In Enemy Hands

Chapter One

December 1863

"Lieutenant Tyler!" The voice rose, tremulous and frightened, above the gradually slowing assault of gunfire. Private Louis Medfield was trapped, sheltered behind the stiff corpse of a cavalryman's abandoned horse. "I can't move!"

Quintin Tyler could see no more than a patch of blue from his position behind a stand of fallen trees. He and his men were retreating under attack of superior forces, as the Rebs bore down on them. For three days the battle had raged, and it looked to be a decisive victory for the Union and General Burnside. But a sizeable Confederate contingent had managed to pin down Quint and his men.

"Are you hit?" Quint shouted. The distance separating Private Medfield from the rest of his unit was probably no more than sixty feet--but it was a dangerously open sixty feet of nothing more than scrubby grass and sporadic patches of snow.

"Yes!" Louis Medfield was nothing more than a kid, a seventeen-year-old farm boy who hadn't seen battle before this winter. His voice trembled even as he shouted. "Don't leave me here!" he pleaded. "I can't move!"

Quint cursed under his breath as the men around him watched and waited. They were waiting for him to make a decision. Most of his soldiers were no older than Medfield, and few had any more experience with the hardships of battle. Quint didn't think of himself as a soldier at heart, any more than the men and boys who looked to him for answers.

He cast his eyes downward as he loosened the saber at his side and laid it on the ground. The patches of snow that dotted the landscape were remnants of a late November snowstorm. This was his third winter with the Union Army, and he still couldn't get accustomed to the cold. Clouds blocked the sun that might have warmed his skin, and the cold seemed to penetrate his layers of clothing and travel through his very skin to the bone. Of course, he hadn't seen snow until he was nearly thirty years old, and what he had called cold growing up would have been considered mild by many of the Northerners he fought alongside. It was hard to believe that he was actually in the South--Tennessee, to be exact. As close to home as he'd been in over two and a half years.

With a grimace and a slow exhale that fogged the air, Quint checked his pistols, two Colt Model 1860s, weapons he kept meticulously clean. With a Colt in each hand, he turned to the silent man at his side.

"Cover me, Candell."

Quint burst from shelter and sprinted over the frozen ground. With his appearance, the enemy fire increased once again, and he heard the whistle of the balls in the air around him as well as the sharp reports of the weapons themselves. With a final burst of energy, he leapt over the dead horse and landed nearly on top of Medfield. He descended on the wounded man and waited for the enemy fire to stop. Then Quint took a deep breath and rolled to one side, quickly looking over the private, who was trembling badly.

"Where are you hit?" Quint asked briskly.

"My leg." There were tears in Medfield's eyes, tear tracks down his dirty cheeks.

Quint assessed the wound in Medfield's calf without emotion. Painful, but not life-threatening as long as infection didn't set in.

"Listen to me, Private," he said sternly. There was no time for sympathy. Not now. That would come later. If they made it. "We're going to make a run for it."

"I can't.... "

"You will, soldier!" Quint shouted as he placed a stony face close to the terrified private's. He couldn't allow Medfield to see any warmth or uncertainty. "It's going to hurt like hell, but you will move your goddamn feet!"

Quint reloaded one Colt and shoved the other into his waistband. He slid an arm around a suddenly less tearful private and looked into the young man's pale blue eyes. Eyes too young and innocent to see what they had seen today. Eyes that looked to his lieutenant to save him, to take care of him.

"Ready, soldier?" Quint felt a tightening in the pit of his belly. The attempt to rescue the private had been helpless, hopeless, but he could no sooner leave the boy there to be slaughtered or captured than he could shoot one of his own men.

They burst from the shelter of the dead horse, Quint's right side facing the fire that increased as he ran, practically dragging the wounded private as the young man attempted to move his legs. Quint raised his arm and fired aimlessly toward the invisible enemy, the Colt so natural in his hand that it felt like an extension of his arm.

He felt the sharp sting in his arm and dropped the pistol. Twenty more feet to go. He heard Medfield gasp in surprise and knew that somehow, even though the private was almost completely shielded by Quint's body, he had been hit again. Just a few more steps. Medfield was almost a dead weight, though Quint could hear the young man breathing raggedly.

The ball ripped into Quint's leg when he thought they were finally safe, tearing into his thigh and forcing him over the barricade in an awkward tumble. Medfield went first, and together they landed almost on top of the waiting soldiers.

"Lieutenant Tyler?" Candell hovered over him, panic in his voice as he gripped Quint's arm and leaned close to see if a breath stirred. A constant exchange of gunfire kept the Rebs at bay, though for how much longer no one could say.

Quint forced his eyes open, pushing away the comfort of darkness that threatened. The wound in his arm was little more than a scratch, but he recognized that the injury to his right thigh could be deadly. The wound was bleeding freely, and the ball was buried deep. He forced himself into a crouching position, with Candell's help, putting all of his weight on his left leg. Immediately his eyes fell on Medfield's body, that lifeless form not three feet away. The second ball had entered the private's back, and the farm boy was dead.