The five ragged veterans who now ride for Lucien Beauregard Saint Clair, master of Blackthorn Hall, are among the last remnants of the old 27th Virginia Cavalry still willing to answer the call of a Saint Clair. All are armed with pistols, partly because carbines, ammunition and decent equipment became scarce during the final months of the war, and partly because each has spent so long fighting at close quarters that a revolver now seems a more natural companion than a rifle. They are not young men, nor particularly respectable ones, but they remain dangerous, loyal in their own fashion and deeply attached to a regiment that officially ceased to exist long ago.

The five ragged veterans who now ride for Lucien Beauregard Saint Clair, master of Blackthorn Hall, are among the last remnants of the old 27th Virginia Cavalry still willing to answer the call of a Saint Clair. All are armed with pistols, partly because carbines, ammunition and decent equipment became scarce during the final months of the war, and partly because each has spent so long fighting at close quarters that a revolver now seems a more natural companion than a rifle. They are not young men, nor particularly respectable ones, but they remain dangerous, loyal in their own fashion and deeply attached to a regiment that officially ceased to exist long ago.

Abner Taliaferro

Abner Taliaferro had been a small farmer before the war, owning just enough land to consider himself independent and just little enough to lose nearly all of it while he was away fighting. He joined the 27th Virginia Cavalry early and quickly earned a reputation as a steady man who could be relied upon when more enthusiastic soldiers had exhausted their courage. Taliaferro was never particularly interested in speeches about glory, but he believed in his regiment, trusted his officers and remained in the saddle long after common sense suggested that he should have gone home.

By the end of the war he had lost his farm, two brothers and most of his faith in grand causes, although he never lost his attachment to the men with whom he had served. When Lucien Saint Clair began quietly gathering former members of the 27th around Blackthorn Hall, Taliaferro was one of the first to appear. He claims that he came because he owed the Saint Clair family an old debt, although those who know him suspect that the sight of familiar uniforms and old comrades was enough.

Taliaferro carries two battered pistols, both older than some of the men now claiming to be cavalrymen, and has the irritating habit of cleaning them while other people are attempting to have serious conversations. He says little, complains frequently and remains one of the few men in the posse capable of recognising when a situation is about to become a disaster, although experience has taught him that recognising this fact and avoiding it are entirely different skills.

Silas Pendleton

Silas Pendleton had been a horse trader, gambler and occasional thief before joining the 27th Virginia Cavalry, and military service did little to improve any of those qualities. What it did reveal was that Pendleton possessed exceptional nerves in a close fight and an instinctive understanding of horses, making him far more useful to the regiment than his civilian reputation might have suggested.

Pendleton preferred pistols even during the war, arguing that if a man needed to shoot farther than thirty yards he had probably failed to get close enough. He became notorious for riding into skirmishes with a revolver in each hand, a habit that produced several wounds, one missing fingertip and a collection of stories that Pendleton has improved steadily ever since.

After the surrender he drifted through Virginia making money wherever opportunity allowed, which generally meant gambling, horse dealing and activities best described as unofficial redistribution. Lucien eventually found him in a county jail and paid his outstanding debts, fines and several expenses that the local sheriff had invented on the spot.

Pendleton has been loyal to Blackthorn Hall ever since, although he insists this has nothing to do with gratitude and everything to do with the quality of Lucien’s whiskey.

Thomas Beverley

Thomas Beverley came from a family of modest Virginia landowners whose property lay close enough to Blackthorn Hall that the Beverley and Saint Clair families had known one another for generations. Beverley joined the 27th Virginia Cavalry alongside two cousins, both of whom were dead before the final year of the war, leaving Thomas with a bitterness that never entirely faded.

He was a competent cavalryman but became particularly effective in the confused fighting that characterised the regiment’s later campaigns, when formations broke down and small groups of riders operated almost independently. Beverley learned to fight from hedgerows, barns, lanes and ruined farm buildings, relying on patience and a pair of pistols rather than heroic charges.

The postwar years suited him badly. The family property was sold to cover debts, his surviving relatives scattered and Beverley spent much of the next decade moving between temporary jobs and arguments with men he believed had benefited from the defeat of the Confederacy. Blackthorn Hall offered something he had not possessed for years, namely a place where the old regiment was still remembered and where nobody suggested that he should forget the past.

Beverley rarely smiles and has little interest in Lucien’s occult interests, although he has learned that asking too many questions at Blackthorn Hall generally produces answers he would rather not hear.

Josiah Cabell

Josiah Cabell had been one of the youngest men in the 27th Virginia Cavalry and was barely old enough to shave when he first joined the regiment. What he lacked in experience he compensated for with enthusiasm, horsemanship and a reckless conviction that bullets were a problem mainly affecting other people, a belief that the war corrected without entirely curing the recklessness.

Cabell survived several actions in which older and supposedly wiser men did not, eventually becoming an accomplished scout and messenger who could move rapidly across difficult country and had an uncanny ability to find gaps in enemy patrols. He developed a preference for pistols because they interfered less with riding and because, as Cabell still explains, anything that cannot be settled with six shots probably requires leaving.

After the war Cabell attempted several respectable occupations with uniformly poor results, including farming, clerking and working for a railway company. None lasted long, partly because he disliked authority and partly because civilian life seemed painfully slow after years spent riding through gunfire.

When rumours reached him that men of the 27th were once again gathering at Blackthorn Hall, Cabell arrived within the week. He now behaves as though the intervening years were merely an extended period of leave and appears remarkably unconcerned by the fact that some of the men he remembers dying have also begun returning to duty.

Nathaniel Randolph

Nathaniel Randolph was never a wealthy man, but he came from an old Virginia family proud enough to behave as though poverty was simply another inherited tradition. He enlisted in the 27th Virginia Cavalry with his own horse, a serviceable pistol and a coat his mother had altered from an older relative’s uniform.

Randolph developed into a stubborn and dependable cavalryman whose greatest talent was simply remaining in the fight. He was wounded repeatedly, lost three horses and once returned to the regiment after being officially reported dead, an administrative error he found highly amusing at the time and considerably less amusing now that Lucien Saint Clair has begun taking a professional interest in such matters.

After the war Randolph became a wandering farmhand and occasional deputy, never staying anywhere long enough to establish new roots. The old regiment remained the strongest connection he had to anything resembling home, and the Saint Clair name still carried considerable weight with him.

Randolph is the most openly uneasy about what is happening at Blackthorn Hall. He has seen lights in the family cemetery, heard horses moving beyond the stable walls and recognised at least one face among Lucien’s followers that he distinctly remembers helping to bury.

Despite this, he remains, because as Randolph explains whenever the question is raised, a man should not abandon his regiment merely because some of it has become difficult to kill.

Together, Taliaferro, Pendleton, Beverley, Cabell and Randolph form the hard core of Lucien Saint Clair’s growing force at Blackthorn Hall, men bound less by politics than by memory, comradeship and an inability to leave the old regiment entirely behind. They still wear what remains of their cavalry clothing, still argue over campaigns fought years earlier and still fall naturally into the habits of men who once depended upon one another for survival, while their pistols remain close at hand whenever Lucien requires something more persuasive than conversation.

What none of them fully understands is exactly what Lucien intends for the remnants of the 27th Virginia Cavalry, although all have begun to suspect that he is interested in restoring rather more than its name. Strange riders have been seen around Blackthorn Hall after dark, old saddles have disappeared from the stables and there are increasingly familiar faces among men who should have remained in Virginia soil. For the five veterans, however, the answer is simple enough, because if the 27th is riding again, then they intend to be there when it does.