Washington and Caesar (74 page)

After five minutes’ rest and no pipes, they moved again, now at a quiet march across dark fields. Anything in among the trees was invisible in the black, and the sky was an endless field of stars that covered the heavens and seemed to have a clarity and a depth more suited to a winter night.

They stopped when Virgil called a halt by waving, but he had only flushed a deer, and the astonished column watched as the big doe and her fawn raced down the whole length of their little column. Sergeant Fowver slapped the doe as she ran by and laughed softly.

“Bet she never been slapped befo’,” he said quietly, and Caesar glared at him. Then Caesar gave two soft pipes on
his whistle, and they were moving again, through an apple orchard full of ripe fruit where Jim Somerset stopped them for reasons he couldn’t explain to Captain Stewart in a hurried conference. But Caesar respected Jim’s ways, and he sent Virgil forward with three old hands to feel out the last few hundred yards of the approach. Knealey sat and sweated, and the other men made their last checks of their equipment. No one spoke. Men filled their haversacks with apples.

To some, it seemed that Virgil returned in a moment, but to Caesar and Stewart he seemed to be gone half the night.

“Sentries out,” he said. “An’ more under cover, I reckon. Hard to tell in the dark.”

“And you have a route?”

“All the way to the last cover.”

Stewart called for all the NCOs down to the lowliest corporal to attend him, and they moved well off from the column to be as quiet as they could. Virgil drew them a hasty sketch in the dirt.

“A big barn heah, an’ the house. The yard is open an’ they ain’t no fence.” He was nervous, Caesar could see, almost shaking from what he had just done. Caesar thought of Polly and all the different ways that people were brave.

“Then this is a little patch o’ wood, and this is a wall, jus’ so high,” and he indicated his thigh. “They’s men behin’ that wall.”

“Cover for us?” said Stewart.

“These woods is empty, and these other woods, I dunno. We din’t get to them.”

Caesar nodded. “Fowver into the near woods and I go into the far.”

Stewart winced as he shifted his arm. He was still sitting on his horse. “One long blast from my whistle and in you go. Remember that we don’t want to give the alarm before Robinson. He’s only a mile or so away, perhaps two. He ought to open the ball in about an hour.”

Martin shook his head. “An hour is a long time lying in the dark.”

Stewart nodded. “I agree. Keep them here for half an hour.”

Caesar moved at the head of his men, cautiously entering the edge of the woods, completely alive and aware of every motion and every sound. The night trees were pitch black, but the gentle hum of insects and the chatter of birds told him the woods were most likely empty. He kept his fowler up and aimed into the darkness as he moved from trunk to trunk, his legs making noise in the underbrush that would easily give him away if there were foes here.

When he was in the middle, the brush was less and he could move better. He changed his posture, rising all the way up on the balls of his feet in silence and then sinking back down to change the weight on his back. He leaned forward, and then back, and felt his spine shift a little, and moved on, placing each foot to make the least noise. He couldn’t
see
anything, even the man behind him when he turned, and he had to stop himself from looking up at the sky just to find light for his eyes. In what seemed like an eternity he came to thicker brush, and then light—the far edge of the wood. He peered out softly and couldn’t even make out the bulk of the barn, except that there seemed to be a sharp edge on the horizon that must be a roofline. He waited. Virgil came up to him and he patted him off to the right, and then Jim came and was sent to the left. He could hear them make noise, and he expected an alarm at every moment, and he put his own whistle to his lips and held it there like a pipe stem, ready. And still there was no alarm. He realized that it was possible that the farm was empty, and that shook him more than the dread of discovery, but under these worries he was still in the grip of the calm that came in action. He crouched and waited.

The very first lightening of the sky came and with it a
gentle rain, almost a mist. It didn’t last long but Caesar dumped his prime and reprimed from a little horn. After it stopped, the sky seemed to darken, and then it became difficult to tell the passage of time and Caesar grew concerned that something had changed, or that the darkness might be a sign of heavy rain.

Off to the north and west, there was a dull thump and the hint of a cry on the breeze, and then another thump as the sky grew brighter. Suddenly Caesar wondered if he had been asleep, because the roofline of the barn and house were each distinct, and the morning seemed farther along out in the open while it was still full night under the trees. A very distant sound, almost at the edge of hearing, so Caesar began to doubt each sound, and they were never repeated, but each was separated from the next by an interminable time. And then, quite close, a whistle blast, and he was on his feet and blew a blast on his own whistle, and the woods erupted, pouring Guides into the open ground.

There was a shot from a window of the house and someone went down.

“Clear the house!” yelled Caesar in a voice of brass. They went forward, right up the front steps and into the first room. There was one man there and someone shot him, and the room filled with smoke. Caesar flung himself at a solid door and fell through it as it came off its hinges. Two shots went over his head, one killing a former slave from Pennsylvania and the other smashing the doorframe and ricocheting to break Virgil’s arm. Caesar was up in a second, stunned but game. He tried to get over a table at the closest man, but the man had his hands up. Jim Somerset shot him anyway. The other man fought grimly, penned against the wall, and managed to knock one of Caesar’s men down with his musket butt before he was stuck under the arm with a bayonet. He screamed.

The room was clear. Jim pushed past Caesar into the
next room and it was empty, and they entered the kitchen through different doors, together, each of them with their file partner covering. Smoke everywhere. They could hear shooting upstairs and something was on fire, because the reek of the smoke was in their lungs before they could see it. Everywhere, Caesar was looking for Bludner, but he wasn’t downstairs in the house.

Van Sluyt appeared at the back of the kitchen.

“Just the two upstairs, and they’re dead. Roof’s on fire a little.”

“Let it burn,” Caesar said. He knew why they had set it, and it gave him a grim joy that Bludner’s men expected help when they set the fire. He looked out the kitchen door toward the yard and a shot whispered past his head.

A new boy, not yet fifteen, came past Van Sluyt.

“Mr. Martin says they have the carriage shed, but Bludner’s in the stone barn, an’ he would like a word.”

“Send Mr. Martin my best compliments and tell him that I will attend him directly,” Caesar replied, and fired carefully at the loophole in the barn, just twenty paces away. There was a screech and he gave Van Sluyt and Jim a big smile.

“Jim, just hold the house. I’ll be back.”

“Yes, Sergeant.”

The light was enough that it could almost be called morning. Captain Stewart was annoyed that his whole plan to seize the barn had been frustrated by one man tripping on a root and falling just as the last defender reached the barn, but there was nothing that they could do. The barn had walls several feet thick, and would resist even a small cannon.

Caesar came up behind the low stone carriage house and found the two officers watching warily.

“We have to storm it,” Caesar said immediately.

“We’ll lose a lot of men,” said Stewart, looking at McDonald, who nodded.

“And then we’ll get in the doors and kill them all,” said Caesar. He looked at them and they at him, and McDonald gave him a little nod. Caesar felt that Stewart was resisting the notion because he couldn’t share the danger. Mr. Martin looked like he had his doubts.

Caesar said, “Give me a few minutes, sir. Perhaps we can get fire on to the roof of the barn and smoke them out.”

Martin brightened noticeably, and Stewart looked thoughtful.

“Let’s make sure we have the doors covered, then.”

Caesar was back at the kitchen door of the big house. He leaned out so his voice would project.

“Surrender!” he called.

He was answered by an obscenity.

“Come out or you will all be killed. If I have to storm that barn, there won’t be any prisoners.”

“You better git!” That might be Bludner’s voice. “You think we don’t have covering troops?”

“That’s what I think. All your covering troops is dead or taken, Bludner. That is you, am I right?”

Silence.

“Enough talk,” he yelled, motioning to Jim, who was moving very carefully at the corner of the barn where there wasn’t a loophole. “You have ten seconds to surrender, or we storm. Are you ready, Guides?”

A roar, and Jim was at the base of the barn. It didn’t have an overhang on the top side, and he was safe, right up against the wall. He started to light a hasty torch of linen and tow and fat from a coal.

There were noises from the barn as if in debate, and a single pistol shot.

“No one here is surrenderin’. Come an’ take us.”

“Try this, then,” said Caesar, and nodded to Jim, who leaned back and threw his torch high, high in the dark, where it spun like a child’s firework for two revolutions
before landing in the thatch of the roof. Jim flattened himself against the building again.

“Don’t seem like no storm!” called the defiant voice inside.

Caesar waited. Fire takes time. The morning was very quiet, as if the first burst of musketry had stunned the birds, and they heard a little rattle of shots far off. And then, as if by magic, the thatch caught in one gallant sheet of flame.

Caesar wondered what it would be like to be inside the barn, with the smoke and the knowledge of what waited for them in the yard. He thought of the ancient Caesar and the pirates, and he smiled.

The main door of the barn opened, and a handful of men staggered out with handkerchiefs and neck rollers over their mouths. They threw their muskets out first. No one fired, and they were ordered out to the open ground, where some of Stewart’s men took them with ungentle hands. McDonald made sure they saw Knealey, too. Then another group, perhaps five men. Caesar was leaning well forward, looking for Bludner, when he realized with shock that the door closest to the kitchen had opened.

A thick knot of men burst from the door and raced on, scattering as soon as they were clear. One fell over another, and a second stumbled, but the others were running like rabbits from a dog, while the Guides were mostly watching the men at the front surrender.

Jim shot one and immediately began to reload. Van Sluyt shot the one who had stumbled, and Caesar waited too long for Bludner and realized that he had been the first from the door and was already clear of the yard. He shot another man and turned from the door to run through the house. Jim was with him. Virgil fired one-handed from a window and gave him a shout as he whipped through the main room and out the front door. He could see the shapes of four or five men as they ducked into the same woods
he and his men had waited in just a few minutes ago, and he reached back for a cartridge as he ran. If Bludner wanted a race, then so be it.

Suddenly Major Stewart was on them, his horse careening into one man and kicking at another, a beautiful capriole. Stewart’s saber transcribed a vicious arc, and a third man was down, and then Bludner and another were clear away into the woods, where the horse could not go. And one of them stopped, because there was movement at the edge of the woods. Stewart whirled his horse and reared it, and the rifle ball caught the horse in the breast, bouncing off the thick bone and leaving a long score and a steady flow of blood. The horse slumped and Stewart fell heavily under his horse as Caesar went by. He gave Stewart a glance, unable to tell how serious the wound was, and focused on his prey, and Stewart cursed. “Get him!” he shouted.

Caesar bit off the back of a cartridge and stopped for one stride to get priming into the pan, and then dashed on. Behind him, there was another burst of firing by the barn. He thought Jim might still be with him.

“See to the major,” he roared. Jim stopped with Stewart, but he looked and saw Virgil, his arm bound against his chest, running along behind. Then he was in among the trees with Bludner and another man.

He could see now. There was enough light. He was surprised at how small the woodlot was in the light. The branches were still moving from their passage, and he followed a little slower, patient. By the time he cleared the wood, he saw them disappearing over a low hill, hundreds of yards ahead. Then he started to run in earnest.

He wanted to catch them before Robinson’s men took them. They were headed directly into the Loyal Americans over the ridge, and he didn’t want the mess of their being prisoners. He didn’t want the chance of escape. He wanted Bludner dead. He ran a little faster, still saving some for
the last gasp. He was utterly confident in his running. He could run very fast, and he could run
forever.

He flew over the ground, and as he crested the next gentle rise he saw them clearly, Bludner ahead and moving well, and the other man slower and laboring. Caesar looked over his shoulder and saw Virgil coming along, his face gray with effort. Caesar stretched into a long sprint, angling a little as he came down the slope. The other man looked back at Caesar and swerved. Then he stopped, clearly done in by the run, and raised his musket. Caesar ran on. If this man was loaded, then Bludner had tried a shot at Stewart and was empty, because neither of them had had time to load. The man aimed carefully and Caesar could see his arms trembling with the effort and he swerved to make the man re-aim. Caesar saw the puff of smoke and heard the report, but not the bullet. The man was too spent to aim well, which was what Caesar had expected. Caesar ran directly at him, bowled him over at full speed and ran on. The man was thrown aside.