Had he laid it on too thick? Sometimes, when he used that voice, he sounded more like an Englishman than an educated white Confederate. But the militiaman with the slagged face was satisfied. “Yes, sir!” he said, and plunged deeper into the swamp. He couldn’t possibly have known who Scipio was, but assumed anyone who talked the way he did had to be an officer.

“Thank you, Miss Anne,” Scipio whispered as he made his way farther and farther from the Congaree. Teaching him how to talk like an educated white man hadn’t been for his benefit-having a butler who could talk like that had given Marshlands more swank. It had also made him a white crow, one who couldn’t fully fit in with the rest of the Negroes on the plantation. He’d hated it while it was going on. Now it just might have saved his life.

If he kept going straight away from the swamp, he’d emerge somewhere near the ruins of the Marshlands mansion. He didn’t want to do that. Too many people around there were liable to recognize him. He swung to the west, guiding himself by the sun as best he could.

He came out in a cotton field that was, like so many others in this part of the country, untended and overrun with weeds. He was filthy and exhausted. He didn’t care. He didn’t care even a little bit. He’d escaped Anne Colleton and Cassius, too. He was, for the time being, a free man again.

Chester Martin was not the only U.S. sergeant commanding a company in Virginia these days. They might eventually get around to promoting him or bringing in an officer to take over. On the other hand, they might not. They might just keep putting more young privates under him, sending them forward, and seeing what the hell happened next. Somewhere not far away, there was supposed to be a regiment led by a first lieutenant, the outfit’s senior officer who was alive and in one piece.

Even a year before, rank would have worried him more than it did today. Today, all he wanted to do was get on with the attack, however it went in. He had trouble believing he was actually eager to go forward. Nor was he the only one. Corporal Bob Reinholdt, who had been furious at not getting a section but was now commanding one, looked up from the Springfield he was cleaning and said, “One more good push and these bastards are going to roll over and play dead.”

“That’s about the size of it, I think,” Martin agreed. “Never thought I’d say it, but they don’t snap back the way they used to.”

Tilden Russell remained a private, too, but he was leading a squad in Martin’s shrunken company. He might lack rank, but he had experience. He said, “The Rebs are like an inner tube with a little tiny leak. They look fine till you press on ’em, but then they give.”

Martin whistled, a low, respectful note. “That’s not half bad, Tilden. You ought to think about writing for the newspapers when the war’s done.”

When the war’s done. The words hung in the air. For a long time-from the minute the fighting started up to his own getting shot and beyond-the war had seemed to stretch out forever ahead of Martin. If he wasn’t still fighting thirty years from now, his sons or grandsons would be, if he found time to marry and beget any on his infrequent leaves. The only way out he’d seen was getting killed-and he’d seen a lot of that.

Now…now it was different. As he rolled himself a cigarette, he thought about how. Reinholdt and Russell had defined the difference as well as he heard it defined. “If we keep pressing on ’em, sooner or later they’ll go flat. I’m finally starting to think it’ll be sooner.”

It hadn’t happened yet. Confederate artillery south of Manassas started banging away at the U.S. lines threatening the town. Those lines weren’t so deeply entrenched nor so well furnished with dugouts as many of the ones in which Martin had previously served: they were too new to have acquired what he’d come to think of as the amenities of trench life. He threw himself down in the dirt and hoped he wouldn’t be like Moses, dying before he entered the promised land of peace. Of course, no one had promised that land to him.

After a while, the barrage eased. He braced for a Confederate counterattack to follow it, but none came. The Rebs still fought ferociously on defense, but they didn’t hit back so hard or so often as they once had-another sign, as Tilden Russell had said, that their inner tube had sprung a leak. Martin wished the Army could have pinned them against the Potomac from the west before they could pull out of Washington. That might have ended the war right there.

As things were, he was glad to get to his feet. He was glad to have feet to get to, and arms, and everything else he’d had before the shelling started. Here and there, wounded men and their pals were shouting for stretcher-bearers. He gauged the cries with practiced ears. The company hadn’t been hurt too badly, not as a group. The unlucky soldiers who were the exceptions wouldn’t have seen things the same way.

A couple of hours later, as afternoon drifted toward evening, a fellow who looked no older than Martin but who had gold oak leaves on his shoulder straps came down the trench. “I’m looking for the company commander,” he called.

“You’ve found him, sir,” Martin said, and jabbed a thumb at his own chest.

The major looked surprised, but only for a moment. “All right, Sergeant. Looks like you got your job the same way I got mine.”

“Yes, sir: I’m still breathing,” Martin answered.

“Fair enough,” the major said with a laugh. “I’m Gideon Adkins. Happens that I’m the senior officer still breathing in this regiment, so the 91st is mine till they send somebody to take my place-if they ever get around to that.”

“We’re in the same boat, all right, sir,” Martin said. “Let’s get down to business. What do you need from B Company?”

Adkins studied him. He knew what was in the major’s mind-the same thing that would be in a brigadier general’s mind when he studied Adkins: can this man do the job, or do we need to replace him? If they did replace Martin, he hoped he wouldn’t be as resentful as Bob Reinholdt had been when he first joined the company.

Well, Major Adkins couldn’t complain about the question he’d asked. Indeed, the young regimental commander said, “That’s the spirit, Sergeant…”

“Oh, sorry, sir. I’m Chester Martin.”

“Thanks, Sergeant Martin. Wish I didn’t have to ask, but I’m still learning the ropes, too, no doubt about it. All right, here’s what you need to know: in three days, we go over the top. First objective is Manassas. Second objective is Independent Hill.” Adkins drew a much-folded map from his breast pocket and pointed the hill out to Martin.

After he glanced at the scale of miles, Martin raised his eyebrows. “Sir, that looks to be eight or ten miles past Manassas. If they’re setting that as an objective for this attack, they do think the Confederate States are ready to throw in the sponge.”

“If they aren’t, we’re going to make them throw it in anyhow,” Gideon Adkins declared. “That’s what this attack is all about. We’ll have plenty of barrels to throw at them, and plenty of aeroplanes, and they’ll be bringing forward some new light machine guns that’ll do a better job of keeping up with a rapid advance.”

“That all sounds good, sir.” Martin gave a wry smile. “And there’ll be plenty of us old-fashioned, garden-variety infantrymen around, to do whatever the barrels and the aeroplanes and the machine guns can’t.”

“Infantrymen?” Major Adkins made as if he’d never heard the word. Then he laughed and slapped Martin on the back. “Yes, I expect there’ll be something or other for old-fashioned critters like us to do.”

Martin spread the word to the other sergeants who commanded the platoons in his company. They had all seen a lot of fighting. One of them said, “Well, it’s been going better lately, but ain’t a one of us’d have the job he’s doing right now if it’d been going what you’d call good.” That summed up the course of the war so well, nobody tried to improve on it.