Midnight Honor

sword and brought it slashing down with out preamble or sentiment. He was trembling as well, but out of rage, not pleasure; with contempt, not anticipation. He stood in the market square of Linlithgow, the snow falling thick as wool shearings over the bowed heads of every officer who still possessed enough sense to have answered the general's summons. To Hawley's immediate left was a long, sturdy tree trunk that had been chopped down and denuded of its branches before being suspended from the corners of two buildings. From this makeshift gibbet the bodies of fourteen men jerked and twisted at the ends of their ropes, their lives forfeit on the downstroke of Hawley's blade.
    Most of them were dragoons whose names had been put forward by a choleric Major Hamilton Garner. Another score waited hatless, their tunics stripped of any identifiable rank or rating, their hands bound behind their backs. When the macabre dance of their comrades ceased, they too would be summarily hoisted above the solemn crowd by way of demonstrating the extent of Hawley's outrage and disgust.
    “Cowards!” he screamed. “Cowards and curs! Look well on these fornicating dogs, for they are no better than the dung they left behind in their haste to desert their posts! Was there ever an army so rife with poltroons and miscreants! Was there ever a general so cursed, so shamed, so humiliated, so completely appalled by the character of his troops! Hang them! Hang them all, by God, for they are not worth the powder it would take to shoot them! Powder, I might add, that we no longer have in any adequate supply since
every godforsaken piece of equipment, fourteen heavy artillery pieces, and ammunition was left behind for the enemy to enjoy!”
    Winded by the fury of his diatribe, Hawley paced to the end of the raised boardwalk and, having no other immediate outlet for his rage, broke his sword over the head of the nearest man.
    “I want names,” he raged, his chest heaving, his mouth flecked with spittle. “I want the names of every man in every regiment who turned and ran. I want them flogged! Iwant their skin flayed and hanging in shreds, and I want them left on the racks so that every soldier who sees them will know the consequences of cowardice in my army! I want them to
know,”
he screamed, “that in future, death on the battlefield will be a thousand times preferable to dereliction or dishonor! Never think …
never think for one foolish moment
that I will hesitate to hang the lot of you if you fail me again! Now go! Get out of my sight! You disgust me!”
    He strode off the end of the walk and stormed away into the darkness, leaving the officers shaken and silent enough to hear the heavy flakes of snow falling around them. As the bodies of the first hanged men were cut down and new ones pushed forward to take their place, those who had been lucky enough to avoid the worst of Hawley's wrath began to slink away.
    Garner was one of the few who lingered, as was Major Worsham, both of whom had found redress on the battlefield following their inauspicious departure from Callendar House.
    Both men were wounded. Garner stood with his hand bracing two broken ribs, his face gray with the pain, his jaw set against the nauseating sound of the bones grinding together. Worsham's cheek had been sliced open to the bone and his left arm hung limp and nerveless by his side; his injuries had been hastily bandaged by a surgeon stained to his elbows with other men's blood, but he dared not have them properly stitched until the general's spleen had been vented.
    The opening Jacobite volley had shattered the resolve of the dragoons; less than half an hour later, the government forces had been in full flight. It was impossible at this time to even begin to know the tally of dead, wounded, or captured, for there were surely those who were still running and would keep on running until they were certain they would never be found again.
    Worsham had no qualms about punishing deserters or cowards. It was a harsh fact of army life that any man who signed his name to the roster was giving his oath to obey the orders of his superiors regardless of whether he agreed or disagreed with the execution. Any man who violated that oath did so at his own peril.
    And then there were the men who'd had no intention of fighting at all. They had formed up in their ranks and they had marched onto the field, but once there, they had crouched down to avoid the heated fusillades and, when