Excerpt from Fallen Land by Taylor Brown, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

When the boy dismounted his horse, old Swinney slapped him on the shoulder.

"Welcome to Virginny," said the old man.

"Virginia?" said the boy, his eyes going wide with wonder.

"That's right. Colonel wants you to see if they got anything to eat down there."

The boy nodded. He crept toward the edge of the trees, his face dark amid the shadows. He could feel the older men's eyes upon him, their ears attuned to the snap of stick or shrub. They listened because he made no sound, this boy, the lightest of foot among them. Their scout. A former horse thief whose skills translated readily to their pursuits. At last he stared down upon the rough-planked barn, the once-white house, the single white pig mired in a sagging pen of mud. He stared down upon Virginia for a long time, a stranger unto this country. Then he turned his head and made a whip-poor-will's whistle over his shoulder.

When he returned, the men of the troop, thirty-odd strong, were tightening their holsters and sighting their rifles, sliding their knives back and forth in their sheaths, back and forth, making sure no catches might slow the draw. The boy carried a French dueling pistol of uncommon caliber. He mounted up and pulled the heavy J-shaped weapon from his belt and thumbed the hammer back. The filigreed metal of the action spun and clicked into place. The rich wood frame was scarred by countless run-ins with his belt buckle, tree branches, roots where he'd dropped the thing practicing his pistoleer skills.

Swinney stood below him.

"You got any bullets left for that thing, boy?"

The boy held the pistol toward him butt-first.

"She's a firecracker," he warned, smiling.

When the older man reached for the pistol, the boy dropped it sideways from his hand and hooked it upside down by the trigger guard and spun the gun upon its axis, catching it by the backstrap, the trigger fingered, the barrel at Swinney's chest, the older man's eyes wide with fright.

"Let them sons of bitches learn the hard way," said the boy.

In fact, he did not have any bullets. He was out.

Swinney's eyes narrowed and he shook his head.

"What you need is a good ass-whooping, boy. Not them parlor tricks."

The boy spun the gun and stuck it in his belt.

"Now don't you go getting jealous on me, Swinney."

The older man, his keeper of sorts, made a derisive gesture and waddled down the line.

The provenance of the pistol was known—one of a pair from the vast arms collection of a Union sympathizer whose home they'd raided. The boy's first of such prizes. He'd been promptly swindled of one of the guns in a bet over the estimated height of a sycamore that was fated for firewood. That left him one pistol and five balls for the smoothbore barrel. Two went to target practice, one to drunken roistering, one to a duel with a blue jay on a fence post (lost), and the last plumb lost along the way.

He could only wait now for another of his comrades to fall. Be first to scavenge.

"Hey, Swinney," he called. "You think they're down there? Any villains?"

"Somebody is," said the fat man, turning back down the line.

The boy sat astride his horse and made ready to maraud. When their leader rode past, the boy could smell him. The Colonel was riding the line with words of exhortation, of courage and duty and triumph. He had long curly locks, dark as crow feathers, flying loose under a plumed hat. He wore four Colt revolvers on his belt, butt-forward, and carried two dragoon pistols in saddle holsters, and he wore fine riding boots that went up to his knees. He was the man who had once poled across the foggy Potomac in the dead of night to ambush the Maryland Guards in their sleep. The man who had kidnapped a Northern general from a hotel room in West Virginia, pulling him from the bed he shared with a purchased negress. He was the man who had blown more Baltimore & Ohio Railroad bridges than anyone, and captured at least one of those B&O trains for his own profit, keeping the gold, and been stripped of his commission for it. His battalion of Partisan Rangers had been disbanded, some said by order of Lee himself, but for these few who remained. He led them through the hills on missions their own.

Excerpted from Fallen Land by Taylor Brown. Copyright © 2016 by Taylor Brown. Excerpted by permission of St. Martin's Griffin. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.