Blue and Gray

Chapter Two – The Skirmish at Sporting Hill

Written by: minoan

One was gentle, one was kind.
One came home, one stayed behind.
A cannonball don’t pay no mind,
all on a beautiful morning.

~ Chris Stapleton – Two Brothers

June 29, 1863
Carlisle, Cumberland County, Pennsylvania

In the year 1846 Flynn was a fawn, only four years of age.

An ocean away, an army captain by the name of Claude-Étienne Minié completed work on a new type of projectile for rifles used by the French army. Prior to his invention, soldiers in all the world’s armies used round shot – simple spheres of lead whose design had remained unchanged since the invention of gunpowder several hundred years prior.

Round shot was effective, but it was and had always been wildly inaccurate. It was for this deficiency that American General Putnam famously told his troops not to fire until they saw the whites of the British troops’ eyes at the Battle of Bunker Hill during the American Revolution. Round shot’s suitability was maximized with massed troop formations firing volleys at similarly massed troop formations just dozens of yards apart. As a result, this was the way in which wars were fought throughout the world for several hundred years.

Minié’s new projectile – named the “Minié ball” after its creator – all but eliminated this deficiency. The Minié ball was conical in shape instead of round. When fired, expanding gases forced the skirt at the base of the two-ounce lead projectile to expand against the interior of the gun barrel, which allowed the Minié ball to make use of the new technology of rifling. The Minié ball left the barrel spinning, flying straight and true. This was a feat that round shot was never capable of.

Overnight the scope of the battlefield changed. An individual soldier’s effectiveness was no longer limited to several dozen yards. With training and practice, targets hundreds of yards away could reliably be hit.

This new technology would revolutionize infantry tactics across the globe – eventually. But those unfortunate men who fought in the American Civil War endured two particular injustices that, when taken together, made the conflict one of the deadliest in history.

Firstly, the overwhelming majority of generals during the war employed tactics unchanged from the Napoleonic era, wholly ignoring recent advances in small arms technology. The result was unmitigated slaughter as massed formations of troops marched headlong against fortified position.

Secondly, wounds that the Minié ball created were unlike any seen before. Whereas round shot might break bone if it struck one, the Minié ball was all but guaranteed to completely shatter them. Doctors of the time had no frame of reference for the brutality of these types of injuries, no prior experience. When they started seeing soldiers whose arms and legs had been mangled by the cruel new invention their only real option was amputation. More often than not these amputations led to serious infections, and more often than not this was fatal. Being hit by a Minié ball, regardless of location on the body, was a death sentence for most.

In a heavy satchel on Flynn’s waist were 54 of these .58 caliber instruments of suffering and death, a half-dozen short of the 60 he’d been issued just a month ago. 

The first one he’d lost; it slipped from his fingers when he was nervously loading his Confederate-issued 1853 Enfield rifle for the first time after the three days of disorganized drills that constituted the entirety of his training as a soldier. Edward – who he was fortunate enough to be serving with – laughed as they watched it tumble down into a ravine. Flynn couldn’t help but laugh too. Deep down he was relieved in a strange way. It was one bullet that would never hurt anyone.

Flynn had fired four just weeks later during the fight at Brandy Station. It was the first fighting he or Edward had seen. He was far from the fight, and it was very unlikely he’d hit anything at the distance he, Edward and the rest of his regiment were firing from, but for what it was worth he could now say he’d taken part in the war.

He’d fired the sixth one yesterday at a Union scout openly observing the regiment’s movements on horseback from a hilltop almost half a mile away. The captain had ordered him and a few others to shoot at the scout, not with any real chance of hitting him but just to scare him away. In this they had failed, for the scout was not hit and he did not flee. He did not move a muscle. The captain, a tall and dashing mountain lion, tried to reassure the troops, but seeing the unflinching Union scout stare down at them from the hilltop while Minié balls flew past him had been an unnerving experience for his company.

Flynn adjusted the satchel again. No matter what he did he just couldn’t get it to sit comfortably during these marches. What a raw deal, he thought – he was the smallest one in the regiment but he had to carry just as much as everyone else. It’s just not fair! No, don’t think those thoughts Flynn, he reminded himself. It could be a lot worse.

“Company, halt!”

Flynn dutifully halted with the rest of the soldiers at the captain’s command. He watched as the captain rode his horse over to the other officers.

“This better be it for marching today,” Edward, who had been marching beside Flynn, whispered to him. “My hooves are killing me.”

For days they’d been marching further and further north, first along the Shenandoah River, then following train tracks. They’d been through the towns of Sharpsburg, Hagerstown and Chambersburg. Now they found themselves past the train tracks through the woods and in the middle of a new town called Carlisle. Flynn could could see womenfolk, children and old men peering fearfully out of their windows, their quiet town suddenly becoming occupied enemy territory.

None of the other soldiers in Flynn’s company knew exactly what the grand strategy of this campaign was, but rumors and theories spread around pretty quickly. They knew that they traveled as the vanguard for the bulwark of Robert E. Lee’s army, and they knew that a similarly large Union army was trailing them. There would be a fight, it would be soon, and when it came it would be colossal – that much was certain. The only question was where and when.

Early on, most thought the battle would occur at Harper’s Ferry, an important Union manufacturing site that had already traded hands several times during the course of the war. Flynn didn’t think much about war strategies, but Edward did, and this was what Edward had told Flynn he suspected.

But the Confederate Army recaptured Harper’s Ferry without opposition several weeks ago. Now the smart money was on Harrisburg. Even a casual glance at a map made clear that they were marching straight towards it, and as the capital of Pennsylvania its importance was obvious.

Most of the Confederate army was still a few days behind them, but a battle at Harrisburg in the next several days was looking increasingly likely. Only a few small towns were now between the main force of the Confederate army and Harrisburg – a town called Mechanicsburg, a town called York, and a town called Gettysburg. Edward had told Flynn he believed that the assault on Harrisburg would commence once the army got past those towns. Then the real fight would begin.

“We camp here tonight!” The captain yelled.

- -

It was late. Most of the troops in the company were already asleep, but Edward and Flynn had stayed up talking to each other like they did most nights. Talking about life, talking about home, talking about the situation they found themselves in. They shared a two-person tent that consisted chiefly of two poles and a canvas sheet, standard issue for marching soldiers to keep down their carry weight. Usually a soldier would pick a bunking buddy and they’d alternate days to carry it, but Edward had insisted on carrying it himself the entire march. He was a good bit taller and stronger than Flynn, so he figured it was only fair.

They had set their tent up in a small lawn in front of the Lutheran church near the center of town. The officers had requisitioned the rectory adjacent to the church and were sleeping there, leaving the company scattered in small tents on what patches of soft ground they could find in the town.

“Aww, it didn’t matter too much, you never liked wearing them things much anyway!” Edward joked. The conversation had found its way to one of several incidents of Edward hiding Flynn’s neatly folded clothes while they were swimming.

“Not when I was swimming. Different when you’re walking back home though!” Flynn said with a smile.

“Yeah but I gave them back, didn’t I? I wouldn’t make you walk too far like that. I'm not that mean!”

Edward looked over at his bunk-mate and winked at him as he said it.

“Not usually, but you have moments, you do. And you did make me walk some before you gave them back,” Flynn said, smiling widely as he looked over. “I bet my face was redder than one of Penelope’s cherry pies when I started walking back to town!”

The boyish grin faded from Edward’s face at the mention of his Penelope. Edward turned back over and looked at the roof of the tent briefly before speaking again. Flynn sensed that he’d said something to change Edward’s mood and rolled over on his back, too.

“Hey Flynn,” Edward said after some time.

“Yeah?”

“Can you do something for me?”

Flynn rolled back over and looked at Edward again. Edward was still staring at the canvas roof of the tent.

“Sure. Anything,” Flynn replied, meaning it.

Edward leaned up and reached over to the gray coat laying at his feet. Flynn watched as he dug into one of the pockets. He pulled out a letter.

“Flynn,” he said with the letter in his hand, “if I don't make it...”

“Edward...” Flynn said, frowning as he propped himself up on one elbow.

“Flynn, please don’t... just... look, if I don’t make it, promise me you’ll mail this letter. Please.”

Edward handed the letter to him. There was a stamp already on it. It was addressed to Penelope.

“Come on Edward, nothing’s gonna...”

“Flynn. Please. Promise me,” Edward said as he extended his hand to give Flynn the letter, entrusting the precious document to his best friend.

Flynn reached out slowly and accepted it without a word. He looked at it for a moment, then back at Edward, before leaning over and putting it in the left pant pocket of his gray trousers. He laid back down and looked over at Edward, but Edward was again laying on his back looking up pensively at the tent canvas above them.

Flynn closed his eyes. He listened to the katydids in the Pennsylvania grass around him for several moments. The crickets sounded the same here as they did back in Tennessee. If he kept his eyes closed he could pretend he was back home, just laying in a field for a nap.

“Hey Flynn?” Edward said again after some time.

“Yeah?”

“Are you scared?”

Flynn paused for a moment, listening to the katydids. He knew exactly what Edward meant. They hadn’t seen much of the war, but they’d seen enough to know what it was – what had happened to folks around them, what could happen to them. With certainty the colossal battle was coming, an unmovable wall they were barreling towards, destined to crash into. Nothing could stop it.

“Yeah,” he finally answered. “I am.”

“Yeah. Me too,”  Edward answered after several seconds. After a few more, he continued, “But at least we’re in this together, you know? It’d be even scarier if you weren’t here with me.”

Flynn leaned back up on his elbow and looked at Edward.

“Just… thank you,” Edward said. “Not just for keeping that letter. Just… for everything. You’ve always being there for me Flynn, ever since we were little kids. Stuck by me when no one else did, always. I don’t know... you just mean a lot to me. You’re special to me. I just wanted you to know that, to hear me say it. I wanted to say it. If we have to be here, I’m glad we’re here together, if that makes any sense.”

“Edward...” Flynn said, leaning up. He scooted over to Edward and hugged him, leaning his head wide so their antlers wouldn’t tangle before resting it behind Edward’s neck. “You’re my best friend, best in the whole world. Always have been and always will be. You know that. I wouldn’t be anywhere else but here with you.”

Edward didn’t reply, but Flynn could hear him sniffling. Neither made any move to break their hug, and it extended past the length of time that could be considered a hug at all. They lay on their sides, arms wrapped around each others’ backs, sheltered beneath a thin canvas tent under the moon in the dark Pennsylvania sky.

And there they lay as they drifted off to sleep, each fulfilling a deep need for the other.

Edward could hold Flynn in his arms and pretend it was Penelope. He could fall asleep feeling like he was back home in his own bed with his fiance in his arms. Flynn was about the same size as Penelope, so as his chest rose and fell against Edward’s own it was almost the same. The fur on his back felt exactly the same. It was easy to pretend. It was comforting.

Flynn could be held in Edward’s arms and pretend Edward was his lover instead of his best friend. There was nothing sexual in their embrace now – there didn’t need to be. With Edward’s strong arms around him he felt safe. Warm. Loved. Those were the things he needed right now.

Years ago Flynn might have tried to escalate their embrace into something more, but by now he knew Edward wasn’t gay. His heart had ached with jealousy when Edward started courting Penelope, and when it was clear that they loved each other he was truly heart-stricken. But in time Flynn forced himself accept Edward for who he was and not to begrudge Penelope for taking the place he so wanted to occupy. Edward couldn’t control what he felt any more than he could. It wasn’t fair to Edward or Penelope for him to feel this way, and as long as he did he didn’t think he’d be able to be a real friend to them. He had to let the jealousy go.

And he did. It was difficult, but he did.

It helped that Penelope really was about as good a woman as Flynn could ever hope Edward would find. Flynn had known her as long as he’d known Edward, since they were all in primary school, and she had always been – well, perfect. Pretty but not vain, smart but not snooty, nice to everyone and sincere about it. Truly sincere, you could tell. If Edward had ended up with someone else it might have been a different story, but Flynn had no choice but to be genuinely happy for Edward to end up with such a faultless woman.

Beyond that, Flynn was certain that Edward knew he was gay. They’d never spoken about it directly, it was a dangerous topic. But it was clear from a thousand little experiences they’d shared that Edward knew. That’s why Flynn had worked so hard to get over his jealousy – Edward knew what he was and liked him anyway. How many friends, Flynn thought, will I ever find like that in this world? He had to hold on to this one because he wasn’t likely to ever find another friend like him.

Flynn held on tightly to Edward. Sleep came to the two Confederate soldiers as they let themselves pretend, just for one night, that the world wasn’t burning.

- -

June 30, 1863
Cumberland County, Pennsylvania

Reveille had come earlier in the morning than usual. Flynn and Edward dressed and ate a breakfast of hardtack and bacon, the same as every day. To prevent spoilage, the bacon was so heavily salted that it was all but inedible without cooking it down until it was almost black. But it was still better than hardtack – compacted biscuits made only of flour and water, hard as rocks and tasteless but, importantly for the military, almost completely non-perishable. Unless worms or weevils found then they could last indefinitely.

Worms and weevils did find them, almost always. Some soldiers in Flynn’s company refused to eat the vermin-riddled crackers. This could last for a few days to several weeks until, invariably, they were too hungry to care any more. Others dealt with it with humor, joking with each other about eating hardtack meat pies and seeing who got the most ‘beef’ in their biscuit.

Edward had invented his own strategy for the problem. First, he’d start cooking the bacon in a pan over the fire. When the bacon grease started filling the pan, he’d drop his hardtack biscuit in. After the biscuit started soaking up the bacon grease he would use his knife to start breaking it apart. Sometimes Edward would see weevils or worms crawl out of the hardtack as the boiling hot grease soaked into it. These were cooked along with the bacon. He’d add some water occasionally, and after some time he would mix it all up into a kind of hardtack, bacon, grease, worm and weevil pancake. That was breakfast.

Following breakfast they received their orders. Their company, consisting of fifty men, would split from the main deployment of the regiment to reconnoiter one of the potential approaches to Harrisburg. They were to march to a place called Sporting Hill, a vantage point from which they should have a good view of the terrain across the Susquehanna River from Harrisburg.

“You know why they call it ‘reconnoiter,’ don’t you?” Edward jokingly said to Flynn as they marched side-by-side.

They were within sight of Sporting Hill now. In less than half an hour they should be on top of it.

“No… but I’m sure you’re going to tell me all about it,” Flynn answered, smiling, as he admired the muscular ram marching in front of him. He’d been marching behind this ram since Sharpsburg and the view never got old.

It was a longstanding running joke between the two blue deer that whenever Edward learned a new word – words he called “ten-dollar words” – he would attempt to explain why he’d never heard it. Further, he’d make the case that since he’d never heard the word, it must not be important and should, therefore, fall out of use in the English language entirely. He’d cracked Flynn up not long ago with his explanation that you shouldn’t use the word “foment” because folks were likely to think you’d seen a rabid animal.

The real point of these rants was to make Flynn laugh, of course.

“Well,” Edward continued with a silly grin, “if them officers said to the captain ‘hey cap! Why don’t you take a walk over yonder with your boys to that hilltop and look around, see what you can see. Then – plan of plans – come on back and tell us all about it!’, well, they’d look a might dim, wouldn’t they?”

Flynn was stifling back laughter.

“Yeah Edward, they would, sure...”

“But! But! If they dress it up, make it shiny, make it pretty, it looks like they’re real important men with real high ideas! So while they mean ‘go take a look-see,’ what they say is ‘maneuver deploy to coordinate Y-23, reconnoiter the... geographical topographs and... report to command your... observationals.’”

Flynn was openly laughing now. Edward waited until he stopped before continuing, broad smile on his own face from making his best friend laugh.

“They have to use words like ‘reconnoiter’ to give what they’re doing credibility, you know? Otherwise everyone will realize no one really knows what they’re doing. We’re all just floating along.”

“That,” Flynn answered after he regained his composure, “actually makes more sense than any of the other ‘ten-dollar words’ you’ve told me about, Edward. It really does.”

“Why thank you Mr. Flynn!” Edward said sarcastically, “I knew you’d finally--”

Without warning, a volley of gunfire erupted from the treeline of the woods a few hundred yards away.  Eight of the fifty men in the company were on the ground instantly, dead or dying, as dozens of Minié balls tore through the formation.

The mangled, perforated body of the captain fell heavily from the saddle. Riding on horseback in front of the column of troops marching on foot, the mountain lion was an obvious target. He’d died instantly. The body of the horse he was riding, hit by several of the bullets intended for him, kicked up a cloud of dust as it tipped over and landed on the captain’s corpse.

A few of the men in the company leveled their Enfield rifles and fired back at the unseen enemy. But the Yankees were too well hidden, entrenched and waiting for this opportunity. It was unlikely any of the returned fire had any effect.

Most of the men in the company weren’t nearly so brave or foolhardy. With their captain dead and almost no training afforded to them by the Confederate army, they scattered like straw in the wind.

Flynn did not. Whether it was purely terror or his cervine nature, he froze in place. 

“Flynn!”

He stared slack-jawed at the scene of blood, bone and bile that had suddenly bloomed in front of him. The ram who’d been marching in front of him was on the ground, screaming as blood poured from the twisted flesh at his elbow where a forearm and hand should have been.

“Flynn!”

Someone grabbed him, shook him.

“Flynn! Fuck, Flynn, we have to run!”

Flynn had never in his life heard Edward use that word. He’d heard it from his father on a daily basis, he’d used it occasionally himself, but Edward never did. Wasn’t his character. For him to be using the word “fuck” was so outrageously uncharacteristic of him that it jolted Flynn back to reality, back to the present moment, prompting him to action.

Edward and Flynn ran. They were in open terrain with no cover in sight, but there had been a barn they’d passed not long before they were ambushed. Bullets whirred by them and kicked up dirt at their hooves as they sprinted towards the barn with several dozen other surviving soldiers in their company. More men were hit as Flynn and Edward made it inside the shelter of barn.

“God damn, shit! What do we do!” one of the soldiers cried in panic. Minié balls impacted the thin wooden walls of the barn, each one punching straight through with a terrifying crack and a spray of splinters. Flynn, Edward, and most of the other men were on the dirt floor, staying as low as possible while the fusillade continued.

“I can’t see shit! I can’t see ‘em!” another soldier yelled. He was pressed against the wall looking outside in a gap between wooden slats. “They’re all around us!”

“Cowards!” another solder yelled as he raised himself from the floor, rifle in hand. “I ain’t gonna die without a fight!”

He never made it to his feet. As he stood, the Union army artillery corps supporting the ambush had finished ranging the barn and fired their first shot. The cannonball smashed into the central wooden support beam of the barn and snapped it in two. The beam collapsed onto the barn floor, crushing the soldier who vowed to fight, snapping his spine as the beam had been snapped by the Union cannonball. It brought half the barn’s roof down with it.

For Flynn, there was no time to think. Fear overtook him. There was nothing in him but pure panic.

Flynn’s hooves struggled to find traction as he tried to leap up and run all at the same time. He stumbled and fell. In his frenzy to escape his hooves clove into the dirt again, and again he stumbled. But Edward was there, again, to save him. Edward pulled him up by his gray coat.

“Come on!” Edward yelled as he turned towards the barn’s entrance, now an open exit, the doors flung off their hinges by the force of the roof collapse.

Edward, Flynn, and several other compatriots ran out of the barn. Once again they were running for their lives, targeted by an unseen enemy, shots ringing in their ears as bullets pierced through the hot summer air around them.

Flynn ran after Edward, away from the rifles firing at them and towards a forest buffeting the farmland they were on. It was a good quarter mile away, but if they made it they might be safe.

Flynn ran harder than he knew he could, but Edward was still bigger, stronger, and faster than he had ever been. Flynn was falling back. Bullets were landing beside him, ripping past him. He was the closer target. Edward was leaving him behind.

Edward turned his head back, looking for his best friend. He stopped.

“Flynn! Come on!”

Flynn was running as fast as he could, as fast as he ever had. His lungs burned and adrenaline coursed through his blood, his nostrils flared and his hooves kicked up clumps of the soft, fertile soil with every stride. And Edward was waiting for him. God damn it, Edward was waiting for him.

“Come on! We’ve got to get ou--”

Edward’s head burst like a melon under a wagon wheel before the words cleared his mouth. Two ounces of lead, conical in shape, had struck him between his eyes. It punched through his skull and tore a spiraling channel through his brain before exploding from the back of his head. Edward was dead before his knees buckled.

Flynn’s eyes saw it, but his mind was unable to comprehend what his eyes told him had just happened. It was impossible for him to reconcile. Flynn stopped in his tracks, struggling to make sense of it. His best and only friend – the mass of torn flesh and fur and blood and gore that had been his only friend – collapsed lifelessly into a crumpled heap in front of him. 

“Edward!!” Flynn screamed, voice cracking. “Edward no!!!”

In that moment Flynn forgot where he was. What he had just witnessed was so unreal, so alien and incomprehensible that he forgot he was standing exposed in the middle of a fallow field, dozens of American rifles aimed at him, Minié balls kicking up dirt as they impacted all around him.

It felt to him like he had been kicked in the thigh by a horse. His left leg violently jerked forward and he fell to the ground.

He’d never been hit so hard in his life. Not anything close.

- - 

It was the noise that snapped Flynn back to his senses. His hypersensitive cervine ears heard a trickling of liquid. It came in time with his own pulse.

That’s your blood, a voice in his head told him. You have to do something. You are bleeding to death. Do something!

Flynn looked down over his body and saw the left leg of his gray pants stained crimson. He tried to bring his leg up, but grimaced in pain as soon as he moved it.

It hurts. Okay, so what! You have to stop the bleeding!

Painfully, Flynn began pulling down his blood soaked pants. He got them down to his knees and pulled up on his underwear to see his wound.

“Ahh!” Flynn winced as he bent his knees. Laying on his side, he needed to see it closer.

Blood poured from the small hole at the front of his thigh. The Minié ball had entered the back of his leg, so this must be the exit wound.

Stop the bleeding!

In the recesses of his mind Flynn had the knowledge of what to do. It had been imparted on him when he was a child, during one of the many emotionally traumatic hunting trips he’d taken with his father.

“If you ever shoot yourself on accident, boy, and god fuckin’ knows you might, you make what they call a  ‘tourniquet,’ ‘cause that’s the only way you’ll stop yourself bleeding out. Whatever cloth or rope or vine you have handy, tie it up above the where you’re bleeding, side closest to your body. Then you find you a stick and twist it, make it tight as you can and tie it off. Do that or you’ll die.”

I hate that man, Flynn thought. God I hate him, but he was the best hunter in the valley, and when it came to things like this he knew what he was talking about.

Flynn pulled off his gray Confederate Army coat. It was the last time he’d ever wear one.

He pulled the army knife from the sheath on his belt and cut off one of the sleeves. Painfully, he wrapped it around his thigh above the wound. But he was in the middle of a field, there was no stick to use.

Flynn realized he’d been lugging his rifle with him the whole time. When he ran out of the barn, when he ran after Edward, he’d still had it clutched in his hand. God, why didn’t I drop it, Flynn thought. Was it the rifle that slowed me down? Could I have kept up with Edward if I had dropped it? Would Edward be alive?

It doesn’t matter Flynn! It doesn’t matter any more! What’s done is done, what happened has happened, you can’t change it now! Focus!

Flynn yanked the steel ramrod from under the barrel of the 1853 Enfield. He tied both ends of the sleeve to the ramrod and began twisting.

The pain was intense. Flynn groaned with every twist. Tighter, pain. It must be tighter, endure the pain! Tighter! Blinding, searing pain. But this had to be done.

Finally, Flynn had twisted the makeshift tourniquet as tightly as he could. And when he looked at his wound, the bleeding had indeed stopped. He tied it off and pulled out the ramrod.

Whether from the loss of blood, the exertion, the pain or all three, Flynn felt light-headed. He rolled onto his back and stared up at the sky.

Distantly he could hear continued gunfire and agonized screaming, but the sky was beautiful. Puffy white clouds hung in the air like a painting. This is a fine country, Flynn thought, this place called Sporting Hill on a beautiful summer morning. It’s so far from home, but it’s not so different from Tennessee. Not really. The sun feels so nice and warm, and the breeze feel just fine. Just fine.

His eyes felt heavy. Too early for a nap, he thought, but I feel so tired all of a sudden. So tired. Maybe I’ll just rest them. Just for a moment.

Flynn closed his eyes.

- -

The horrible sounds of battle and pain and chaos were gone when Flynn awoke, replaced with the gentle rustling of the breeze and birds chirping merrily.

In the first instant of wakefulness Flynn did not remember where he was; he was just waking from a pleasant nap in a bright, warm field. But the dull, throbbing pain in his left leg brought the events of that morning back to him.

He’d been shot. Edward was dead. Most of the company probably was too, and those that weren’t were already long gone. He was farther north than he had ever been and they had abandoned him. He was alone.

Flynn didn’t know what to do, but he knew he couldn’t stay in this field, waiting to die. Slowly, he brought his uninjured leg up and, using his rifle as a crutch, dug his hoof into the soil and pushed himself upright. Gingerly he tried to put some weight on his left leg. It was painful, but he could do it. He knew then that the Minié ball had missed his bone. It must have torn straight through his leg, only through muscle. There was still the terrifying possibility of infection, but he couldn’t think about that now. The bone in his thigh was not shattered. He had a chance to survive.

He knew that what remained of Edward was not far away, but he couldn’t bring himself to look in that direction. He didn’t want to see. Instead he looked towards the collapsed barn they had fled from, and to the road that ran adjacent to it.

What he saw made his heart sink.

Standing in the road barely a hundred yards away was a lone horse, and on its back rode a Union soldier. He was dressed in the blue uniform of the American army, shiny and clean and everything that Confederate army issue clothing was not. There was no mistaking him for a Confederate, even at this distance. He was staring directly at Flynn.

The soldier smoothly kicked one leg over the saddle and dismounted. He had his rifle in his hand as he started walking towards Flynn. Even at this distance Flynn could tell he was a tower of a man by his height next to the horse, and that he was powerfully built just by the way he carried himself. The glare of the sun obscured Flynn’s ability to discern much else.

Flynn, who had been leaning on his own rifle for support, once again panicked. Balancing shakily on one leg, he lifted the rifle and aimed it at the soldier.

The Union soldier stopped. He didn’t raise his own gun, he didn’t turn to run, he didn’t make a noise. He simply stood where he was and stared right at Flynn.

“Now boy, now! Right goddamn now, son! Ain’t gon’ set for long!”

Flynn peered down the sight of his rifle. The Union soldier was motionless, as if he were simply waiting to be shot. But Flynn’s arms were weak from his injury and his hands were shaking with fear. He struggled to keep the sight still, but it danced and bobbed and shook all around and over the figure he was aiming at.

“For fuck’s sake shoot him!”

Flynn flinched as he pulled the trigger, sending a Minié ball tearing through the air towards the soldier. For a second, maybe two, Flynn’s vision was obscured from the smoke of the gunshot, but when it cleared and he could see that the soldier was still standing – and aiming his own rifle back at him.

The Union soldier’s rifle glinted in the sunlight momentarily before it fired. Instantly, Flynn’s head jerked backwards and he was once again knocked to the ground. It felt as if a giant had grabbed hold of one of his antlers and violently yanked it backwards.

Laying on the ground, he reached up to his face, running his hands over to make sure a bullet hadn’t torn through it. He brought them in front of his eyes – no blood. He then felt his ears, felt the top of his head, felt his antlers.

Felt one antler.

His left antler had been completely shattered and blown off by the bullet. Where it had been there was now only a stump. He ran his fingers over its ragged edges. Again, Flynn brought his hands in front of his face, and again he saw they were clean – no blood. This new wound was only to his pride; he couldn’t think about that now. He had to escape.

But when he leaned up he knew that wasn’t going to happen. What he saw the soldier do then told him, deep down, that he had exhausted every option available to him, that there was only one way this encounter could end.

The soldier had pulled something from a loop on his belt. Long, thin, shiny, metallic – a bayonet. He began fastening it to the end of his rifle, locking it into the socket designed to house it.

The realization of what it meant sent Flynn’s heart into his stomach. That’s death, he thought. That bayonet is my own death –  I’m looking at it. He’s going to run that bayonet through me and I’m going to die, right here in this field. Right now.

“No, no, no, no...” Flynn muttered to himself as he scrambled to his hooves.

He tried to run, but with the injury to his leg he could only hobble pathetically. With every stride there was an intense blast of pain. After just a few yards he stumbled and fell to the ground – in his panic and with his broken, pained gait, it was inevitable. It wouldn’t have mattered anyway; there was no way he would be able to outrun anyone in the state he was in, let alone the beast that was chasing him.

Flynn looked over his shoulder and saw the Union soldier in a full sprint. He was much closer than Flynn thought possible.

“No! Oh god, please no!”

Flynn frenziedly tried to push himself up again. But it was no use. The soldier was upon him.

He fell on his back and, for the first time, saw the Union soldier clearly. He was an enormous gray wolf. Around his waist was a brass belt buckle, emblazoned US. The shiny brass buttons on his clean blue woolen coat glinted brightly, twinkling in the sunlight. He was close enough that Flynn could see the number “27” stamped onto each one.

The wolf raised his rifle, Yankee bayonet pointed directly at Flynn’s chest.

“No!! Please, no!!!” Flynn screamed in terror.

The wolf hesitated for a brief moment. He was looking straight into Flynn’s icy blue eyes.

The wolf quickly flipped the rifle around. Flynn saw a flash of wood as the wolf drove the butt of his rifle down towards his face like a steam hammer.

Flynn’s vision turned black and he knew no more.