No pain, just the numbness. The thought triggered a momentary panic. He had seen men eviscerated, entrails looping out onto the ground, stand back up and try to go forward, momentarily unaware that they were dead, until finally the dark hand stilled their heart and they fell.
He started to fumble, feeling his chest, stomach. Where am I hit? "Sir! Sir!"
Sound was returning. The hazy mist behind his eyes was clearing. It was Sergeant Hazner who was speaking, holding him by the shoulders, turning him around. "Are you all right, sir?"
He tried to speak, but the words wouldn't come.
Someone else came up to his side. Private Jenson, his orderly, eyes wide with fear. "You're alright, sir, just stunned!"
Hazner was shouting, and John looked around. The noise, the noise was returning, a wild roar, the swirling insane thunder of musketry, artillery, men screaming, cursing, crying.
He looked past Hazner. The charge was losing force. The regiment was staggering to a halt, men now crouching in the middle of the open field.
"All right. I'm all right. Keep moving!"
He broke free from Hazner's grasp, and at that instant another shell detonated… and Jenson seemed to disappear into pulpy mist, what was left of him spraying over them.
Hazner staggered back, stunned, face covered with Jenson's blood.
John turned away, struggling not to vomit. — "John!"
He looked up; the voice was clear and recognizable, Lt Colonel Brown, commander of the regiment.
"Goddamn it, John, move these men!" Brown screamed. "We've got to move!"
The sense of what he was supposed to do, why he was here, returned. He saluted as Brown turned about and disappeared back into the smoke.
John looked down the length of their line. Only minutes before (or was it hours?) they had stepped off, moving past the wreckage of Harry Heth's division, which had fought itself out Heth's boys had shouted that they were facing that damned Black Hat Brigade of the Yankees' First Corps.
The ridge ahead was wreathed in a dirty yellow-gray cloud of smoke, the only thing visible the pinpoint flashes from muskets and artillery. Above the smoke he caught occasional glimpses of a cupola crowning a large brick building.
"Come on, boys!" It was Brown, stepping in front of the line, waving his sword. "We can't stay out here! Come on!"
The battle line started to surge forward. He heard Brown screaming, urging the men on.
He spared a quick glance for Hazner. The sergeant face covered with Jenson's blood, pushed back into the line, screaming for the men to keep moving.
"Go, goddamn it go!" John screamed, adding in his own voice, pushing through the battle line, urging his men forward.
The momentum of the charge began to build again, and he felt swept up in it, driven forward like a leaf, one of thousands of leaves flung into the mouth of a hurricane.
Men were screaming, a wild terrible wolflike cry, the rebel yell.
"Go! Go! Go!"
He kept screaming the single word over and over, urging his men on. Some were ahead of him, running forward, heads down, shoulders hunched, staggering as if into the blast from the open door of a furnace.
He caught a glimpse of the colors. Then the flag bearer spun around, going down in a heap. An instant later he was back up, like a sprinter who had lost his stride but for a second. Disbelieving, John saw that the boy had lost his right arm, blown, off at the shoulder. The boy was holding the colors aloft with his left hand, waving them defiantly, screaming for the regiment to press in and kill the bastards.
They were at the bottom of the swale, the ground flattening out, then rising up less than a hundred yards to the crest
No fire from up forward. Were they running?
The smoke was drifting up, rising in thick, tangled coils.
"Go! Go! Go!"
John caught a glimpse of their line. "Merciful Jesus!" The cry escaped him. The Yankees weren't running. They had always run when the charge came in. Not this time. They were standing up, preparing to deliver a volley, bright musket barrels rising up, coming down in unison.
A thousand voices all mingled together as one, screams of terror, rage, defiance… calls to press on, to charge, to halt to run. Momentum carried them forward, inexorably forward into the waiting death.
He saw the rippling flash, the explosion of the volley. It swept over them, through them, tearing gaping holes in the line. Men spun around, screaming. The entire line staggered, dozens dropping. Bodies went down in bloody heaps, punched by two, three, even half a dozen rounds.
The line staggered to a halt. Those who were left were raising their rifles, ready to return fire.
"No! Now, charge them now!" The words exploded out of him, and he continued forward, sword raised high.
The mad spine-tingling yell, which had nearly been extinguished by the volley, now redoubled. Men came up around him, shouldering him aside, pressing forward.
The Yankees were so close now John could see their faces, so blackened by powder they looked like badly made-up actors in a minstrel show. Some were frantically working to reload; others were lowering rifles, bayonets poised, others swinging guns around, grabbing the barrels. Yet others were backing up, starting to turn, to run.
The sight of them unleashed a maddened frenzy, his men screaming, coming forward, shouting foul obscenities, roaring like wolves at the scent of blood. They hit the low barricade of fence rails in front of the seminary and went up over it. A musket exploded in his face, burning his check. Clumsily he cut down with his sword, the blade striking thin air, the.man before him disappearing.
The melee poured over and around him. They were into the line, breaking it apart. The Yankees were falling back, some running, most giving ground grudgingly, as if they were misers not willing to give a single inch without payment It was the Black Hats, the Iron Brigade; after then-stand at Second Manassas and their valiant charge at Antietam they were the most feared brigade in the Army of the Potomac.
His men surged forward, pressing them across a narrow killing ground, the two lines sometimes touching and exploding into a flurry of kicks, jabs, punches, and clubbed rifles, then parting, firing into each other across a space of less than a dozen yards.
They pushed around the brick building, crossing over the ' top of the crest As the land dropped away, what was left of the Yankee formation broke apart, the last of them turning, running.
John caught a glimpse of men leaping out of the open windows of the seminary, one man dropping from the second floor, his legs snapping as he hit the hard ground. A Yankee officer was by the entryway, wearing a bloody apron, waving a hospital flag.
"Major Williamson! Secure that building! Round up the captives."
He caught a glimpse of Brown in the press, the one-armed flag bearer beside him, still waving the colors. "Hazner!"
The sergeant was by his side, rounding up a mix of men as John sprinted for the steps. The Yankee officer was still in the doorway; he caught a glimpse of green shoulder straps, a surgeon.
"This is a hospital!" the Yankee shouted. "Hazner, check the building."
The sergeant shouldered past the Yankee surgeon and cautiously stepped through the door. He hesitated for a second and then plunged into the gloom.
John, the hysteria of the charge still on him, panting for breath, kept his sword pointed at the surgeon.
"I surrender, sir."
"You're damn right you surrender," John gasped.
The surgeon stared, gaze drifting down to the sword that John held poised, aimed at the man's chest.
John suddenly felt embarrassed; the mad frenzy was clearing. The man was a surgeon, a non-combatant He lowered the sword. "Sorry, sir," he said woodenly.
The surgeon nodded.