The Fiery Cross - Diana Gabaldon [430]
Tossing the badge lightly in his palm, Buccleigh turned to Black-beard, who was taking a suddenly renewed interest in the proceedings.
“I’ve a thought, sir, regarding our mutual friend.” He nodded toward Roger. “If you’re with me?”
Black-beard looked at Roger, back at MacKenzie, and a slow smile began to grow beneath his bulbous, reddened nose. The ripple of unease down Roger’s back blossomed suddenly into a full-blown jolt of fear.
“Help!” he roared. “Help, militia! Help!” He rolled, twisting to avoid them, but Black-beard seized him by the shoulders, pulling him back. Calls came from beyond the trees, and the sound of feet, beginning to run.
“No, sir,” said William Buccleigh, kneeling down in front of him. He seized Roger’s jaw in a grip of iron, strangling his yells and squeezing his cheeks to force open his mouth. “I do not think you’ll speak, indeed.” With a slight smile, he rammed the sodden cloth down Roger’s throat again, and tied the tattered neckcloth fast around it.
He stood up, then, the militia badge held tight in his hand. As the bushes opened, he turned toward them and waved an arm in hearty greeting.
67
AFTERMATH
It being now half past two O’Clock the Enemy entirely dispersed, and the Army five Miles from Camp, it was thought adviseable to lose no Time, but to return immediately to the Camp at Alamance. Empty Waggons were ordered from Camp which took both the killed and wounded of the Loyalists, and even several of the wounded Rebels, who acknowledged had they gained the day no Quarters would have been given but to such as would have turned Regulators, these were nevertheless, taken good Care of, and had their wounds dressed.
—“A Journal of the Expedition against the Insurgents,”
Wm. Tryon
A MUSKET-BALL had shattered David Wingate’s elbow. Bad luck; had it struck an inch higher, it would have broken the bone, but healed cleanly. I’d opened the joint with a semicircular incision across the outer aspect, and dug out both the flattened ball and several bone chips, but the cartilage was badly damaged, and the biceps tendon had been sheared through completely; I could see the silvery gleam of one end, hiding deep in the dark-red meat of the muscle.
I gnawed my lower lip, considering. If I left matters as they were, the arm would be permanently—and badly—crippled. If I could reattach the severed tendon and bring the bone-ends in the joint capsule into good alignment, he might just possibly regain some use of it.
I glanced round the campsite, which now resembled an ambulance depot, littered with bodies, equipment, and blood-stained bandages. Most of the bodies were moving, thank God, if only to curse or moan. One man had been dead when his friends brought him in; he lay quiet in the shade of a tree, wrapped in his blanket.
Most of the injuries I saw had been slight, though there were two men shot through the body; I could do nothing for them but keep them warm and hope for the best. Brianna was checking them every few minutes for signs of shock and fever, in between rounds of administering honeyed water to those suffering more superficial wounds. Best she kept busy, I thought, and she did keep moving, though her face looked like one of the wild morning glories on the vine that climbed the bush behind me—white and puckered, pinched tight closed against the terrors of the day.
I had had to amputate a leg, soon after the battle ended. It was a man from Mercer’s Company—camped near to us, and lacking a surgeon of their own—struck by a rebounding chunk of a mortar round that had torn off most of his foot and left the flesh of the lower leg hanging in ribbons from the shattered bone. I’d thought she would faint when the heavy limb thumped into the dirt at her feet, and she’d thought so, too, but had by some miracle stayed upright, supporting the patient—who really had fainted, thank the Lord for small mercies—while I cauterized the bleeding vessels and bound the stump with brutal speed.
Jamie was