Departures by Harry Turtledove

Author:Harry Turtledove [Turtledove, Harry]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
ISBN: 9780307792341
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2011-05-03T21:00:00+00:00

Thorpe looked down at the cuff of his gray coat. It bore the double twist of braid that showed captain’s rank. He looked at the hand protruding from the cuff. The flesh was smooth and unspotted, the tendons no longer upraised like old tree roots pushing through thin soil.

He had no time for surprise. He and the rest of the men in gray and butternut and occasional looted Yankee blue hurried through the cover afforded by a stand of old pine woods. The trees thinned ahead. He could see the line of the Weldon Railroad, the burned ruins of what had been Reams Station south of Petersburg, the low parapet the Federals had thrown up twenty or thirty yards east of the train tracks.

“Keep your ranks, boys,” he called to the men of Company A. The troopers of the Chicora Guards just grinned and nodded. They’d been through enough fights to know what to do without being told.

The Federals held their fire, no doubt waiting for their foes to reach a point from which they would be unable to get away cheaply. Suddenly, from not far behind Thorpe, Brigadier General William McRae shouted, “Don’t fire a gun now, but dash for the enemy.”

The soldiers in gray traded grim looks. If McRae’s ploy failed, they were the ones who would pay the butcher’s bill. No choice, though, but to obey. Drawing his Army Colt, Thorpe cried “Forward!” and ran to the attack at the head of his company.

The Rebels burst out of the pine woods yelling like fiends. The Northern soldiers yelled, too, in surprise and alarm. Muzzle flashes stabbed outward from the parapet; thick clouds of black-powder smoke rose above it.

A Minié ball cracked past Thorpe’s head. Confederate soldiers fell, screaming and writhing in pain. But the charge was across only a couple of hundred yards of ground. Since the Rebels did not pause to fire and reload their rifle muskets—always deadly dangerous out in the open—they drew near the parapet before too many of them fell.

Thorpe tripped on a cross-tie as he ran across the railroad track. He stumbled, almost fell, caught himself just in time. Then he was at the low Federal earthwork. A man in blue scrambled up to meet him, thrust with a bayoneted Springfield. Thorpe fired the Colt pistol at point-blank range. The Federal wailed and reeled backward, clutching his belly.

Other southern men were up on the Union works now, too, some fighting hand to hand, others shooting down into the trenches behind the parapet. Some bluecoats fired back, but more threw down their guns and threw up their hands in token of surrender.

The cheering Confederates swarmed forward. A ragged private seized a flag from a color bearer who seemed too stunned to stop him. A glum Federal who wore a major’s shoulder straps on the plain blue blouse of a private turned to Thorpe and said, “Captain, your men fight well; that was a magnificent charge.”

“Thank you, sir,” Thorpe said, nodding to his courteous captive.

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