"The prudent course, sir, would be a withdrawal behind the Rappahannock," the aide murmured. The aide was a graduate of West Point and supposed to provide the politician-general with sound military advice.

"It may be nothing but a reconnaissance," Banks said, thinking of vengeance.

"Maybe so, sir," the aide said suavely, "but what do we gain by fighting? Why hold ground we can easily retake in a week's time? Why not just let the enemy wear himself out by marching?"

Banks brushed cigar ash off the map. Retreat now? In a week when Boston's most famous preacher was coming to visit the army? What would Massachusetts say if they heard that Commissary Banks had run away from a few rebels?

"We stay," Banks said. He stabbed his finger down at the

contours of a ridge that barred the road just south of the Culpeper Court House. If Jackson was marching north in the hope of resupplying his army at the expense of Commissary Banks, then he would have to cross that ridge that lay behind the small protection of a stream. The stream was called Cedar Run, and it lay at the foot of Cedar Mountain. "We'll meet him there," Banks said, "and beat him there."

The aide said nothing. He was a handsome, clever young man who thought he deserved better than to be harnessed to this stubborn bantam-cock. The aide was trying to frame a response, some persuasive words that would deflect Banks from rashness, but the words would not come. Instead, from the lamplit street, there sounded men's voices singing about loved ones left behind, of sweethearts waiting, of home.

"We'll meet him there," Banks said again, ramming his finger onto the sweat-stained map, "and beat him there."

At Cedar Mountain.

The Legion did not march far on the day they crossed the Rapidan. There was a curious lack of urgency about the expedition, almost as though they were merely changing base rather than advancing on the Northerners who had invaded Virginia. And next morning, though they were woken long before dawn and were ready to march even before the sun had risen above the tall eastern trees, they still waited three hours while a succession of other regiments trailed slowly by on the dusty road. A battery of small six-pounders and short-barreled howitzers was dragged past, followed by a column of Virginia infantry, who good-naturedly jeered the Faulconer Legion for its pretentious name. The day was hot and promised to get hotter still, yet still they waited as the sun climbed higher. More troops passed until, just short of midday, the Legion at last led the Faulconer Brigade out onto the dusty road.

Just moments later the guns started to sound. The noise came from far ahead, a grumble that could have been mistaken for thunder if the sky had not been cloudless. The air was sullen, moist, and windless, and the faces of Starbuck's men were pale with road dust through which their sweat ran in dark lines. Soon, Starbuck thought, some of those rivulets would be blood red, fly-coated, and twitching, and that premonition of battle turned his belly sour and caused the muscles in his right thigh to tremble. He tried to anticipate the sound of bullets as he coached himself to display courage and not the fear that was liquefying his bowels, and all the while the distant cannons hammered their flat, soulless noise across the land. "Goddamned artillery," Truslow said in a sour tone. "Some poor bastards are catching hell."

Lieutenant Coffman seemed about to say something, then decided to keep quiet. One of the conscripts broke ranks to pull down his pants and squat beside the road. Normally he would have been good-naturedly jeered, but the muffled thump of the guns made every man nervous.

In the early afternoon the Legion halted in a shallow valley. The road ahead was blocked by a Georgia battalion beyond which lay a ridgeline crested by dark trees beneath a sky whitened by gunsmoke. Some of the Georgians lay asleep on the road, looking like corpses. Others were penciling their names and hometowns on scraps of paper that they either pinned to their coats or stuck into buttonholes so that, should they die, their bodies would be recognized and their families informed. Some of Starbuck's men began to take the same gloomy precaution, using the blank end pages of Bibles as their labels.

"Culpeper Court House," George Finney announced suddenly.

Starbuck, sitting beside the road, glanced at him, waiting.

"Billy Sutton says this is the road to Culpeper Court House," George Finney explained. "Says his daddy brought him on this road two years back."

"We came to bury my grandmother, Captain," Billy Sutton intervened. Sutton was a corporal in G Company. He had once been in J Company, but a year of battles had shrunk the Faulconer Legion from ten to eight companies, and even those companies were now understrength. At the war's beginning the Legion had marched to battle as one of the biggest regiments in the rebel army, but after a year of battle it would scarcely have filled the pews of a backcountry church.

Three horsemen galloped southward through the brittle stubble of a harvested cornfield, their horses' hooves kicking up puffs of dust from the parched dirt. Starbuck guessed they were staff officers bringing orders. Truslow glanced at the three men, then shook his head. "Goddam Yankees in Culpeper Court House," Truslow said, affronted. "Got no damned business in Culpeper Court House."

"If it is Culpeper Court House," Starbuck said dubiously. Culpeper County had to be at least sixty miles from the Legion's home in Faulconer County, and few of the men in the Legion had traveled more than twenty miles from home in all their lives. Or not until this war had marched them up to Manassas and across to Richmond to kill Yankees. They had become good at that. They had become good at dying, too.

The gunfire suddenly swelled into one of those frenetic passages when, for no apparent reason, every cannon on a battlefield spoke at once. Starbuck cocked an ear, listening for the slighter crackle of musketry, but he could hear nothing except the unending thunder of artillery. "Poor bastards," he said.

"Our turn soon," Truslow answered unhelpfully.

"This rate they'll run out of ammunition," Starbuck said hopefully.

Truslow spat in comment on his Captain's optimism, then turned as hoofbeats sounded. "God damn Swynyard," he said tonelessly.

Every man in the company now either feigned sleep or kept his eyes fixed on the dusty road. Colonel Griffin Swynyard was a professional soldier whose talents had long been dissolved by alcohol but whose career had been rescued by General Washington Faulconer. Swynyard's cousin edited Richmond's most influential newspaper, and Washington Faulconer, well aware that reputation was more easily bought than won, was paying for the support of the Richmond Examiner by employing Swynyard. For a second Starbuck wondered if Swynyard was coming to see him, but the Colonel, closely followed by Captain Moxey, galloped past H Company and on up the slope toward the sound of battle. Starbuck's heart gave an acid beat as he guessed Swynyard was going to mark the place where the Legion would deploy, which meant that at any second the orders would come to advance into the guns.

Ahead, where the road vanished across the shallow ridge, the Georgian troops were already struggling to their feet and pulling on bedrolls and weapons. The cannon fire had momentarily abated, but the snapping sound of rifle cartridges now crackled across the dry landscape. The sound increased Starbuck's nervousness. It had been a month since the Legion last fought, but a single month was not nearly long enough to allay the terrors of the battlefield. Starbuck had been secretly hoping that the Legion might sit this skirmish out, but the Georgia battalion was already trudging north to leave a haze of dust over the road.