A/N: Almost done, guys…. Oh, there may be an error on my part in here. In the movie, was it Greene they had leading "Cowpens" (wherein Ben Martin skewers many people/animals/inanimate objects in consummation of manly grief)? I have not watched the movie in ages, but I remember Ben talking to Nathaniel Greene the night before and coming up with some strategery (*snickers*). Ah, well, I gotta watch the movie for AP History homework anyway, so I'll find out eventually. Some of you might get mad at me for what I do to Ben in the end, but if you look at how the movie flows, it works!

It was morning, but it only seemed a couple minutes ago that Constance had forced her brother into bed at gunpoint. She smiled, wiping the grogginess from her eyes. He had been right. It only was a blank, but it had scared him witless. The woman stretched and yawned, the gun flopping down against her wrist with her light grip. She heard the soft sounds of dozing and turned to her brother.

"Will, are you feeling any--"

The cot was of course empty.

"Bastard!" Her face grew red and hot in rage. For his sake, he had better only be at his desk! Constance paused and listened. There was little outside noise and the sound of sleeping over in her brother's office. Must be pretty early then.

She wrapped a blanket around her shoulders, pulling it close against the nippy October morning.

"William, you would do well to--" Another surprise. It was not William asleep in the chair.

"Tobias Fife, what on Earth are you doing here!"

The lieutenant came to with a squeal and a start, falling out of the chair. "Yaw!" he yelped when he hit his head against a chair leg. He struggled up to his feet and gripped the corner of the desk to keep upright.

"Yes, Miss Tavington?" he answered with a silly grin.

"Why are you here?"

Fife's face bunched up with a yawn. "Because your brother told me to. He came and got me 'round abouts two or three in the morning, I'd guess. That's all."

She was furious, but at whom, she was not sure. So William had betrayed her and put the poor lieutenant in the middle of it all. "No, that's not all! Where is my brother!"

He shrugged. "Here, there, likely at the--" yawn "--other place…'scuse me."

"I'm not fooling around, Tobias Fife. Where is William?"

"He said something about Nathaniel Greene and the Ghost. Everyone left maybe an hour or so after he came and got me. I asked why I was being left behind and he merely told me to shut up and follow orders. Your brother was not in the most splendorous of moods."

"When is he?" Constance attacked her fingernails with a possessed vigor, deep in thought. Fife stared at her in an adoring, sleepy reverie. After awhile, she snorted as she reached a conclusion. "Do you want some coffee? It's going to be a long day."

Constance and Fife were galloping hard through the trees. They had had their coffee, and Constance had struggled to dress. Tobias had aided her with buttons and cross belts with blushing devotion. He had even tacked up their horses. Constance lent him Roxelana, as she was nimble after the lieutenant futilely protested that Constance would need the more manageable horse. She had muttered something about Patrick Ferguson making due with one arm and directed Fife to saddle her brother's little steel grey mare Artemis.

"She's just as light on her feet," Constance grumbled as she swung herself up into the saddle. Her broken arm ached in the cold, but the woman ignored it and heeled into her mount.

Neither of them spoke during the ride. Constance was listening intently to the sounds of artillery in the distance to locate the battle. She dug her spurs deeper into Artemis when the blasts where clearly audible. The fight was just through the trees and down the hill…. Branches whipped against their bodies and stung at their faces. The horses were sweating and their chests smeared with their foamy breath. Fife rode on Constance's left flank, ready to try and catch her if she fell. He saw that she was hurting as tree limbs smacked against the broken arm she kept clenched to her chest.

"There!" she bellowed, reining in and pointing. She could see the banners of General Cornwallis, and the back of the Lord General and his adjutants. Tobias squinted into the crystalline morning and spotted the cavalry waiting anxiously.

"They're just about to get started," he said. The lieutenant fixed his eyes on Constance. "Do you really want to do this?"

She nodded, not having entirely heard what he said. He took a deep breath in frustration. It was hard to reason with Tavingtons.

"Constance, listen to me please."

Constance wheeled Artemis around to face him. She nudged up her fur-crested helm as it had slipped down during their frantic ride. "What?" she said with impatience.

"Your brother--he betrayed you. He duped you so he could go out like a hero. Do you really want to charge in there with the legion just to die with him--for him--after he did that to you?"

"He is my brother." Her voice was tiny and choked. Fife needed to crane forward in the saddle to hear her. Their eyes met and Tobias saw that her mind was unswervingly made up. His lip quivered and he clenched his reins tight. He was incredibly frightened now, wondering why he was willing to follow this woman to possible death for a man who had always been particularly acerbic to both of them.

"Then I will stay by your side until the end--" he swallowed a lump in his throat as he began to turn for toward the other members of horse. "And until then, I will pray there is no end."

There was no response from her, and they cantered back into the trees. They had little trouble melting into the back of the clustered group of dragoons. Everyone was too wound up to pay heed to the late arrivals. At the front was Will, faking health admirably well. He sat straight backed, peering through his spyglass at the action below. The militia had just opened fire. Captain Wilkins, who waited beside the colonel, cringed with the beginning round.

Fife made a strange noise beside Constance. She glanced over and saw him shaking, tears sliding down his face as he wrestled to keep a sob down in his throat. He pulled out his handkerchief and scrubbed his face free of tears only to have them wind their way back down his cheeks.

"Toby," Constance said softly, reaching over and squeezing his hand. "What's wrong, Toby?"

He shook his head, sniffling and sitting up straight now. "Nothing. I'm all right now. I'm just a bit stunned, is all. I have never been in a battle before. Skirmishes, yes, but not anything this--I was perfectly content to sit in your brother's chair all day."

"You never had to come with me," she returned with a wan smile. "I won't think less of you if you want to go back. Go back, you won't get in trouble that way. You can just say I knocked you unconscious and escaped. Will knows I'm a bit daft."

"Yeah, I know, but I wasn't going to just let you ride off all by yourself. You are just as whole as your brother is. It would have been a heartless thing to let a woman with a broken arm take my place in a fight."

"That's good of you to say, Toby. "

Much more was left to be said, but they did not have the opportunity. William had started the charge early. Dragoons galloped down the hill with their sabres in a deadly cascade. Constance glanced over at Fife before falling in with the others. Her mind was now focused on her brother. She needed to follow him as closely as possible.

Tailing the colonel was more difficult than she had expected, as Tavington was doing his own bit of tracking. The Ghost was his quarry, and he would find the rebel, come Hell or high water. Constance was the least of Will's concerns. She's likely sipping rum punches with Fife, swapping jokes and critiques. He did not know she was a few yards behind him, reins in her bad hand while she galloped and sliced like a demented Valkyrie.

There he is! Constance sighted her brother and loped toward him as she hacked intermittently at the rebels who were now starting to fall back. Her mind was spinning. The action around her made her feel like an observer in the midst of a fatal dervish. Blinking hard to clear her thoughts, she called to her brother. Her voice was lost in the melee. William was searching, oblivious to her presence. She saw his form inflate as he drew in a deep breath--prey sighted.

He put distance between them, switching at his horse's flanks with his sabre blade. Constance screamed and spurred Artemis. Her brother was charging toward the Ghost. The rebel colonel wielded an American banner like a spear. He dropped down to brace himself and impaled Will's horse with the flag. Tavington went flying when his horse stumbled and fell heavily.

The dragoon was disoriented for a moment as he returned to his feet. He saw his poor horse, his favorite, writhing and squealing in its death throes. Tavington shot the beast out of pity and to silence the horrendous noise it made over the din of battling men. His attentions flicked to the grubby man barreling toward him, and for a moment, he watched in wonder, unsure if he was really there.

Constance lost sight of her brother now that he was on the ground. She was further distracted by a man with a bayonet trying to unseat her. With a haphazard stroke, Constance forced him to drop the weapon as she took his hand off at the wrist. The woman moved on, trying to find her brother. She was hesitant to dismount once she spotted him, not wanting to lose a good horse to some scavenging bumpkin. However, in the end, she slid down from the saddle to fight her way to him. She threw off her helmet to allow better sight and clamped her broken arm across her body. Fear poured through her, and she had a hard time accepting that she had survived yet so far.

Now that she was on the ground, fighting took on a more personal, more heart wrenching form. Constance found herself staring at those she needed to kill in the eye and was forced to discover that they were surprisingly human. There was no personal animosity, only hatred for a misguided man across the ocean, in their faces. If she were one who could break a promise, she would have thrown down her sword and run away into the woods. But William needed her.

One of her fellow horsemen was struggling with a burly colonist. The dragoon's legs were buckling as the rebel used all his strength to press him down under a crossed sword and musket. It was an officer, so naturally Constance was sort of obliged to help. She swung her arm wildly and caught the man across the stomach and around to his side. The rebel came at her now despite the massive injury. He batted the sabre from her grip and was coming down on her with the bayonet when the rescued officer plunged his sabre into the man's back.

Wilkins yanked the blade from the dying man and grabbed Constance's wrist to pull her shoulder to him in a comeradic embrace. "I 'preciate it."

Constance nodded--her red hair had fallen loose some time ago and caught the captain's eyes. He was dumbfounded, gaping and lowering in a bow. Constance rolled her eyes as she shot a man coming at Wilkins' exposed back.

"Watch it all right, you twit? I'm not saving you again." She shoved him aside and jogged on in search of her brother. She found him and halted. She would not steal the prize of the Ghost's head from Will, as much as she would like to.

Tavington and the Ghost had almost come to terms--Benjamin Martin was on his knees, reeling with his wounds as Will wound up to behead him. The Ghost swayed his head below the strike, then turned to spear his foe with a bayoneted musket. Martin rose and sneered into the agonized eyes of the dragoon.

"My sons were better men," he spat, driving yet another bayonet into Will.

Constance could not cry out. Only her legs would operate. She ran to meet the rebel colonel. Martin was distracted again and entirely unaware of his surroundings. Constance followed his path of sight and saw Cornwallis riding away with his staff. She took up a forgotten musket. The weapon's bayonet was lost somewhere, and she had no ammunition, depriving her a chance of killing the Ghost outright. Screaming in excruciating pain, she swung the butt of the musket with every bit of her strength to connect with the back of the Ghost's skull. She dropped the gun then and tucked her bad arm up again and began to sob.

She had failed.

She knew she had not killed the Ghost. Aye, she had rendered him quite unconscious for the time being and a while afterward, but at most she had done a little mental damage. She left Fife behind to fight on his own when he was much more frightened than she was. And then there was Will. Her favorite brother, slumped over a bayonet in his belly. Weeping bitterly, she picked her way over to her brother. There was little fear of being attacked, as all the colonists were too busy giving chase to the retreating British to worry about a whimpering woman.

"Oh, Bunny," she cried, propping him against her shoulder so she could gently remove the bayonet. Constance lay him down in the trampled and bloody grass. William groaned, and she was startled. Constance pulled off her coat and wadded it up beneath his head. "Are you comfortable?"

He did not answer, but was singing something in a cracked mumble:

"Confutatis maledictis,

flammis acribus addictis,

voca me cum benedictus.

Oro supplex et acclinis,

cor contritum quasi sinis,

gere curam mei finis."*

Constance bit her lip as her brother was fumbling through his prayer. She kneeled beside him and stroked his hair. "You do not need to be afraid, Will."

He wheezed and nodded. "Yes, I do." His voice was nothing more than a raspy whisper.

"Enough of that. You'll be just fine, Bunny."

"Kitty, I am dying. That's not…fine." He touched her hand. "If I'll be just fine, why are you crying?"

"'Cause, uh, I just am. See, I got hurt too--I can cry." She pointed to a deep scratch across her cheek courtesy of a Continental sergeant.

Will made something of a smile at her attempt to brush off her painful emotions. "You should get that looked at. It's deep."

"I'll be okay."

He dabbed at her wound with his sleeve. "You should have stayed home, Kitty. I did not want you to see any of this. Was Fife asleep?"

"No--he helped me. I did not ask him to, but he did." She looked up to scan the field--it was unsettlingly empty but for the dead and horribly wounded. "And I left him behind in the charge. I shouldn't have--he was afraid."

"He is all right, I promise you. He's got too much to stay alive for. You, for instance."

Constance snorted. "I abandoned him, and that was wrong. I'm not going to leave you, though, to go look for him. I wish I did not have to say that, but--"

"Say what?"

"Aye, what are we saying, eh?" Fife--insultingly cheery--strolled up leading Roxelana. "I say it's about time for us to leave the field before we are snapped up as prisoners. What think you?"

"Could you be any more insensitive and irrational!" Constance howled. "Look, you git!" She indicated her brother.

"Grand to see you too, lovey! Insensitive? You're the one who barreled off without me and left me feeling like an ass after I said I would not leave your side! I worry my fool head off, I even keep your horse alive, I rejoice to find out you're alive, and what a greeting I get!" He drew himself upright and puffed out his chest like an irate bantam. "All this after playing dead to keep from being captured. Ungrateful wench!"

She scowled and threw a rock at him before refocusing on her brother. The woman kissed his forehead and was about to say something when Lieutenant Fife stooped down. He hauled Tavington up against his chest and heaved him up into the saddle.

"'Us', being plural and all, Miss Rational, would encompass we--again plural--three. So, let US get out of here!" He mounted, and reached down for Constance. Roxelana skittered under the weight of three riders as Fife gave the mare a nudge with his heels. They galloped away across the field toward a main road.

"Where in Hell are you taking us, Tobias Fife!" Constance growled.

"I know a surgeon around here. We should be able to get there before others start to pour in. He's a devout Loyalist, so don't worry about him hacking off any limbs for the fun of it."

Constance muttered something about the lieutenant being best friends with every yokel within four colonies and held on to his waist. He was irritating, but deep down, she was glad to see him.

Constance searched out the new encampment a few days later in hope of collecting some of her brother's and her own personal effects. A few books while Tavington recovered would be comforting and appreciated. Will had been well mangled, but this surgeon friend of Fife's was competent and assured her that all would be well.

The doctors in camp were working over time still, tending to the tougher cases and disposing of the dead. As she wandered around looking for baggage, she passed a hospital tent with a fair pile of limbs outside. Those eager young surgeons were getting their fill of amputations for sure. Constance shuddered and hurried by the horrific sight.

It was likely that Captain Wilkins would know the most about her brother's possessions, provided that he had survived. She inquired a dragoon as to his whereabouts.

"He's hiding," the horseman answered with a wry smile.

"Hiding?"

"Yeah, listen."

An ear-piercing squalling noise rolled through the air. Constance winced. "Oh. Her."

The dragoon nodded and moved on.

Mrs. Wilkins was bawling in anguish. She could not find her beloved husband. She wailed his name, choking on each extension of his name: "Ja-aaaaaa-aaaaa-aaaaaaaaaa-aaa-aaaaamesssssssssssssss!" Mrs. Wilkins fell to her knees and melted into an unflattering mess of tears. Constance watched the miserable display. As annoying as it was, this woman really did love her husband.

Constance took pity on the poor woman and hoped she would quiet down if offered some sympathy. "Now, now, Mrs. Wilkins. I'm sure you'll find your husband. Everything will be just fine."

Mrs. Wilkins clung to her, sobbing all over Constance. "Oh-oh-oh, Mizz Tavington, have ye seen mah huzbind? Awwww, Ja-aaaaaaaaaaaaa-aaaa-aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaamessss!"

"I'm sorry, but I haven't, madam. He'll turn up. I promise. Would you like me to help you look for him?"

"Bless ye, Mizz Tavington! Mah huzbind's bin so nasty t' ye, and yer nawt bu' a lil' angel t' meeeeeeeeee!" Mrs. Wilkins took to a new fit of tears, and Constance had to drag the hefty woman to try and accomplish her volunteered task.

Wiping her eyes with a grungy handkerchief, the woman squealed in a tone unnatural to most human beings. She broke away from Constance and ran toward a tent where two men were bearing a man on a stretcher. They slid the man onto the ground and covered him in a sheet. Mrs. Wilkins left in her wake a sharp squeal and a cluster of frightened soldiers.

"Oh, Ja-aaaaaaaaaaaaaames! Nooooooooooo!" She flung herself dutifully onto the corpse and soaked the sheet with her tears. Mrs. Wilkins wailed and pounded on her husband's chest with hammy fists. A series of "whumpf"s and gasps came from under the sheet.

Constance shuffled up, curious, since the dragoon she had spoken to implied that the captain was still alive.

Mrs. Wilkins snapped back the sheet to kiss her departed husband. Captain Wilkins shrieked, despite having the wind knocked out of him, and yanked the cover back down. His wife sat back, startled and confused. Her face then puckered up in rage as she pulled the sheet down again. Several facial muscles began to spasm as her face contorted into the dreaded look.

"MADAM, I ASSURE YOU I AM THOROUGHLY DEAD!" Wilkins screeched, pulling the sheet over his face again. "THERE'S NUTHIN' TO SEE HERE!"

Constance's eyes bugged as she held her hand over her mouth. The laughter was beginning to sting inside.

"Ohhhhhh, ye're dead a'righ'! Leavin' me t' worry an' bawl like sum madwommin an' all, an' leavin' the chil'ren wi' no Papa. Fakin' yer own death…ohhhhhhhh, Jimmy Wilkins, yer gunna wish ye weren' fakin'! Now geddupfromunnertha'sheet!"

"Yes, angel-sweets. I ain't dead no more, love. See?" Wilkins chuckled nervously as he sat. His wife smacked him across the back of the head with a pudgy hand before grabbing him by the ear.

Constance never knew laughter could hurt so much, but she promptly learned. She laughed and laughed, overjoyed that she did not need to feel guilty for laughing when life was so good. Previous situations had been rough, but now everything was on the upswing. She laughed until she felt like retching and her eyes were dry and burning from lack of tears. Constance laughed, for it was the sweet sound of success.

Next chapter: Fife pulls a Hamlet and isn't killed. Will's slow recovery,

and the meeting with his replacement.

* Confutatis maledictis, etc., is part of a Requiem Mass. In English:

When the damned are cast away

And consigned into the searing flames,

Call me to be with the blessed.

Bowed down in supplication I beg you,

My heart as though ground to ashes,

Help me in my last hour.

The title--more death music! Yay! Actually, I picked this because I just finished reading A Devil of a Whipping by Lawrence Babits. It's about the REAL battle of Cowpens, and I seriously almost started bawling. (Unrelated tangent: Nor can I explain the fact that I nearly burst into tears after reading The Red Knight of Germany by Floyd Gibbons, for that matter. Poor, poor Manfred. *sniffle*) I thought this a suitable title because one of Babits' reasons for writing the book was so the participants of Cowpens would be remembered. Yeah, I got sentimental. For once. Anyhow, Requiem aeternam, etc.:

Grant them rest, O Lord,

And let perpetual light shine upon them.