Bernard Cornwell – Battle Flag (страница 16)

For a rebel yell meant only one thing: a rebel attack.

Because the wretches weren’t beaten at all.

Captain Nathaniel Starbuck, crouched in the woods close by the turnpike, heard the screaming of a rebel counterattack. “About goddamned time,” he murmured to no one in particular. The gunfire in the trees had been sporadic for the last few minutes, and Starbuck had begun to fear that the Legion’s stranded skirmishers would be trapped far behind a victorious Northern army. So far the only resistance to the Northern attack had seemed haphazard and futile, but now the rifle fire swelled into the full intensity of battle, to which the screams of the attacking Southerners added an unearthly descant. The battle was all sound to Starbuck, for he could see nothing through the smoky, deep-shadowed undergrowth, but the sounds indicated that the attacking Northerners were being checked and even counterattacked. “I reckon we should join in,” Starbuck said to Captain Medlicott.

“No,” Medlicott said. “Absolutely not!” The reply was too vehement, betraying Medlicott’s fear. The miller turned soldier was as white-faced as though he had just come from a hard shift at his old grindstones. Sweat dripped and glistened in his beard, while his eyes flicked nervously around the sanctuary his men had fortuitously discovered among the trees. The sanctuary was a shallow scrape that would have been flooded by the smallest fall of rain, yet was so surrounded by undergrowth that an army could have marched on the road behind and not seen the men hidden just paces away. “We’ll just wait here till things calm down,” Medlicott insisted.

Starbuck did not like the thought of skulking in the shadows. So far the two companies had avoided any Northerners, but that luck might not last, yet Medlicott would not listen to the younger man’s ideas. Medlicott had been happy enough to accept Starbuck’s guidance when they were exposed to the enemy’s fire, but now that he was in a seemingly safe refuge, Medlicott was rediscovering the authority that Colonel Swynyard had conferred on him. “We stay here,” he insisted again, “and that’s an order, Starbuck.”

Starbuck went back to his company. He stretched himself at the edge of the shallow hollow and stared through the foliage toward the sounds of battle. The branches of the wood made a dark lacework against an evening sky that was layered with red-tinted bands of gunsmoke. The rebel yell swelled and faded, hinting at surges as regiments advanced and went to ground before advancing again. Volleys crashed among the trees, then footsteps trampled the undergrowth close by, but the leaves grew so thick that Starbuck could see no one. Nevertheless he feared the sudden irruption of a company of nervous Yankees, and so he twisted around and hissed at his men to fix their bayonets. If the Yankees did come, then Starbuck would be ready for them.

He pulled out his own blade and slotted it into place. Squirrels chattered unhappily in the branches overhead, and a flash of red feathers showed where a cardinal flew among the trunks. Behind Starbuck, beyond the deserted turnpike, gunsmoke lay like layers of mist above a patchwork of wheat and cornfields. There was no infantry visible there. It was almost as if the road divided the battlefield into two discrete halves, the one filled with cannon smoke and the other with struggling men.

Truslow, his rifle tipped with steel, dropped beside Starbuck. “What’s wrong with Medlicott?”

“Frightened.”

“Never was any damned good. His father was the same.” Truslow spat a viscous gob of tobacco juice into the leaf mould. “I once saw old John Medlicott run from a pair of horse thieves who weren’t a day over fifteen.”

“Were you one of them?” Starbuck asked shrewdly.

Truslow grinned, but before he could answer there was a sudden panicked rush of feet, and a single Northern soldier burst through the bushes ahead. The Yankee was oblivious of the two rebel companies until he was just paces away, then his eyes widened and he slid to a panicked halt. His mouth dropped open. He turned, seemingly to shout a warning to his comrades, but Starbuck had climbed to his feet and now hammered the side of the Northerner’s skull with the brass butt of his rifle just a split second before Truslow pulled the man’s feet out from beneath him. The Yankee fell like a poleaxed steer. Truslow and Starbuck dragged him back to the company and disarmed him. “Shut your goddamned mouth,” Starbuck hissed at the man, who had begun to stir.

“I’m not…”

“The officer told you to shut the hell up, you son of a whore, so shut the hell up or I’ll rip your damned tongue out,” Truslow growled, and the Northerner went utterly quiet. The buckle on his leather belt showed he was a Pennsylvanian. A trickle of blood showed among the roots of his fair hair above his ear. “You’ll have a peach of a bruise there, you bastard,” Truslow said happily. He was rifling the man’s pockets and pouches. He tossed the Pennsylvanian’s rifle cartridges back among the company, then found a pale brown package marked with the trademark of John Anderson’s Honeydew Fine-Cut Tobacco of New York. “It ain’t Virginia, but someone will smoke it,” Truslow said, pushing it into his pouch.

“Leave me some,” the Pennsylvanian pleaded. “I ain’t had a smoke in hours.”

“Then you should have stayed in Pennsylvania, you son of a whore, instead of trampling our corn. You’re not wanted here. If you got what you deserved you’d be breathing through a hole in your ribs by now.” Truslow eased a wad of folded Northern dollar bills from the man’s top pocket. “Lucky at cards, are you?”

“And with women.” The Pennsylvanian had a snub-nosed and cheeky charm.

“Lie still and be quiet, boy, or your luck will end here.” Truslow unlooped the boy’s canteen and found it still held a half-inch of water, which he offered to Starbuck. Starbuck, despite his thirst, refused, so Truslow drained the canteen himself.

Starbuck stood to give himself a view over the surrounding brush. Captain Medlicott hissed at him to get his head down, but Starbuck ignored the miller. Another burst of screaming announced a renewed rebel charge, and this time a group of some two dozen Yankees appeared just twenty paces beyond Starbuck’s hiding place. A handful of the Northerners knelt and fired into the trees before retreating again. Two of the Yankees fell as they went back, driven down by rebel bullets, and the rest of the men would doubtless have kept on running had not the color party come through the trees to rally them. A tall, white-haired officer waved a sword toward the rebels. “Vorwarts! Vorwarts!” the officer cried, and the retreating men turned, cheered, and delivered a splintering volley toward their pursuers. The two flags were bright squares of silk in the smoke-riven shadows. One was Old Glory, battle-torn and stained, while the second was a purple flag embroidered with an eagle and a legend Starbuck could not decipher. “Vorwarts!” the white-haired officer called again.

“Are they goddamned Germans?” Truslow asked. The Sergeant had an irrational dislike of German immigrants, blaming them for many of the rules and regulations that had begun to infest his former country. “Americans used to be free men,” he often declared. “Then the damned Prussians came to organize us.”

“We’re Pennsylvania Deutsch,” the prisoner answered.

“Then you’re godforsaken son of a bitch bastards,” Truslow said. Starbuck could read the Gothic-lettered legend on the second flag now: “Gott und die Vereinigten Staaten,” it said, and it struck Starbuck that such a flag would make a handsome trophy.

“Feuer!” the white-haired officer shouted, and another Northern volley ripped into the attacking rebels. The Germans cheered, sensing that their sudden resistance had taken the attackers by surprise.

“We can take those bastards,” Starbuck said to Truslow.

The Sergeant glanced toward Captain Medlicott. “Not with that yellow bastard’s help.”

“Then we’ll do it without the yellow bastard’s help,” Starbuck said. He felt the elation of a soldier given the inestimable advantage of surprise; this was a fight he could not lose, and so he cocked his rifle and twisted around to look at his company. “We’re going to put one volley into those German sons of bitches and then run them off our land. Hard and fast, boys, scare the daylights out of the sumbitches. Ready?” The men grinned at him, letting him know that they were good and ready. Starbuck grinned back. There were times when he wondered if anything ever again in all eternity would ever taste as good as these moments in battle. The nervousness of anticipation was utterly gone, replaced by a feral excitement. He glanced at the prisoner. “You stay here, Yankee.”

“I won’t move an inch!” the prisoner promised, though in truth he intended to run just as soon as he was left unattended.

“Stand!” Starbuck shouted. The heady mix of fear and excitement swirled through him. He understood the temptation of following Medlicott’s lead and staying hidden and safe, yet he also wanted to humiliate Medlicott. Starbuck wanted to show that he was the best man on a battlefield, and no one demonstrated such arrogance by cowering in the bushes. “Take aim!” he called, and a handful of the rallying Yankees heard the shouted order and looked around fearfully, but they were already too late. Starbuck’s men were on their feet, rifles at their shoulders.