The Fort: A Novel of the Revolutionary War - xaviantvision

e first among the enemy and they had the advantage of surprise.Yet even so Iain Campbell could not believe how quickly the enemy broke. As he neared the battery and could see more through the dark fog he had amoment of alarm because there seemed to be hundreds of rebels, they were far more numerous than his company, and he thought what a ridiculousplace this was to meet his death. Most of the rebels were in the battery itself, which was as crowded as a Methodist meeting. Only about twenty men wereworking on the entrenchments and it was evident they had set no sentries or, if they had placed picquets, those sentries were asleep. Astonished facesturned to stare at the shrieking highlanders. Too many faces, Campbell thought. There would be a marble plaque in the kirk with his name and this day'sdate and a dignified epitaph, then that vision vanished because the enemy was already running. "Kill!" Campbell heard himself shout. "Kill!" And the shoutspurred even more of the enemy to flee westwards. They dropped their picks and spades, they scrambled over the west-facing rampart and they ran. Afew, very few, fired at the approaching highlanders, but most forgot they were carrying muskets and just abandoned the battery to run towards the heights.One group of men was dressed in dark uniforms crossed by white belts and those men did not run. They tried to form a line and they presentedmuskets and they fired a ragged volley at Campbell's men as the highlanders leaped the newly dug scratch of a ditch. Iain Campbell felt the wind of a ballwhip past his cheek, then he was swinging his heavy blade at a smoking musket, knocking it aside as he brought the sword back to stab low and fast.The steel punctured cloth, skin, flesh, and muscle, and then his Campbells were all around him, screaming hatred and lunging with bayonets, and theoutnumbered enemy broke. "Give them a volley!" Campbell shouted. He twisted his blade in the enemy's belly and thumped his left fist into the man'sface. Corporal Campbell added his bayonet and the rebel went down. Captain Campbell kicked the musket from the enemy's grasp and dragged hisblade free of the clinging flesh. Musket flashes cast sudden stark light on blood, chaos, and Campbell fury.A lone American officer tried to rally his men. He slashed his sword at Campbell, but the laird's son had learned his fencing at Major Teague's Academyon Edinburgh's Grassmarket and he parried the swing effortlessly, reversed, turned his wrist and lunged the blade into the American officer's chest. He feltthe sword scrape on a rib, he grimaced and lunged harder. The man choked, gasped, spewed blood, and fell. "Give them a volley!" Campbell shoutedagain. He had hardly needed to think to defeat the rebel officer, it had all been instinctive. He dragged his sword free and saw an American sergeant in agreen uniform coat stagger and fall. The sergeant was not wounded, but a highlander had thumped the side of his head with a musket stock and he washalf-dazed. "Take his musket!" Campbell called sharply. "Don't kill him! Just take him prisoner!""He could be a MacDonald," a Campbell private said, quite ready to thrust his bayonet into the sergeant's belly."Take him prisoner!" Campbell snapped. He turned and looked towards the heights where the dawn was lighting the slope, but the fog hid the fleeingrebels. Scottish muskets coughed smoke, stabbed flame into the fog, and shot balls uphill to where the Americans retreated. "Sergeant MacKellan!"Campbell called. "You'll set a picquet! Smartly now!""You sure this bastard's not a MacDonald?" the private standing above the dazed rebel sergeant asked."He's called Sykes," a voice said, and Campbell turned to see it was the wounded rebel officer who had spoken. The man had propped himself on anelbow. His face, very white in the dawn's wan light, was streaked with blood that had spilled from his mouth. He looked towards the green-coatedsergeant. "He's not called MacDonald," he managed to say, "he's called Sykes."Campbell was impressed that the young officer, despite his chest wound, was trying to save his sergeant's life. That sergeant was sitting now, guardedby Jamie Campbell, the youngest son of Ballaculish's blacksmith. The wounded officer spat more blood. "He's called Sykes," he said yet again, "and theywere drunk."Campbell crouched beside the injured officer. "Who was drunk?" he asked."They found barrels of rum," the man said, "and I couldn't stop them. The militia." The highlanders were still shooting into the fog, hastening the retreat ofthe rebels who had now vanished into the fog that spread inexorably up the long slope. "I told McCobb," the wounded officer said, "but he said theydeserved the rum.""Rest," Campbell said to the man. There were two great hogsheads at the back of the battery and they had evidently been full of naval rum, and therebels, celebrating their victory, had celebrated too hard. Campbell found a discarded knapsack that he put beneath the wounded officer's head. "Rest,"he said again. "What's your name?""Lieutenant Dennis."The blood on Dennis's coat looked black and Campbell would not even have known it was blood except that it reflected a sheen in the weak light."You're a marine?""Yes," Dennis choked on the word and blood welled at his lips and ran down his cheek. His breath rasped. "We changed sentries," he said, andwhimpered with sudden pain. He wanted to explain that the defeat was not his fault, that his marines had done their job, but the militia picquet that hadreplaced his marine sentries had failed."Don't speak." Campbell said. He saw the fallen sword nearby and slid the blade into Dennis's scabbard. Captured officers were allowed to keep theirswords, and Campbell reckoned Lieutenant Dennis deserved it as a reward for his bravery. He patted Dennis's blood-wet shoulder and stood. RobbieCampbell, a corporal, and almost as great a fool as his father, who was a drunken drover, had found a drum that was painted with an eagle and the word"Liberty" and he was beating it with his fists and capering like the fool he was. "Stop that noise, Robbie Campbell!" Campbell shouted, and wasrewarded with silence. The drummer boy's corpse was lying beside a newly dug grave. "Jamie Campbell! You and your brother will make a stretcher. Twomuskets, two jackets!" The quickest way to fashion a stretcher was to thread the sleeves of two jackets onto a pair of muskets. "Carry Lieutenant Dennisto the hospital.""Did we kill the MacDonald, sir?""The MacDonald ran away," Campbell said dismissively. "What do you expect of a MacDonald?""The yon bastards!" a private said angrily and Campbell turned to see the bloodied heads of the Royal Marine corpses, their scalps cut and torn away."Bloody heathen savage god-damned bastards," the man growled."Take Lieutenant Dennis to the surgeons," Campbell ordered, "and the prisoner to the fort." He found a rag in a corner of the battery and wiped hisbroadsword's long blade clean. It was almost full light now. Rain began to fall, heavy rain that splashed on the battery's wreckage and diluted the blood.The Half Moon Battery was back in British hands, and on the high ground Peleg Wadsworth despaired."They're patriots!" General Lovell complained. "They must fight for their liberty!""They're farmers," Wadsworth said wearily, "and carpenters and laborers and they're the men who didn't volunteer for the Continental Army, and half ofthem didn't want to fight anyway. They were forced to fight by press gangs.""The Massachusetts Militia," Lovell said in a hurt voice. He was standing beneath the cover of a sail that had been strung and pegged between twotrees to make a headquarter's tent. The rain pattered on the canvas and hissed in the camp-fire just outside the tent."They're not the same militia who fought at Lexington," Wadsworth said, "or who stormed Breed's Hill. Those men are all gone into the army," or theirgraves, he thought, "and we have the leavings.""Another eighteen deserted last night," Lovell said despairingly. He had set a picquet on the neck, but that post did little to stop men sneaking away inthe darkness. Some, he supposed, deserted to the British, but most went north into the wild woods and hoped to find their way home. Those who werecaught were condemned to the Horse, a brutal punishment whereby a man was sat astride a narrow beam with muskets tied to his legs, but thepunishment was evidently not brutal enough, because still the militiamen deserted. "I am ashamed," Lovell said."We still have enough men to assult the fort," Wadsworth said, not sure he believed the words.Lovell ignored them anyway. "What can we do?" he asked helplessly.Wadsworth wanted to kick the man. You can lead us, he thought, you can take command, but in fairness, and Peleg Wadsworth was a man given tohonesty about himself, he did not think he was showing great leadership either. He sighed. The dawn's fog had cleared to reveal that the British hadabandoned the recaptured Half Moon Battery, leaving the earthwork empty, and there was something insulting in that abandonment. They seemed to besaying that they could retake the battery whenever they wished, though Lovell showed no desire to accept the challenge. "We can't hold the battery," thegeneral said despairingly."Of course we can, sir," Wadsworth insisted."You saw what happened! They ran! The rascals ran! You want me to attack the fort with such men?""I think we must, sir," Wadsworth said, but Lovell said nothing in return. The rain was coming down harder, forcing Wadsworth to raise his voice. "And,sir," he continued, "at least we've rid ourselves of the enemy battery. The commodore might sail into the harbor.""He might," Lovell said in a tone that suggested pigs might take wings and circle the heights of Majabigwaduce singing hallelujahs. "But I fear . . ." hebegan, and stopped."Fear, sir?""We need disciplined troops, Wadsworth. We need General Washington's men."