Chapter 7

The following historic characters appears in the next few chapters:

General George Rogers Clark

Major General, Commander of Fort Henry, Conqueror of the Northwest Territory, 6'-0" tall, 190 pounds, 48 years old, red hair going gray, brown eyes

The others were all waiting for me when I reappeared in G & G's, Gwyn and Glanda -- my older Sisters, shell after leaving the Headquarters. James had Jillian off to one side away from everyone, and had his arms around his twin to calm her down and reassure her that she was safe and all right.

"How did it go, Mark?" Seamus asked on seeing me.

"Not too badly, but we will need to make a few changes," I told him, before calling for everyone's attention.

"Gather around everyone. There are some new rules, or precautions, that we need to put into effect immediately. From this minute on, anyone going outside of a shell will have their wards in place. There are apparently still some people with the Americans who are firmly anti-Magic because of their religious beliefs.

"We know from our own history that this existed, but I thought that it had disappeared before the Revolutionary War. That apparently isn't true in this Reality. To stay safe here, we will all need to have our wards in place whenever we leave a shell, for now at least," I told them.

"What about the Mages?" Carl asked, as he smiled at Dymphna and Coleen sitting near him.

"Someone will need to go with them whenever they go out for now. We can't afford to lose any of them," I told the others.

"And we could afford to lose someone else?" Sererena asked in a sarcastic tone of voice.

"No, we can't afford to lose anyone, but the Mages don't have the strength of wards that the rest of us do," I told her.

"We could always work in a shell," Cessair injected.

"Suppose one of the wounded is one of the anti-Magic nuts?" Wolf asked her. Cessair went pale at this remark.

"Do you really think that he would want to hurt us even while we were making him better?" she asked in a confused voice.

"He would probably consider what you were doing to be not only wrong, but evil," Carl told her.

"At present, I wouldn't put anything past them," I added. "We have no idea how many of them there are with the Army, either."

Just past noon, Wolf and I went with Gwyn to draw our initial ration of food from the Quartermaster. Initially, he was doubtful that we were entitled to draw supplies from him because we were not wearing uniforms. Showing him the General's commission convinced him that we were.

"How many men are in your unit?" he asked, grumpily.

"I have eighteen officers plus myself," I told him.

"How many other ranks?" he demanded.

"There are no other ranks," I informed him.

"What? All of you are officers! What do you do?" he asked, appearing surly, but confused.

"Magic!" I told him, "and healing."

"Oh!" he grunted. "You're those people who arrived yesterday. Do you have a means of transporting these supplies?"

"We will deal with whatever you have for us," I assured him with a smile. He looked at us skeptically on hearing this.

"Who is your Quartermaster? He will need to sign for these supplies each time," he wanted to know next, as he made a notation in his ledger.

"This is Lieutenant Gwyn O'Connell. She is our Quartermaster," I told him, indicating Gwen, who smiled at him.

"You have women in your company?" he demanded, angrily.

"Of course! Over half of our Company are women," I informed him. "And I wouldn't do anything to anger them, if I were you, unless you like looking like a pink frog," I added with another smile.

"Yes, Mark, this one would look good as a frog," Gwyn said, with a giggle, before turning to the fat Quartermaster. " Would you like a little demonstration?" she demanded. The Quartermaster didn't appear to be totally convinced by our remarks.

"Of course, you would also look good as a fat little mouse, like that one," she said, pointing to a mouse that had appeared at the base of a box near us. The rust colored cat resting on top of the box quickly pounced upon it and dispatched it.

"Would you like another fat little mouse to play with, Kitty?" Gwyn crooned to the cat, that had come over to strop herself against Gwyn's leg and purr. Gwyn reached down to scratch her behind the ears. On seeing all of this, the Quartermaster was now in a panic, and hurriedly had his people draw our rations and bring them out to us. We were soon confronted with quite a pile of sacks, boxes and barrels. Gwyn checked them against the list that he had written out and signed for them. She then cast the transfer spell, and drew its glyph in the air with a flourish before adding the Magic to the glyph. Both she and the supplies vanished. The Quartermaster had turned a very nice shade of green on seeing this.

"We will also need horses when we leave here," I reminded him. "Both riding horses, and a couple of pack horses."

"Yes sir!" the still startled Quartermaster answered, before both Wolf and I also vanished. We reappeared in the shell, as Gwyn and Glanda were going over the supplies that we had been issued.

"This food leaves a lot to be desired," she told me after a few minutes. "If I were the General, I'd have that Quartermaster hung for incompetence and theft," she told the rest of us.

"It is probably not just this Quartermaster," I reminded her. "It's more likely the entire purchasing system that is at fault."

"I can see where the truth spell would get a lot of use in straightening their system out," Glanda told us with a grin.

"Will we be able to use any of this?" I asked them, pointing at the collection of containers.

"Yes, we can make a lot of it work, but the meals may be a bit monotonous," Gwyn told us with a smile.

"As long as there is something to eat for now. We can see about better food later," I told the two of them. We were interrupted then by a messenger in the uniform of a Continental soldier banging on the side of the shell.

"I think that he has been signaling us for several minutes," Meagan told us. I passed through the defensive shell to see what he wanted. He saluted, as I approached him.

"Are you Captain O'Connell, sir?" he asked, nervously.

"Yes, I am. What can I do for you?" I inquired.

"Colonel Williams's complements, sir. You are requested to report to the Headquarters at your convenience, sir," the young man told me, nervously.

"Thank you, young man. You may inform the Colonel that I will be there in a few minutes," I told him. He saluted again and quickly departed, while I returned to the shell.

"I need to go to the Headquarters tent. We may know something more about those who attacked Jillian shortly," I told the others, before transferring to the vicinity of the Headquarters tent, and startling the guards there again.

"Ah ... Captain O'Connell! We have identified those that attacked the member of your Command. They were the last remaining members of a Massachusetts Regiment. They had been consolidated with those from various other units that had only small contingents remaining. Their Commander told us that they were very troublesome, and were always fighting with others in the unit," Colonel Williams informed me. "We will simply list them as casualties in the battle yesterday," he finished.

"Thank you for the information, sir. I'm sure that Jillian will be happy to know that. We have already changed our procedures, so that something like this won't happen again," I assured him before returning to G & G's shell. I found that the news didn't make Jillian feel any better.

That evening following dinner, one of the Officers that I had seen in the Headquarters tent arrived at our shell with a request.

"The General requests that you erect a structure similar to the one that you used last night around the camp to protect it tonight," the officer, a Lieutenant Colonel, told me when brought into our shell.

"Certainly. That won't be a problem, Colonel," I assured him with a smile.

"Also, since we will be departing for Lexington in the morning, the structure will need to be removed again soon after reveille," he informed me.

"That also won't be a problem," I assured him before he departed. G & G had been listening to our conversation with some interest.

"I'm going to the Quartermaster tonight to be sure that he has horses for us in the morning," Gwyn told me right after that.

"We captured quite a few horses when we stopped the attack on the left flank," Seamus reminded her. "We should be able to get some of them along with their equipment," he finished.

"There was also a lot of horse tack turned in from our side of the flank attack, though not so many horses," I also reminded her. "Don't forget to get some pack horses also to carry the remaining supplies," I told her.

"Don't worry. I saw how that fat little Quartermaster was sweating when I played with his cat, earlier," Gwyn told us with a smile. She and Glanda vanished right after that to see the Quartermaster.

"When do you want to erect the defensive shell?" Seamus asked after they were gone.

"I was thinking at about 8:00 PM. It will still be light enough to see then. I was also going to use the modified open top shell that our Dads used in France, since it doesn't look like rain tonight," I told him.

"Who did you want to assist us, since G & G are off seeing about the horses?" Seamus asked.

"Sererena and Saraid can help us tonight. They should know the spell," I told him.

"Yes, I believe my older Sisters know that spell," Seamus said with a grin, before he left to talk to them.

We left shortly after that, and appeared near where we had cast the spherical defensive shell last night. There was no nosy Lieutenant to question why we were there tonight, and we soon finished casting the open top defensive shell. There would be no problem with smoke accumulation tonight, or any need to create and ward vents. Those who appeared to watch us work tonight only smiled at us, as they remembered the storm last night, and how they had stayed dry throughout it.

When we reached G & G's shell, after a leisurely walk back in the slowly fading light, we found that they had returned, and there were now nineteen sets of tack for riding horse in the shell along with four sets of tack for pack horses. Wolf, Carl, Gerald, and James were going over it, by the light of several Magic-powered lanterns, to insure that it was all in good shape for tomorrow.

"What about the horses?" I asked Gwyn, after we had seen our Brothers and Cousins at work.

"C & D and D & C are bringing them here. We'll put them in one of the unoccupied shells for the night along with some hay. We also got grain to feed them in the morning before we start, and some for on the trip also," Gwyn told me.

"Did you have any trouble?" I asked. Glanda began to laugh on hearing this.

"Trouble!" she asked sweetly after that. "Not unless you consider changing the man in charge of the horses into a green pig while we selected the horses trouble. We got C & D and D & C to check them for us once we got them issued by the Quartermaster, but his assistant wanted to issue us the worst ones that he had," Glanda finished with a big grin.

"You didn't take the General's horse, did you?" I asked in a worried voice.

"No, we only selected those that had been captured by either Seamus, or you," Gwyn assured me. "The four pack horses were in a different corral than the riding horses."

Our Mage Sisters soon arrived with the horses, and we created an entrance in the unoccupied shell where G & G had sent the hay.

"Have they all been watered tonight?" I asked them, after we had the horses secured.

"Yes, we stopped to have them drink from one of the horse troughs before we brought them here," Dyphna told me. We placed a general ward over the entry that we had created in the shell. It would keep the horses from wandering off, and anyone else from entering, and removing, or changing any of them.

The hanging Magic-powered lamp was on by the time that we returned to G & G's shell, and everyone was just relaxing in the area that it lit. I addressed them soon after we returned.

"We will be leaving here in the morning. You can expect to be up early. I would recommend that everyone get to bed early because of that. There will be plenty to do in the morning before we leave," I told them.