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By Root 857 0

wild skirling of the Rebel yell rose all around and above them, eerie as the shrieking of the predawn owl. Henri could not get his lips or throat or larynx to make that sound, any more than the men he rode with could ever manage to pronounce his name. He would only let his jaws drop open so that the screaming would meet no obstacle as it ran through him; it came from outside, certainly, but at the same time seemed to inhabit his whole body. Whenever he felt that cry ring in him, his blood turned cold and his eyes turned clear and fear was driven from his body and flew out ahead of him to stoop down on the enemy. That he stretched out along his horse’s neck during the charge was no more than a practical consideration. Forrest however stood straight up in his stirrups screaming his fury from the bottom of his gullet and ready to catch the bullets in his teeth and spit them back where they came from if anyone had the nerve to stand and fire.

In fact the Federal horsemen did get off a ragged volley or two before they turned to run. They had those new Spencer repeaters. Henri heard the whistle of a ball passing through the space his head had occupied before he’d leaned forward into the charge, and then he saw another pass through the muscular neck of Forrest’s horse a hand’s reach away, on his right just ahead. A fountain of blood leapt up after it.

That horse would collapse on its next stride, Henri saw, and he knew that Forrest would not be pleased at this turn of events, since only two days before he had lost another good horse in the same situation—an excellent mount which had been a gift to him from the citizens of Rome, Georgia, in gratitude for his having captured a division of Federal raiders just before they could reach and pillage that town.

“Shitsonofabitchsuckingspawnofthehornedevilsbilenassholeinhell!” Forrest exclaimed. “Goddamme to the eternal fires of Belial if I give up another horse before I bury the Yankee sonofabitch that shot him!” He leaned over and plugged the wound with the ball of his right index finger. The blood geyser stopped and the horse galloped on as if unaware of the injury.

Henri sat up straight, astounded. The Federals were no longer firing; their horse tails were receding to the point where the road met the horizon. Forrest, finger properly inside his horse’s pulse, continued the pursuit until a fissure opened in the world of space and time and Forrest’s horse left the ground altogether to jump through it. The door was still there, a rent in the world’s fabric, with the rest of Forrest’s cavalry refusing the jump and passing to one side or the other of the tall narrow ogive as if they hadn’t even seen it. The passage had the look of a mirror now, like a high pier glass in a rich man’s hall. When Henri rode to it he could not see anything beyond it, not Forrest or his warhorse or the fleeing Federals, but no more did the ogive reflect himself or his own horse—it only showed white cottony clouds hurrying across the lightening sky. He caught his breath and swallowed hard—then he whipped up his horse and went through on the trail of his general.

BUT HE DIDN’T SEE FORREST or his wounded horse on the other side—instead he was riding alone through mist on a surface of fog on which the hooves of his own horse made no sound. He must have passed over to the place where the Old Ones abided. But everyone know that the Old Ones were dead.

He sawed his horse to a rough halt and clutched at his skull, which seemed intact. His horse was hot between his legs and was breathing hard, as it had the right to.

And now he noticed he was back on solid ground: a bare knoll with one hollow tree on it like the screech owl’s tree from the night before, but different too—the rent in the trunk held the same swirling mist as the mirrored passway he had come through to be here. Ginral Jerry was hunkered over a small greenwood fire, cooking fatback in an old iron skillet.

Henri hobbled his horse and walked around to the other side of the tree and looked down between the roots. There indeed was Forrest well out ahead