[u][b]Tuckahoe, New Jersey[/b][/u]

The southern New Jersey landscape was green with summer, smelling of pollen and stale water. Rifle fire echoed five miles to the east, where several regiments of the United States Army were feinting at a bridge across the swampy estuary that divided the abandoned small towns of Tuckahoe and Corbin City. While that fight sparked, among the reeds and the trees, Lieutenant-General Mason Sumner led the bulk of his forces through the woods to the west, around the estuary and toward the shallow Tuckahoe river. 

To his surprise, there was little resistance here aside from the sniping fire of enemy skirmishers. 

The General rode on horseback in the middle of his force. He was a middle aged man, and though his hairline remained intact, what once was a strong jawline now drooped with his jowls. Part of Mason Sumner's success was that his brother, Caden Sumner, was President of the United States. Surrounded by his men, these columns of fresh troops in their undusted dark-blue uniforms and steel helmets, he sat up rigid straight, watching the woods casually, expecting to see turkeys present in more numbers than the enemy. 

"Observe this." he didn't look when he spoke to his nephew, the twenty five year old Ethan Sumner, a young man with mousy brown hair and the broad, bony facial features of the Sumner men. Soldiers in camouflage jogged by, passing the blue-clad soldiers in column. "Those men who just passed us? Their duty was assigned to them before hand. You know what that is?"

"They are skirmishers." the younger man said. "So I suspect they will skirmish."

"They will cross the river up here slowly and flush out any of the enemy that might be set up there. When you hear them open fire, that means the battle is joined on the western flank."

And so they listened. They still heard the gunfire to the east. Nearby was the sound of horses, men whispering to each other, and birds twittering in the trees. Sunlight broke through the leafy canopy above them and cast light like lasers on the crumbled road below.. Minutes went by and nothing happened. The far away guns were so consistent they blended in with the nature sounds, but no action was opening near by.  

It was some time before a scout arrived to relieve them of their tension.

"The river crossing is clear, sir." he reported to the General.

"Okay then." Mason said, mulling his suspicions over in his head. "We'll cross the motherfucker and see what happens."

Nothing happened. The crossing was slow because the ground along the river was swampy, near as they were to where the Tuckahoe river emptied into the embattled estuary.

It was when Mason's horse, struggling for footing on the muddy slope, came out of the reedy bottoms and into the woods, that gunfire erupted nearby. At first it was hard to discern a direction among so many trees. 

"Forward in line!" Mason shouted. The men fanned out into the woods in search of the battle. The moving was slow through the summer foliage. Mason joined up with the lead regiment, whose going was made easy by the ruins of the road. They went east, in the direction his skirmishers had been sent, assuming they would find the fight there.

They found it in a field, a mile long and a quarter mile across. Wild wheat grew among weeds here, suggesting it had been farmed within the last decade. In front of them was an old house that showed signs of recent maintenance, and where now a number of US skirmishers found cover and took shots at the shadowed forest ahead.

"They are there in force, sir." a Captain of the skirmishers reported. Around them, the blue-shirted and blue-helmeted infantry formed up and put themselves at the treeline. 

"Let's find out what New Jersey is about." Mason said. He rode forward, into the light, close enough to hear bullets smashing into the ground. He pulled his sword, waved it, and...

The infantry had been finding cover and taking aim when he rode up, and all at once they fired, sounding like the doors to hell bursting open. The gunfire continued on down the line, supplemented by the scattered pops of the men in camo. The enemy did not relent that first time. Bullets smashed into flesh now, and men fell into their own pooling blood. 

"Tell the men on the left to make a charge." the General commanded. A rider departed north, and the contest ahead continued unchanged.

The birds had stopped singing. All that could be heard was screaming and rifle fire. Mason looked to the north, in the direction where the field tapered to a knife's point. He couldn't see the enemy, though he knew they were there. The only way to judge their disposition was by the rate of fire poured into his own ranks. When the enemy slowed their pace, he recognized the attack was having its effect.

"Go over that field and take them!" he said with another wave of the sword. The infantry did, across the gnarled field of weeds and wheat, bodies dropping in small numbers as they went. Mason stayed behind and watched from the vantage point of the bullet-torn house. The line made it to the other side of the field and were swallowed up by the shadow of forest, leaving their wounded and dead behind.

Beside him, Ethan pulled out a pair of binoculars and looked toward the tree line on the other side of the field. "I can't see anything." he said.

"You cannot know everything in battle." Mason said. "That's how it is an art. You know how many battles in history where won because the grunts and low-ranking officers were good at their jobs?"

"How many?" Ethan snarked.

"Most." Mason replied. "Probably all." 

The sound in the forest ahead became that of scattered gunfire, individual screams, and the occasional shout of more than a dozen men in unison celebrating... something. Mason looked down at his nephew and noticed the young man had paled. Could he see a defeat that the old Sumner didn't? But the young man had tilted his binoculars lower than the forest, into the field.

This was the first time Ethan saw the effects of combat. He was no longer watching the battle, he was watching the blue-uniformed corpses in the field. Some were dead; bloodied, gutted, dismembered, beheaded. Most were alive, either bringing themselves back to the friendly treeline, walking or crawling, while the others lay mangled but alive in the field, crying for help, panicking at their wounds, praying or begging for mothers. Mason had seen worse in his youth. He'd been at the Battle of Short Pump when he was young, commanding a regiment, walking among fields stacked with dead. This place had only a scattered number of casualties, their blood splattered on wheat left standing despite the fact a gunfight had just occurred here.

"If this bothers you, Ethan..."

"No." the young man put down his binoculars, looking ashamed. "I'm fine. It's just... new."

Medics reached them and started to tend to the wounded when a running courier burst from the other side. He sprinted across the field, minding the bodies, living and dead, only so much as a runner avoids inanimate obstacles, and paused for a breath under the shade where General Sumner rested. "They are running, sir." he said. "We have their flank."

Mason didn't trade words. He rode forward at a trot with his nephew following behind.

The forest was a running battle. Mason took out his pistol and those with him followed suit, and they rode along the line trying to restore order before a gap in their line formed serious enough for the enemy to take advantage. Not that the enemy seemed capable of taking advantage of anything. Seeing their bodies here for the first time, he knew he wasn't fighting any professional force. They wore common enough clothing, with back-backs and utility belts to store whatever they might need. The only common marker was pale-yellow bands of cloth, usually worn around their arms, though some wrapped them around hats or used larger bands as sashes. This was a militia, not an army, and that they broke now meant they probably broke for good.

Lines were reformed as the fleeing enemy took pot-shots from behind trees. When they started forward, they did so like a rake, taking prisoner the scattered foe where they found them and pushing the rest through the forest. It was, in his mind, the cleanest Battle Mason Sumner had ever saw in his life.

There were places where the forest had over taken old buildings and broke them down, leaving debris near the faint trace of a road, and creating a place for the panicked enemy to lay ambushes. They never held long in the chase except for once. An old railroad ran through the forest intact, providing a barrier for rallying New Jerseyans to lay prone and send a stunning volley into the jogging American troops. The Americans spread out, found cover, or dropped, and the second line fight of the advance started up.

General Sumner wondered how far the chase had taken them. He and his staff rode south, staying behind the line as they went. Bullets whizzed and punched into trees, throwing splinters and dust into the air. They rode until they reached a point where they could see the estuary surrounded by a good wall of reeded marshland. They hadn't linked up with the force pushing against the bridge. 

"Colonel Estaban!" he shouted, recognizing the balding commander of the nearest regiment. "Get your men north!" 

"The fighting is hairy here, sir!" the Colonel noted.

"Fighting gets that way." Sumner replied. "Go north, effect a push, lets drive these Yawka motherfuckers into the river."

Blue uniforms pulled out of the fight and followed the inside track Sumner had traced in his ride. 

"I see what you are doing." Ethan said thoughtfully. "Do you think they are pulling back?"

"For their sake, they better be." Sumner said over the din of rifle fire.

The light from the setting sun was paled by the smoke. Trees were whittled to the yellow wood beneath the bark. From time to time an American would throw a grenade, and the sound would rock across the way, location marked by a jet of sod. But the New Jerseyans held on, withdrawing piecemeal. The battle didn't so much end as peter out, with the last remnants of the enemy chased from the field in the fading light. 

"You didn't drive them into the river." Ethan said.

"Plans don't survive contact with the enemy." Mason replied. Their attention turned to the arrival of more troops, the boys he'd sent to feint at the bridge, and their commander, Brigadier General Costen James. General James was a light-skinned black man with a face that was flat, almost feline. Though he was only a few years over forty, his hair was already beginning to grey, and it hung in dreadlocks.

"How was it down there?" Mason asked the younger General.

"Messy." Costen said, his voice deep and quiet. "Spilled more US Army blood than I would have liked, but we pushed them. They picked a good spot considering they were amateurs. But if this is all New Jersey has to offer, we'll be flickin' peanut shells in the Hudson river before the first snowfall."

"That's what I like to hear." Mason said. He then spurred his horse, took a flag from a nearby man, and rode forward waving it as a greeting to the last of the men marching up the road from the bridge. They cheered at the sight of him.

"Alright boys, write home to your girls" Mason shouted with a shit-eating grin on his face. "You were at the Battle of Tuckahoe, on the winning side!"

They cheered the louder for hearing him say it.