his tongue and wrote a few lines on the last page. When finished, he tied the journal with its ribbon bindings and tossed it to Broody. “Return to General Hood. Tell him I am in receipt of his latest.”
Broody stared at the journal as if he were laying hands on a holy relic. “Should I give him this, too?”
Cleburne’s coal-black eyes blazed so hot they could have lit the fires of Tara. “No, the journal is your wedding gift. And you’re not to read what I wrote until the day you marry that Kilheel lass of yours.”
“Aye, sir, but—”
“We’ll finish our checkers game after I’ve dispensed with this business at hand.” Cleburne pointed toward the two log stumps they’d used for seats. “And don’t move those chips. I have your king cornered.”
Broody swallowed hard. He now realized what Hood had written to Cleburne. Those regiments behind them on the turnpike weren’t drilling at all. Old Wooden Head Hood was dead set on fighting a battle this very hour, even though there wasn’t enough light left to draw a decent bead. That Texan ghoul with half a torso had gone plum off his nut.
“Be gone with you, Private.” Cleburne averted his eyes. “Godspeed.”
Broody saluted as the general mounted to take his station at the head of Cheatham’s corps. He’d never pined for the fighting, but he longed to accompany the general on what surely would be his greatest victory. Yet he had his orders. He threaded his way back south through the surge of regiments being led into columns for the attack. He was nearly past them when he heard a yell.
“Harbinger!”
Broody specked across the hundreds of heads and musket barrels for the source of that damnable shout. He spotted his fellow lads of the Seventh Arkansas forming up in the next column over.
“You coming with us?” Ferdy McGowan asked. “Or you gonna put on another holy show and yellow out?”
Broody ran over to greet his regiment. “I got orders to report back to Hood. But you boys cain’t guess who I just played checkers ’ginst.”
“Jeff Davis stop by for a lemonade, did he?” Ferdy asked.
“General Cleburne in the flesh!”
As the other men rolled their eyes, clearly not believing the claim, Ferdy took a step closer to hover over Broody. “You wouldn’t be coddin’ us now, would you?”
Broody made the sign of the cross. “I swear on Saint Modan’s bones! Ferdy, I even regaled him with your story.”
“What story?”
“The one about Cuchulainn and Emer.”
The men nearly deafened Broody with their roars of laughter.
Ferdy snorted. “Did you now?”
“What’s so damn gassing?” Broody demanded amid the dismissive hoots.
Ferdy grinned through his bushy beard. “General Paddy told us that very tale two years ago. On the night before Perryville. That’s how we heard it.”
Broody reddened. Cleburne had just been joshing him, acting as if he’d never heard of Cuchulain. “And to think I gave the General half of my mutt jerky, and he goes leadin’ me on—”
The men stopped laughing. Aghast looks crossed their faces.
Ferdy cocked an ear at Broody. “What’d you say?”
“I said I was playing checkers—”
“No, about that mutt jerky.”
“Aye, I gave him some of ours.”
“From that dog we cooked up for breakfast?”
Broody nodded. “The general seemed appreciative enough.”
The men closed in and glared at him as if he were devoid of a full shilling.
Ferdy turned the shade of a turnip. “You feckin’ Mourneman waster! Do you not recollect the end of that epic you pestered General Paddy with?”
Broody shrugged. “Remember? Hell, didn’t I just say I told it to him?”
Ferdy balled his fists as if hankering to throw a punch. “And did you happen to remember what act of treachery brought the great Cuchulainn down?”
Broody thought for a moment, and paled. He reached into his pocket and stared at what was left of his dog chaw.
What’d I gone done?
He dropped the jerky to the ground and stepped away from it. How could he have forgotten? The great Irish warrior’s one disabling taboo was canine meat. The way Ferdy recounted it back in Atlanta, when an old crone in an act of generosity had offered some of her cooked hound stew to ease his hunger, Cuchulainn ate the forbidden victual rather than offend her. That chivalrous sacrifice drained Cuchulainn of his spiritual power and caused him to die in his next battle.
The Arkansas men turned toward Franklin town and watched, helpless, as General Cleburne waved forward their columns with all twenty thousand men in the army. Hell, didn’t look as if Hood was holding back reserves.
Broody tried to make a dash for the front line. “I gotta warn him!”
The men restrained him, knowing it was too late.
Ferdy spat a wad of phlegm at Broody’s feet. “This time you done both us and the General in, Harbinger.”
Before Broody could protest that indictment, the call to advance rang out, and the regiment surged forward with the rest of the division, their flags flapping in the breeze. He could only watch as his comrades marched off in sullen resignation. Desperate to atone for his negligence, he raised the crucifix on his rosary and begged the Almighty to reverse the course of the doom cinniúint. Up ahead, Cleburne rode with his chin pressed against his chest as if offering up prayers. The general’s beloved horse of three years, Red Pepper, had been maimed the day before—just as Cuchulainn’s horse, Liath Macha, had been wounded in his final campaign.
Broody fought back tears. The omens had turned against them, for certain. Maybe he was the carrier of a bane from the old country. He knew there was only one way a blackened soul could ever cast off such a blight. He had never disobeyed an order. This would be his first time, and going against the man he worshipped as his hero. But rather than return to Hood’s headquarters, he swung back and ran to catch up with his regiment.
Ferdy nodded his grudging approval and pulled Broody to his side.
The Arkansas men covered the next mile in brittle silence. As their butternut columns reached the scattering Yankee pickets, Broody saw Cleburne draw his sword and raise it toward the heavens to signal the double-time charge into the breach. A few steps behind Cleburne,
he ran shoulder-to-shoulder with Ferdy toward the defenses that lay five hundred yards across flat killing ground. The Yankee batteries in front of Franklin opened up again, and Broody looked up to watch for the hissing balls to rain down on them. At that instant, he swore he saw an empty chariot in the clouds advancing with them. Huffing from his exertion, he yelled at Ferdy, “You see that?”
Ferdy didn’t answer.
Broody turned to ask again, but Ferdy was gone. He wheeled and found Ferdy laid out on the ground behind him, face up and hands folded over his chest as if he had prepared himself for his wake. Before he could to go to him, the ranks tightened, and the next man over took Ferdy’s place in the line and pushed Broody forward.
The Yankees switched to canister. Shells exploded all around Cleburne as he circled his horse to rally the men onward. The general pointed his sword north and shouted, “Ireland just beyond those hills, lads!”
That promise drove the remnants of the Seventh Arkansas into the Union breastworks. The blinding smoke and deafening din of artillery and muskets staggered them.
Broody saw Cleburne reel back in the saddle and fall from his horse. He disappeared into the maelstrom of writhing men below. Broody fought his way forward to save the general from being crushed and—
A bolt that burned like a red-hot iron pierced his thigh.
He collapsed and shrieked. The pain was so fierce he feared he would black out. Above him, men were dropping and screaming. He shielded his head with his elbow to avoid being crushed. Through the tears and sweat, he looked down at his soaked pant legging to see how badly he’d been hit. Where his knee should have been, there was nothing but a stump spurting blood.
I done drawn the short straw on this ’un.
He dropped his head to wait for death. There’d be no returning to Ireland now. No marrying Bridget Hopkins or telling his younguns about the checkers game with the great General Cleburne. Nothing to be done but pray it come quick.
The journal is your wedding gift.
Those words echoing in his ear revived him. By God, it’d be the last thing he accomplished on this cracked Earth, but he was determined to read what General Paddy had written him for his wedding day, even if it meant shirking a second order. He inched his shaking hand toward his pocket to reach Cleburne’s dispatch book. He clawed it toward his lips and bit the clasp open. In the last gasps of sunlight, he blinked blood from his eyes and squinted to make out the script on the last page:
Cuchulainn gathered his bowels into his breast, and went forth to the loch. And there he drank his drink, and washed himself, and came forth to die, calling on his foes to come to meet him.
He gasped. That was the end of the Cuchulainn tale, just as Ferdy had told it to him in the Atlanta trenches. He realized to his horror that Cleburne had eaten the dog jerky knowing of its curse. Just like Cuchulainn, the general had been too honorable to break the geis law against turning down a gift of sustenance.
General Paddy knowed he was gonna to die this hour.
Aye, that’s why Cleburne had sent him back to headquarters, even though he’d had nothing to tell Old Wooden Head. He’d done it to keep him alive so that he could return to Ireland and marry Bridget. The general had wanted one of us at least to stand at the altar. and… All for naught. He’d let the general down again.
Can’t feel my hands.… coming fast now.
Broody Dugan…Hood’s Harbinger…Descending Bird of Misfortune.
Those damn spalpeens carve that on my stone, they’ll learn how a County Down ghost haunts from the grave!
Hell of a circumstance.
About the Author
A graduate of Indiana University School of Law and Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, Glen Craney practiced trial law before joining the Washington press corps to cover national politics and the Iran-contra trial for Congressional Quarterly magazine. The Academy of Motion Pictures, Arts and Sciences awarded him the Nicholl Fellowship prize for best new screenwriting. His debut novel, The Fire and the Light, was named Best New Fiction by About the Author the National Indie Excellence Awards. He is a three-time Finalist/Honorable Mention winner of Foreword Magazine’s Book of the Year and a Chaucer Award winner for Category Historical Fiction. His books have taken readers to Occitania during the Albigensian Crusade, to the Scotland of Robert Bruce, to Portugal during the Age of Discovery, to the trenches of France during World War I, and to the American Hoovervilles of the Great Depression He lives in Malibu, California.
Dear Reader: If you enjoyed this story and feel it worthy, I’d be grateful if you left a review on Amazon.com and Goodreads. And please visit my author website and sign up for my mailing list to be the first to receive special offers and news of my upcoming book releases. Thank you.
Also By Glen Craney
The Fire and the Light
A Novel of the Cathars
As the 13th century dawns, Cathar heretics in southern France guard an ancient scroll that holds shattering revelations about Jesus Christ. Esclarmonde de Foix, a beloved Occitan countess, must defy Rome to preserve the true path to salvation. Christianity suffers its darkest hour in this epic saga of troubadour love, monastic intrigue, and esoteric mystery set during the first years of the French Inquisition.
More information at www.glencraney.com.
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* * *
The Spider and the Stone
A Novel of Scotland's Black Douglas
As the 14th century dawns, the brutal Edward Longshanks of England schemes to steal Scotland. But inspired by a headstrong lass, a frail, dark-skinned boy named James Douglas defies three Plantagenet kings and champions the cause of his wavering friend, Robert the Bruce, leading the armies to the bloody field of Bannockburn. A thrilling saga of star-crossed love and heroic sacrifice set during the Scottish Wars of Independence.
More information at www.glencraney.com.
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The Virgin of the Wind Rose
A Christopher Columbus Mystery-Thriller
While investigating the murder of an American missionary in Ethiopia, State Department lawyer Jaqueline Quartermane discovers an ancient Latin palindrome embedded with a cryptographic time bomb. Separated by half a millennium, two espionage conspiracies dovetail in this breakneck thriller to expose the world’s most explosive secret: The true identity of Christopher Columbus and the explorer’s connection to those now trying to launch the Apocalypse.
More information at www.glencraney.com.
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The Yanks Are Starving
A Novel of the Bonus Army
Mired in the Great Depression, the United States teeters on the brink of revolution. And as the summer of 1932 approaches, a charismatic hobo leads twenty thousand homeless World War I veterans into the nation’s capital to demand their service compensation. Here is the epic story of political intrigue and betrayal that culminated in the only pitched battle ever fought between two American armies under the same flag.
More information at www.glencraney.com.
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The Lucifer Genome
A Conspiracy Thriller
(with John Jeter)
Islam’s holiest relic has been stolen from Mecca, and retired CIA agent Cas Fielding must recover it before the Saudi royal family is toppled. Teaming with a sultry expert on meteorites, he sees his mission turn into a deadly race to locate the world’s oldest human DNA, proving the old adage that nothing in the Middle East is what it seems.
More information at www.glencraney.com.
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An Excerpt from
The Yanks Are Starving
Norman, Oklahoma
December, 1941
“GET THIS SLUICE T-T-TROUGH moving! If you don’t put a gitty-up on, the damn war’s gonna be over b-b-before we fire a shot!”
Lt. John Keyes shook his head at that pathetic yelp of false courage. He had heard similar boa
sts from many of the farm boys who had lined up that week at his induction station, but none sputtered with such an unstrung stammer. The way he sized it, anyone from around these parts trying to join the Navy had to be a little yellow anyway. Most of these dust-grimed crackers in overalls hadn’t seen a body of water larger than a washbasin, and half of them couldn’t swim. All of this Midwestern bragging about steamrolling across the Pacific to Tokyo was just a cover to avoid the infantry.
“What’s the d-d-damn hold-up anyway?”
The officer didn’t bother to look up from the stack of NGCT intelligence tests that he was grading. “Keep your powder dry, cowboy. There’ll still be plenty of bullets to go around.”
Ignored, the impatient recruit bit off a couple of incoherent curses.
The lieutenant leaned back in his metal chair to take a break from the paperwork. Chilled to the bone, he yawned and pushed his aviator sunglasses up the bridge of his red nose for cover, hoping to warm his feet with the memory of Norfolk’s sunny beaches. Crackerjack shore duty that had been, until the Japs had to go bomb Pearl Harbor and get him transferred to this Okie Siberia to process enlistments. He closed his eyes and smiled at those Virginia dolls in their skimpy swimsuits, frolicking in the waves—
A frigid blast of prairie air walloped him harder than a Joe Louis left hook. Rousted from his daydream, he returned to the test forms, and now his damn pen was frozen. If those pogue geniuses in Washington thought this country was ready to fight a war, they should bunk down a couple of nights at this cattle lick being passed off for a service base. Hell, the whole damn place was falling apart. Just that morning, wind gusts had collapsed a section of the Naval Training School’s armory roof, forcing him to move this human cattle drive outside on the parade ground until repairs could be made. Disgusted with the dead-end assignment, he took out his frustration by thumping the pen’s congealed tip against his desk. When its cheap casing splintered, he tossed the pen over his shoulder and, wiping his ink-smeared hands on the brown grass, muttered a prediction that they’d all be eating out of rice bowls soon if those new anti-aircraft guns didn’t last longer than these—
