Jonothan Jeffries was scared. Merely a few hundred yards away beyond the stone farm wall he stood by was a large number of men who wanted to kill him. True, they wanted to kill the rest of the 11th Massachusetts Light Infantry as well and they only wanted to kill him because he wore their blue coat but it felt as if they wanted him personally. As more time passed and the order for his men to attack across the wall, to run towards a small shack in a field and kill anyone inside drew closer and closer Jeffries didn’t think he’d ever been as scared in his life.
There was a crack, the sharp sound of a rifle and a whooping sound as the blue-coated men from Massachusetts ducked to the ground to avoid the sniping bullets from the grey-coated rebels opposite. Jeffries held himself upright, though he wanted desperately to dive to the ground and burrow like a rabbit until there was no chance of finding him with even the most persistent dogs. But he was an officer, and as an officer he owed it to the men to give them an example to live up to. After all, he and the other officers were asking these men to risk death. It wasn’t fair to do that without risking it himself.
Of course if Captain Carlysle had been ten miles back in a tent full of gorgeous women the men would still have accepted orders from him to walk over mined fields. The men loved Carlysle unconditionally and would lay down their lives for him. The fact he would lay down his for them just made their fanatic devotion to him complete. With his confidant swagger and his closely-cropped blonde beard and the long blonde hair that fell over the collar of his uniform he looked like an angel who had joined the Union army and who stumbled through the mud with them on a crusade of rightousness. To some of the men he probably was.
And there was more than enough mud here for him to help the men through. The last few weeks had been torrential rain and icy winds. It had been a struggle worthy of Homer to keep the men dry, their weapons clean, the powder and caps servicable and their spirits raised. And though they had mumbled at Jeffries and Parker, the other Lieutenant, their faces had turned into the widest smiles when the Captain approached. They may have grumbled about being lead into Hell to their Sergeants but the Captain just saw their rotten teeth and fleshy gums twisted into smiles as he nodded to them and called them the greatest gentlemen it had been his pleasure to fight alongside.
Jeffries had heard a scientist friend of his fathers once talk about particles, and how the whole world was made up of tiny pieces. And all these particles did different jobs. Some were in the brain and did the thinking, some were in the air and you breathed them in and out and some were bits of bone and skin. Jeffries had to admit he hadn’t listened much because he was going to inherit his father’s land and didn’t think being a farmer required knowing about particles but now, as he waited to die, Jeffries thought about particles and whether there was a particle that made you a better leader. A charisma particle maybe? He shook his head and pulled out the the Colt revolver his father had bought him when he had signed up to fight the rebels. He checked each chamber was loaded and put it back in its holster.
He heard the sound of a horse behind him, turned to see who it was and had to shade his eyes as the man on the horse towered above him, a huge sillhouette with glowing edges against the sun. The magnificent rider touced the brim of his hat in salute, an action Jeffries returned.
“G’morning son,” Carlysle said. At the sound of that deep honest voice Jeffries felt ashamed at some of his earlier thoughts. How could he have thought of this man as anything but a saint?
“Sir?” he asked. “What’s the news from the General? Are we going soon?” The whole of the army knew it would be attacking today, the first dry day since April, but it needed the General’s consent before its intuition would be proved correct.
“We go soon. As soon as our big guns stop firing.” He turned to the men. “Are you ready to go men?” he asked, knowing that he would get the cheer he did. He was spraying out charisma particles thick and fast. Jeffries dropped back and chatted to a Sergeant for a few minutes before asking the question that had puzzled him most of the morning.
“Why do they fight?” he asked, gesturing at the men who were slinging ammunition bags over their blue coats. “They know they might not come back. Why do they do it?” The old Sergeant chewed on his cigar a bit more before answering.
“Way I see it,” he answered, “is that all their friends, most folks they know are here. And they reckons that if one of ‘em died without him being there then it’s kind of their fault. So they does it ‘cause of their friends, y’see.” The Sergeant slipped a percussion cap into his rifle and put the bullet down the barrel.
“Not for the Union then?” asked Jeffries. “Not for the president or good government or liberty?”
“For their friends,” the Sergeant reiterated. He pulled out the cigar and spat a ball of brown spit over the wall.
The big guns went quiet.
Then Carlysle’s voice yelled “For Massachusetts!” and the men roared and began leaping over the wall and sprinting towards the shack in this muddy field that was their target. As he leapt the low wall Jeffries felt himself being hit by a charisma particle, being drawn into Carlysle’s magic aura of confidence and success, knowing he was a demi-god in the service of some Olympian king and he let out a whoop of joy as a war cry.
The next thing that hit him was small, round and made of lead.
