Eric Flint - 1812 - The Rivers of War

Gasping for breath, Thornton looked down at the corpse. The lieutenant still gripped the smoldering fuse in his hand.

Sometime later, Thornton knew, he'd feel admiration for the man. The unknown lieutenant had just added to the splendid reputation which the little U.S. Navy had gotten in the course of the war. But at the moment, he felt more like stabbing the corpse himself, with his saber. That battery had hammered the Eighty-fifth worse than Thornton had expected.

After a few more breaths, Thornton regained his wind. Amazingly enough, in that last charge, he hadn't himself suffered as much as a scratch, even though he'd been in the lead much of the way.

But what next?

A round from the battery still firing on the American right killed another British soldier and scattered his squad, right in front of Thornton's eyes. Damnation! Against all logic and reason, that bloody unit was still in place and still firing its cannons with the same rate and accuracy that had ripped the Eighty-fifth throughout the charge. The rest of the American line had peeled away and raced to the rear, even before the assault overwhelmed the artillerymen on the riverbank. But the other battery hadn't so much as flinched.

So much for logic and reason. As often, applied to military affairs, they'd proved to be treacherous beasts.

Quickly, Thornton considered his options. None of them were good.

"Shall we charge them, sir?" asked Lieutenant Colonel Gubbins, Thornton's immediate subordinate, nodding toward the American battery a few hundred yards away.

Thornton thought about it-quickly, because the battery was continuing to fire on them. Now that the Eighty-fifth had reached the redoubt on the riverbank, the men were somewhat sheltered. But not enough, and certainly not against fire that accurate.

Standard procedure would have been to silence the battery before pressing onward. No commander wanted to leave an enemy bastion threatening his rear. But Thornton decided to risk it. He had to take the main American battery, farther to the north, with its big cannons. And he had to do it quickly.

"No, we'll keep pressing on. However good that new American unit has proven to be, I don't think its commander will risk a sortie against our troops on the open field. And if he does, we'll turn and crush him."

Gubbins scanned the area, then nodded. "Soon enough, too, we'll be out of their range. Out of sight, for that matter, once the column moves a few hundred yards off."

Thornton saw that Gubbins was right, and his grim expression lightened considerably.

The American commander had established his line at a place where the cypress swamps were fairly distant-exactly the opposite of what Jackson had done across the river. Just a few hundred yards north, the swamps closed in again, leaving an open area not more than two or three hundred yards wide between the cypress and the waterway. Once the British column reached that narrow neck, they'd be out of sight of the American battery altogether.

"Do you want to leave a detachment behind, sir?" Gubbins asked.

"Yes. They'll serve to guide the Forty-third and the West Indians, once they arrive." Thornton looked over the guns they'd seized from the naval detachment. One twelve-pounder and two six-pounders, neither of which the Americans had found time to spike. For a moment, he was sorely tempted to take the cannons with him. But they wouldn't be enough to affect whatever battle started across the river on Chalmette field; and, in the meantime, the detachment he left behind would need those guns to defend themselves against the American battery that was still in place.

"Leave as small a detachment as we can manage, but not so small that they might be overrun by those bloody bastards over there. Make sure they've enough experienced men to handle the guns we leave behind, as well."

Gubbins moved off. Thornton began organizing his regiment to make a rapid movement out of the shelter of the redoubt. Such as it was.

"Give it to 'em, boys!" hollered Ball. "Any crew slacks off I'll have their legs in with the rest of the shrimp in Marie's pot!" Brandishing a cutlass, he glared at the crew of the twelve-pounder. "Don't you be grinning at me, Corporal Jones! Those long legs of yours'll fit, too! That voudou queen got the biggest cook pot in New Orleans!"

Ball was demonstrating that his superb performance at the Capitol had been no fluke. He had as much of a knack for handling novice recruits as he did the veterans he'd had with him in Washington.

Better still, Driscol knew, the men themselves were blooded now-and in the best possible manner. Bloodlessly, for them. They'd been able to prove to themselves that they could inflict damage on an enemy before that enemy could attack them directly. When and if the British came at them, they'd have confidence that fighting back would make a difference, even in the face of a terrifying bayonet charge.

When, he thought, correcting himself. There'd be no "if" involved.

True enough, from what he could tell the British commander was getting ready to push onward, leaving Driscol and his battalion behind. But it was obvious that they'd faced only a portion of the British forces, thus far, not more than a regiment. There had to be more coming.

The British were pushing this assault far more vigorously-almost recklessly-than they ever would have for a simple diversionary movement. Driscol thought there would be at least another thousand soldiers arriving now on this side of the river. They'd be here soon enough.

In the meantime "Look, Sergeant! The bastards are leaving!" Excitedly, one of the gunners pointed toward the river, where the head of the British column could be seen moving to the northwest. "They're running away!"

Ball was there in an instant, swatting the man. Fortunately, he did it with his bare left hand, not the cutlass. "And what do I care, you stupid curree? Get back to your post! Fire on 'em, boys! Keeping firing, the Lord damn you! I want those bastards bled and gutted every step of the way!"

Splendid, splendid. Driscol wondered if Jackson's quirkiness would extend as far as to allow Driscol to promote Ball to a commissioned rank.

Maybe. You never knew, with Jackson.

After the sound of the guns faded, Robert Ross looked at Tiana, sitting across from him at the table on the square. Her face had remained expressionless, but seemed tighter than before.

He started to open his mouth, prepared to reassure her, but stopped almost at once. He brought the cup of his tea to his lips, to disguise the moment's lapse.

How could he reassure her? Driscol might well be dead by now.

Or not. Battles were unpredictable things. There had been many times in his life when Robert Ross had thought the peculiarly abstract nature of military terminology-those fussy and precise terms like enfilade and all the rest, often enough drawn from a foreign tongue-served the main purpose of shielding soldiers from the raw certainty that battles were nothing but chaos, carnage, ruin, and agony. Battles would be unbearable, faced without that prism to shield the human heart and mind.

"He's dead now, isn't he?" There was no tone at all in Tiana's voice, though the voice itself seemed brittle.

Robert shook his head firmly. "There's no way to know, girl. Trust me about this. There is simply no way to know."

Steadily, like a metronome, Pakenham's fist kept pounding the tree trunk. Very gently, now.

"I wonder if he's being wise, sir," commented Gibbs, watching the British column that was continuing north along the riverbank.

Pakenham shook his head firmly. "We shall not be second-guessing Colonel Thornton, General. He knows he's far behind schedule. No fault of his own, of course. So he's leaving that bastion behind, and going for the critical guns. What other course can he follow?"