"No bang."

"That's right, no bang until the cavalry reach the long ditch."

"Horse come," Oreb croaked thoughtfully. "Come hole."

"You've got it. Now make absolutely certain that Atteno has it too, please."

I gave him a little lift: by raising the handle of my stick, and he flapped upward, vanishing almost at once against the dark sky. It was only an hour or two past noon; but quite dark, as it almost always is when it snows. The fireworks would show up well, I thought, unless the snow had wet them-in which case they would not show up at all.

For the first time it struck me that the young man who had so closely resembled my sons was with the fireworks detail, and would be in considerable danger from the fireworks themselves and from any cavalry troopers who were able to wheel their mounts and charge their tormentors. No ditch protected the hedgerow, nor had there been time to dig one even if I had been willing to risk the enemy's observing it. Angrily I reminded myself that a dozen other boys who did not in the least resemble my sons were at equal risk, and I did not have the right to get the one who did out of harm's way while leaving the others where they might be killed.

Inclito strolled over. "Well, we've done our best."

"Have we?"

He shrugged, then wiped his nose on his coat sleeve.

"I keep thinking-"

"That you should have sat tight in town like I told you to, and Hierax help the farmers. Incanto, there's going to be a hundred people a lot smarter than you are second-guessing you if we lose. Don't make it a hundred and one unless you can't help it. Remember the brothers I told you about? One killed the other one."

"Yes," I said. How often I had feared that Sinew would kill one of his brothers or his mother! Or that he would kill me, or try to kill me so that I had to kill or cripple him in self-defense. None of which had happened.

"I got second-guessed about that by everybody for two days' ride, and not a one of them had given me a single word of warning or advice before it happened." Inclito spat. "Mora's a good rider. Very good. You know that?"

I said Fava had mentioned it.

"Who do you think taught her? Taught Mora?"

"You?"

Inclito nodded. "If I hadn't, would she still have taken that horse and gone off with your letter like she did?"

"Yes," I said, "but if I had never written those letters, there would have been no horse for her to take."

"You're lying. How many times since then do you think I've wanted to kick myself for teaching her to ride?"

"A thousand, I suppose."

"Eight or ten. But believe me, eight or ten was bad enough. I never commanded our troops in a war before, did you know that?"

I shook my head.

"I was always under somebody, trying to carry out his orders. This is different, and I always thought it would be better, but it's worse. You know?"

"Very well indeed."

"I trained our troopers, and I got them the best equipment I could. I decided on the plan, holding the hills against Soldo, moving around and trying to block them no matter what way they tried to come.

"Then the war. It was like you're out in the field, and you see a big thunderstorm a long way off. You ever do that?"

"My field was the sea," I told him, "but, yes, I have."

"Same thing, probably. You see it and it's so much bigger than you that you can't even guess, and unless you plowed right it's going to wash away your topsoil and wash out your seedlings, and maybe it will even if you did, and it's coming on fast, and there's lightning in it, and you know there'll be big winds and you want to run but the sprats and the women are scared already. That's how I saw the war coming at us."

"I was frightened myself," I admitted. "I kept telling myself that I ought to leave you and Mora, and if things had been only slightly different, I'm sure I would have."

"That was why you stayed? For Mora and me?"

I nodded.

"I want to ask you about that sometime." He pointed. "They're moving again. This is it."

"They're not galloping," I protested.

"Trotting. They won't gallop until they're up close. Did you think they would?"

I nodded. "It would be better if they did."

"That's why they don't." He nudged me to make sure I understood that he was joking. "You've never seen a charge?"

"I have, but they were much closer."

"They will be."

I started for Kupus's uneven line of men and boys with slug guns, but Inclito caught my elbow. "The women and sprats are scared already, remember? The men are, too, and I mean you and me. So walk."

He was right, of course. I walked slowly toward our right flank, and even permitted myself to limp a little. From the top of a stile I studied the field of green, snow-spotted winter wheat, and the crimson, brown, and silver cavalry approaching it, spirited horses and expert riders obscured by wind-driven snow. From our viewpoint, it would have been better beyond all question had the rippling wheat been higher. I could see Atteno's pigs moving through it, and even the long waves when a pig's motions twitched the finger-thick rope that united him to his partner. They were mature boars for the most part, and big ones. I had been afraid that they would fight each other, bound together as they were; apparently the lack of sows and the length of the ropes had prevented or at least postponed it.

Something-some stir, perhaps, among the women and elderly men along the walls-made me turn and look north. Soldese infantry were advancing from the hills, only fitfully visible through the snow. Looking at those dark trickles of marching men, I felt I understood how Inclito had been forced out of a whole series of good defensive positions. There must have been a thousand troopers there for every hundred Blanko possessed when the fighting began; and from the top of that stile, I was tempted to believe that there were a thousand now for every ten.

"Master?" It was Adatta, with snow in her hair and on the lashes of her remarkable eyes. "Colonel Sfido sent me. He'll send some of our people to strengthen this flank, if you want them."

I pointed to the hills.

"Yes, sir, I know. So does he, I'm sure."

"I have been studying them, Adatta, and wondering where you people in Blanko ever found the courage to defy them and their Duko."

She hesitated so long that I concluded she would never reply and turned my attention to the swarming infantry again. At last she said, "We make our own laws, sir. In the Corpo. Lots of us are old enough to remember how it was in Grandecitta, when we didn't."

I turned once more to face her. "Are you, Adatto? You don't look it."

"Yes, sir."

"I don't believe you. Twenty years ago you can hardly have been old enough to walk."

"Thank you, sir. Sir…?"

"What is it?"

"General Inclito's going up and down the walls, sir, talking to everybody. It might help if you did that, too."

"Did he or Colonel Sfido ask you to ask me?"

"No, sir. I just thought of it."

By a gesture I indicated the long thin line of men and boys in ragged coats. "We have no wall here, Captain."

"Yes, sir. Just this fence and the long ditch."

"Exactly, just the fence and the ditch. Colonel Sfido is offering to send them reinforcements deducted from your own rather slight strength. There would be women among them, I assume, as well as men. Would you go, Captain, if you were ordered to? Stand here at the edge of the long ditch with your slug gun, waiting for charging cavalry to get near enough to shoot at?"

(When I said that-I shall never forget it, Nettle – my heart sunk within me; the leading line of the Soldese cavalry were past the first trip rope, I felt sure, which meant that they had seen it in the wheat and cut it without my having observed the operation, and could very well have cut the others in just the same way.)