To both sides of Hedges, along the entire line of the trench, blue, and gray-clad figures were locked in vicious hand-to-hand fighting as they rolled over dead comrades and tried to strike down their opponents with revolver shots or knife blades. He saw Morgan plunge a knife into the throat of a rebel and shouted a warning. But it was too late. Morgan whirled towards a fresh attacker and had his face turned to a pu1p by a charge of buckshot fired from two feet away. Hedges squeezed the trigger of the Spencer and the man with the scattergun pitched across the body of his victim.
"Forward," a voice shouted as Hedges recognized the excited tones of Leaman.
While those still engaged in the trench fighting remained to kill or be killed, the large proportion of the attackers scrambled clear of the blood-soaked ground and started up the mountain again, crouching and moving on a zigzag course as rifle fire erupted from more rebels concealed in the brush and trees ahead. There was no order in the advance now, as the men ran in terror and rage, many of them fighting as individuals with no concern for others. Hedges saw two Union troopers fling their arms high and fall forward in death throes with bullets in their backs, fired wildly by other Union men behind them. Then he saw three more veer away from the advance, tossing aside their rifles and stripping off their tunics as they fled from the fight.
He reached a patch of tall growing grass and flung himself into it, hearing several other bodies thud to the ground about him. Bullets and ballshot whined overhead or rusted through the grass.
A man screamed.
"God, Deveen's caught one," somebody said in horror.
"Figure he's lucky to be out of it," came a reply. "Listen to those guys."
The screams and cries of the wounded sprawled in the trench below acted as a horrifying counterpoint to the ominous crack of gunfire. Somewhere a voice was intoning a prayer and it was impossible to tell whether he was wounded or not. The grass rustled beside Hedges and he turned to see Leaman crawling towards him, favoring his right arm. The sleeve was torn and coated with blood.
"Seen Captain Jordan?" he asked.
Hedges shook his head and both men ducked as three shots whined over them.
"He held back, sir," a voice called from nearby, the speaker hidden by the grass.
"He's as yellow as he's stupid," somebody else said vindictively.
"It ain't stupid to be scared in this war," came an answering call.
"I'm so scared I'm shitting myself, but I didn't stay hiding behind no tree."
"Hold your tongues," Leaman yelled, and attracted a fresh fusillade of shots. "We have to get into the trees," he hissed to Hedges. "Take as many men as you can and make a rush. I'll get the word to as many as I can to cover you. With a bit of luck Jordan might consider it's safe enough to move his troop forward. If he does it will help to distract the rebels from your advance. I want you to keep them occupied so we can get up there. Okay?"
Hedges grinned coldly. "As long as it's understood I'm not volunteering."
Leaman's arm hurt too much for him to force a smile. "You're not. And don't ask for any."
Hedges moved forward, keeping his head down and hauling himself along on his elbows. He chose a diagonal course, away from the center of the rebels' defensive line and tapped on the shoulder of each man he came upon.
"Move," he told each of them. "And if you make a sound I'll kill you before a reb can draw a bead."
He had only seven men by the time the grass began to get too short for adequate cover and he was peering out across a field which had once been ploughed but had been allowed to lie fallow. Weeds grew thickly in the furrows.
"We got to cross that?" a trooper said as he crawled up alongside the lieutenant. His face was pale.
"We haven't got to," Hedges replied, his clear blue eyes studying the trees on the far side of the field, "but if we don't a lot of people ain't going to be happy. Most of them will be dead."
Hedges grinned knowingly at the trooper, who swallowed hard. "Including us?"
"Especially us," Hedges told him. "Because we're going to try to cross the field."
There had been spasmodic firing as Hedges gathered his men together, but suddenly the rate picked up to a continuous chatter, accompanied by frantic shouting. The Lieutenant raised his head for a moment to glance down the slope and saw a barrage of smoke and flashes from the area where he had left Leaman, backed up by cavalrymen shooting at the gallop as they raced up the slope. He recognized the pennant of Jordan's troop but could not see the captain himself. He had time for only I quick glance before he turned and jerked his head to the men in the grass.
"Time to go," he snapped and sprang up out of the grass to break into a run across the uneven ground. He carried his rifle at the hip, finger on the trigger. The men grinding along in his wake did likewise, conserving their ammunition for as long as the rebel guns were concentrating their fire power on the pinned-down troopers and the advancing cavalry. But as they reached the three-quarter point on the run, legs threatening to collapse under the strain and throats throbbing with the effort of sucking in air for overworked lungs, a section of the Confederate riflemen opened up on them. Two of the Union men went down, one killed instantly by a bullet in his heart, the second clawing at his blood-soaked thigh. Hedges pushed the wounded men into a deep furrow as the five uninjured men began to fire, with no targets except imagined forms along the screen of trees. But it was sufficient to hinder the rebels in taking aim and as Hedges broke into a crouching run and dived headlong into cover all five crowded safely in behind him. The hillside became broken among the trees, with thickets of brush providing additional cover to the close-growing columns of trunks and the rises and indentations of the ground. One of the men snapped off a shot and grunted with satisfaction as a gray clad figure tumbled from high in a tree.
"That's what we do," Hedges whispered as the men crowded around him, keeping low as lead whined over their heads. "Spread out and take your time. Only shoot when you have a target, then get your damn heads down. We've got to blast a hole in their line to let Jordan and the rest through."
"Don't think Jordan wants any part of this, sir," a man said in disgust.
Hedges snatched a cautious glance down the slope, over the sprawled and crouched Union soldiers, across the trench and into the trees on the far side of the battlefield. He could see a mounted figure waiting there, stroking the horse's neck as if to calm the beast. There was no other cavalry in sight and Hedges guessed that Jordan's troop had all made it to the trench or fallen as they tried to reach it.
"Probably charge his men with deserting him under fire," a trooper said cynically.
"Maybe he's missing his mother," another suggested and tried to laugh. It was just a hoarse rasping in his throat.
Hedges fixed him with a stee1y-eyed glare. "Guess you'd rather be eating your ma's apple pie right this moment?" he said.
"But I ain't," the man replied.
"And you ain't doing a hell of a lot towards winning this war," Hedges countered. "Let's move." He indicated with hand movements that the five men should spread out in a line facing the end of the Confederate defenses. Gunfire continued to sound across the battlefield from both sides and was punctuated spasmodically by a scream as a soldier was hit. But Hedges' group had been unmolested for several minutes, as if the enemy soldiers thought they had wiped out the infiltrators. Hedges urged caution as he signaled the advance and the men complied, their frightened eyes flicking over every inch of ground before them and then examining the trees, thick with summer leaf.