The Warriors Read Online Free

Morrison seemed the only men sufficiently self-possessed to do what had to be done; the others kept yelling warnings, orders, questions.
    Someone ran up to report that at least two men were dead for certain. A courier snagged the reins of a horse—Sport, Gideon saw with consternation—mounted, and galloped off before he could protest.
    He turned back, tense and still shaken. Wilbourn propped Jackson against a roadside tree, gently pulled off the blood-soaked gauntlets, then carefully unfastened the general’s coat. Jackson was still conscious. He groaned when Wilbourn found it difficult to free his right arm from the sleeve.
    “Kerchief!” Wilbourn demanded.
    A. P. Hill produced one. Wilbourn knotted it around Jackson’s upper left arm, then asked for another. He used it to tie a crude sling. Gideon thought he saw bone protruding through the mangled flesh of the general’s arm.
    Breathing hard, Wilbourn leaned back on his haunches.
    “General? We must see to your right hand.”
    Jackson’s lids fluttered. His voice—so often stern—was a mild whisper. “No. A mere trifle—”
    General Hill stamped a boot down, hard. “It’s too dangerous to wait for an ambulance here. Rig a litter. Use my overcoat. Branches.”
    Trying to banish the persistent image of the fallen sword, Gideon darted toward the brush on the north side of the road. A private, a starved-looking boy whose ragged gray uniform was powder stained, leaned on his rifled musket, staring at the wounded man. In the smoky moonlight the boy saw Gideon’s enraged face. He seemed compelled to plead with him.
    “Don’t blame us, Major. Jesus, please don’t blame us. We heard the Yankee horse was movin’ this way. We thought it was them—”
    “You didn’t think at all!” Gideon cried, raising a fist. The boy cringed away. It was all Gideon could do to keep from hitting him.
    Finally, muttering a disgusted obscenity, he shoved past the boy, dragged out his saber, and began cutting a low branch. More of the damn fool North Carolina troops were drifting out of the woods. They stood like silent, shabby wraiths, gazing at Jackson. Gideon hacked at the branch with savage strokes, as though it were a human adversary.
    When the branch dropped, he started to chop off a second one. He grew conscious of a faint whistling, coming from the east and growing louder. He glanced up, his palms cold all at once. Whether it was coincidence or the result of all the noise in the wood, the Federal gunners had chosen that moment to open a new bombardment.
    He flung himself forward against the trunk as the Tarheel soldiers scattered. The shot burst at treetop level, almost directly above him. The shock wave slammed his cheek against the bark.
    Bits of metal and wood rained down. None struck hard enough to hurt him. But the explosion and fall of debris touched something raw in him—something abraded by the months of separation from his wife, by the wretched conditions of the winter camp where the brave songs had begun to sound hollow and infantile. He was suddenly gripped by a paralyzing panic.
    He broke it with an enraged yell. He snatched up the first branch, yanked the second off the trunk by sheer force, jammed his saber under his arm, and stumbled back toward Jackson.
    A shell exploded close by. The road lit up momentarily. Crouched over with the branches in his hands and the saber jutting from his armpit, Gideon dodged a shower of burning twigs while his mind reproduced the dreadful image again: the untouched sword scabbard slowly, slowly toppling —
    At First Manassas, Jackson had stood like that stone wall and earned his famous nickname. He was more than a master tactician. He had become a legend to thousands of Confederate soldiers who’d never even seen him, a name in newspapers that gave hope to those at home when hope seemed futile. He was the supreme example of the South’s one matchless weapon—raw courage in the face of superior numbers and industrial