"Dumb enough, I guess," Koenig said. "What? You never looked dumb before?"

"Not the past ten minutes, anyway," Pete said, which drew a laugh from the other noncom. He went on, "I tell you, I wish the Japs would get the hell out of Peking and stay out. Town was a lot more fun when the Chinamen were still hanging on to it."

"You got that right." Koenig nodded in what might have been approval. "See? You ain't as dumb as you look."

"Heh! I'm not as dumb as you look, either," Pete retorted. They were off duty. He could sass a sergeant if he felt like it. And he did-it wasn't a pleasure he got often enough.

"Wise guy," Koenig said, and then something in Chinese that sounded like a cat with its tail caught under a rocking chair. Behind the bar, Danny jumped a foot.

"Wow! What's that mean?" Pete asked, impressed in spite of himself.

"Can't tell you," Koenig answered. "If I said it in English, you'd have to try and murder me."

"Give it to me again," Pete urged. "Sounds like it's worth knowing."

Koenig repeated it. Pete tried to echo him. He got the tones wrong the first couple of times. He could hear that, but he had trouble fixing it. Danny held his head in his hands. Pete finally said it the right way, which made the bartender even more unhappy.

"What's it mean, Danny?" Pete called. Danny wouldn't tell him, either. That made him like his new toy even better.

When Alistair Walsh saw a road sign saying how many kilometers it was to Paris, he knew things weren't in good shape. The whole point to the war was keeping the Nazis away from Paris, the same as it had been with the Kaiser's army the last time around.

They'd done it the last time-done it twice, in fact, in 1914 and then again in 1918. He wasn't so sure they could now. The BEF stumbled back and stumbled back. People were starting to talk about the Miracle on the Marne in 1914. Well, they were getting too damn close to the Marne again, and they sure could use another miracle.

He yawned. What he could use was sleep. One of the things nobody talked about was how wearing modern war was. You were fighting or you were marching or they were shelling you or bombing you or you were trying to promote something to eat. What you weren't doing was resting.

He wasn't the only one frazzled almost to death. Even though February remained chilly, exhausted soldiers curled up like animals by the side of the road. Some slept in greatcoats, some wrapped in blankets, some as they were regardless of the cold. You had to look closely to see their chests rising and falling to make sure they weren't corpses.

Exhausted civilians also slept by the roadside, singly and in family groups. They hadn't done any shooting; other than that, they had as much right to be weary as the soldiers. One poor woman must have been a restless sleeper. She'd kicked off her blanket and thrashed around so her legs and backside were out in the biting breeze. Walsh got an eyeful as he trudged along.

One of the Tommies with him chuckled. "What we're fighting for, right?" the fellow said.

"I've seen plenty worse," Walsh allowed. "If I lay down beside her, though, I bet I'd cork off before I could try getting her knickers down."

"Blimey! Me, too." The other soldier's face split in an enormous yawn. "Don't know how I put one foot in front of the other any more."

Behind them, German artillery thundered to life. Walsh jerked a thumb over his shoulder. "That's how."

"Too right it is. Got a fag on you, Sarge?"

Walsh listened for screams in the air that would warn of incoming shells aimed their way. Hearing none, he reached into a tunic pocket and pulled out a packet of Gitanes. "Here. Got these off a dead Frenchman. Nasty things, but better than nothing."

"I'd smoke whatever you've got and thank you for it. I'm plumb out, and I'm all-" The Tommy held out his arm in front of him and made his hand tremble.

"Know what you mean. I've run dry myself a couple of times." Walsh proffered the French cigarettes. "Take two or three, then."

"I'd be much obliged, if you don't mind." The soldier stuck one in his mouth and stashed the other two in a breast pocket of his grimy battledress. He struck a match and inhaled. "Cor!" he said in tones of deep respect. "Like smoking a bleeding blowtorch, ain't it?"

Walsh had also lit a Gitane. After blowing out smoke, he coughed like a man in the last stages of consumption. "What's that you say?" he inquired.

The other soldier laughed. He took a second, more cautious, drag. "Damn froggies like 'em this way, don't they?"

"I expect so. They'd make 'em different if they didn't," Walsh said.

"Fuck." The Tommy shook his head. "We ought to be on Adolf's side."

"Bugger that, mate," Walsh said. "Germans shot me once, and it's not for lack of trying they haven't done it again. Yeah, the French are a bad lot, but those bastards in field-gray are worse."

"Take an even strain, Sergeant. I was only joking, like." But then the soldier added, "They make damn good soldiers, though."

"They make damn good dead soldiers," Walsh said. He also had a healthy regard for German military talent. He'd never met an English soldier who'd fought the squareheads who didn't. To him, that only made Germans more dangerous. It didn't mean he wanted to switch sides. He pointed to the town ahead. "Is that Senlis?" He probably butchered the pronunciation, but he didn't care.

"I think so." The soldier to whom he'd given a smoke also seemed glad to change the subject.

At its core, Senlis had what looked like really ancient walls with towers. The spires of a cathedral poked up from inside them. Walsh remembered that the Germans had burned the town and shot the mayor and several leading citizens in 1914. The damage had been made good in the quarter-century since. All the same, he didn't want to fight alongside people who did things like that.

He also wasn't eager to fight against them. Willing, yes, but not eager. They were too bloody good at what they did.

In front of those old, old walls-would they go back to Roman days?-an English captain with half a company's worth of men was nabbing stragglers. "You and you!" he called to Walsh and the Tommy to whom he'd given some Gitanes. "You think we can hold this town, eh?"

The other soldier didn't say anything. It wasn't quite what the Articles of War called mute insolence, but it wasn't far removed, either. Sergeant Walsh said, "We can try, sir." He didn't agree with the officer, but he did admit the possibility.

That was plenty. "Fall in with me, then, the both of you," the captain said. "If the Hun tries to take this place, we'll give him what he deserves and send him off with his tail between his legs, what?"

How many years had it been since Walsh heard anybody call Germans Huns? More than he could remember. The captain was about his age, so he'd probably done time here in the last war.

Most of the civilians had cleared out of Senlis, which meant they were causing traffic headaches somewhere south and west of here. Soldiers could pick and choose the empty houses they tried to defend. Walsh went through his, but didn't find anything worth eating or drinking. Too bad, he thought.

He had three privates with him. They were all Yorkshire farm boys, and spoke with an accent he had to work to follow. His might have sounded just as strange to them, but that was their lookout. They understood him well enough to keep watch at all the windows-and to give him a tin of M amp; V. He felt better after wolfing down the meat-and-vegetable stew.

Senlis got a couple of hours' respite before the Germans turned their attention to it. Then artillery walked up to the town. Walsh crouched down with the three privates: they were Jim and Jock and, improbably, Alonzo. The house they'd taken over was made of stone. It would stop fragments unless it was unlucky enough to take a direct hit.