“Whoever say I ain’t Jeroboam, he a liar,” Scipio declared.

“Anne Colleton ain’t no he,” the white man without the gun said. Scipio had the presence of mind not to betray that he knew the name. That helped now. It wouldn’t help for long. The tough guy with the gun gestured. “Come on,” the other one growled. Numbly, Scipio came.

Sergeant Chester Martin wrinkled his long, rather beaky nose as he made his way up the muddy zigzag of the communications trench toward the front line. He’d lived with mud and the stink of rotting meat and shit and garbage from the U.S. invasion of the Roanoke valley when the war was new till he got wounded the autumn before. Convalescing in Toledo, he’d almost managed to forget the nature of the stench, but it came back in a hurry.

He rubbed his chin, which was as pointed as his nose. Now the United States were getting ready to invade Virginia again, this time from the north rather than the west. In the early days of the fighting, the CSA had overrun Maryland and southern Pennsylvania before being halted on the line of the Susquehanna. The grinding war since then had driven the Rebels back toward their own border. Now-

Now the United States had bridgeheads south of the Potomac, on Confederate soil. Martin trudged past a wrecked barrel-a Confederate model, with treads all around the hull-from which Army engineers were scavenging whatever they could.

A shell burst a couple of hundred yards to Martin’s left. He didn’t bother ducking; going home to heal hadn’t made him lose the knack for knowing when an incoming round was dangerous and when it wasn’t. Rifle and machine-gun fire told him he was getting very close to the front. The shooting was sporadic, almost desultory. Neither side was pushing hard here, not right this second.

A grimy, tired-looking fellow with several days’ growth of beard was leaning against the wall of the trench while he smoked a cigarette. Martin paused. The soldier studied him. He could read the fellow’s thoughts. Nearly clean uniform-a point against. New Purple Heart ribbon-a point for, maybe even a point and a half, because it explained the clean uniform. Sergeant’s stripes-three points against, without a doubt.

But the stripes also meant the fellow couldn’t safely ignore him. Sure enough, after another drag on the hand-rolled cigarette, the soldier asked, “You lookin’ for somebody in particular, Sergeant?”

“B Company, 91st Regiment,” Martin answered. “They told me back at division HQ it was up this way.”

“They gave you the straight goods,” the soldier said with a nod. “Matter of fact, I’m in B Company myself. Name’s Tilden Russell.”

“Chester Martin,” Martin said.

Russell looked him over again, this time with more interest. “You don’t mind me askin’, Sarge, where’d you pick up your grape-jelly ribbon there?”

What kind of soldier are you? the question meant. What kind of action have you seen? “Roanoke front,” Martin answered crisply. “Spent two years there, till I took one in the arm in the Rebs’ big counterattack last fall.”

“Two years on the Roanoke front?” Russell’s eyebrows rose toward the brim of his helmet. “Come on. I’ll take you up to the line myself. God damn, you can play on my team any day of the week.”

“Thanks.” Martin hid a smile. If he’d come from Arkansas or, say, Sequoyah, Tilden Russell wouldn’t have wanted to give him the time of day, let alone escort him up to the forward trenches. Compared to this front, the fighting out west wasn’t anything to speak of. The fighting in the Roanoke valley, though, didn’t take a back seat to anything.

“Captain Cremony!” Russell called as he came into the front-line trenches, and then, to a soldier in a green-gray uniform, “You seen the captain, Eddie? This here’s our new sergeant-spent two years on the Roanoke front.” He sounded as proud of that as if he’d done the fighting himself.

“Yeah?” Eddie looked impressed, too. He pointed to the nearest vertical jog in the horizontal trench. “He ducked into that traverse there, last I saw him.”

“Thanks. Come on, Sergeant.” Russell led Martin down the firebay toward the traverse. Some of the trench floor was corduroyed with wood. Some was just mud, into which Martin’s boots sank with wet, squelching noises. He rounded the corner on Tilden Russell’s heels. Russell let out a pleased grunt and said, “Hey, Captain, I found our new sergeant comin’ up to the line. His name’s Martin, sir-he was on the Roanoke front before he got wounded.”

In spite of a fearsomely waxed, upthrusting Kaiser Bill mustache, Captain Cremony couldn’t have seen his twenty-fifth birthday. He was skinny and swarthy and looked more like a clerk than a soldier, but clerks didn’t commonly have two oak-leaf clusters under their Purple Heart ribbons. “Roanoke, eh?” he said. “You’ll know what it’s all about, then.”

“I hope so, sir,” Martin answered.

“You ought to fit in well,” the company commander said. “You mark my words, Sergeant-when the weather clears up, this front will see movement like nothing since the early days.”

“I hope so, sir,” Martin said again. In the early days, the Confederates had been doing all the moving on this front. He was willing to assume that wasn’t what Captain Cremony meant.

“About time, too,” Cremony said. “We’ve owed these bastards for two wars and fifty years. Now we’re going to get our own back.”

“Yes, sir!” Martin’s voice took on real warmth. “My grandfather lost a leg in the War of Secession. He died before we got to pay the Rebs back for that and for everything else. Next to what he got, this”-he waggled his arm-“isn’t anything worth talking about.”

He listened to himself in something close to amazement. After two and a half years of what surely came closer to hell than anything else man had managed to build on earth, he could still sound like a patriot. If that didn’t mean he was crazy, it did mean the United States had owed a hell of a big debt for a hell of a long time: a debt of pain, a debt of humiliation. And if they won this time, they would pay it back in the same coin. Martin didn’t look forward to the fighting that lay ahead. But the repayment…oh, yes, he looked forward to the repayment.

Captain Cremony said, “Russell, take him down the line to the section he’ll be leading. The sooner he fits himself into the scheme of things, the better for everybody.”

“Yes, sir,” Tilden Russell said. “You come with me, Sergeant. It’s not far.” As soon as he and Martin were out of earshot of Captain Cremony, he added, “The one you’re going to have to watch out for, Sarge, is Corporal Reinholdt. He’s been running the section since Sergeant Kelly stopped a Tredegar round with his ear, and he was steamed when they didn’t give him his third stripe.”

“I’ll take care of that,” Martin said. He didn’t blame Reinholdt for being steamed. If you were doing a three-striper’s job, you deserved a third stripe. A file card with Martin’s name on it must have popped up in the War Department at just the wrong moment for Reinholdt.

Either that, Martin thought, or the guy doesn’t deserve two stripes, let alone three. He’d have to see about that, too.

Quietly, Russell said, “Here we are, Sarge.” Then he raised his voice: “Heads up, you lugs. This here is Sergeant Martin. He’s off convalescent leave-spent the whole damn war till now on the Roanoke front.”

One of the men Martin would be leading was stirring a kettle of stew. A couple were on the firing step, though they weren’t shooting at the Rebels. One was dealing from a battered deck of cards for himself and three friends. A couple were cleaning their rifles. One was repairing a tunic, using a needle and thread with what Martin could see at a glance was extraordinary skill. A few were asleep, rolled in blankets.

Everybody who was awake gave Martin a once-over. He was a stranger here, and so an object of suspicion, and in a clean uniform, and so doubly an object of suspicion. He looked the men over, too. The tailor, or whatever he was in civilian life, was a kid. So were one of the fellows on the firing step, a cardplayer, and one of the men working with gun oil and cleaning rod. The rest, Martin guessed, had been in the fight longer.