Friday (Historical) Fiction: Freeman's Fight -The Battle of Kings Mountain

I wrote this this piece of historical fiction for Armchair General magazine. You can read the original short story/article, plus an historical recounting of the battle, here. They graciously allowed me to repurpose it here.  

Freeman's Fight -The Battle of Kings Mountain

By Mark H. Walker

“Damn them.”

Darius Freeman cursed as a Tory musket ball smacked the maple beside him. Nearby, a pair of Patriots fired their long rifles, the guns’ crack lost amid the din of battle. The rifles’ smoke mixed with a hundred others on the slope, the acrid air tasting like copper on the back of his throat, the gauzy grey discharge clouds obscuring the blue autumn sky.

“Our Lord may well do that,” shouted his long-time friend Jethro Benis, “but first we must send them to him.”

As if in reply, Tory muskets thundered above them, their .75 caliber balls whipping through the branches over the men like angry hornets, showering them with cut twigs, and severed leaves.

Darius and Jethro ducked, pulling their heads down between hunched shoulders. Both were tall, rawboned men, clothed in doeskin, with moccasins covering their feet, long hunting knives belted at the waist. Each wore their hair long, tied back with leather cord. Wild beards grew from their cheeks and chin. They were mountain men, frontiersmen, from the west side of the Appalachians. Darius farmed corn and bean bushes outside the small village of Sycamore Shoals, along the bank of the Watauga River. Jethro trapped in the mountains to the east. They had mustered with hundreds more at the Shoals when asked by Isaac Shelby and John Sevier. The British had trounced Horatio Gates army at Camden, and when Lord Charles Cornwallis sent British Major Patrick Ferguson to clear out the Patriots from the remainder of the Carolinas, Darius, Jethro, and all the others mustered to protect their land, to protect their families, and to put paid to Ferguson and his army of Tory militia and Provincials. 

Continue reading Freeman's Fight now at Amazon.com. Click here. 

Mark H. Walker is the author of Desert Moon, an exciting mecha, military scifi novel with a twist, World at War: Revelation, a creepy, military action, with a love story, alternate history, World War Three novel thing, and numerous short stories. They are all available from Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing right here. Give them a try. What the hell? 

Wait. A. Minute. Amazon hasn't added Desert Moon to my author page, so you'll need to click the Desert Moon link above, or right here.