Battle Flag. Bernard Cornwell
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“Were you one of them?” Starbuck asked shrewdly.
Truslow grinned, but before he could answer there was a sudden panicked rush of feet, and a single Northern soldier burst through the bushes ahead. The Yankee was oblivious of the two rebel companies until he was just paces away, then his eyes widened and he slid to a panicked halt. His mouth dropped open. He turned, seemingly to shout a warning to his comrades, but Starbuck had climbed to his feet and now hammered the side of the Northerner’s skull with the brass butt of his rifle just a split second before Truslow pulled the man’s feet out from beneath him. The Yankee fell like a poleaxed steer. Truslow and Starbuck dragged him back to the company and disarmed him. “Shut your goddamned mouth,” Starbuck hissed at the man, who had begun to stir.
“I’m not…”
“The officer told you to shut the hell up, you son of a whore, so shut the hell up or I’ll rip your damned tongue out,” Truslow growled, and the Northerner went utterly quiet. The buckle on his leather belt showed he was a Pennsylvanian. A trickle of blood showed among the roots of his fair hair above his ear. “You’ll have a peach of a bruise there, you bastard,” Truslow said happily. He was rifling the man’s pockets and pouches. He tossed the Pennsylvanian’s rifle cartridges back among the company, then found a pale brown package marked with the trademark of John Anderson’s Honeydew Fine-Cut Tobacco of New York. “It ain’t Virginia, but someone will smoke it,” Truslow said, pushing it into his pouch.
“Leave me some,” the Pennsylvanian pleaded. “I ain’t had a smoke in hours.”
“Then you should have stayed in Pennsylvania, you son of a whore, instead of trampling our corn. You’re not wanted here. If you got what you deserved you’d be breathing through a hole in your ribs by now.” Truslow eased a wad of folded Northern dollar bills from the man’s top pocket. “Lucky at cards, are you?”
“And with women.” The Pennsylvanian had a snub-nosed and cheeky charm.
“Lie still and be quiet, boy, or your luck will end here.” Truslow unlooped the boy’s canteen and found it still held a half-inch of water, which he offered to Starbuck. Starbuck, despite his thirst, refused, so Truslow drained the canteen himself.
Starbuck stood to give himself a view over the surrounding brush. Captain Medlicott hissed at him to get his head down, but Starbuck ignored the miller. Another burst of screaming announced a renewed rebel charge, and this time a group of some two dozen Yankees appeared just twenty paces beyond Starbuck’s hiding place. A handful of the Northerners knelt and fired into the trees before retreating again. Two of the Yankees fell as they went back, driven down by rebel bullets, and the rest of the men would doubtless have kept on running had not the color party come through the trees to rally them. A tall, white-haired officer waved a sword toward the rebels. “Vorwarts! Vorwarts!” the officer cried, and the retreating men turned, cheered, and delivered a splintering volley toward their pursuers. The two flags were bright squares of silk in the smoke-riven shadows. One was Old Glory, battle-torn and stained, while the second was a purple flag embroidered with an eagle and a legend Starbuck could not decipher. “Vorwarts!” the white-haired officer called again.
“Are they goddamned Germans?” Truslow asked. The Sergeant had an irrational dislike of German immigrants, blaming them for many of the rules and regulations that had begun to infest his former country. “Americans used to be free men,” he often declared. “Then the damned Prussians came to organize us.”
“We’re Pennsylvania Deutsch,” the prisoner answered.
“Then you’re godforsaken son of a bitch bastards,” Truslow said. Starbuck could read the Gothic-lettered legend on the second flag now: “Gott und die Vereinigten Staaten,” it said, and it struck Starbuck that such a flag would make a handsome trophy.
“Feuer!” the white-haired officer shouted, and another Northern volley ripped into the attacking rebels. The Germans cheered, sensing that their sudden resistance had taken the attackers by surprise.
“We can take those bastards,” Starbuck said to Truslow.
The Sergeant glanced toward Captain Medlicott. “Not with that yellow bastard’s help.”
“Then we’ll do it without the yellow bastard’s help,” Starbuck said. He felt the elation of a soldier given the inestimable advantage of surprise; this was a fight he could not lose, and so he cocked his rifle and twisted around to look at his company. “We’re going to put one volley into those German sons of bitches and then run them off our land. Hard and fast, boys, scare the daylights out of the sumbitches. Ready?” The men grinned at him, letting him know that they were good and ready. Starbuck grinned back. There were times when he wondered if anything ever again in all eternity would ever taste as good as these moments in battle. The nervousness of anticipation was utterly gone, replaced by a feral excitement. He glanced at the prisoner. “You stay here, Yankee.”
“I won’t move an inch!” the prisoner promised, though in truth he intended to run just as soon as he was left unattended.
“Stand!” Starbuck shouted. The heady mix of fear and excitement swirled through him. He understood the temptation of following Medlicott’s lead and staying hidden and safe, yet he also wanted to humiliate Medlicott. Starbuck wanted to show that he was the best man on a battlefield, and no one demonstrated such arrogance by cowering in the bushes. “Take aim!” he called, and a handful of the rallying Yankees heard the shouted order and looked around fearfully, but they were already too late. Starbuck’s men were on their feet, rifles at their shoulders.
Then it began to go wrong.
“Stop!” Medlicott shouted. “Get down! I order you! Down!” The miller had panicked. He was running up the shallow scrape and shouting at Starbuck’s men, even thrusting some of them back down to the ground. Other men crouched, and all were confused.
“Fire!” Starbuck shouted, and a puny scatter of rifle flames studded the shadows.
“Down!” Medlicott waved a hand frantically.
“Get up and fire!” Starbuck’s yell was ferocious. “Up! Fire!” The men stood again and pulled their triggers, so that a stuttering mistimed volley flamed in the dusk. “Charge!” Starbuck shouted, drawing the word out like a war cry.
The white-haired officer had turned the Pennsylvanians to face the unexpected threat to their flank. Medlicott’s interference had brought the Yankees a few seconds of precious time, long enough for a half-company to form a ragged firing line at right angles to the rest of their battalion. That half-company now faced Starbuck’s confused assault, and as he watched the Yankees lift their rifles to their shoulders, he sensed the disaster that was about to strike. Even a half-company volley at such short distance would tear the heart from his assault. Panic whipped through him. He felt the temptation to break right and dive into the underbrush for cover, indeed a temptation to just run away, but then salvation arrived as the rebel regiment that was assaulting the Pennsylvanians from the south fired an overwhelming volley. The hastily formed Northern line crumpled. The fusillade that should have destroyed Starbuck was never fired. Instead the two Union flags faltered and fell as the overpowered Yankees began to retreat.
Sheer relief made Starbuck’s war cry into a chilling and incoherent screech as he led his men into the clearing. A blue-coated soldier swung a rifle butt at him, but Starbuck easily parried the wild blow and used his own rifle’s stock to hammer the man down to the leaf mould. A rifle shot half deafened him; the Northerner who had fired it was retreating backward and tripped on a fallen branch. Robert Decker jumped on the man, screaming as loudly as his terrified victim. Truslow alone advanced without screaming; instead, he was watching for places where the enemy might recover the initiative. He saw one of the Legion’s new conscripts, Isaiah Clarke, being beaten to the ground by a huge Pennsylvanian. Truslow had his bowie knife drawn. He slashed it twice, then kicked the dying Pennsylvanian so that his body would not fall across Clarke. “Get up, boy,” he told Clarke. “You ain’t hurt bad. Nothing that a swallow of whiskey won’t cure.”
The Pennsylvanians