Seward gathered his cape around him and shivered, watching his breath turn into white mist in the icy air. "You just made that up, Rog," he complained, his voice a whine, hopeful of a denial.
Bell spat and the spittle froze solid as it hit the hard ground. "It's a nice, warm idea, ain't it, Billy?"
Riding at the head of the column, Hedges could hear the conversation and was on the point of turning in the saddle and ordering the men into silence. But he held his peace. He decided that if a man was stupid enough to imagine he could keep warm with his own thoughts, then he should be allowed the privilege of his luck.
The cavalry column was part of a 45,000-strong army under William S. Rosecrans, marching south from Nashville towards the town of Murfreesboro where, according to intelligence reports, some 40,000 rebels were camped. The weather had been deteriorating ever since the massive army had set out and there were no signs of a let-up in the freezing conditions.
"It's December 31, lunkhead!" The harsh words came from Frank Forrest, the sergeant of the troop. War had not aged him because he had tasted killing long before the opening of hostilities, bounty hunting for renegades in the Arizona Territory. He was a big, mean-looking man with a crooked mouth and the unwavering stare of aggressiveness. It was, perhaps, a measure of the man's ill-directed strength of character that he was able to keep track of time while to so many others the passage of the days had lost any meaning.
"I didn't say what Christmas, Sarge," Bell came back after a few moments of hesitation.
Seward giggled.
"Shut your smart mouth!" Forrest commanded and the troop was driven into silence.
Hedges allowed himself a small grin at his own wisdom in promoting Forrest to the non-com rank. For the most part, he had a first-class troop in the context of the kind of war they were fighting. But the nucleus of the group was formed of six men who were potential troublemakers. Like Bell and Seward, Hal Douglas, John Scott and Bob Rhett were youngsters who had grown to enjoy killing but resent the lack of reward for it. They were expert fighters, but lacked discipline. However, they did possess an ill-conceived respect for Forrest, the professional killer, and Hedges had capitalized upon this by giving the older man his ranking. And Forrest, with the instinct for survival that was an integral requisite of his former profession, was a hard taskmaster in his demands for obedience. But, of course, his usefulness in the role was dependent upon the opinion he held of his commanding officer, and Hedges was constantly aware that one mistake by him could crack the uneasy rapport he had with Forrest.
Almost as if he was aware that he was the subject of the captain's thoughts, Forrest urged his horse up alongside Hedges' mount. "We been a long time without a fight, Captain," Forrest said absently, looking ahead into the gloom of the winter evening, at the line of blue-uniformed horse soldiers and infantry snaking down the hillside.
Hedges gave Forrest a sidelong glance and saw the impatient belligerence in the ugliness of his profile. "Shiloh ought to have been enough for any man in one year," he said.
Forrest turned a grin towards Hedges. The teeth were stained dark brown by tobacco. "It's New Year's Eve."
"So let's wait until tomorrow," Hedges suggested.
"It's going to be a cold night."
There was shouting ahead and both men looked in that direction and saw the column begin to break into two, then four, then six lines; spreading out in an uneven formation across a broad front where the slope of the hillside flattened out and gave way to a wide expanse of cotton fields.
"Looks like Rosecrans figures things are going to warm up, sir," Forrest suggested laconically.
Messengers whipped their horses up the treacherous hillside with vapor billowing from their nostrils and those of their mounts. One skidded to a halt facing Hedges and threw up a clumsy salute. Hedges ordered his troopers to pause.
"Message from the general commanding, sir," the messenger said breathlessly. "Scouts have spotted the enemy making ready a mile across the cotton fields. You're to take your troop on to the right flank and lead the infantry under the artillery barrage."
Hedges nodded his acknowledgement of the order and the messenger went off at a gallop, scattering groups of men who were already trying to take up positions issued by harassed officers.
"Oh, Christ!" Douglas yelled. "Under the goddam artillery. Them stupid clods are likely to drop their shot on top of us."
"At least that would keep you quiet!" Forrest yelled at him.
"Move them out to the right," Hedges ordered and kept his horse reined to an uneasy standstill as Forrest wheeled away, his arm raised to beckon the troopers in his wake.
Douglas, who was probably the worst corporal in the Union Army, was still complaining—although in lower tones—as he and Scott rode after Forrest. Seward and Bell were next, their expressions animated by the need for action. The rest of the troopers streamed along behind, an uneven mixture of old and young, large and small, stupid and intelligent. But all had one thing in common—they were afraid. This had to be, because death was waiting less than a mile away and none could know who it would strike. However, the fear visible in each man's face was as different from the next man's as were his features. Thus, while one man allowed his horse to find the way as he read from the Bible, another was calling softly to his mother. An old regular soldier was thinking about his wife. A boy who looked as if he had never shaved was recalling the occasion he could have slept with his, girl but didn't. And, interspersed among these men, who had something precious to lose, were those like Bell and Seward for whom the past was as none existent as the future. But nothing was as empty as death, and in the calm before the battle even such men as these had to look inwards and acknowledge the dark presence of fear.
Such a man as Joe Hedges, too, for although he had been honed as hard as any man by his experiences, he did have a future, being tenderly preserved for him by a kid brother on an Iowa farm. Whether he could face that future if the time came, he did not know. But he did know that Jamie was relying on him, and this was at the root of Hedges' fear as he urged his horse forward.* (*See: Edge #1 The Loner)
"Say one for me, trooper," he said as he rode past the soldier with the Bible.
"It's for all of us, sir," the man said. Hedges reached the end of the line where Forrest was blowing on his clasped hands as he peered into the gloom. "Can't see a thing out there except cotton," he said sourly.
"Don't you believe our scouts?" Hedges asked him.
Forrest began to rub his hands together as he grinned. "I’ve stayed alive by not believing anything I haven't seen for myself."
Edge returned the grin. "That's a lot of open field down there. Like to go and see for yourself?"
The artillery began to move through the lines, the gunners cursing at the horses to speed up the movement of the big brass smoothbore cannon to the hastily prepared emplacements at the edge of the field. Behind them rolled the flatbeds low on their springs with the twelve-pound shot and slug canisters.
"The rebs are the guys in grey," Seward taunted one of the struggling gunners who had to use all his strength to prevent his cannon side-sliding on ice into a small gulley.
The man stared hatefully up at the arrogant youngster. "You're safe," he retorted sourly. "Whoever saw a dead cavalryman?"
A large group of infantry waiting behind Hedges' troop raised a sardonic cheer for the gunner's remark.
"Hell, you're just plain jealous of our skills," Bell shouted at the foot soldiers. "We're the cream of the army."
"Goddam cream puffs!" a voice called from out of the gloom.
Bell, Seward, Scott and Douglas kicked loose of a stirrup and prepared to slide from their saddles.
"Stay in 'em!" Forrest roared, his voice cutting across the laughter of the foot soldiers. "Save it for the rebs."
Once again, Forrest's harsh voice and menacing demeanor held the men's anger in check. He continued to glower at the mounted soldiers until their rage at the insult had died.
"I hear he's on the mend, sir," Forrest replied.
Hedges sighed. "Maybe we'll be lucky. Maybe some other troop will get him."
Bob Rhett was a New England dandy who'd been wounded in mysterious circumstances during the Shenandoah Valley campaign. He was a coward with homosexual tendencies but had held his place in the troop's central group because the others found him amusing. But in Hedges' book the man was a no-account fag who disgraced the uniform he wore.
"Hey, we're moving," a cavalryman called, and Hedges looked with the others down the slope to where cavalry and infantry were beginning to push between the cannon, out into the cotton fields.
"Let's go give them hell" another voice encouraged; sadly lacking in the confidence the words had intended to exude.
Across the darkness the enemy cannon opened up with far-off splashes of bright orange along a wide front. Hurried orders were yelled by officers and noncoms and whether it had been the intention or not, the Union lines moved forward, shouting in a mixture of fear and blood lust. Not for the first time in the war, Hedges saw the battle plan of a general overruled by the panicked actions of the moment as officers forgot or muddled their orders amid the clamor of undisciplined troops impatient to be done with the fighting. As Hedges' understood it, Rosecrans had wanted to hold with his right flank and attack with his left. But the sudden bombardment towards the right was triggering an immediate response. Instead of advancing and holding, the great mass of men were spilling down the hill and streaming far into the expanse of frozen cotton fields. And as the murderous hail of cannon shot began to smash into the foot of the hill it was obvious that only the bravest of the brave would be prepared to hold the line. It was a simple question of advance or withdraw, for to be brave in such a situation was to show mindless stupidity.
"Forward!" Hedges yelled and heeled his mount into a downhill gallop as somewhere far off a corps bugler sounded the charge.
The Union battery opened up then, sending shot whistling through the freezing air towards the bright Hashes of the rebels' second fusillade. The night was almost full-born now and the wispy patterns of a tenuous mist trailed across the fields, cleanly white before it became contaminated by the evil grayness of gunpowder smoke. Out amongst it, brushing through the cold stiffened stalks of cotton, men and horses pressed forward, some at the run and others with circumspection: all keeping low.
More than a hundred Union men were already dead, twisted and bleeding along the line of cannon emplacements. By luck, for there had been no time to allow judgment, the rebel gunners had zeroed directly in on the Union's leading line and a mixture of ball shot and lead pellet canisters had wrought their own particular brand of havoc.
One man's head had been wrenched from his shoulders by a ball. Another lay face down as if still a complete man, but as a wailing friend turned him over the entire front of his body was a mass of blood-soaked lacerations from flying pellets. Two gunners were trapped beneath an overturned cannon, one with a smashed skull from where the barrel had hit him, the other impaled through the stomach by a snapped-off spoke.
As Hedges galloped forward, his mind was impervious to the sight of the mutilated corpses and the terrible cries of the wounded. He was concerned solely with the able and the living for upon them depended the outcome of the battle and this was all that mattered.
''We lost our line to heaven!" Scott shouted with high excitement as a twelve-pounder whistled in and a man screamed.
Hedges glanced to his left through eyes narrowed against the rush of icy air and saw a book arcing away into the night. The arm of the man who had held it spun off on a lower trajectory. The trooper who had been praying for the whole army continued to scream as he stared down at the blood-soaked patch on his shoulder where his arm had been ripped off. Then he tumbled from his horse, which raced ahead and kicked over backwards, taking a second ball shot full in the chest.
"Somebody up there didn't like him," Billy Seward yelled, ducking as another shot whistled in and burrowed through the chest of an already dead infantryman. The troop was in amongst the trampled cotton now and they could hear small-arms fire ahead, frail sounding against the pounding roar of the artillery barrages. The mist with its interlacing of acrid gunsmoke was thickening and Hedges slowed the pace, concerned at the danger of smashing through the Union infantry. He unbooted the Henry and all along the line the troopers took out their motley selection of singleshot and repeating weapons, breech and muzzleloaders. The metal frames of the guns were cold to the touch, but warm in the comfort of self-protection they offered.
Two men came running out of the mist and a trooper sent a bullet humming towards them. It crackled harmlessly into the downtrodden cotton stalks.
"Don't shoot!" one of the men screamed. "Union."
The second man couldn't speak. His jaw had been shot away. His teeth looked very white against the scarlet pulp of his fleshless chin. Hedges' voice rasped an order to hold fire as he reined in his horse. The cannon had ceased to fire, each battery commander unsure of how far his own advance had progressed and unwilling to risk dropping shot upon his comrades. Behind the curtain of wavering mist the crackle of rifle and revolver fire was suddenly loud and deadly. The warcries of bravado merged with the screams of the wounded in a terrifying stridency that spooked men and horses alike.
"Go back!" the uninjured man implored. "There's a million of 'em. Go-back! They're murdering us."
"How far?" Hedges demanded.
The man waved inconclusively towards the racket of the battle. "Back there. It's slaughter."
The man with no jaw made a groaning sound, but no pain showed in his glazed eyes. His companion looked at him with great compassion, then reached out and took his hand. When he turned back to look up at Hedges, there were tears streaming. down his face.
"It's my son," he said. "He was a real handsome boy. We’ve had enough. Were going home to mother."
He took one step into a run and then the back of his head exploded under the impact of two heavy caliber bullets. Four men in Confederate grey broke into the open, two of them with smoking muskets. Forrest and Hedges fired together and the two rebels with primed guns crumpled, pouring blood from chest wounds. The man with no jaw whirled and threw himself at his father's killers. He died with them, under a hail of bullets from the troopers that riddled all three bodies. A snarl burst from Hedges and he turned in the saddle to deliver a tongue lashing to his men. But before he could start, the thud of running feet and the whistling of bullets changed the order of priorities.
"It ain't the whites of their eyes we want to see!" he yelled, experiencing a familiar rise of excitement within his chest.
"Just make sure the bastards are wearing grey!" Forrest augmented.
Thirty guns were brought up and aimed into the mist. Thirty fingers curled around triggers and thirty eyes narrowed behind back sights. Thirty horses smelt he fear and excitement of their riders and blew their vaporized breath into the chill of the night.
Hedges’ nerve was as cold and steady as the steel frame of the Henry. As he listened to the running feet and the crack of gunfire, he recalled Shiloh and the shattering self-discovery he had. made during the battle. There, amid the bloodbath, he had learned how to kill without compunction and glory in the sight of men falling by his hand. There, surrounded by death at its most horrible, he had found exhilaration in killing. And now, as he waited in this new arena, he was aware of the same high excitement. The farm in Iowa and everything it represented was smothered by the glory of this moment. Shiloh had not been an isolated incident. He wants to win the damn war all on his own! Bell had shouted at the height of the battle and Hedges knew this was true. He wanted to kill and kill and not stop until he had blasted the life from every last man in a Confederate uniform.
The soldiers in blue came through first, breathless and pale-faced, some trailing blood, Without breaking their hurried retreat, they veered to lef
t and right to thread between the line of nervous horses. Many moved like mindless puppets, as if led by cords towards the safety of the Union lines. A few stared up into the faces of the cavalrymen with eyes that poured scorn upon a tactic they considered reckless to the point of stupidity.
"Get the bastards!" Forrest yelled and thirty shots rang out. The line of rebels had emerged from the mist at the run, their faces jubilant as they leapt across the Union dead and gave chase to the retreating troops. More than a score died before their minds could realize the tragedy of victory becoming the ultimate defeat. Six more writhed on the prickly, cold ground with agonizing wounds as the remainder got off shots, toppling dead and injured troopers from their mounts.
"Hit the dirt!" Hedges roared and the troopers slid from their saddles, firing on the move into the fresh wave of rebels which seemed to materialize from the mist as if born from it. As horses lost their riders they either collapsed into death throes or bolted forward, trampling the dead and wounded and sending other men crashing to the ground under flying hooves.
"They're holding!" a rebel voice called through the gunfire. "Down, down, down!"
The mist seemed suddenly to exhaust its supply of grey-clad figures as the rebels halted their headlong advance and threw themselves to the ground, below the hail of bullets sent puncturing through the darkness from the smoking muzzles of the cavalrymen's guns.
THE BLUE, THE GREY AND THE RED. (Edge Series Book 6) Page 3