Titus Gamble by Kerry Newcomb

Author:Kerry Newcomb
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781504002875
Publisher: Open Road Media

CHAPTER NINE

Metal on stone. A loud, grating sound, then another. Rury thumbed the saber’s edge. Not sharp enough. Not the edge he wanted. He took whetstone in hand and returned to the task. There was something comforting in the droning chant of a blade against the stone’s smooth and paradoxically biting surface. A continuing chorus reminiscent of the cry of battle. The saber … a gentleman’s weapon … He lifted the sword, fingers protected by the wire basket, hand gripping the leather-bound hilt. The blade itself, thick at the base, curved out a full three feet and slimmed toward the point. The polished steel glinted in the sun with a thousand tiny explosions of light. A wind stirred in the oaks and sent branches dancing, but he heard them not, listening as he was to the sweet music of men at arms thundering in his skull.

Their’s had been a grand cause, poignant in collapse when weary generals and ragtag troops lay down their arms on the blood-soaked fields of Appomattox with nothing left but the sullen march home. Empty days, they were, after months of excitement. Rury Brennan had reveled in the war less for the cause than the flaring joy of battle. No tactician, his way was always the direct: to ride to the fore of his command, a wild rebel yell in his throat and the raging of his fierce heart the ensign behind which his men rallied. He loved every sound, every second—the rasp of shot rammed home, the click of hammers pulled back, the brief sliding hiss and kiss of metal on metal as bayonets fixed. And then the heart-stopping wait. The command! followed by the surging mass before which he rode, the black stallion beneath him held to a canter, then a trot, then the headlong charge; muskets gouting angry plumes of black smoke that drifted in ominous, choking clouds; the thunderous cannonade of a thousand hooves; the incredible cacophony of colliding walls of men and horses, rifle and saber, flesh and rending steel. Havoc … the gleaming length of red steel … red to the hilt … red no longer.

For that time was past. The throbbing battle pitch of his pulse subsided, eased by the less dramatic realities of the moment. Rury rested against the log and ran the whetstone the length of his saber with long, lazy, contemplative strokes. Three weeks had passed since the death of Ep and the disappearance of Gus and Lonnie Joe. The first week had been the most trying. For two days, Rury and Barnet searched the Brennanburg road and along the mill trail as far south and east as Ep’s burned out homestead. They found intriguing hints, but no real traces of a struggle. Two days’ labor were rewarded with no more than the sight of three abandoned dwellings whose newly freed owners had given up and left, fearing reprisals similar to those which had been visited upon Ep. The raid, as predicted, had proved successful, for the southland was once again clear of squatters.

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