"— and so, as is our custom, we are extracting recompense for numerous Yankee atrocities, including those of the Dahlgren raid, while we fulfill, at the same time, the apostle Paul's promise to the good Christians of the church at Thessaly: 'The Lord Jesus shall be revealed from heaven with His mighty angels' "— the deacon shook a ministerial finger at Charles —" 'in flaming fire taking vengeance on them that know not God and that obey not the gospel of Our Lord Jesus Christ.'"
Charles's tightened lips showed his disgust. Deacon Follywell was indifferent. With a hint of threat in his watery brown eyes, he said, "We trust we have satisfactorily explained ourselves. We will therefore, with your kind permission, continue our work."
Again Charles smelled the vile odor from the blazing house. He would just as soon shoot a Yankee as spit on him, but if the South had to rely on this kind of defender — this kind of tactic — then her cause richly deserved to fail.
Sport raised and gently plopped his right forefoot in the snow. Charles shook his head. "You sure as hell don't have my permission, Deacon. Not to burn people alive. If Dahlgren was sent to commit atrocities in Richmond, he was killed before he had the opportunity. I'll take charge of these prisoners."
He counted on the partisans responding to commands of a regular army officer; Follywell's colonelcy was undoubtedly self-conferred. He realized his mistake when Deacon Follywell pulled his saber and shoved the point against Charles's chest.
"You try, Major, and you will be next into the flames."
Charles grew genuinely frightened then. He couldn't order or shout this band into obedience. Nor, he suspected, could he ride away from the scene easily, even if his conscience would have allowed it, which it didn't. Instantly, he saw his only means of saving the Yanks and preventing more murders. He had to form a temporary alliance.
He looked at the remaining prisoners for the first time. His stomach wrenched. The stocky, bearded officer in charge of the party was Billy Hazard.
Billy recognized him; Charles saw it in his friend's shocked eyes. But Billy was careful to give no sign.
What about the rest of the Yanks? Would they fight? Considering the alternative, he suspected they would. Could they overcome twice their number? Might — if Charles evened the odds slightly. What he contemplated was a departure from the road he had traveled since Sharpsburg, but somehow, in this weary winter, he had come to understand too late where that road led.
Only a moment had passed since the partisan leader spoke. Charles lowered his head and returned Follywell's stare. "Don't threaten me, you ignorant farmer. I'm a duly commissioned officer of the Confederacy, and I am taking these men to —"
"Pull him out of the saddle." Follywell waved a couple of his louts. The horseman on Charles's right reached for him. Charles gave him the shotgun point-blank.
The pellets sieved the man's face; blood streamed from his eye sockets and all the other holes. Follywell roared and pulled his sword arm back for a killing thrust. He got the other shotgun barrel. The blast lifted him from his saddle with his head tilting forward over his tornaway neck.
"Billy — the bunch of you — run!"
Charles had pared the odds to eight against five. But the eight had weapons, and the prisoners were dazed, slow to react. The wagon horses stamped and whinnied as a partisan turned his roan toward Charles, who was hurriedly dragging his Colt from the holster. Two of the Yanks leaped on another partisan while the one near Charles kneed his mount to steady it, raised his left forearm, and laid the muzzle of his revolver across it, all within seconds.
Shouts, oaths, struggle erupted just as the partisan fired. Charles would have been hit but for the stupidity of another of Follywell's men, who rode up from the rear and smacked Charles's head with the barrel of his long squirrel gun.
Knocked sideways, Charles started to slip off the left side of his saddle. He kicked his right boot free of the stirrup. The partisan with the squirrel gun coughed hard; the shot fired by the other man had gone in and out of his right shoulder.
The snowy landscape and towering fire tilted. Falling backward, Charles tried to free his left boot and couldn't. He felt a sharp twist in his thigh as his shoulder and the back of his head thumped the ground. He shot upward at the first partisan, missing. Sport was stamping and shying, feeling the unnatural drag on the left stirrup.
The rest happened swiftly, yet to Charles each action seemed harrowingly slow. Another partisan, dismounted, stamped on Charles's outstretched right arm. His hand opened. He lost the revolver.
The partisan flung himself on top of Charles, left hand choking, right hand pressing a pistol muzzle against Charles's body, up high near his armpit. He braced for the shot, seeing against a backdrop of misty sun shafts the first partisan, still on horseback, still maneuvering so that he, too, could shoot.
With no warning, weight and shadow crashed in from the left, knocking away the partisan kneeling on Charles. The man's pistol discharged; someone cried out. Only then did Charles understand that Billy had come on the run and dived and bowled the partisan back, taking the bullet himself.
The partisan on horseback fired. The blast was followed by an animal's bellow. Charles screamed, "Sport!"
Billy, wounded, wrestled the other partisan underneath the belly of the gray gelding. Punching, thrashing, kicking dirt and snow, the men struggled until Billy turned the partisan's own gun back on him by pressuring his wrist. Billy's finger slipped over the other man's, forcing him to fire into his own stomach.
Charles stared at Sport's left shoulder where the partisan's bullet had entered. The angle of fire would carry the bullet rearward and down. Not deep, he thought. God, don't let it be deep —
He retrieved his Colt, rolling to the left again. The mounted partisan tried to shoot him but was slow. Charles clasped his revolver in both hands. Two rounds killed the partisan and sent his horse galloping away through the shafts of sunshine. The dead man hung forward over the animal's neck.
Breathing hard, Billy scrambled from underneath the gray. The other engineers were locked hand-to-hand with Follywell's men and were by no means out of danger. Charles lurched to his feet. So did Billy, whose uniform had a moist patch of brilliant red on the upper left front. Beyond his friend, Charles saw more blood; it streamed down Sport's elbow and forearm to his left knee.
"Go on — while you can." Billy's breath plumed out. For a moment he locked his teeth against pain. "That's — one less I owe you."
"The slate's clean." Reaching out quickly, Charles squeezed his friend's sleeve. "Take care of yourself."
He put his boot in the stirrup and, when Sport took his weight, felt the gray's foreleg almost buckle. He had to escape — the firing would bring nearby Union videttes — but first he had to do a little more to ensure survival of the Yankees. He shot twice; two partisans dropped, one killed, one injured. As a couple of the Union engineers took possession of fallen weapons, the remaining partisans turned their horses, abandoned their dead leader, and thundered away in the vapor rising from the warming ground.
The gelding began to trot. "Can you do it, Sport?" Charles asked in a dry, strained voice. They passed over a patch of clean snow and, looking behind, he saw the trail of bloodstains, splashes at regular intervals. He knew what the end would be and began to curse.
In the melee he had dropped his shotgun and forgotten it, he realized. Didn't matter. Nothing mattered but this beautiful brave horse that had carried him so far, so faithfully, only to be hit by chance in a meaningless little fray that wouldn't even merit a footnote in official records. "Jesus," he said, squeezing his eyelids shut till he could barely see. "Jesus, Jesus."
Sport seemed to know they had a good distance to travel to safety. He galloped with the strength and exuberance of a colt, hoofs rifling out snow and mud beneath his tail, then rat-tatting along a stretch of plank road and through a covered bridge. They turned west again, into denuded pasture. Charles heard a drumming that grew louder. There was pursuit.