Chapter 25: Chapter 20.5: From the Diary of a Confederate Sharpshooter

 

 

Excerpt from a journal in Mary’s collection, printed for sale:

 

Journal entry #85 from the journal of Edwin Cooper, Court Mage of the Kingdom of Appelia. Frmrly Sgt. and Sharpshooter in the Army of Northern Virginia.

 

 

              At times like these I really have to wonder how I got to the point I am in life. The king, and he’s a right impressive fellow, looks up to me with awe at times, though quite frankly I have no idea what I’m doing myself most times. Somehow it all works out, though with a bit more flash and thunder than I ever would have reckoned I could make without a firelock or powder previously. I suppose the Good Lord has a plan for everyone, and although He might not approve of the conjuring and the like I’m doing, he must of gave me the ability to do so for a purpose.

 

              Still, these flashy clothes and baubles I’m wearing don’t quite fit my honest background. The impressive stone castles and such I currently live in feel a far cry from the humble cabin my parents raised me in, out in the western part of old Virginia. All the bowing and scrapping towards me might feel nice to stuck up city folk up north, or those rich types living on plantations with all their slaves and servants dealing with their every whim. But I come from honest, hard-working stock. Abasing yourself like that towards your fellow man just seems wrong, though I could understand somewhat wanting to do so towards someone like General Lee.

 

              After five years of this life, you’d think I’d be used to it, but I suppose my upbringing was just too honest for all this finery and the such to get to me. My family grew up in a hard land. Barrel-makers by trade, we had decided to settle the wilder mountain parts of the state. Although there was some market for are wares, more often than not we still needed to farm and hunt for our table. Hunting more often than farming, as the soil was terribly rocky and hard to plant. I learned right quick not to miss growing up, as the cost of powder and shot tended to add up quickly.

 

              Didn’t think much of it at the time, but I always seemed to be able to nose-out where game might be hiding. My family usually left the hunting to me, so they could focus more on our trade, and we tended to have enough meat that we could afford to sell off a lot of the game I shot to our neighbors. I do hope they all are doing well. Ma was rather afraid when I decided to go off to fight. But a man has a duty to his state, just as he has a duty to God, and I’ll be damned if I was going to sit back and let those Northern invaders run willy-nilly over my homeland.

 

              I took well to the military life too, surprising for one so used to the solitude of the woods. My time hunting for the table and for trade made me a rather decent shot, and I was picked as a sharpshooter. Not only that, but they issued me a Whitworth rifle, of all things. Now that piece was a work of absolute beauty.

 

              Said to be the most accurate rifle ever created, designed by an English fellow. They cost the Confederate government almost its weight in gold, and worth every last speck of it. It can put a ball through a man at a thousand, maybe two thousand yards, so they say. Well, it’s not exactly a ball, more of a weirdly shaped hexagonal thing, cast and molded to fit perfectly into the bore. Much different than my old flintlock I used back home, which had a patched ball rammed down the barrel and was only accurate to about two to three hundred yards. Both are miles better than the smoothbores they used back during the Revolutionary war, but can you imagine, a rifle that can be used accurately at a thousand yards?

 

              You can barely even see a man out that far away even with the telescopic sight on it, but in theory you can hit him if he’s cooperative or stupid enough to stand still on a battlefield. Most aren’t, but most are also a bit closer than a thousand yards. I was already too close for comfort on the day when I ended up here. It happened in Pennsylvania of all places, and a town at the convergence of several crossroads. It didn’t exactly sit right with me that we were heading north of the Mason-Dixon, but those Yankees invaded us first, and I figure General Lee did have a plan with it all.  Some folks did turn back, since most of use signed up to defend our homelands, not invade the homelands of other people. I believe they even allowed it. But I kept right on with our Army, since I trusted our General.

 

              But of all things, we ended up fighting at this small town. Gettysburg, I think it was called. Many of the men’s boots were worn out completely, with more of the army going barefoot than you’d ever have expected at the beginning of the war. So we went to requisition some shoes that we had heard were in the town, and a line of dismounted cavalry was waiting for us, all lined up with fancy breechloaders. So a simple errand for footwear turned into a full-on battle, one that felt as intense as Second Manassas or Sharpsburg.

 

              On the second day of the battle I found myself holed up in a boulder field, a place the locals called Devil’s Den. Mighty ominous place to be in a fight, though I’d never have expected what was to happen. My job at that time was to silence the enemy artillery crews and infantry that had decided to set up on top of a round hill up in front of me. Now, usually we sharpshooters are courteous enough to give them a warning by sending a ball at each of the steel-bound wheels of the cannons carriage, to “ring the battery” if you will to let the artillerymen know that trying to load the gun would end with their demise. I don’t much like having to kill folk, and in a few cases this is enough to show the Yankees the error of their ways.

 

              In this case however the blue-bellies were determined to fight, and so I went to work. I’ll be damned if it wasn’t a productive day of work at that. I even got a general, one that was foolish enough to let his bright shiny epaulets be seen. Of course they gave as good as they got, and with much bigger guns than my Whitworth. Several other sharpshooters with me in the rocks fell, not even from shrapnel but merely from the pressure from the blasts.

You are reading story In the House of a Witch at novel35.com

 

              I happened to spy one of the battery on the hill turn towards my spot as if they had figured my location. I got one of the men turning the cannon, but it wasn’t enough to dissuade the crew of the gun. I saw the jerk of a lanyard, and knowing there was no time left to flee I prayed with all my heart that God deliver me to safety.

 

              Then, with a flash, the din of battle was replaced with birdsong. I looked around. The rock formation looked the same, but no shells were exploding amongst them as had been previously. Looking up at the hill, it looked…different somehow. As if the flows of time had a slightly different effect on the weathering of the hill than before. The biggest difference with the hill was the lack of enemy soldiers on top of it. It was as if they had disappeared.

 

              I would assume I had died, but I felt as alive as I had previously, and it might not be bright to make massive assumptions of the sort. I didn’t see any of the pearly gates or Saints with logbooks I had been told to expect upon death, and the rock and soil beneath my feet had the same feel it had always had. The air smelled just as real as it had before the shift. More so, even. This air did not have the heavy sulfurous smoke that hung over the fields and boulders like a plague. None of the sharp crack of rifles, the whining of minie balls flying through the air. The boom of cannon was absent, and the concussion of case shot going off and whirring shrapnel was not to be found.

 

              You could call this heaven in comparison to the hell I had been in, but it wasn’t any sort of heaven I had heard of, and the hot sweat of the July day still clung to my body. My knapsack was still digging into my shoulders, and the weight of my rifle could be felt in my hands as I stared blankly over the peaceful surroundings. It was almost as if I had been stolen away from the field. Tales my parents had told me, of the old country and the fairy that haunted the woods and meadows there came to mind. People would often be stolen away, subject to the whims of the Fair Folk. But no dancing pixies were in sight, although in my current position as court mage I now know that those bastards do have a tendency to kidnap people, including children who they replace with one of their own.

 

              Fairy tales at the time though seemed almost fantastical. My time in the woods had taught me there is more out there than the mundane, especially in the wilds where even the Indians were said to fear to tread. And all sorts of big-names in the cities were going on about seances and spiritualism. But I had not yet gotten to know the full depths of the world outside the purely natural that they teach in schools.

 

              I didn’t see Puck or Oberon waiting to laugh at their latest prank, however, so I figured I should take stock of my supplies with the assumption that I would have no access to the baggage trains following our army. But first came reloading my rifle. The Whitworth rifle is a marvel of engineering, but the tight-fitting bullets and precise powder measures make it time consuming to load. Powder, lubricated felt wad, the bullet itself, and another lubed wad on top of that. All to ensure the rifle was able to perform accurately. It was a bitch to load but it could hit a man at a distance where an Enfield or Springfield rifle couldn’t hit an elephant at.

 

              Then I had my uniform. Butternut gray, with a sergeant’s stripes on the shoulders and a badge on my cuff showing my status as one of the best marksmen in the army, allowing me free range to pick my spot for my work rather than being forced into working parties or fixed line like the regulars. My forage cap had long since worn out, and I had replaced it with a fine felt slouch cap, all the better to shield my eyes and neck from the sun. And I was fortunate enough to have a decent pair of boots, a Godsend in an army so desperate for supplies. We hadn’t even had real coffee in over a year, forced to roast dandelion roots to create an ersatz imitation of the drink.

 

              As for food I had a few packets of hard-tack, so hard that you’d likely as not break your teeth before the biscuit trying to eat it as-is. Your best bet was to soak it in hot water and use it to thicken your other meal, fatty salt pork. The past few days had been a bit fatter, walking through Pennsylvania Dutch apple orchards, and I still have a few of the delicious fruits stuck in my pack. Besides my sleeping roll, I’m always paranoid at being caught out without proper gear, I had my mess tin and a few other odds and ends for hygiene and the like, or as near enough as I could get to it in the field.

 

              At my hip was a Bowie knife, a fine coffin handled one of Curly Maple, and a Remington revolver I got off a dead union officer with its accoutrements. It was extra weight I normally would not want, but there was a bounty out on sharpshooters so it paid to be safe. I reached into my pocket, filled my pipe, and gathered my thoughts while puffing at it, looking over the rest of my knapsack’s contents. A few candles, writing implements, stationary, tinderbox, whetstone, and a flute made up the rest of my kit.

 

              Seeing no sign of anyone, I figured my best bet would be to head north, towards the direction of the town. At the time, I still believed I could link up with the army, or at least find signs of friendly Southern troops. But that was clearly not in God’s plan for me.

 

Oh, the King is calling for me, something about meeting with a representative of one of the fae courts. I’ll have to finish writing this entry later.