"Walter Jon Williams - No Spot of Ground" - читать интересную книгу автора (Williams Walter John)

He fulfilled another ambition: he started a literary magazine, the Southern Gentleman, with its offices in
Baltimore. For it he wrote essays, criticism, occasional stories, once or twice a poem.

Only once or twice.

Somehow, he discovered, the poetry had fled his soul.

And he began to feel, to his growing horror, that his loss of poetry was nothing but a just punishment.
True poetry, he knew, could not reside in the breast of a man as faithless as he.

****

The Starker house on its small eminence stood hard-edged and black against a background of shifting
mist, like an isolated tor rising above the clouds. It was a little after four. The sun had not yet risen, but
already the eastern horizon was beginning to turn gray. The ravens, coming awake, crackled and
muttered to one another as they shook dew from their feathers.

Poe leaned on his stick before a half-circle of his brigadiers and their mingled staffs. Hugin and Munin
sat on their perch behind him. Poe was in his uniform of somber gray, a new paper collar, a black cravat,
the black doeskin gloves. Over his shoulders he wore a red-lined black cloak with a high collar, an old
gift from Jeb Stuart who had said it made him look like a proper raven.

Most of his life Poe had dressed all in black. The uniform was a concession to his new profession, but
for sake of consistency with his earlier mode of dress he had chosen the darkest possible gray fabric, so
dark it was almost blue.

There was the sound of galloping; riders rose out of the mist. Poe recognized the man in the lead;
Fitzhugh Lee, Robert Lee's nephew and the commander of the cavalry division on his right. He was a
short man, about Poe's height, a bandy-legged cavalryman with a huge spade-shaped beard and bright,
twinkling eyes. Poe was surprised to see him--he had asked only that Lee send him a staff officer.

He and Poe exchanged salutes. "Decided to come myself, General." He dropped from his horse. "Your
messenger made it seem mighty important."


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 No Spot of Ground

"I thank you, sir." Fitz Lee, Poe realized, outranked him. He could take command here if he so desired.

He would not dare, Poe thought. A cold anger burned through him for a moment before he recollected
that Fitz Lee had as yet done nothing to make him angry.

Still, Poe was uneasy. He could be superseded so easily.

"I think the Yankees are moving across my front," he said. He straightened his stiff leg, felt a twinge of
pain. "I think Grant is moving to his left again."

The cavalryman considered this. "If he wants Richmond," he said, "he'll go to his right. The distance is