The Andre Norton Megapack - 15 Classic Novels and Short Stories

refugees had struggled away on foot, the river patrolled by pickets of cavalry ordered to extricate every able-bodied man from the throng and press him into the struggle. Forrest’s orders were plain: Every male able to fight goes into the works, or into the river!
    Now Drew and Boyd were with the Kentuckians, forming with Forrest’s escort a small reserve force behind the center of that horseshoe of ramparts. Veterans on either flank, and the militia, trusted by none, in the middle. Thin lines stretched to the limit, so that each dismounted trooper in that pitiful fortification was six or even ten feet from his nearest fellow. And gathering under the afternoon sun a mass of blue, a vast, endless ocean.…
    The enemy was dismounted, too, coming in on a charge as fearless and reckless as any the Confederates had delivered in the past. With the sharpness of one of their own sabers, they slashed out a trotting arc of men, cutting at Armstrong’s veterans in the earthworks to be curled back under a withering fire, losing a general, senior officers, and men. But the rebuff did not shake them.
    A second Union attack was aimed at the center, and the militia broke. Bugles shrilled in the small reserve, who then pushed up to meet that long tongue of blue licking out confidently toward the city. This time there was no stopping the Yankee advance. The reserve neither broke nor followed the shambling panic-striken flight of the militia, but were pushed back by sheer weight of numbers to the unfinished second line of the city’s defenses.
    Blue—a full tidal wave of it in front and wedges of blue overlapping the gray flanks and appearing here and there even to the rear—
    Having thrown away his rifle, Drew was now firing with both Colts, never sure any of his bullets found their targets. He stood shoulder to shoulder with Boyd in a dip of half-finished earthwork when the bugle called again, and down the ragged line of gray snapped an order unheard before—
    “Get out! Save yourselves!”
    Boyd fired, then threw his emptied Colt into the face of a tall man whose blue coat bore a sergeant’s stripes. His own emptied guns placed in their holsters, Drew caught up the carbine the Yankee had dropped. He gave Boyd a shove.
    “Run!”
    They dodged in and out of a swirling mass of fighting men, somehow reaching the line of horse holders. Drew found Croaker standing stolidly with dragging reins, got into the saddle, and reached down a hand to aid Boyd up behind him. In the early dusk he saw General Forrest—his own height and the proportions of his charger King Phillip distinguishable even in that melee—gathering about him a nucleus of resistance as they battled toward the city. And Drew headed Croaker in the General’s direction.
    Boyd pawed at his shoulder as they burst into a street at the bone-shaking gallop which was the mule’s fastest gait. A blue-coated trooper sat with his back against the paling of a trim white fence, one lax hand still holding the reins of a horse. Drew pulled Croaker up so Boyd could slip down. As he pulled loose the reins the Yankee slid inertly to the ground.
    A squad of blue coats turned the corner a block away, heading for them. Somewhere ahead, the company led by the General was fighting its way through Selma. Drew was driven by the necessity of catching up. The two armies were so mingled now that the wild disorder proved a cover for escaping Confederates.
    Twilight was on them as they hit the Burnsville road, coming into the tail end of the command of men from a dozen or more shattered regiments, companies, and divisions, who had consolidated in some order about Forrest and his escort. These were all veterans, men tough enough to fight their way out of the city and lucky enough to find their mounts or others when the order to get out had come. They were part of the striking force Forrest had built up through months and years—tempered with his own particular training and spirit—now peeled down to a final hard core.
    In the darkness their advance tangled with a Union outpost, snapping up prisoners before the bewildered Yankees were aware that they, too, were not Wilson’s men. And the word passed that a Fourth United States Regulars’ scouting detachment was camped not too far away.
    “We can take ’em, suh.” Drew caught the assurance in that.
    “We shall, we certainly shall!” Forrest’s drawl had sharpened as if he saw in the prospect of this small engagement a chance to redeem