officer's back open, tumbling him into the dirt and mud of the field between the tobacco rows, brought it down again and almost severed the head from the shoulders, hacked on the body until he began to hear things beside the ringing in his ears.
'Load up!' someone was ordering. 'Load 'an face the road!'
Mollow was at his side, fending off his bloody cutlass with his rifle stock as Alan thought him another foe to deal with. 'Hold on, thar, boy! Git yerself a rifle, an' we're gonna do some hawg-killin'!'
The closest weapons Alan could find were militia muskets, and he did not have the right caliber ball for them. He searched back and forth across the fields until he came across the soldier Hatmaker, who had been shot in the chest and would no longer need his rifle.
'Form ranks, form two ranks!' Knevet was shouting, manhandling stunned sailors and surviving riflemen into some sort of order. There seemed too few to be credited. 'Spread out, ten foot apart! Load up an' stand by ta fire!'
Alan loaded Hatmaker's rifle, wiping the blood from the breech and stock as he did so. He looked up to see French soldiers from Lauzun's Legion stumble from the woods south of the road, along with a few men from the militia company who had run off from the fighting and had gotten mixed in with them. Cavalrymen in shakoes, sabers abandoned and bearing short musketoons and dragoon pistols, infantry in bearskin headresses with muskets, a wounded officer with a sword in hand being helped along by his orderly. There seemed too damned few of them to be credited, either. As he watched they turned to fire back into the woods from which they came, then spun about to continue running.
'First rank… fire!' Knevet called, and six or seven rifles made a harsh sound, spewing out a thick cloud of powder. 'Reload! Second rank… fire!'
This time, Alan aimed and fired, his hands so weak that he could have just as easily hit either the ground at his feet or the bay beyond. A third volley sounded from the woods by the zigzag fences as Governour, Burgess, and their survivors came into sight, and they had the French and Rebels caught in an L-shaped killing ground, just about one hundred yards away, too far for accurate musket fire even for steady men, but as Governour had predicted, close enough to do terrible practice with Fergusons. The enemy melted away, spun off their feet to fall like limp rags.
'Kill 'em! Kill 'em all, goddammit!' someone ordered.
'Close 'em!' Knevet said, and the two ragged ranks began to walk forward, angling right to keep up with the fleeing foe as they finally broke and fled. There were not a dozen left on their feet, then eight; another volley and there were three, a few scattered shots and there were none left standing, only the writhing wounded crying out for quarter as the soldiers walked among them with their bayonet blades prodding at the dead.
Wanting no part of such a gruesome activity, Alan sank to his knees and concentrated on drawing breath into his lungs. He felt as though he had run a mile, and every limb of his body ached as though he had carried something heavy as he had done so.
'Ya hurt?' Mollow asked him, kneeling down by him.
'No, I don't think so,' Alan panted. 'You?'
'Cut 'r two, nothin' much.' Mollow grimaced. He swung his canteen around from his hip and took a swallow, then offered it to Alan, who half drained it before handing it back reluctantly.
'Bastards worn't ready fer this kinda fightin',' Mollow commented. 'Bet them Lauzun boys thort they'd tangled with red Injuns back in them woods. Them Virginia Militia put up a good fight fer a minute thar, though.'
Alan got to his feet and looked back to the north. He could follow the trail of the fighting through the tobacco fields where plants had been knocked flat by struggling, falling men, like a swath left by a reaper. And the swath was littered with bodies all the way back to the log barrier, bodies spilled on the ground like bundles of clothing empty of the men who had worn them, looking sunk into the ground in ungainly postures, a few squirming back and forth in pain still.
'God Almighty in Heaven,' Alan muttered in shock.
'Purty bad, wuhst iver I seen, an' I seen me some fightin',' Mollow went on as they walked stiff legged back toward the north. 'You an' yer Navy boys stand killin' better'n most, I'll 'low ya that. Whoo, all them cutlasses aswangin' an' them sailors ayellin' and stampin' fit ta bust, like ta curdled my jizzum!'
'Is fighting on land always like this?' Alan gaped in awe.
'Naw, mos' times hit's almost civilized.'
There was Hatmaker, curled up like a singed worm, his yellow hair muddied and his eyes staring at a beetle that crawled under his nose. A sailor was next, struck in the belly, flat on his back with his shirt up to reveal the huge purple bruise and bullet hole that he had clutched before he bled to death through the exit wound in his back. Nearer the logs there was Feather, the stubborn quartermaster's mate, sprawled across the body of a Virginia militiaman, a musket bayonet still in his chest and the musket sagged to the ground like a fallen mast.
And there was old Nat Queener that Coe was trying to help, shot through the body and feebly fluttering his hands over his slashed belly, life draining from him as Alan watched. He knelt down next to him and the old man turned his face to him. 'We done good, didn't we, Mister Lewrie?'
'Aye, we did, Mister Queener,' Alan told him, tears coming to his eyes at the sight of him. He wasn't long for the world with a wound like that. 'Anyone you want to know about you being hurt?'
'Ain't nobody back home, I outlived 'em all, Mister Lewrie. Mebbe 'Chips' an' a few o' me mates in
'I'm so damned sorry, Queener.' Alan shuddered.
'Don' ya take on so, sir. Hands'll be lookin' ta ya. Aw, I'd admire me somethin' wet afore I go, Coe. Got anythin'?'
Coe lifted up a small leather bottle of rum and Queener gulped at it greedily.
Alan got to his feet, hearing Queener give a groan and the last breath rattling in his throat.
''E's gone, sir,' Coe said. ''E were a good shipmate.'
'Aye, he was. How many dead and wounded from our people?'
'Dunno, sir.'
'Find out and give me a list, Coe. You are senior hand, now.'
'Aye, aye, sir.'
Alan wandered off to pick his way across the field to retrieve his dropped pistols, the dragoon pistols, and to gather up the Ferguson he had discarded at the barrier. He ran across Governour, limping from a sword cut on his leg that was already bound up.
'Hard fight,' Governour said matter-of-factly. 'But we got 'em all. No one to tell the tale back up at Gloucester Point, so we should be able to get away. It's after four. Once we make the worst wounded comfortable, we should think of being on our way.'
'What about the dead?' Alan demanded, suddenly angry that the officer was so callous.
'Have to leave 'em where they lay.' Governour shrugged. 'We'll put the worst hurt up at the house where the Hayleys and their slaves can care for 'em. They'll send for surgeons. We can't care for them.'
'Goddamn you!' Alan shouted, whirling on him.
'Would you rather that was us?' Governour said with a sad smile, pointing to the nearest mutilated dead. 'Grow up, for God's sake, Lewrie. Get the names of the dead to leave with the Hayley family. Maybe they'll put something up over their graves, I don't know, but that's all you can do after something like this. You're a Navy officer, or the nearest thing we have to one right now. Act like one.'
They laid out their own dead with as much dignity as they could. Of the thirty soldiers and officers from the Volunteers, there were eighteen dead or so badly wounded they would have to be left behind. Of the eighteen sailors and petty officers, only nine would be leaving on the boats. Of the French and Rebel militia, there were not twenty men left alive from the nearly hundred who had come to take them.
Alan copied out his list of dead and badly wounded, then went up to the house, where Mrs. Hayley and her sister Nancy waited on the porch by the back terrace, aghast at the carnage, tears flowing down their faces at the horror that had come to their peaceful farm.
'Mrs. Hayley, Miss Ledbetter,' Alan said, doffing his hat to them. 'We are leaving soon. I have here a list of the people we left behind in your care, and the names of the dead. I trust in your Christian generosity to tend to them as gently as possible.'
'Yes, yes we shall,' Mrs. Hayley managed, stunned.
