Chapter 1: The Cabin

Damn the bloody war. I was completely ready to give it up. I already had come close to doing just that a couple of times. We had been doing nothing but losing and retreating for as long as I could remember, practically every day since we reached New York from the environs of Boston. Except for those few times I was in and out of the city on spying missions or recovering from wounds, we lived in tents or open huts on short rations, and nobody had been paid for months unless the officers were lying, which they probably were. There was a lot of grumbling, almost no women and wide-spread desertion as well as disease and hunger.

Now the well-dressed, well-fed, oft-laid decision-makers of this army were thinking about crossing an ice-filled river in the middle of the night and attacking a bunch of bloody German professionals who did not believe in taking prisoners. I, and most of those I knew, was constantly wet and my feet were always cold and hard to look at. They had been cold for a month at least. I was sick of the bloody war, and I was looking for a back door, a way out, a warm bed and, if possible, a willing jade.

The wind tore a wisp of smoke away from the squat, stone chimney of the isolated cabin that crouched near the crumbling edge of the steep river bank. I stood behind a large, bare-limbed maple and listened, shivering as icy limbs clattered. I had been looking for a place to get in out of the miserable weather for some time, and I had smelled the wood smoke as soon as I got across the Delaware and hid my little boat.

But if it had not been for the strange noises, I might have walked right past the small, low-lying structure without seeing it. It was almost as crude as some of our smelly huts in Pennsylvania. The whining, mewling sound came again, like some sort on small animal in distress.

Like some local barns, the rude log cabin had been built into the side of a hill and its only window was shuttered so I made my way slowly toward the plank door and listened again, hands tucked under my arms, my musket in an elbow crook, my feet two blocks of ice. Curiosity had gotten me in trouble before as the rising hair on the back of my neck reminded me. Several sets of large, fresh, boot tracks crossed the snow from the nearby ferry road and none led away from the doorstep. The moonlight left no doubt.

"Don't! Please!" a woman screamed from inside, a piecing sound that was cut short by what sounded like a slap followed by a guttural curse and a foul laugh. I felt my curiosity drowning in anger. My nearly-empty stomach growled and my half-frozen cock twitched.

I quickly locked on my bayonet, took the leather cover off my firelock, checked the pan, cocked my piece, took a deep breath, prayed it would fire and kicked the door twice at the linch pin before it flew open. Three large men in dark blue uniforms almost filled the low-beamed, fireplace-lit room. The grunting one with his broad back to me was thrusting away at the buttocks of a pale, slender girl who was being held face down on a crude table by a wide-eyed soldier with a fierce mustache. Her stained shift had been bunched up near her shoulders. I pulled the trigger as I ducked through the door, the pan flashed at my wrist and the musket bucked in my hands answering one question that had been haunting my mind.

The back of the busy rapist's head disappeared in an red and black explosion. Bone, hair, blood and brain sprayed across the room along with his tattered wig. Relieved that the wet musket had worked, I took one long step to the table as his bulky body crumpled away from me and jabbed my bayonet into the throat of the man holding the girl's wrists. His hands flew from her arms to his neck. He looked at my weapon and then at me, surprised, horrified. A geyser of bright blood followed my blade out of his throat as I bumped into the moaning woman's rounded hip, rolled my weapon sideways and pulled the heavy musket and long bayonet loose, tearing blood vessels apart. I heard his head hit the table and some burbling sounds while I turned in time to see the third Hessian reach for the straight sword which hung on the chair back.

He was a bulky sergeant who had been in the process of buttoning up his breeches when I bulled my way in. I yelled something at him and tripped over the sprawled body of the soldier with the shattered skull as I sprang across the room swinging the butt of my musket at his shocked face. He ducked under most of that clumsy blow, losing his wig, and falling back against the fireplace with his bare blade in his hand. I hit him again, squarely in the mouth, bashing him back against the stone chimney before he could recover his balance. He fell to his knees spitting bone and teeth, and swinging wildly at me, hacking weakly at my heavy boots. I smashed in the back of his shaved head with the musket's butt plate and then bayoneted him for good measure, feeling the blade scrape the stone hearth beneath him and hook on his ribs. He still quivered so I stuck him again under his raised arm and then put my foot on his back to pull out the blade which had evidently wedged between some bones. He collapsed with thick blood pulsing from his mouth and back.

Then I remembered to take a breath, a deep one. I stepped over the soldier with the shattered skull and pulled the gaping girl away from the table where her hands and forearms still lay. She had fallen to her knees, head drooping. She was obviously a small but full-grown woman and not a child. She was a mess. Blood from the throat of the one who had been holding her down had flowed into her tousled hair. She looked at me wide-eyed, her mouth a large O. I held her to my chest and patted her back while she sobbed and produced the odd, animal sounds that had attracted me to her cabin in the first place.

After a bit she stopped shivering and making those distressful moans. She wriggled in my grip very pleasantly, said, "Leggo, I'm all right," and pulled away from me. Blood was dripping from her nose and mouth and one eye was swelling shut. She wiped her face on the back of her hand and looked about her cabin at the carnage. Her shift had been torn from her left shoulder and the pink nipple of a round, white breast quivered in the cold air. Blood stained her tattered white garment at the groin, and I wondered if she had been a virgin when the Germans arrived. There were few left in this part of New Jersey. She was a pretty little thing, even in this bruised and disheveled state, with a straight back and a strong chin, but she was only about five feet tall and probably did not weigh more than six or seven stone.

"Get some clothes on," I said to her as she stood gulping before me, looking at the sprawled dead men, the spreading blood. "We've got to get the bodies out of here and clean up some in case they come looking for these buggers."

She found her skirt in a dark corner and tied it on. She pointed to her bodice which was under the man whose brains I had blown out. I kicked him over with my toe and handed her the torn cloth with my bayonet, while I tried to avoid looking at his staring eyes or the wasted member he had been exercising when I killed him. She examined her vest, made a face, used it to wipe up some of the blood from the table where a dead Hessian still lay. Then she threw it in the fire. Her bouncing breasts might not have bothered her, but they surely aroused some non-violent feelings in me despite the sweet smell of blood and acrid odor of gunpowder.

I got my breathing regulated while I pulled off the soldiers' boots and went through their pockets, handing her what I found. The sergeant had a leather purse heavy with silver, the others only a few coins and some tobacco. A dark, heavy coat hung from a wall peg, and she pulled that down and put it on. It was far too big for her, the sleeves hung over her hands and the hem almost dragged the floor. Still panting and dripping blood, the young woman tied a scarf around her head and then nodded at me.

Chapter 2 »