Bernard Cornwell – Copperhead (страница 13)

Starbuck saw the first Yankees. Two men were using a fallen tree as a firing position. One was reloading, working the long ramrod down his rifle while his companion aimed across the trunk. The man fired and Starbuck saw the kick of the rifle on the man’s shoulder and the puff of spark-lit smoke where the percussion cap exploded. Beyond the two men the woods suddenly seemed thick with blue uniforms and, more oddly, gray coats that hung from trees and twitched as rebel bullets struck home. “Kill them!” Starbuck screamed, and the two men by the fallen tree turned to stare in horror at the rebel charge. The man who had reloaded his rifle swung it to face Starbuck, aimed, then pulled the trigger, but in his panic he had forgotten to prime his rifle. The hammer fell with a click onto bare steel. The man scrambled to his feet and ran past an officer who stood with drawn sword and a look of appalled bewilderment on his whiskered face. Starbuck, seeing the officer’s expression, knew he had done the right thing. “Kill them,” he screamed, completely unaware that he was uttering anything so bloodthirsty. He just felt the elation of a man who has outwitted an enemy and so imposed his will on a battlefield. That feeling was intoxicating, filling him with a manic elation. “Kill them!” he screamed again, and this time the words seemed to spur the whole Yankee flank into disintegration.

The northerners fled. Some threw themselves off the bluff’s edge and slithered down the slope, but most ran back along the line of the summit and, as they ran, more men joined the flight, and the retreat became ever more crowded and chaotic. Starbuck tripped on a wounded man who screamed foully, then ran into the clearing where the Rhode Island cannon had plowed its ragged furrow back and over the bluff’s crest. He jumped a box of ammunition, still screaming his challenge at the men running ahead.

Not all the northerners ran. Many of the officers reckoned that duty was more important than safety and, with a bravery that was close to suicide, stayed to fight the rebels’ flanking attack. One lieutenant calmly aimed his revolver, fired once, then went down under two bayonets. He tried to fire the revolver even as he was dying, then a third rebel put a bullet into his head and there was a spray of blood as the shot struck home. The Lieutenant died, though the men with the bayonets still savaged his corpse with the ferocity of hunting dogs rending a fallen buck. Starbuck shouted at his men to let the dead man alone and hurry on. He did not want to give the Yankees time to recover.

Adam Faulconer was riding his horse in the sunlit clearing, shouting for the rest of the Legion to cross over and support Starbuck’s company. Major Bird led the color party across into evening woods full of the shrill sound of rebels attacking, of gunshots and of northern officers shouting orders that stood no chance of being obeyed in the panic.

Truslow told a northerner to drop his rifle, the man either did not hear or decided to defy the demand, and the bowie knife chopped down once with a horrid economy of effort. A group of Yankees, their retreat blocked, turned and ran blindly back toward their attackers. Most stopped when they saw their mistake and raised their hands in surrender, but one, an officer, sliced his sword in a wild blow at Starbuck’s face. Starbuck checked, let the blade hiss by, then rammed his bayonet forward and down. He felt the steel hit the Yankee’s ribs and cursed that he had stabbed down instead of up.

“Nate!” The Yankee officer gasped. “No! Please!”

“Jesus!” The blasphemy was torn from Starbuck. The man he was attacking was a member of his father’s church, an old acquaintance with whom Starbuck had endured an eternity of Sunday school lessons. The last news Starbuck had heard of William Lewis was that he had become a student at Harvard, but now he was gasping as Starbuck’s bayonet scored down his ribs.

“Nate?” Lewis asked. “Is it you?”

“Drop your sword, Will!”

William Lewis shook his head, not out of obstinate refusal, but out of puzzlement that his old friend should appear in the unlikely guise of a rebel. Then, seeing the look of fury on Starbuck’s face, he let the sword drop. “I surrender, Nate!”

Starbuck left him standing over the fallen sword and ran on to catch his men. The encounter with an old friend had unnerved him. Was he fighting a Boston battalion? If so, how many more of this beaten enemy would recognize him? What familiar households would he plunge into mourning by his actions on this Virginia hilltop? Then he forgot his qualms as he saw a giant bearded man howling at the rebels. The man, dressed in shirtsleeves and suspenders, was using one hand to swing an artillery rammer like a club, while in his other he held a short Roman-pattern stabbing sword that was standard issue to gunners. His retreat had been cut off, but he was refusing to surrender, preferring, to die like a hero than yield like a coward. He had already felled one of Starbuck’s men; now he challenged the others to fight him. Sergeant Mallory, who was Truslow’s brother-in-law, fired at the huge man, but the bullet missed and the bearded gunner turned like a fury on the wiry Mallory.

“He’s mine!” Starbuck shouted and pushed Mallory aside, lunged forward, then swayed back as the huge man whirled the rammer. This, Starbuck reckoned, was his duty as an officer. The company must see that he was the least afraid, the most ready to fight. Besides, today he felt unbeatable. The scream of battle was in his veins like a splash of fire. He laughed as he lunged with the bayonet, only to have the blade knocked hard aside by the short sword.

“Bastard!” the gunner spat at Starbuck, then slashed the short sword in quick vicious sweeps, trying to keep Starbuck’s attention on the blade while he swung the rammer. He thought he had tricked the rebel officer and bellowed with a kind of joy as he anticipated the clublike wooden head smashing his enemy’s skull, but Starbuck ducked hard down so that it hissed over his slouch hat and the momentum of the great swing was sufficient to sway the big man off-balance. Then it was Starbuck’s turn to shout in triumph as he rammed the bayonet up, hard up, pushing against the astonishing resistance of skin and flesh, and he was still screaming as the big man jerked and fell, twitching on the blade’s long shank like a gaffed fish dying.

Starbuck was breathless as he tried to pull his bayonet free, but the gunner’s flesh had closed tight on the steel and the blade would not move. The man had dropped his own weapons and was clawing feebly at the rifle in his gut. Starbuck also tried to twist the steel free, but the flesh’s suction gripped like stone. He pulled the rifle’s trigger, hoping to blast the bayonet loose, but still it would not move. The gunner gasped horribly as the bullet struck, then Starbuck abandoned the weapon and left the gunner dying on the forest floor. He unholstered his fine ivory-handled revolver instead and ran after his company only to discover that K Company was no longer alone in the woods, but was merely a small part of a gray and butternut tide that was overwhelming the northern defenders and driving the survivors in a terrible stampede off the bluffs summit and down to the narrow, muddy ledge beside the river. A New York sergeant screamed as he lost his precarious footing and tumbled down the slope to break his leg on a rock.

“Nate!” Adam had spurred his stallion into the trees. “Call them off!”

Starbuck stared uncomprehendingly at his friend.

“It’s over! You’ve won!” Adam said and gestured at the mass of rebels who had begun firing down the bluff’s steep slope at the Yankees trapped beneath. “Stop them!” Adam said, as if he blamed Starbuck for this display of gleeful, vengeful victory, then he turned his horse savagely away to find someone with the authority to finish the killing.

Except no one wanted to end the killing. The northerners were trapped beneath the bluff and the southerners poured a merciless fire into the writhing, crawling, bleeding mass below. A rush of Yankees tried to escape the slaughter by trampling over the wounded to the safety of a newly arrived boat, but the weight of the fugitives overturned the small craft. A man called for help as the current dragged him away. Others tried to swim the channel, but the water was churning and spattering with the strike of bullets. Blood soured the stream and was carried seaward. Men drowned, men died, men bled, and still the remorseless, unending slaughter went on as the rebels loaded and fired, loaded and fired, loaded and fired, jeering all the while at their beaten, cowed, broken enemy.

Starbuck edged his way to the bluff’s edge and stared down at a scene from the inferno. The base of the bluff’s escarpment was like a wriggling, sensate mass; an enormous beast dying in the gathering dusk, though it was not yet a fangless beast for shots still came up the slope. Starbuck pushed his revolver into his belt and cupped his hands and shouted downhill for the Yankees to cease fire. “You’re prisoners!” he shouted, but the only answer was a splintering of rifle flames in the shadows and the whistle of a fusillade past his head. Starbuck pulled his revolver free and emptied its chambers down the hill. Truslow was beside him, taking loaded rifles from men behind and firing at the heads of men trying to swim to safety. The river was being beaten into a froth, looking just as though a school of fish were churning frantically to escape a tidal shallow. Bodies drifted downstream, others snagged on branches or lodged on mudbanks. The Potomac had become a river of death, blood-streaked, bullet-lashed, and body-filled. Major Bird grimaced at the view, but did nothing to stop his men firing.