"Where's our guns?" Alonzo complained. Goons, it came out when he said it. However it came out, it was a damn good question. The Germans always seemed to put their guns where they needed them. The Allies…sometimes did.

Stukas screamed down out of the sky, one after another. Crouching huddled under the kitchen table, Walsh cursed the vulture-winged monsters and their sirens. He also cursed the RAF, both for not shooting them down and for not having anything like them.

Several windows in the French house were already broken. The ones that weren't blew in now, leaving small snowdrifts of glass spears on the floor. Walsh swore some more, resignedly. Sure as hell, he'd end up cutting his hand or his leg on them.

Somebody was yelling for a medic. Somebody else was screaming for his mother. One of the Yorkshire lads crossed himself. Alistair Walsh was no Catholic, but he understood the gesture. Nobody but a desperately hurt man made noises like that.

Before long, the screaming stopped. Walsh hoped the wounded man got morphine. More likely, the poor bugger passed out or just died. "Up, lads," the sergeant told the privates. "I expect we'll have company before long."

"Won't get no clotted cream from me," Jock said, chambering a round in his Enfield with a snick! of the bolt.

Sure enough, here came the Germans. They moved up in little stuttering runs from one bit of cover to the next. Some of them had leaves and branches fixed to their helmets with bands cut from old inner tubes. No, no one could say they weren't skilled at their murderous trade.

A Bren gun opened up a couple of houses away from Walsh's. He liked the British army's new light machine gun a lot. It really was light-you could pick it up and shoot from the hip if you had to. And it was air-cooled: no need to worry about pouring water (or, that failing, piss) into the metal cooling jacket around the barrel. Best of all, it worked reliably. What more could you want?

It made the Germans hit the deck. They started shooting at the house where it lurked. When they did, the muzzle flashes from their Mausers gave the British infantrymen good targets. Walsh fired and reloaded, then ducked down and crawled to another window to fire again.

Something bit him through the knee of his battledress. "Bloody glass," he muttered.

The Bren gun barked again. German medics in Red Cross smocks ran up to recover casualties. Walsh didn't shoot at them. Fair was fair. The Germans mostly didn't shoot at British medics.

A lull followed. The Germans seemed surprised anyone was fighting hard to save Senlis. Since Walsh had been surprised when the captain made a fight for the place, how could he blame them?

"What happens now, Sergeant?" Alonzo asked.

"They could shell us some more. They could call in the Stukas again, or the tanks," Walsh said. None of the three Yorkshiremen seemed to want to hear that. Walsh went on, "Or they could decide we're a tough nut and try to go around us instead of pushing through."

"That'd be good," Alonzo said. Jack and Jock both nodded. After a moment, so did Alistair Walsh. AFTER SARAH GOLDMAN'S FATHER TIED his necktie every morning, he pinned his Iron Cross Second Class onto the breast pocket of his jacket. Samuel Goldman wanted to remind the Nazi thugs and Gestapo goons who came to scream at him that he'd done his duty for the Vaterland in the last war and would have done it again this time if only they'd let him.

Maybe the Eisenkreuz did some good. The Goldmans remained in their home. The Nazis hadn't hauled the rest of them off to Dachau or Buchenwald even if Saul had killed a member of the Master Race.

The Nazis hadn't caught Sarah's big brother, either. Saul had fled the labor gang…and, after that, he might have fallen off the face of the earth. Sarah had no idea what he'd done. Whatever it was, she admired it tremendously. The policemen with the swastika armbands also had no idea what he'd done. It drove them crazy.

"No, sir," Samuel Goldman told a foul-mouthed Gestapo officer. "He has not telephoned us. You would know if he had, nicht wahr? You must be tapping our telephone line."

"You bet your scrawny ass we are, Jew," the secret policeman said. "But he could be talking to some other lousy kike who's passing you coded messages."

"It is not so, sir." Sarah's father kept his temper better than she dreamt of being able to do. Maybe he had a deeper understanding of what was at stake in this game. Or maybe he was just blessed with a disposition more even than hers.

"Ought to take you all out and give you a noodle," the officer growled.

"I beg your pardon?" Somehow, Samuel Goldman still managed to keep the dignity a professor of ancient history and classics should have.

The Gestapo officer jumped up and walked around behind him. He put the tip of his outthrust index finger against the back of Samuel Goldman's neck. "Bang!" he said, and then, "A noodle."

"I see," Sarah's father replied, as coolly as if the man had explained how a new phonograph operated.

"Think you've got nerve, do you?" the Gestapo man growled. "You know what happens to assholes with nerve? They scream as loud as anybody else once we get to work on 'em. Maybe louder, on account of we don't fuckin' like tough guys."

Sarah and her mother listened from the kitchen, doing their best to keep quiet so they didn't remind the goon they were there. Her mother's face went pale as skimmed milk. Sarah's own face was probably the same color, but she couldn't see herself.

Out in the front room, her father stayed calm. "Nerve? Not a bit of it," he answered. "It's slang we didn't use in the trenches, that's all. You'll know that's true-you're the right age."

"Ja, ja," the officer said impatiently. "You were in France. I fought in the East, against the Russians."

"Ach so," Samuel Goldman said. "Well, that was no fun, either. I had two friends who went to the Eastern Front and didn't come back."

"Kaupisch and Briesen," the Gestapo man said. It wasn't a question-he knew. Sarah asked her mother with her eyes how the officer knew something like that. Hanna Goldman shrugged helplessly.

"That's right," Sarah's father said, his voice soft and sad.

"Both Aryans," the officer said. "Not good Aryans, or they wouldn't have made friends with a goddamn sheeny. Besides, I'm not here to talk about them. I'm here to talk about your stinking, murdering turd of a son."

If he'd said anything like that to Sarah, she thought she would have tried to brain him with an ashtray. Her father only sighed and said, "I don't know any more than you do. I probably know less than you do, because you've been chasing him ever since the tragedy took place."

"Why shouldn't we just kill you or take you off to a camp because of what that little cocksucker did?" the Gestapo man snarled.

Had he seen Saul? Sarah had her doubts. He wouldn't have called him little if he had. Saul was one meter eighty-eight centimeters tall; he weighed ninety kilos. You could say a lot of things about him, but not little, not if you wanted to stay within shouting distance of the truth.

As if the Gestapo cared! Or had to care.

Samuel Goldman sighed. "Because we had nothing to do with anything Saul may have done?" he suggested. Saul had done it, all right. Sarah would never forget the sound that shovel blade made smashing into the side of the work-gang boss' head. Saul had had plenty of provocation, but he'd done it.

The Gestapo man snorted. "You aren't even citizens of the Reich, only residents. I can do whatever I want with you. To you."

"Yes, sir. I know you can," Father said mournfully. "You asked why you shouldn't. I gave you the best answer I could."

"Are you playing games with me, Jewboy?" demanded the officer in the black uniform with the shiny metal buttons.

Sarah would have killed him for that, too, if she could. Her father didn't even flinch. "Games? No, sir," he replied. "All I'm doing is the best I can for my family and me. Wouldn't you do the same in my place?"