But A Wandering Voice: K-Nurse Book Two (K-Nurse, The Knight-Nurses of the Order of St. John 2) by Mark Leo Tapper

Author:Mark Leo Tapper [Tapper, Mark Leo]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Sousa House Press
Published: 2022-05-01T04:00:00+00:00

Twelve

November 1805, Schöngrabern, Austria

Jude was on his knees in the blood-sodden dirt. His previously white breeches were now indistinguishable from his gray coat. I crawled on my belly to him as a cannonball from the French Fifth Corps whistled overhead then shook the ground behind us. The rich Austrian soil showered on us after the impact, and I used his cloak to grab Jude by the shoulders and pull him a few meters to our left before dropping again to the ground.

His right ear was a swinging lobe, ready to fall in a strong wind. The rest of his ear was gone, and there was so much blood around the side of his head, it looked as if he had taken a blow with an axe. I knew it had been a bullet, because I was beside him when it happened. The lower part of his right arm dangled, yellow-white bone piercing his coat sleeve like a dagger. It must have hurt like white hell whenever I dragged him but drag him I did.

Our unit of Russian infantry had disappeared into the cloud of gunpowder smoke in front of us. Horses nickered in the woods behind us. The battlefield smelled of rancid, burning gunpowder, some made from horse urine. The volume of blood on the field added a metallic aftertaste to each breath. One of the French troops appeared suddenly out of the fog. He seemed surprised to see us there, on the ground. He swung his musket over his shoulder, but before he could level the bayonet, Jude ran him through.

Jude stood, his right arm hanging useless, blood streaming down his face and neck. Another French soldier appeared, and Jude almost decapitated him. The man’s dangling head tucked under him when he fell. For long moments, I could only gape. When it finally dawned on me that my half-dead brother was still fighting, I grabbed the first Frenchman’s musket, secured the bayonet, and stood beside Jude. We killed twelve men before they stopped coming, and the ground rolled with the hoofbeats of our Prince Bagration’s cavalry. When they had passed, Jude collapsed. I carried him over my shoulder back to camp where the barbers who served as our surgeons cut off his arm at the shoulder.

I sat with him that night. He was so pale. Blood seeped into the bandage around his head from his severed ear. I reached out to him to check for a fever when a shadow crossed over us. I turned to see the prince, our general, looking down on us. His aide-de-camp and the rest of his entourage stood back, away from the ghastly wreck of humanity that was laid out in every direction on the ground.

“Your friend fights like a demon. That’s what my men say,” said the prince, drawing his mouth into a thin line.

“Like an angel, General,” I said, “like a wrathful angel.”

“Better that you do not blaspheme,” he said.

“Better that you do not describe my friend as a creature of darkness, General.

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