Look back at man’s struggle for freedom, trace his present day strength to its source, and you’ll find that his pathway to glory is strewn with the bones of the horse.
– Anonymous
Andrea’s heart throbbed in wild anticipation. Destiny had set her on a perilous journey, and she could barely control the excitement that flowed through her veins. All around her men galloped hastily to and fro, rushing to obey orders shouted at them by officers, and hurrying to make final preparations for the impending conflict.
Having found and reported to Colonel Scott, she was on her way back to headquarters, when a spattering in the trees above her made Justus shy to the right. Andrea looked up at the limbs, expecting to see a flock of birds flying away. Instead, she saw small branches and leaves plunging down, mixed with the lead that had caused their descent.
Moving her eyes to the left, she stared with unrestrained awe at the sight of men and horses, followed by flying caissons and cannons, seeming to appear out of nowhere on the brow of a hill. She felt the hair rise on the back of her neck in response to the sinister apparition of evil that seemed to materialize out of the solid green earth right before her eyes.
Spurring Justus cruelly, Andrea struck back to Scott’s command to inform him of the proximity of the enemy. Already the far right was skirmishing, and she knew chances were good they would be hotly engaged all along the line in the not-too-distant future.
Calm, but breathing hard from the exertion, she was in the midst of detailing what she had seen, when suddenly utter silence prevailed.
Andrea stopped talking and gazed out at the horizon. Both she and the officer tensed and held their breath as if expecting something of significance to begin. Their expectations were realized in a matter of moments. Ear-splitting detonations that defied description began, and the eruptions that followed made it appear the earth itself had begun spitting fire.
“Find Colonel Lawson,” Scott screamed above the fury. “Tell him to move up and protect my right! Then go to Murphy. Tell him to send reinforcements at the earliest possible instant and by every available means!”
Andrea nodded and wheeled Justus around, knowing the order would take her through the midst of the fighting. She guided her mount through seemingly impassable obstacles to where she hoped Lawson was being held in reserve. The sound of battle, already deafening, continued to swell like a colossal gale gathering strength.
An angry crackle of carbines to her left warned her she was getting close to some action, and the ensuing cloak of smoke alerted her to its intensity. Soon, to her right, more noise erupted as Federal cannons moved into place and began to talk back. The fighting began to spread and seemed to exist everywhere. Missiles of every conceivable type and every imaginable size came hurling from out of the sky, wreaking havoc on anything and everything in their path.
Andrea thought the storm could get no worse, but when she got to the crown of a small rise, the tempest burst with all its fury. Not knowing which way to turn, she pulled Justus to a stop and found herself within a sea of smoke.
Pushing him back into a gallop, she watched a wave of gray crest a hill of green to face a wall of blue. Her eyes, seeming of their own accord, lifted to the hills far beyond that flashed with small puffs of smoke. Almost instantly, entire lines of men disappeared. She found herself in a surreal storm of whirling hot lead so loud and brilliant it seemed to her the world was falling apart.
Not fifty feet away a horse bounded by with only the bottom half of a man upon its back. Nearby walked a steed with its entrails dragging out behind. Slaughtered beasts and butchered men, many with their vital current pulsing out in throbbing streams, lay suffering all around.
Just moments earlier, the land before her had been the picture of peaceful Virginia farmland. Now, death bloomed like a hell-spawned crop on every foot of soil. The scene affected Justus, too. Trembling in terror beneath her, he stared crazily at the ground, sniffing the sulfur smoke and the scent of blood, reluctant to move forward, yet afraid to stand still. He stepped on something that made a squishing noise, and Andrea gagged when she looked down to see what it was. She did not look down again.
Yet what she saw when she looked up was not much better. The smoke lifted, revealing a column of Union troops directly in front of her—a living, breathing mass of men plunging toward their formidable foe. Andrea lifted her gaze toward their destination on the opposite hill, where the muzzles of a dozen cannons glowered from the heights.
It took a moment for her brain to grasp the surreal scene unfolding. Her mind could barely comprehend the horror about to ensue as the cannons prepared to eat everything in her midst alive.
Even then she did not have time to feel fear or contemplate flight. She watched small puffs of smoke rise from the gaping mouths of the massive instruments of death and thought how they appeared like smoke rings from a peace pipe against the blue of the sky.
But their effect was anything but peaceful. A dreadful roar reached her ears as the earth trembled beneath her—and then hell exploded in her face. The fury that fell upon her was like nothing she had ever known or could imagine. All of the thunderstorms and all the lightning she had ever seen thrown together could not compare with the storm roaring around her.
Reacting to the thunderous clamor, Justus reared high in the air, throwing Andrea backward and off balance. She heard an appalling thump, a loud crack that sounded like iron consuming flesh and bone. Trying to regain her balance, she leaned forward, reaching erratically for a handful of mane. But there was no mane to grab. There was no horse beneath her. The strong, well-muscled animal between her legs had dissolved. Disappeared. He was gone.
Andrea hit the ground with a thud so loud it continued to echo in her ears for some moments after. Reaching up tentatively to feel her skull, Andrea envisioned that it had splintered into any number of fragmented pieces, like the vase Victoria had thrown at her at Hawthorne.
She felt a sinking sensation, dizzy and faint, a numb darkness, as she attempted to regain her senses. Remembering Justus, she struggled to her knees, choking and gasping for air, trying to clear her mind of the fog enveloping it. The roar and the thunder that, minutes earlier had seemed so loud, now sounded faint and detached, like the battle was far away, coming to her from a distance of miles or years. Yet she could feel the earth beneath her fingers trembling with the great ferocity of the fight.
Crawling through the smoke that hovered above the ground, Andrea moved in the direction she thought her horse should be standing. “Justus,” she cried, half expecting him to run to her through the clamor of battle. She blinked against the red haze that filled her eyes and spit blood from her mouth as she clawed and groped through the tempest of death in desperation. “Justus!”
It seemed to Andrea that she had been dropped into the very depths of Hell and left to her own devices to find her way out. She could no longer distinguish anything in the thick, gray canopy that settled over her. Closing her eyes against the stinging sulfuric smoke, she continued edging her way across the ground.
Within moments her fingers touched something wet, something soft and warm. She stopped and lifted her head. There in the shadowy haze of battle, she saw the dark mound of her horse, or the pile of quivering flesh that remained, lying in a growing pool of coagulating red fluid.
If not for the roar of battle that already filled the air, her blood-curdling scream of pain and despair would have been enough to pierce even the most war-calloused heart. But no one heard and no one cared, so she crawled beside what was left of her beloved companion and prayed for a similar fate.