Now that was not the case.
After she handed bandages to Susana, Nena shielded her eyes from the sun with a hand, searching for faces she knew through the smoky haze. Mosquitoes hummed at her ears; she swatted them away. She caught sight of Papá and Don Severo, their horses prancing with anticipation and fear. In the line in front of Papá, she glimpsed a vaquero on a black mare. The white star on the horse’s forehead—curved and perfect as a waning crescent moon—told her exactly who the vaquero was. The next moment, he was gone. Lost in the sea of vaquero hats and horses tossing their heads.
Worry for him stirred in her chest. The vaqueros would ride before the rancheros and the generals; the first to face the gaping maws of black cannons and Yanqui bayonets were not the landowners. There was a hierarchy on the battlefield just as there was on the rancho. It meant there was less of a risk of Papá being wounded, and for that, she should be grateful.
She wasn’t.
The moment the black mare was lost in the crowd and the squadron joined the greater mass of the Mexican cavalry, a shard of fear buried itself in her chest.
The men raised their guns and voices, shouting viva México. All the horses of the squadron sprang into a canter, then lengthened their strides, whinnying and tossing heads. Formation remained tight as they drove forward into the smoke from the cannons.
Nena could feel the earth shake with hoofbeats as the squadron rode into battle. As they charged down the plain, some of the cavalry riders in the front broke into a gallop, surging forward, sabers raised. Vaqueros and rancheros behind them spilled forward at full gallop, guns at the ready. As soon as it hit the fray, the formation was cleaved in two; screams split the air as horses barreled over Yanqui soldiers and were swallowed by the chaos of the battlefield.
Clouds of smoke obscured the distance between them and the Yanqui line.
They were gone.
How many of them would return?
“Magdalena.” Susana called Nena’s attention harshly back to earth.
Susana crouched at a fallen soldier’s side.
“I need you to tie a tourniquet around his leg,” the older woman barked. “Hurry.”
Behind Susana was another man. He wore the blue uniform of the Mexican infantry, but it was soiled with mud and a dark, wet patch over his stomach. The edges of his aura wavered, weak and dark. A foul smell crept up Nena’s nostrils—the stench of a soiling of a different kind. Even if she hadn’t seen the blood across his stomach, she knew he was going to die.
Nena glanced down as she walked.
Her heart collapsed on itself.
It was Néstor.
“No,” she breathed.
No, it could not be him.
In between one moment and the next, the vision slipped; the cheekbones softened and widened. A mustache appeared where Néstor had none.
Nausea slicked her mouth. No, it was not him. It was a trick of the gloom.
She forced herself to walk forward to Susana, making the sign of the cross. She had to keep her wits about her to help the men who had a chance at living.
But fear for Néstor lingered at the base of her throat, persistent and sour and grasping.
Please, God, she thought as she knelt opposite Susana and began to tie bandages tightly around the soldier’s leg to slow his bleeding. Her hands shook as she worked; too often they slipped as she used her knife to cut away clothing or bandages. Her knife shone with blood. The stench rising from the churned mud was like that of carrion. Please keep him safe. Don’t let him be hurt. Not like this.
The tumult of galloping and screaming horses was shattered by a cannon impact. Nena’s ears split with whistling overhead; she ducked, her back curling and shoulders folding forward over the man she tended. As if that could protect either of them. A ferocious tremor seized the earth, vibrating up through her knees; she envisioned horses being thrown to their knees, their riders sailing over their ears into the fray.
She peered up, certain she would see a cannonball directly overhead. Black smoke obscured the sky. Dark figures swarmed through the haze around the healing area.
“Get out of here! Run!”
That was Félix’s voice. Nena wrenched herself upward, ears ringing. She clutched her knife. Sporadic gunfire pocked the air overhead; the screams of horses set her teeth on edge.
Félix was no longer quietly patrolling the healing area. He charged forward, his pistol held high.
Anglos on horseback charged toward the wounded and the women, their hats pushed low over their faces and chaps billowing like bat wings. Guns gleamed in their hands. Rinches. Texas Rangers.
A sharp movement caught her eye. Susana jerked backward abruptly, as if someone had put hands on her shoulders and shoved her back, away from the dying man. Red bloomed over her chest.
Nena screamed. It was half surprise, half horror.
Susana fell backward into the muck, staring blankly up at the smoke.
Her aura was gone, broken. She was dead.
The Rinches cut a rough path through the wounded, not caring if they trampled them. Nena dodged out of the way, effectively cut off from the other women like a steer from the herd.
Someone seized her by the hair; her head snapped backward, sending a white bolt of pain up her neck. She shrieked as she was yanked backward, her boots dragging through the mud. Hoofbeats thundered directly to her left; her cheek was pressed to someone’s chivarras. The edge of a stirrup dug into her shoulder.
Pain seared her scalp. She was going to be trampled. Or the horse would stumble and her neck would snap, as fragile as a chicken’s.
But she still had her knife.
With all her might, she gripped the knife and brought it into the leg of the Rinche.
A scream; her hair was abruptly released. Her heart flew to her throat as she was dropped to the earth.
She yanked her arms into her chest as she rolled in the reeking mud, then she forced herself up immediately. Her head spun, but the memory of hooves crunching over the wounded was too fresh in her mind. The ground meant death. She had to be on her feet.
When she steadied herself, ears ringing, she could not tell which way she was facing. East? Or west and away from the battle? Smoke hung over the battlefield like a fog, stinging her eyes and nostrils; no matter where she looked, she could see no landmarks to lead her out of the fray.
Her body shook uncontrollably; the skin beneath the scar on her neck prickled and itched as if she had been ravaged by mosquitoes. Her mind observed this in a detached fashion, sweeping the perimeter around her. Fallen bodies were scattered haphazardly around her, some blown open and dismembered by cannon fire. Garish, flayed flesh rippled with crawling horseflies; their hum hung on the air like the cannon smoke, thick and persistent. A vaquero’s hat trampled into the mud. A kerchief, blue as a summer sky, darkened and sticking to a chest wet with blood.
The smell of sulfur snaked into her nose draping over her tongue and scalding the roof of her mouth. Gunmetal gray skies and swampy earth soaked with blood. For a moment, she could have sworn she saw figures appearing like phantoms through the gloom—figures that were long-limbed, bent on all fours, and loping like coyotes.
Then they vanished. It was a trick of the eye, a trick of the light.
Was Hell like this? Not a burning inferno but humid and cloying, the air thick with the tastes of sulfur and gunpowder, the clammy fingertips of the dead grasping at her, seeking her soul and dragging her down, down, down . . .
A sharp, metallic whinny wrenched Nena to her senses. A horse shied nearby. It was riderless.
And it was close.
“Tranquila,” she cooed, praying this calmed the beast. “Easy.”
The horse was backing up, eyes wide—it was ready to whirl and bolt. She lunged for the reins. Seized them. Dug her heels into the slippery mud.
“Come on,” she muttered, focusing her will on the frightened animal. “If you want to live, you have to be calm. Whoa, tranquila.”