Snippet #2042530

Breathing hard beneath the weight of his pack, shrub and gorse whipping at his legs as he passed, John Black sprinted across the barren moorland towards relative safety of the distant tree line.

Behind him, black could hear the dull, relentless pounding of hooves as the French cavalrymen drew closer by the second.
Knowing he had no chance to make the wooden hillside before they caught him, Black turned at bay, brining up his Baker Rifle to the shoulder in one swift, practised movement and squinting down the barrel...

There were three of them, galloping across the open ground towards him, sabres glinting in the sun, doublets flapping in the breeze as they closed in for the kill...

The sharp retort of John Blacks Baker rang out over the moorland as the lead Cavalryman was picked clean out of his saddle by the Rifleman's expert aim, but the other two spurred their mounts on, sudden;y more confident now despite the loss of their comrade, knowing that their quarry had fired its shot...

Cursing, Black turned his rifle around and swung it like a club, straight into the foaming mouth of the first horse to reach him, the beast reared, pitching the rider from his saddle as John dropped and rolled to avoid the maddened animals flailing hooves...

As the Rifleman came back to his feet, he saw the thrown Frenchman laying sprawled in a ditch some feet away, his neck twisted at an odd angle as his mount pounded away across the moor...

Blacks eyes then sought out the remaining Cavalryman, who had ridden clean past him in the confusion and was even now wheeling his horse about for another charge...

Throwing his rifle aside, Black turned with a curse and sprinted to the fallen body laying in the ditch and muttered a prayer of thanks for his good fortune as he spied a heavy, flintlock pistol tucked into the dead man's cross belt.

Irreverently tugging the weapon free, Black cocked the weapon and took aim at the remaining Frenchman who even now was bearing down on him, murder in his eyes!

Praying his fortune would hold, Black squeezed the trigger and was rewarded with a loud retort and bright flash of powder!
The pistol ball struck the Cavalryman clean in the centre of the chest, pitching the Frog from his saddle in a shower of gore and landed him face down in the dust, dead.

Ignoring the fleeing horses, Black thrust the pistol down into his own belt and, pausing only to retrieve his rifle, set off towards the distant tree line at double time!

===============

Twenty minutes later saw Black burst from the surrounding forest and into a clearing where a ragged band of Redcoat survivors sat or slumped in varying degrees of fatigue, all looked filthy and exhausted... Perhaps all that now remained of the routed 50th foot...

"Bloody 'ell!"
Black frowned,
"Looks like not many of us made it out..."

He could see no officers amongst the gathered survivors, so instead Black moved off between the Redcoats, his eyes looking for any other of the familiar dark green jackets of his regiment...