Sam snorted. “What kind of valuables could you have had?”

“Food would do, at that point. Distribution had broken down. Why should the work-gangs work, without the guards to make them? Finally, we mobbed the warehouse and broke in—and ruined more food than we ate.” He shuddered at the memory. “They started knife fights over ham hocks! That was about when I started looking for a hole to crawl into.”

“Your general has no more ethics than a shark!” Sam blazed. “How could he just sit there and let it happen?”

“I expect he had a pretty good idea about how it would all come out.”

“How could he? With chaos like that, it was completely unpredictable!”

“Well, not really…”

“What’re you talking about? You could’ve all killed each other off!”

“That’s predictable, isn’t it? But there wasn’t too much chance of it, I guess. There were too many of us—half a million. That’s a full society; and anarchy’s an unstable condition. When the little gangs began to realize they couldn’t be sure of beating the next little gang they were trying to steal from, they made a truce instead, and merged into a bigger gang that could be sure of winning a fight, because it was the biggest gang around.”

“So other little gangs had to band together into bigger gangs too.” Sam nodded. “And that meant the bigger gangs had to merge into small armies.”

“Right. Only most of us didn’t realize all that; we just knew there were three big gangs fighting it out, all of a sudden.”

“The power-hungry boys you told me about?”

Dar nodded. “And they were pretty evenly balanced, too. So their battles didn’t really decide anything; they just killed off sixty men. Which meant you had to stay way clear of any of ‘em, or they’d draft you as a replacement.”

“So two of them made a truce and ganged up on the third?”

“No, the Wolmen ganged up on all of us, first.”

“Oh.” Sam looked surprised, then nodded slowly. “Makes sense, of course. I mean, why should they just sit back and wait for you to get yourselves organized?”

“Right. It made a lot more sense to hit us while we were still disorganized. And we’d stopped keeping sentries on the wall, and the Wolmen knew enough to hit us at night.”

Sam shuddered. “Why weren’t you all killed in your beds?”

“Because the Big Three did have sentries, to make sure none of the others tried a night attack. So all of a sudden, the sirens were howling, and everybody was running around yelling—and military conditioning took over.”

“Military conditioning?” Sam frowned. “I thought you were convicts!”

“Yeah, but we were still soldiers. What’d you think—the Army provided a few battalions to fight off the Wolmen for us? We had to do our own fighting, with our own sergeants and lieutenants. The guards just stood back and made sure we didn’t try to get any big ideas … and handled the laser cannons.”

“But how could they let you have weapons?”

Dar shrugged. “Bows and arrows, tops. That gave us a fair chance against the Wolmen. So when the sirens shrieked, we just automatically ran for the armory and grabbed our bows, and jumped any Wolman who got in our way. Then, when we had our weapons, we just naturally yelled, ‘What do we do, Sarge?’ I mean, he was there getting his weapons, too—if he was still alive.”

“And most of them were?”

“What can I tell you? Rank has its privileges. Yeah, most of them were there, and they told us where to go.”

“Sergeants usually do, I understand.”

“Well, yes. But in this case, they just took us out to chop up anything that didn’t wear a uniform—and look for a lieutenant to ask orders from. We pulled together into companies—and the lieutenants were already squawking into their wrist coms, demanding that Shacklar tell them what to do.”

“Why would they do …?” Sam broke off, her eyes widening. “I just realized something: soldiers are basically bureaucrats. Nobody wants to take a chance on getting blamed.”

“It is kind of drilled into you,” Dar admitted. “And as I said, when the Wolmen came over the wall, habit took over. It did for Shacklar, too, I guess. He started telling them what to do.”

“Habit, my great toe! He’d been waiting for a chance like that—counting on it!”

“Looking for me to disagree with you? Anyway, he had the viewscreens, and he knew the tactics; so he started giving orders.” Dar shook his head in disbelief. “If you can call them orders! ‘Lieutenant Walker, there’s a band of Wolmen breaking through over on the left; I really think you should run over and arrange a little surprise for them.’ ‘Lieutenant Able, Sergeant Dorter’s squad is outnumbered two to one over on your company’s right; would you send your reserves over to join him, please?’ ”

“Come off it! No general talks to his subordinates that way!”

Dar held up a palm. “So help me, he did it! I overheard Lieutenant Walker’s communicator.”

“You mean you were in that battle?”

“I had a choice?”

“But I thought you tried to find a hole to crawl into!”

“Sure. I didn’t say I succeeded, did I?”

Sam turned away, glowering. “I still don’t believe it. Why should he be so polite?”

“We figured it out later. In effect, he was telling us it was our war, and it was up to us to fight it; but he was willing to give us advice, if we wanted it.”

“Good advice, I take it?”

“Oh, very good! We had the Wolmen pushed back against the wall in an hour. Then Shacklar told the lieutenants to pull back and give them a chance to get away. They all answered, basically, ‘The hell with that noise! We’ve got a chance to wipe out the bastards!’ ‘Indeed you do,’ Shacklar answered, ‘and they all have brothers and cousins back home—six of them for every one of you. But if you do try to exterminate them—well, you’ll manage it, but they’ll kill two of your men for every one of theirs.’ Well, the lieutenants allowed that he had a point, so they did what he said and pulled back; and the Wolmen, with great daring and ingenuity, managed to get back up over the wall and away.”

“Then he told you to break out the laser cannon?”

“No, he’d sent the cannons home with the guards. Good thing, too; I’d hate to think what those three power-mongers would’ve done with them. But we did have hand-blasters, in the armories. Each of the power-mongers had managed to seize an armory as a power base as soon as he’d recruited a gang. They’d opened the doors and issued sidearms as soon as the sirens screamed. They weren’t much good for the close fighting inside the wall; but, once the Wolmen were over the top and running, we got up on the parapet and started shooting after them, until the lieutenants yelled at us to stop wasting our charges. The Wolmen were running, and they didn’t stop until morning.”

“A victory,” Sam said dryly.

“A bigger one than you think—because as soon as the shooting was over the three would-be warlords showed up with their henchmen, bawling, ‘All right, it’s all over! Turn in your guns! Go home!’ ”

“They what!”

“Well, sure.” Dar shrugged. “After all, they’d opened up the armories for us, hadn’t they? Shouldn’t we give them their guns back now? I mean, you’ve got to see it from their viewpoint.”

“I hope you didn’t!”

“Of course we didn’t. We just turned around grinning, and pointed the guns at them. But we didn’t say anything; we let the lieutenants do the talking.”

“What talking?”

“It depended. The nice ones said, ‘Hands up.’ The rest of them just said, ‘Fire!’ And we did.”

Sam formed a silent O with her lips.

“It was quick and merciful,” Dar pointed out. “More than they had a right to, really.”

“What did you do without them? I mean, they had provided some sort of social order.”

“I see you favor loose definitions. But while the ashes cooled, the lieutenants got together and did some talking.”