“I can’t afford to rest,” he said, rubbing his eyes.

He looked gaunt and distracted, and I pitied him. It might seem unjust to feel sympathy for a Major General who had not lifted a rifle, on a day when thousands of men had sacrificed lives and limbs on his behalf. But it seemed to me that Julian had lived the struggle of every soldier under his command, at least in his imagination, and suffered each loss as though the bullets had pierced his own body. He identified closely with his men, and always took pains to see that they were fed and rested, and this had helped to make him popular among them; but he paid for it now, in stress and in grief.

“Of course you can afford to rest,” I said gently. “You’ll be a better officer for it.”

He rose from his camp table, stretching, and together we stepped outside. Away from the portable stove the air was very cold, and the fires of the enemy smoldered like coals in the flatlands ahead of us.

“See all that we’ve won,” I said.

“I’m content with what I see,” said Julian. “Apart from the number of the dead. What worries me is what I don’t see.”

“Well, it’s dark, after all … what don’t you see?”

“The cavalry detachment I sent to tear up tracks behind the enemy’s lines, for one. Not a man of them has reported back. If the rail connection to Goose Bay remains intact, reinforcements will begin to arrive, and keep on arriving.”

“It’s no easy job, bending rails and blowing up bridges. Probably the cavalry was just detained in its work.”

“And the harbor at Goose Bay. What do you make out by this light, Adam?”

“It seems peaceful.” There was a glow in the sky—a dusty patch of the Northern Lights, which waxed and waned—and I saw a few masts and ships at anchor—Dutch commercial shipping, I supposed. “They threw all their gunboats against us at Striver, and lost them.”

“I see the same. What I don’t see is any American ship of war. I had hoped Admiral Fairfield would be shelling Goose Bay by now, or at least positioning his vessels.”

That was true … and the absence seemed ominous, now that he pointed it out to me.

“Perhaps they’ll arrive in the morning,” I said.

“Perhaps,” said Julian wearily.

I have not yet said very much about Sam Godwin and his role in these events.

That’s not because his part was insignificant, but because it was performed in intimate consultation with Julian, and I didn’t participate directly in battle-planning.^* But Sam pored over the maps just as intently as did Julian, and brought his greater experience into play. He did not attempt to take command, but made himself sympathetic to Julian’s suggestions, and seldom contradicted them, but only offered nuance in their refinement. I supposed this was the role he had played with Julian’s father Bryce during the successful Isthmian War, and at times, when the two of them put their heads together, I could imagine that twenty years of history had been rolled back, and that this was the command tent of the Army of the Californias … though Julian’s unusual yellow beard belied the daydream, as did the cold November weather.

Julian, in any case, succeeded in maintaining a fragile optimism about the campaign; while Sam, though he tried not to show it, was obviously less hopeful. Ever since we sailed from Manhattan, all humor had fled from him. He didn’t joke, or laugh at jokes. He scowled, instead … and there was a glitter in his eye that might have been fear, sternly suppressed. I expect Sam had concluded that he might not see New York City, or more importantly Emily Baines Comstock, ever again in this earthly life; and it was my fervent wish that Julian might succeed in proving him wrong. But the events of the next day were not encouraging.

The Dutch counter-attacked at dawn.

Perhaps they had done some scouting of their own, and calculated that our army, while intimidating, was not as large as they feared; or perhaps reinforcements had arrived by rail during the night. Whatever the case, their resolve had grown firm and their courage was not lacking.

Though the defenders of Goose Bay lacked a Chinese Cannon, their field artillery outranged ours by several hundred yards. They had figured that difference finely, and used it to their advantage. Shot and shell pummeled our forward ranks and masked their first advance. Our men soon brought their own weapons to bear, including the formidable Trench Sweeper; but the Dutch had come ahead too quickly for our field-pieces to be of much use against them, and an important hill, along with an entire artillery battery, was captured before Julian or his lieutenants could react.

All that morning I heard the unceasing roar of cannonry and the cries of wounded men as they were carried back from the front. Dutch and American regiments went at one another like clashing sabers, shooting off sparks of blood and mayhem. Messengers arrived and departed with desperation in their eyes, and each one seemed more exhausted than the last. An entire battalion collapsed on our right flank, driven back by cannonade, although reinforcements held the position—barely.

Noon passed, and the smoke of the battle continued to rise like a crow-colored obelisk into the wan and windless sky. “Panic is our greatest enemy now,” Sam said grimly.

Julian stepped away from his map-table, throwing down a pencil in frustration. “Where is the Navy? There’s nothing happening here the shelling of Goose Bay wouldn’t correct!”

“Admiral Fairfield promised us his armada,” Sam said, “and I believe he meant it. Whatever keeps him, it must be dire. We can’t count on him arriving.”

“Do you suppose this was my uncle’s plan all along—to plant us here among the Dutch, and then withdraw the Navy?”

“I wouldn’t put it past him. The point is that we don’t have the Navy, and we can’t expect to have the Navy. And without the Navy we can’t hold our position much longer.”

“We will hold them,” Julian said flatly.

“If the Dutch flank us and take the road we won’t be able to retreat to Striver—and that’ll be the end of us.”

“We’ll hold,” Julian said, “until we know for a fact that Fairfield isn’t coming. He doesn’t strike me as a man who would abandon a promise.”

“He wouldn’t, though he might be unable to fulfill it, for any number of reasons.”

But Julian refused to be swayed. To the rear of the fighting there was a hill with an old spruce tree on it, and Julian posted an agile man atop this tree as if it were a mizzenmast on an ocean-going vessel, and gave him a sailor’s chore: to watch Lake Melville for ships. Thus any hint of Admiral Fair-field’s tardy arrival would be relayed directly to Julian’s headquarters as soon as it was perceived.

In the meantime he bowed to Sam’s suggestion and gathered his subordinates to plan an orderly retreat, should it become necessary. If we must withdraw, Julian said, then it ought to be a fighting withdrawal, making the enemy pay for every yard of mossy soil he gained. Julian described how troops could be placed along ridges and behind the humped earth of the railway embankment, so that Dutch soldiers in pursuit of a retreating regiment might be drawn into an ambush and killed. Messages were quickly sent out to battalion commanders to coordinate this strategy, and to keep the planned fall-back from turning into a general rout.

The scheme was successful, in so far as it went. Our front buckled—or so it was made to seem—and Mitteleuropan forces poured into the gap. The Dutch infantry were hooting and firing their rifles in triumph just as rows of hidden men turned Trench Sweepers on them and artillery shells began to burst in their midst. Their cross-and-laurel flag, which had been coming ahead at full speed, was suddenly thrown down, along with its bearer and dozens of common soldiers. Dutch troops continued to pour into the line of fire from the rear, but they roiled over their dead comrades uncertainly and were slaughtered in turn.