The light of that fire was his signal to Dasie as well as to his followers. As soon as she saw that he had succeeded in striking one fire, she sent forth the magic that kindled the other torches. I felt the magic go out from her. Although I could not see it, I knew that all over Gettys Town and within the fort, torches suddenly burned. Soldier’s Boy still carried one flaming torch. Heedless now of who might see him, he led Clove right up to a cart between two buildings and used it as a mounting block to get on Clove. Torch held high, he rode toward a nearby barracks. As he went, other torch-bearing Specks drifted in from alleys and byways to join him. Their fantastic shadows danced ahead of them along the sides of the buildings. Sempayli, grinning, came running from the darkness to walk by his stirrup. “And now we shall see their blood run,” he told Soldier’s Boy confidently. He carried a bow.

Clove’s heavy hooves on the packed snow and the thud-whisper of his fur-booted followers were almost the only sound. Occasionally one of the torches crackled and spit. No one spoke and they moved as softly as only Specks could. Yet again, there was no furtiveness about this torch-bearing mob.

Soldier’s Boy reined Clove in and spoke to his men. He divided them into three units, and sent two of them off to two other barracks farther down the main street. He moved purposefully toward the nearest barracks. I recognized which one. Captain Thayer’s troops would be sleeping inside. I felt queasy. Was this more of Soldier’s Boy’s vengeance on my behalf, that this barracks would be his personal target?

I heard a distant scream, and then a woman shouting, “Fire! Fire! Wake up, wake up! Fire!” Somewhere in the town, flames suddenly climbed the side of the building and rose, casting a ruddy light. The stables, full of stored hay, suddenly roared and the roof seemed to literally burst off the building. In a matter of seconds, smoke was rolling like a flood through the streets, while bits of burning straw floated up into the cold night sky. Chances were good that as they settled, they would kindle other fires, adding to the confusion.

Where was Spink? Why hadn’t he warned anyone? Did he and Epiny and Amzil and the children all sleep on? Would they awaken before smoke crept in to choke them? Would the townsfolk who had chosen to drug themselves with Gettys Tonic awaken at all, or burn as they slept?

“You’ve done enough!” I shouted at Soldier’s Boy as he advanced on the barracks.

One back corner of it was alight, and as I watched the door was flung open. A single soldier, hopping and skipping as he tried to pull his trousers on, emerged. He was shouting, “Fire! Fire! Wake up! Get out! Fire!”

“Just take your warriors and leave. You set the fort alight in so many places, they won’t be able to fight all the fires. Gettys will burn. Give some of them a chance to escape. Don’t you want them to flee alive, to carry word of the Speck attack?”

“They must carry word of a Speck war against them, not of a random fire that spread and burned the town down. We are lancing a boil here. Grit your teeth and be silent while I do what must be done!”

Sempayli had already lifted his bow. The arrow was trained on the door. There was a small sound like torn paper, and the hopping soldier went down on the snowy ground, clutching at an arrow shaft in his chest. He saw us then and, to his credit, tried to shout a warning. It came out as a gargled spray of blood, speckling his chin and the snow around him with black dots. Two other half-dressed soldiers burst out of the door. They too went down, feathered with arrows and blocking the door behind them.

There were two doors to the barracks. Soldier’s Boy’s warriors had surrounded both of them. The building was burning well now, kindled in at least three places. I heard a terrible shriek from the other door as a man escaped the fire to die under a sword. The flames were leaping up into the night. From inside, I heard shouts and the thunder of overturned furniture and coughing. There were only two windows in the barracks. One burst outward in a shatter of glass as a chair was flung through it. The man who tried to follow the chair was shot with an arrow through the throat and fell back inside. Shouts of consternation greeted this, but another man immediately launched himself through the window. He fell dying in the snow as one of Sempayli’s arrows took him.

I do not know how many soldiers were sleeping in the barracks that night. Perhaps some died of the smoke. But every one that emerged from the doors or the window was killed before he got two steps. It was slaughter, not battle, for the dazed and smoke-blinded soldiers scarcely seemed to comprehend what was happening. In their struggle to escape the flames and engulfing smoke, they understood too late that a second foe, just as deadly, awaited them outside. Bodies piled up outside as cries for help and shrieks of burning men came from within.

I could not look away. I could not control the eyes. I wanted desperately to cut myself off from Soldier’s Boy, to retreat to where I could not experience this in any way. Under Soldier’s Boy, Clove shifted and fought for his head. He didn’t like the flames, the smoke, the cries, and the blood. But like me he was forced to stand and witness. Soldier’s Boy reined him in hard and held him. The torment for both of us continued.

In that endless time, two things slowly transformed me. As I watched the men die so ignominiously, half-clothed, blinded by smoke and dazed by shock, they suddenly became my fellows, my regiment. Whatever they had done to me, they had done with their own rude sense of judgment. It had not been just, and I knew that, but they had not. My regiment had not been the mob that cornered me and tried to murder me. Looking back, I knew that only a dozen men had willingly partaken of that madness. The others had been reluctant witnesses or shocked bystanders. I would not judge my regiment by the base actions of a few during a time of fear and anger.

I now understood what they had become when the mob spirit had taken them because I now saw how I myself behaved. Bereft of empathy or sympathy, Soldier’s Boy mirrored for me what any man might become when hate and purpose ruled him. What I had become, for all purposes. He was me; folly to deny that. He was doing what I might have done, were I ever in a position that I hated someone so badly that I completely lost sight of his humanity.

A stray memory rose in me. I had been about fourteen the summer that an odd combination of weather had led to a suddenly burgeoning population of rats. They’d infested the barns and the corn bins, and when they had begun to appear even in the house kitchen, my father had had enough. He sent for the Rat Man, so called because he claimed that he and his pack of terriers could rid any holding of rats in a matter of days. When the Rat Man arrived, my elder brother and I had followed him and his seething pack of terriers to the barns. He ordered my father’s grooms to remove every bit of stock from the area. Then “Get your feet up off the floor!” the Rat Man had warned us, and my brother and I had perched on one of the mangers. “Kill them all, boys!” the Rat Man had shouted, and his dogs had dispersed instantly. They’d raced to every corner of the barn, and nose to the walls, had run along them smooth as water, digging at every hole, yelping excitedly and snapping at one another in their competition. The Rat Man had been as active as his terriers as he darted about eliminating obstacles for the dogs. With a hay fork, he lifted the edge of a loose board. The dogs had raced in to seize the boiling rats he had exposed. Snatch, snap, and fling! Each rat was seized, shaken violently, and then flung aside for the next. Rat bodies flew and fell all around us as the Rat Man exposed hidey-hole after hidey-hole to his dogs.