“The Lord has ordained this!” Arch-Angel Luke intoned.
“See, it wasn’t me,” Edge said to Gabb as the trapper closed his eyes and the death rattle sounded in his throat. He spat, clearing the blast-driven dust from his throat. “Feller with a lot more willpower than me disarmed you.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
“GO!” Hedges breathed, and went first.
Forrest and Seward sprinted after him, racing down the slope and hurling themselves behind the slumped carcasses of dead sheep. Scott, Bell and Rhett blasted covering fire at the corner of the monastery wall. Douglas cursed and nursed his shattered arm. Two wild, unaimed shots whined from where the Rebels waited. Each man in the advance trio spotted the next animal for his cover and lunged towards it. The troopers behind them blasted the Rebels again. Then the roles were reversed as the men on the slope provided covering fire for those behind them to break from the trees.
The man in command of the Confederate infantry had chosen to keep his unit in a single group behind the solid cover of the wall. And it was only from this point that an occasional shot was exploded in answer to the barrage from the slope.
Only once was the advance on the monastery halted, while the troopers reloaded their weapons, huddling up close to the still-warm carcasses of the dead sheep, hearing the thud of bullets into the unfeeling meat which protected them. Then a fusillade of shots drove the Rebels back into cover and the troopers spurted closer to their objective, gaining the higher, more solid protection of dead cattle. The final run was across level ground to the inset doorway of the monastery. They arrived there breathless and sweating, shoulders slumped and mouths gaping. The exertion of the advance had drained them of their final reserves of stamina. But the lines of alertness were etched into their drawn faces and their eyes were bright, their trigger fingers poised. The knowledge that death lurk around the angle of the monastery wall, no more than thirty yards away, overrode the bone-deep exhaustion that demanded relief.
The blue eyes of Captain Hedges were the brightest and he knew he could rely on the men not to submit to physical needs now. For they, like him, were drawing strength from the exhilaration of the minor skirmish: the excitement of anticipating the killing to be done.
“Sergeant, Seward, Rhett,” he whispered. “Go around. Scott, Bell, blast the corner from here. Keep it chest high. Corporal—”
“Jesus, sir, I’m sufferin’,” Douglas moaned, sagging into a crouch.
“Do it in silence,” Hedges hissed. “Unless you see this door open. Then yell your damn head off. Go.”
He dropped to all fours and crawled out of the cover of the doorway arch. Above him, the Spencers of Scott and Bell cracked. Forrest sprinted away with the two troopers assigned to him. A head had appeared at the corner, but was hurriedly withdrawn as the rifle fire exploded lead towards it.
Hedges speeded his progress, uncomfortably aware of the stream of bullets cracking a few inches above his arched back. His lungs felt close to bursting with the effort and his vision was blurred by the salty sweat beads that dripped from his brow into his narrowed eyes. He glanced up the slope. The distance to the trees seemed enormous compared with the length of wall he had to crawl. He realized how much the spurting advance had sapped him. Incredibly, up there in the shade of the trees, a half dozen sheep which had survived the slaughter were grazing peacefully, impervious to the barrage of gunfire below them.
He stopped four feet back from the corner. The Spencers of Scott and Bell were fired empty and there was a short pause as they drew their Confederate Colts. A Rebel infantryman appeared abruptly at the corner. He had no reason to look down as he sent a shot cracking along the wall. Hedges cursed under his breath. He had been waiting for the sergeant and two troopers to open fire from the rear of the monastery. But the Rebel saw his squatting form and opened his mouth to shout a warning. Hedges put a bullet between the gaping lips and powered forward. He rose up under the crimson curve of gushing blood from the mouth of the toppling man. For a moment he froze, flattened against the wall. A single revolver shot whined across in front of him.
“You crazy?” Bell shrieked, knocking down Scott’s gun hand.
Hedges groaned from the pain in his shoulder as he pushed away from the wall. He swung around the corner.
They were kids, all of them. The corporal was maybe eighteen. The two dead soldiers and the seven more who had moments to live could be no older than sixteen. New recruits flung into a war the Confederacy was losing, their uniforms still stiff from the quartermaster’s store. Hedges blasted two of them in the stomach as their horrified eyes swung towards him after staring at the body with the smashed mouth.
The Captain was a more terrifying sight. Filthy dirty, heavily stubbled, his clothing still plastered to his powerful body from the two plunges into the river, he was the first Union soldier they had seen close to. He smelled of death and death glittered in the narrowed eyes; was snarled at them by the set of the lips curled back over his teeth.
In unison, the boy soldiers flung their rifles to the turf and thrust their arms high. At that moment, Forrest, Seward and Rhett lunged around the far corner at the rear of the monastery, Hedges saw the leveled guns and the grins of triumph splitting the faces of the men behind them. He knew the sound of his voice would not reach the troopers in time.
“Bye, kids,” he snapped, and hurled himself back into the cover of the corner.
The youngsters in their stiff new uniforms had a moment to register surprise. Then the guns of the three troopers behind them exploded in a lethal hail of lead. Three of the young Rebels were hit in the back. Two whirled to take bullets in the chest and head as the second volley was loosed. All of them staggered away from the corner to collapse at the feet of Hedges. One of them looked up at the impassive figure of the tall Captain.
“My Ma!” he moaned. “Tell her I did my best for the South.”
“Ain’t got the time for women talk, kid,” Hedges hissed.
The boy coughed, and spewed blood from a punctured lung. Heavy footfalls thudded on the turf and the three Union men skidded to a halt to grin down at their victims.
“Hey, one here still breathing, sarge,” Rhett exclaimed, resting the muzzle of his Spencer against the throat of a boy Hedges had shot in the stomach.
“Sometimes you’re good news, trooper,” the Captain rasped, stepping forward to knock the rifle away. “We got enough problems without prisoners!” Forrest snarled.
Hedges ignored him as he crouched beside the injured boy. He rested his rifle and drew the razor. The youngster eyed him with pathetic pleading.
“You’re going to die, kid,” Hedges said softly. “Easy or hard. Your choice. Somebody go for help?”
The Rebel was trying to stem the blood flow from his holed stomach. The crimson oozed between his interlocked fingers. “I ain’t talkin’!” he grasped.
“Undo his pants,” Hedges instructed.
“I’ll do it!” Rhett volunteered.
“Who else?” Forrest growled.
“What you gonna do?” the Rebel whined as he felt the New Englander’s fingers fumbling with his belt buckle.
“Geld you,” Hedges answered nonchalantly.
“The lieutenant!” the boy shrieked. “Lieutenant James. He went. Told us to stay here and keep you pinned down until he brought in some cavalry from Baker’s Crossin’.”
He shrieked as Rhett groped into the front of his pants.
“How long will it take?” Hedges demanded evenly.
“They gotta be on their way here by now, mister.” He shrieked again as Rhett exposed him.
When he raised his head to look down his body at the excited New Englander, Hedges slid the razor into his skull—into the flesh under his ear and penetrating the brain. He sighed and fell inert.
“I told him it’d be easy, Rhett,” Hedges said as he stood up.
“Sure didn’t go out hard,” the New Englander muttered, releasing the dead boy’s limp member.
&n
bsp; “Captain!” Scott yelled.
Hedges picked up his Spencer, sheathed the razor and led the way wearily back towards the monastery entrance. The big door was open and three monks stood on the threshold. Their earnest faces just patches of paleness within the dark shadows of their cowls. They ignored the leveled revolvers of Scott and Bell.
“This is a closed order,” the monk in the centre announced. “We do not admit strangers to our retreat. The soldiers respected our wishes.”
“Changing the order, feller,” Hedges told him, again aware of the pain in his shoulder. “Need medical attention, food and rest.”
“I beseech you not to break with tradition!” the spokesman implored, his voice rising. “No one has ever—”
“It’s wartime!” Hedges spat. “Old orders change. Get out of the damn way. Even monks have to get into new habits.”
Lieutenant James pointed down at the monastery fifty minutes later. Beside him a cavalry captain eyed the peaceful scene with grim suspicion. Behind the two officers, a unit of thirty troopers awaited orders, calming their horses which sensed death in the warm, midday air. After a few moments, the captain beckoned a forward move and the horses were held to a walk down the sloping turf. Sheep and two surviving cows scuttled out of the path of the jingling cavalrymen. As they circled around to the front of the monastery, the men saw the splashes of brown, dried blood staining the turf.
“There was a fight, sir,” the lieutenant said needlessly.
“Yeah, and who won it?” the cavalry captain muttered, wiping sweat from his chin.
“The soldiers put the enemy into full retreat.”
Thirty rifles were drawn from saddle boots and trained at the opening door of the monastery. Three monks in enveloping habits stood in the entrance, faces hooded by the cowls. Behind them, on the lawned quadrangle, were heaped the carcasses of the slaughtered animals.
“What happened, father abbot?” the infantry officer asked, his tone reverent.
“The intruders slaughtered our beasts for cover. But your men retaliated well, sir. The intruders withdrew to the trees. Then they circled the basin and went north. Your men gave chase.”
The grim-faced cavalry officer surveyed the basin and shook his head. “Don’t seem likely.”
“The father abbot wouldn’t lie, sir!” Lieutenant James said, shocked.
“Maybe not, but I’m going to check out this place.”
“We are a closed order!” The father abbot’s voice was heavy with emotion—perhaps fear.
“I protest, sir!” James interjected as the senior officer made to heel his horse forward.
“Noted,” the cavalryman snapped, and started his horse. The troopers in Rebel grey trailed him.
As instructed, the three monks moved to the side of the entrance and no further. So the father abbot remained firmly in the gun sight of Hedges’ Spencer. The Captain was crouched in fetid concealment beneath the heap of animal carcasses. All his concentration was centered upon the father abbot.
“The friars are at prayer in the sanctuary chapel.”
Hedges ignored the troopers and the troopers ignored the father abbot’s cry. Commands were snapped and the men dismounted and began to search. Pale faced, expressing tacit concern, the infantry lieutenant remained mounted beyond the confines of the monastery. Once he seemed on the point of saying something—perhaps to apologize for the sacrilegious actions of the others. But he held his peace.
The search took less than thirty minutes. Then the troopers emerged into the sunlit quadrangle again and mounted their horses.
“Maybe I’ll pay for this on Judgment Day,” the Captain allowed as he moved his horse into the entrance gap and halted. “But desperate situations call for desperate measures.”
“It is the same for both combatants,” the father abbot replied ruefully. “We must all pray for peace.”
“Some of us gotta fight for it!” the Captain growled, and gave the signal for his men to follow him out.
When the back markers cantered through, riding two abreast, the monks flanking the father abbot moved quickly forward to push the big door closed.
Hedges rose, using his good shoulder to heave a dead sheep clear so that he could climb out into the open.
“Let’s go to chapel, fellers,” he said, jerking the Spencer for the trio to lead the way.
They moved across the quadrangle and through an arched entrance into a cloister. A doorway at the far end gave on to the cool gloom of the chapel. At least fifty monks knelt with their heads bowed, incanting a prayer in a low monotone.
“Okay!” Hedges yelled. “Here endeth the one hundred and first lesson in survival.”
The genuine monks ignored the raucous tones of the Captain, continuing with their prayers. The six Union troopers rose, tossing their heads to shake off the cowls. Each dirt-streaked, unshaven face was split by a grin of relief.
“Lousy service, Captain,” Forrest said against the mumbling of massed voices calling softly for him to be forgiven. “Deadly sermon.”
He shoved the kneeling figure next to him. It toppled, banged into the next one, and the chain reaction continued down the line. Within moments, the clerically-robed bodies of the Rebel infantrymen were all sprawled on the chapel’s stone floor.
* * *
“No!” Angel Sarah screamed.
The stoic eyes of the citizens of Paradise all moved their gaze from their immediate surroundings to look towards the woman. She was running in from the burnt wheat field, her nude body only white in patches now. For the most part, she was covered with the soot and ash of the destroyed crop.
Edge merely glanced at her as she staggered into the street between the stable and the blasted barn. Then he raked his narrowed eyes over the group of black-garbed Earthly Angels.
“Cover yourself!” Luke roared, his voice quivering with shock as he realized the woman was naked.
“Francis!” Edge called softly, and the man with the acned face turned to look at the half-breed.
“Warned you, feller,” Edge reminded him as he leveled the Winchester. “A man’s allowed one mistake. You used up yours pointing that Starr musket at me. Picking my pocket was one too many. Will of Edge.”
He squeezed the trigger of the rifle. The bullet drilled into the man’s chest. He was less than fifteen feet from the muzzle. The impact of the lead lifted him off his feet and hurled him backwards. Those around him stood in almost rigid acceptance of the new death in their town. Only those who were brushed by the falling body rocked slightly.
Sarah halted abruptly, stood for a moment, then collapsed to her knees and fell, sobbing, to the ground.
“Take the twenty-five grand now, feller,” the half-breed said to Luke.
He was as unmoved as everybody but Sarah by the coldblooded killing of Francis. “We took one thousand two hundred dollars from you in payment of your fine,” he said evenly.
“The sooted-up angel offered me the whole bundle to get rid of your visitors,” Edge said. “Fulfilled my end of the deal. They sure blew town.”
“And I fear you must leave empty-handed, sinner,” Luke replied. He raised an arm to point towards the blackened ruin of the barn. “Like Angel Francis, I made a mistake. When the invaders came, I took the cathedral fund into the church for safe-keeping. I regret that, in the haste to leave, I forget about the money.” He sighed in resignation. “Will you kill me, too?”
A momentary rage took hold of Edge as he stared along the pointing arm of the white-haired man. He had no doubt that Luke was speaking the truth. If he could accept death so coldly, the loss of mere money—even twenty-five thousand dollars—would mean little to him. Then the fury drained out of him. He had been on the threshold of riches many times before, only to be cheated by a twist of fate as cruel as he was. There would be no satisfaction in further killing. Not of these people who seemed to welcome death as a coveted reward of good living.
They would all pay for Luke’s mistake the hard way: toiling to re
claim the burnt-out land and raising new crops to earn money for the cathedral. He canted the Winchester across his shoulder.
“No deal, feller,” he said slowly. “I don’t owe this town any favors.”
He looked towards the south west. California lay in that direction. He’d been making that way when he came upon the trappers. There was nothing now to stop him moving on again. Perhaps he would find some peace there this time. Last time there had been none.* But a man like Edge had little more than hope and fast reflexes going for him.
(*See—Edge: California Killing.)
“I see Paradise flowering again!” the diminutive Prophet Thomas announced shrilly, spreading his short arms to the skies. “I see the great cathedral thrusting up from fields of golden wheat. Our spiritual and bodily needs will be fulfilled in abundance.”
“But how?” somebody demanded. “How can we begin? We have no seed and no money to buy it.”
“We do not need much,” Luke said, warming to the small man’s vision. “We must go out from Paradise and beg for the little we need.”
“But it must be done speedily,” Prophet Thomas urged. “The crops must be sown before spring is over.”
“Why don’t you just bundle up the little guy and sell him?” Edge said with a wry smile as he turned to go into the timber for his horse.
“What’s that, sinner?” the near midget of a man called.
“You folks being in such an all-fired hurry,” the half-breed replied as he ambled across the street. “For a small prophet you ought to get a quick return.”
DON’T MISS THE NEXT EXCITING EPISODE
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Other titles in the EDGE series from Lobo Publications
#1 The Loner
#2 Ten Grand
#3 Apache Death
#4 Killer’s Breed
#5 Blood On Silver
#6 The Blue, The Grey And The Red
EDGE: Blood Run (Edge series Book 14) Page 13
