The tone of “A Horseman in the Sky” is primarily an empathetic one. While some writers with experience on the battlefield might approach war literature from a specific point of view—condemning the “other side,” for example—Bierce seems to empathize with all his characters, taking issue with war itself rather than the people engaged in it. This comes across in the ways that Bierce characterizes Druse’s father—a Confederate soldier—throughout the story, describing how he respected Druse’s decision to join the Union army and said goodbye to him with a “broken heart.”
The empathetic tone of the story also comes across in Bierce’s use of free indirect discourse, a technique that features a narrator channeling a character’s thoughts or feelings directly. Take the following passage, for example, in which the narrator seems to merge with Druse as Druse decides whether or not to shoot the horseman:
He could not hope to capture that enemy; to alarm him would but send him dashing to his camp with his fatal news. The duty of the soldier was plain: the man must be shot dead from ambush — without warning, without a moment’s spiritual preparation, with never so much as an unspoken prayer, he must be sent to his account.
In the first sentence here, the narrator reports on what Druse is thinking ("He could not hope to capture that enemy"), while, in the second, Druse as a subject disappears and the narrator seems to grapple with the decision whether or not to shoot. This is because, instead of writing, “Druse thought about how the duty of the soldier was plain,” Bierce writes, “The duty of the soldier was plain.” This sort of merging with the thoughts of a character helps demonstrates the narrator’s empathy with Druse's situation and encourages readers to imagine this kind of impossible situation for themselves. Ultimately, Bierce hopes that readers will understand the decision that Druse makes to fulfill his duty as a Union soldier by killing his own father.
