“Fire!” a South Carolinian officer called, and the gray-coated infantry fired a second volley. A ramrod wheeled through the air as the dirty bank of smoke rolled away from the muskets. The Faulconer Legion’s skirmishers were falling back to the regiment’s flanks. The Rhode Islanders’ bayonets looked wickedly long in the smoke-torn sunlight.

“Take aim!” Major Bird shouted, and the Legion’s rifles went into their shoulders.

“Keep your aim low! Keep it low!” Sergeant Truslow shouted from the left flank.

“Aim for the officers!” Captain Hinton, falling back with his skirmishers, shouted.

Starbuck just stared. He could hear a northern officer shouting his men forward. “On, on, on!” The man had long red side-whiskers and gold-rimmed spectacles. “On! On!” Starbuck could now see the individual characters of the northern faces. The men’s mouths opened as they shouted, their eyes were wide. A man stumbled, almost dropped his rifle, then regained his balance. The attackers were past the first dead bodies left by the skirmishers. A gold-braided officer mounted on a gray horse dropped his sword to point it straight at the rebels. “Charge!” he shouted, and the attack line quickened into a stumbling run. The northerners were cheering as they came and the drummers lost all cohesion, simply beating their sticks in a frenzy of effort. A fallen color was picked up, its glorious silk stripes a dazzling patch of color in the gray smoke. “Charge!” the northern officer shouted again, and his horse pranced in the gunsmoke’s skeins.

“Fire!” Major Bird screamed, then whooped with unfeigned glee as the Legion’s whole front disappeared in a gout of filthy smoke.

The fusillade was like the crack of doom at the world’s end. It was one sudden, violent, horrifying volley at lethally short range and the shouts and drumming of the attacking northerners were wiped into instant silence, or rather transmuted into screams and shouts.

“Reload!” Murphy shouted.

Nothing could be seen through the bank of powder smoke that twisted above the rail fence. A few enemy bullets whipped through the smoke, but too high. The Legion reloaded, ramming their minié bullets hard down onto powder and wadding.

“Forward!” Major Bird was shouting. “Take them forward! To the fence, to the fence!” He was jumping up and down with excitement and waving his unloaded revolver. “Forward! Forward!”