by Rob Rosen
I didn’t even stop to wonder how she knew. I just nodded. “He killed Josie.”
“I know it. Why did you come here?”
“’Cause nothing makes sense, that’s why. How could someone like Duncan be a killer? And where is Duncan? I left him when I found the knife. He was gone when I came home.”
“You want to kill him yourself?” she asked.
“Dunno what I want. Last night, I thought I’uz…” I couldn’t say the words out loud.
“In love?”
My face burned. “That’s a sin.”
The Witch spat in the dust. “Ain’t no sin to love, boy. Ain’t never.”
“It’s surely a sin to love him who killed someone you loved.”
She gave a wet sigh. “Men…boys…die in war. Do they deserve it? What if Josie killed Duncan? Would that make Josie evil? Josie went to war to kill British.”
“They’s…our enemies.”
“Ye send young men into battle. Ye tell them it’s right to kill each other. Then ye hate them for doing what they’re told?” She cocked her head at me. “D’ye know how Josie died?”
“No.”
She got up, crossed the room, went to the fire. She lifted a pot from the coals and poured liquid from it into a cup. She’d done the same thing last time.
“Drink it.”
I shook my head. “I don’t want to. It’ll give me visions again, and I don’t wanna see.”
She shoved the cup in my face. “Ain’t about what ye want to see. It’s about what ye have to see. What ye have to know.”
* * *
It was daylight, bright, warm. But the air was full of smoke and screams. Men were all around, some red-coated, some not. Patriots, Englishmen, Tories.
Shots sounded. Horses’ hooves thundered. I spun around to avoid being trampled, but there weren’t no danger; I wasn’t really there. Within arm’s reach crouched a figure in bright red, trembling. A scream behind us startled him. He turned.
Duncan.
His coat was clean, new. This was his first battle. He back-pedaled, trying to get away from the screaming. I turned and someone passed right through me. Didn’t hurt. Felt like nothing.
It was Josie, alive. My heart skipped a beat. But I remembered this was just a vision.
This was Josie’s death.
Josie shrieked again as he charged Duncan. His knife was gripped tight in his hand, pointed at Duncan’s heart.
Duncan was so afraid he couldn’t move. Another few seconds and Josie’s blade would be in his chest. But it didn’t happen that way. Duncan’s trembling hands managed to raise his rifle. It caught Josie’s breastbone and stopped him running. Josie slashed out with that knife like a madman. Once he caught Duncan on the side of his neck. Duncan winced with pain, closed his eyes…
That’s when he fired.
The shot blew Josie backward. He tripped and, before he fell, he looked down at the bloody hole in his chest, surprised. He hadn’t thought he could actually die.
I tried to scream, like in a bad dream, when you try to holler and nothing comes out. I ran forward to hold Josie, but I couldn’t touch him. I wasn’t really there. I could only look into Josie’s eyes as they started to cloud over. He gave a little shake and he was gone.
Duncan cried out as though he were the one wounded. He knelt right where I was, shook Josie’s shoulders and begged him not to be dead. Duncan’s eyes were wild, senseless. His tears fell over Josie, over his first kill in his first battle.
Duncan pressed Josie’s knife in that dead hand, tried to close the fingers ’round it, but a bullet whizzed by his ear. Still clutching the knife, he dropped, scrambling backward, toward the woods. Then he got up and ran, away from the battle, away from the boy he’d killed.
The boy I loved.
I cried over Josie, unable to touch him.
I was still crying when the Witch stroked my hair, bringing me back.
“He didn’t mean to do it,” I said. “Duncan didn’t mean to kill anyone. He was just afraid.” I wiped my face on my sleeve. It was time to stop crying and do something useful.
“Can you tell me where he’s gone?” I asked.
“Back to his regiment. To die like he thinks he deserves. Like he thinks you want him to.”
“It wasn’t his fault,” I whispered.
“He’s halfway to King’s Mountain. There’ll be a battle there. Hundred or more Tories will die.”
“Will Duncan die?”
“It’s up to you, Ezekiel. Will you ride to King’s Mountain?”
Me? Ride into battle?
“I don’t know nothing about fighting.”
The Witch held up the knife. “This can protect ye.”
“Didn’t help Josie none.”
“It’s got the power of a boy’s first love in it.” She touched it to my neck, just below my ear. “It’s tasted blood. Duncan’s blood still stains the blade.”
She showed me the knife’s edge with its dark, brownish stain.
“It joins Duncan and Josiah by blood. You love both. Were it to taste your blood, that would be a powerful enchantment. Love, regret, hope…all inside.”
She wanted to cut me, to mix our blood.
“Do it,” I said.
She cut quick. At first it stung, then it was like my neck was on fire. I screamed and slapped my hand over the wound. Only there weren’t no wound. Weren’t no blood, neither.
The Witch held out the knife to me in both her hands. “Enchanted by blood, by love for the living and for the dead. It’ll protect you. Go, Ezekiel. Ride. Follow the knife. Follow your love.”
I’d never been outside the holler where I was born. Didn’t exactly know where King’s Mountain was, though I knew it wasn’t far. Still, somehow, the route was in my head. Maybe it was just whatever the Witch done to that knife or maybe it was Josie’s spirit guiding me, but anytime I started to take a wrong turn on the way, a voice in my head set me right.
After a day or so, I spotted the Overmountain men, the Patriot militia headed for King’s Mountain. They were set to surprise the enemy who’d been threatening the Carolinas. They didn’t wear uniforms. Duncan had said the Tories didn’t neither. The Patriots were rough-looking, proud, hardworking men, out to defend their homes and families.
They were pinning bits of white paper to their hats, so they’d know who was Tories and who was Patriots. That struck me funny, riding into battle against people so like yourselves that you needed a marker to know who to kill.
Duncan would be with the Tories, not here. The Witch hadn’t been wrong yet. So I’d make my way over the mountain ahead of these men, before they struck. I stood up from my hiding place and ran up the hill.
The bank was wet from rain. It was slick going. I fell a couple times. But I was raised in the hills, knew how to pull myself up using vines and creepers. I was winded when I came into sight of the Tories. They’d camped on the mountainside and were packing up. A man on a big white horse rode among them, blowing on a silver whistle, saying to hurry up, be ready to move out.
Where was Duncan? I had to find him. I came over the rise and into their midst. I walked from man to man, searching. Nobody seemed to notice me. The enemy, after all, was going to attack in force, not send one lone farmboy.
I was near the ruins of a campfire when I heard the man on the horse call out, “Here, Forsyth, put this sprig of pine bough into your hat. We might shoot you otherwise.”
I turned. There was Duncan, dirty and ragged, in borrowed clothes too big for him, but he was my Duncan. Yes, mine.
I called out, waving, but Duncan didn’t look my way. He couldn’t hear me from that distance, it seemed. But he had to, if I was going to save him.
I clutched the knife handle and called out again. This time Duncan looked up, startled.
Someone big and strong grabbed me. Before I knew it, I was on the ground and a Tory soldier stood over me, a sneer on his face. I guess he was a bit more suspicious than the rest, for he shouted, “Colonel! Here
’s a damned spy!”
The Tory whipped round his rifle and drove the bayonet point against my throat.
“Kill him,” somebody called out. “Before he calls for help.”
The Tory reared to drive the blade into me. In my hand, the knife heated up. Before I could think, it had slashed up and out. The knife struck the Tory in his throat. Warm blood splashed me as he fell.
Men gasped around me. In seconds, they’d be on me. I pulled the knife away and lifted it up in the air, its end smeared with red.
I saw fear in the Tories’ eyes, but one man, shouting, raised his rifle and fired before I could think. Either he missed or he’d not loaded the ball. I wasn’t shot. I put my hand to my throat, felt the ridge of torn flesh where the bayonet had bit into it.
The Tories came at me, shouting for blood. They circled around, grabbing at me. I spun faster than I ever moved in my life, lashing out with my knife, slicing any flesh that came near. A man screamed as I opened up his wrist to the bone. That only made the rest angrier. I slit one across his belly. As he fell into me, my arm propelled itself up and back, sinking the weapon into the eye of a man behind me. The sound and feel made me want to puke.
Four enemies were down, done in by Josie’s knife, like Josie was somehow there, protecting me.
Up the hill suddenly came a noise like a million demons shouting. The man on the horse whistled his troops to ready.
The Tories forgot me as the Patriots spilled over the ridge like a creek flooding. Rifle shots rang out. The charging men with bayonets fell. Mountain men know how to shoot. Still, under the crazed assault of the bayonets, the Patriots started to give ground.
I’d lost sight of Duncan in that mass of men heading down the hill. I reckoned I had made it this far, still alive, so I waded into the battle.
It had to be a half an hour or more before I finally found him. He had his rifle held at ready, but he wasn’t firing.
I ran toward him. “You’re gonna get shot, ya darn fool!”
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the glint of sunlight on a blade, a Tory bayonet. I leapt forward at my attacker, caught him with my knife, tore a gash down the whole of his arm.
He fell, shrieking at Duncan. “Kill him, Forsyth!”
Duncan’s lip quivered. “I…I can’t.”
The man tried to lurch at both of us, then pitched his face in the mud. There was a bullet hole clean through his head. Up came a grizzled fellow with a rifle, a piece of dirty white paper shoved into the brim of his hat. Behind him came another Tory, his rifle aimed at our Patriot savior.
My knife shot up, almost on instinct now. It caught that Tory hard in the throat and he fell. The Patriot looked back at me, grinned, then went to free my knife from the gurgling throat of the dying man. He scooped up the rifle the Tory had dropped, too, and handed them both to me.
“You’ll kill more with this.” His eye caught the sprig of pine in Duncan’s cap. “You can practice your aim on that scrawny target.”
“No,” I said, making my eyes hard as I looked on the face of the fair British boy I loved. “No bullet for him. He’s mine.”
I raised my knife, threw myself at Duncan and knocked him to the ground. I hoped the Patriot would move on, wishing that Duncan would fight me, to make it look good, but he just went limp. I raised and looked him in the eye.
He was in tears. “Just do it quickly, please.”
He still thought I was there to kill him. He wanted me to.
“Shut up,” I said. “No one’s killing you. I said you’re mine and I meant it.”
“Step away, boy. I’ll get the limey bastard.”
The Patriot still watched, his gun trained on Duncan’s head. I didn’t have no choice but to throw the knife. It was Duncan or the Patriot who’d saved my life. Loyalty meant nothing to me, not up against love. The Patriot died with Josie’s blade in his heart.
“How did you find me?” Duncan finally wondered aloud.
I shrugged. “The Witch’s enchantment, I s’pose.” Though maybe it was something else, something more powerful that led me to him.
A storm of rifle shots nearby reminded me we were still in danger. “Play dead,” I said and fell down on him, sheltering him, kissing his neck once, secretly, where Josie’s knife had scarred him.
It was like layin’ low in a thunderstorm. The battle raged around us. I prayed for us not to be seen or, worse, trampled. Men fell dead, some so close I could touch them. The man on the white horse rode up high on the hillside, blowing his whistle. The Patriots saw him and fired. A half-dozen bullets riddled him and he dropped from the horse.
Soon after, the Tories ran up a white flag. “It’s almost over,” I whispered to Duncan. “They’re surrendering.”
But the shots kept up. The wounded moaned, some calling out for their mamas.
Finally a voice called out, “Don’t kill any more!”
The shots stopped. I stayed still and listened to marching feet, heard men begging. Hundreds of Tories were led away as prisoners.
They didn’t bother with us on the ground, even if we were moving. One of the Patriot colonels said they needed to clear out fast. Cornwallis and a bigger army might be coming. “Leave the wounded to die.”
I must have fallen asleep. I woke to moonlight, Duncan still there, only I was curled up around him now. His face was painted all silver by the moon. He looked like an angel. I hated to wake him, but now was the time to get away. Tomorrow, they’d come for the wounded and they wouldn’t let a Patriot and the enemy leave together.
I whispered, “Duncan.” His eyes opened. I took his shoulder and set him upright. “Let’s go. T’ain’t safe here.”
He rubbed his eyes. “Why did you come here?”
“To save you.”
“But I killed your friend.”
“Don’t ask me how, but I saw what happened. Josie was going to kill you. In battle, you kill to stay alive. Good reason not to get into battle, I s’pose.”
His head hung. “I deserved to die like all these men.”
I grabbed his shoulders, shaking him hard. “No. I told you. You’re mine, and I’m not letting you die.”
He stared, eyes filling with tears. I leaned forward and kissed him, kissed him for a long time. Only stopped when I felt my cock stirring. This weren’t the place to start no lovemaking, though.
I jerked my head toward the woods. “Let’s go.”
“Where are we going?”
“Home.”
He almost laughed. “Where’s home?”
I kissed him again. “Wherever we’re safe together.”
GIFTED
A. R. Bell
Nobody knew where he had come from. Some said that one unusually hot night in August, a star had fallen from the sky and landed right by the eastern wall of Putna Citadel. When people rushed to the spot, it was so hot and smoky that no one could get near and the next day Bogdan was presented as the new captain of Moldova’s army. Others claimed that he was the illegitimate son of the late Lady Ileana, hidden from the sight of the people until he was fifteen years of age for fear of curses. However, it was the first story that seemed the most plausible, since nothing could go on in the Citadel without the nosy maids finding out and gossiping about it the kitchens.
Bogdan was tall and of a rather dark complexion, with eyes so black and deep that old women felt the need to make the sign of the cross and whisper a little prayer every time they passed him in the square. He’d fought many battles against the invading Turks and came back victorious in most. Radu, the King of Moldova, held him in great esteem and not a day went by without him seeking Bogdan’s council. Today was no exception, as they both sat in the tent raised by the Black Sea. It was a cold, windy evening and the water seemed to foresee the bloody battle that was about to unleash itself on its peaceful shore.
“We should not have come here,” Bogdan said, gazing upon his lord, who was eating a piece of cold lamb steak. “We should have stayed in Putna and waited fo
r them there.”
“They would have pillaged our villages and burned our crops on their way. It’s our duty to defend our people, not only our castle.”
“Your people…” Bogdan began, but stopped as he saw Radu getting up and coming very close to him.
“Our people. Mine and yours.”
The young captain remained silent. Radu was only five years his elder. He had a larger frame and golden hair that hung down upon his shoulders. His countenance was mean enough to freeze any enemy solider in his tracks and his strong arms had slain many of them, to be sure. Moldova was ruled with an iron fist, and all those who wronged against it suffered the cruelest of fates. Bogdan was probably the only one who didn’t fear the Moldovian ruler and made a habit of challenging his decisions and second-guessing his actions. Still, aware of the proud nature of the King, he only acted like this in private. Tonight was no exception.
“We are outnumbered, M’lord.”
“Bogdan, for the one thousandth time, stop calling me that when we are alone.”
“Fine,” came the reply, though he well knew he would never stop calling him this. “There will still be a lot more Turks than us,” he then added.
“I know. But they do not expect us to be waiting for them here.”
“Many of us will perish.”
“They will die in glory.”
“Maybe I will—”
Bogdan was stopped mid-sentence by the Moldovian King, who had once more got up and violently pushed him.
“You will never, ever, say that again. You are my captain and you will not only live but come out of it unscarred. Is that clear?”
“It is not up to you.” Bogdan pushed him back. “Not this time.”
“Bogdan…I wish for you to live.”
“Why? I have been wondering just that for five years now. Why is my life so precious to you? Why did you—?”
“Enough!” Radu’s voice thundered. “We need to rest. The enemy will be here at dawn, and may God help us.”
“We might have upset Him with our daring. I think we will lose.”
“I’ll wager you we won’t.”
“What do you wager?”
The King managed the briefest of grins. “If we come away victorious, I want you shaved.”