Free No Spot of Ground by Walter Jon Williams

brigades, and Fitz Lee’s facing Burnside with two on the right.”
    “I will inform General Lee.”
    “Tell him we are in direst extremity. Tell him that we cannot hold onto Hanover Junction unless substantially reinforced. Tell him my exact words.”
    “I will, sir.” Taylor nodded, saluted, mounted his horse, rode away. Poe stared after him and wondered if the message was going to get through it all, or if the legend of Poe’s alarmism and hysteria were going to filter it—— alter it—— make it as nothing.
    More fighting burst out to his front. Poe cupped his ears and swiveled his head, trying to discover direction. The war on his left seemed to have died away. Poe returned to his chair and sat heavily. His pistols were already weighing him down.
    Through messengers he discovered what had happened. On his third attack, Hancock had succeeded in getting a lodgment in the Confederate trenches between Gregg and Law. They had been ejected only by the hardest, by an attack at bayonet point. Evander Law had been killed in the fighting; his place had been taken by Colonel Bowles of the 4th Alabama. Bowles requested orders. Poe had no hope to give him.
    “Tell Colonel Bowles he must hold until relieved.”
    There was still firing to his front. His brigadiers in the woods were being pressed, but the Yankees as yet had made no concerted assault. Poe told them to hold on for the present. It would be another forty-five minutes, he calculated, before the Yanks could launch a coordinated assault.
    Comparative silence fell on the battlefield. Poe felt his nerves gnawing at him, the suspense spreading through him like poison. After forty-five minutes, he gave his brigades in the woods permission to fall back to their entrenchments.
    As he saw clumps of men in scarecrow gray emerging from the woods, he knew he could not tell them what he feared, that Robert Lee was going to destroy their division. Again.
    *
    After the Seven Days’ Battles, Lee had chosen to lose the paperwork of Poe’s impending court-martial.
    Poe, his brigade lost, his duel unfought, was assigned to help construct the military defenses of Wilmington.
    Later, Poe would be proven right about Harvey Hill. Lee eventually shuffled him west to Bragg’s army, but Bragg couldn’t get along with him either and soon Hill found himself unemployed.
    Poe took small comfort in Hill’s peregrinations as he languished on the Carolina coast while Lee’s army thrashed one Yankee commander after another. He wrote long letters to any officials likely to get him meaningful employment, and short, petulant articles for Confederate newspapers: Why wasn’t the South building submarine rams? Why did they not take advantage, like the North, of observation from balloons? Why not unite the forces of Bragg and Johnston, make a dash for the Ohio, and reclaim Kentucky?
    There were also, in Wilmington, women. Widows, many of them, or wives whose men were at war.
    Their very existence unstrung his nerves, made him frantic; he wrote them tempestuous letters and demanded their love in terms alternately peremptory and desperate. Sometimes, possibly because it seemed to mean so much to him, they surrendered. None of them seemed to mind that he snuffed all the candles, drew all the drapes. He told them he was concerned for their reputation, but he wanted darkness for his own purposes.
    He was remaining faithful to Virginia.
    Perhaps the letter-writing campaign did some good; perhaps it was just the constant attrition of experienced officers that mandated his reemployment. His hopes, at any rate, were justified. A brigade was free under George Pickett, and furthermore it was a lucky brigade, one that all three Confederate corps commanders had led at one time or another. Perhaps, Poe thought, that was an omen.
    Poe was exultant. Lee was going north after whipping Hooker at Chancellorsville. Poe thought again of liberating Maryland, of riding on his thoroughbred charger to Shepherd’s Rest,