The Shadows of God - J. Gregory Keyes [93]
By the time he returned to his senses, four of his rangers were around him, firing at more attackers.
“No more bush fighting, by God!” he snarled. “Fetch me a mount and sound the charge!”
If they questioned his decision, no one said so. He did not care what was wisest—he was a general, by God, not the brawling fool he had been more than two decades ago. He should not have to fight like that!
A moment later, shrieking like Indians themselves, they swarmed up the hill.
It happened in a blur, oddly slowly. Ambushers rose from every pile of brush and fell, and some rose again, missing parts of themselves. Some waited until the Colonials were past, then leapt up behind them. He turned once, just in time to see a red hole the size of a fist appear in Cory MacWilliams, just under the silver coin he wore around his neck for good luck and see— God, yes, see—the bloody bullet that had done the work speed within an inch of his own nose.
By the time they reached the hilltop and the guns there, he had lost more than half his men. Predictably, the Yamacraw made it to the top first, Parmenter's rangers on their heels. The gunners dropped the muzzles of their weapons and fired, cutting swaths that left bits of men everywhere. Through the haze of smoke-coughing weapons, he made out that the top of the hill had been cleared and a cavalry of sorts awaited them—fierce dark men who did not look like Indians, wearing splinted armor and carrying cutlasslike weapons.
Oglethorpe barely felt the impact of the charge. His pistols were long since spent, and his saber was already more a club than a sword.
In a moment of clarity, he knew they would never make it. The ambushers they had left behind them in their hurry were catching up, and they were now in a crossfire. He had killed all his men for nothing.
And then, miraculously, the guns went silent, and the Mongols—that's what he guessed them to be, from what the tsar had said—began dropping from the rear. His men gave a great shout, almost as if in one voice, and their enemies, confused and disheartened, went down like wheat before a scythe.
And from the smoke on the hill, another company emerged. Indians, but this time of a sort he recognized by their tattoos and paint.
Choctaws.
The miracle was they didn't fire at each other. For a long moment, what remained of Oglethorpe's men stood, panting and bleeding, wondering if this was a new force they would have to fight. But the Choctaw had killed the gunners and the Mongols, and so after a moment Oglethorpe made his decision and turned his remaining men to deal with enemy coming up the hill behind them.
Within half an hour the battle was over, the high ground theirs.
“Sir,” a soldier said, limping up beside him. “Let the surgeon bind your wound.”
“Eh?” He glanced at his arm. The ax had peeled his skin back, but there wasn't much bleeding—a sticky sort of crust had already formed over the lesion. “It can wait,” he said. “Where is Tomochichi?”
“He went chasing back down the hill.”
“Ah. What do you think of those fellows with the guns?”
“They seem like friends, sir.”
“I'm going to see.” Over the protests of the young man, he spurred his new mount up the hill, sheathing his saber as he did so.
A small party stepped from cover to greet him—a Choctaw man, perhaps thirty years old, and a body of soldiers in dirty blue uniforms. One of these was a tall, slim fellow with hair the color of copper.
“Halito,” Oglethorpe said, one of the few words he knew in Choctaw.
“Good day,” the Indian answered in English.
“You seemed to have saved us a good bit of trouble. I'm much grateful to you. I am James Edward Oglethorpe, margrave of Azilia, commander of the English forces in