Michael spoke softly. "Rebecca."

She raised her eyes to meet his. He was still smiling. Not broadly, however. The smile seemed-understanding, she thought.

"This is difficult," he said. "For both of us, I think." He chuckled. "Sure as hell for me!" Chuckled again. "Dinner and a movie just doesn't seem appropriate, somehow."

She did not comprehend the precise meaning of that sentence, but she understood the logic. Quite well. She felt her cheeks flush, but fought off the urge to lower her eyes. She even smiled herself.

Michael spread his hands in a gesture which combined amusement, momentary exasperation, and-most of all-patience. Rebecca was dazzled by the charm of it. Relaxed, humorous-confident.

"Time," he said. "I think-yes. We need some time."

Rebecca found herself nodding, and fiercely tried to restrain the impulse. Hopeless. Idiot girl! The image of a rabbit came to her mind, sniffing the world's juiciest cabbage. The image, combined with her nervousness, caused her to burst into sudden laughter.

Then, seeing the quizzical expression on Michael's face, she placed her hand on his chest. "Please," she whispered. "It is not- I am laughing at myself, not you."

The humor faded. Staring into his eyes, now, Rebecca fought for the words. So hard, to speak those words, in a world of confusion and chaos. Too hard.

Time, yes. I am not ready for this.

"Do not be angry with me," she said. Softly, pleading: "Please."

Michael smiled and placed a hand on her cheek. She responded by pressing her cheek into the hand, as if she were an automaton. She did not even try to stop herself.

"Why should I be angry?" he asked. And that, too-that simple question-seemed as dazzling to her as the sunlight. His hand was very warm.

He was turning away. "Time," he said, still smiling. Very broadly, now. Very cheerfully-almost gaily. "Time, yes."

Rebecca stared at his departing figure. When Michael reached the bottom of the small flight of stairs, Rebecca blurted out his name.

He turned and looked back at her.

The words came, finally. Some of them, at least.

"I think you are the most splendid man in the world, Michael. Truly I do."

A moment later she was knocking on the door. Almost frantically. She did not look behind her, afraid of what she would see. Or, perhaps, she was simply afraid of her reaction to what she knew she would see. A smiling face can be the most frightening thing in the world. Her world, as she knew it.

The door opened, and she vanished into the safety beyond. Out of the sunlight.

For a time.

Time, yes.

Time-yes!

Chapter 10

Alexander Mackay was a Scotsman and, as such, a Calvinist born and bred. Even if he had lapsed a bit-more than a bit, in truth-from the faith of his fathers, he had not lost the ingrained habits of his upbringing. Thus, staring down at the newest batch of corpses, he did not blaspheme. But he had no qualms about using other terms, so long as the Lord's name was not taken in vain. Perched on the saddle of his great warhorse, the young nobleman cast a wide net of incredibly vulgar terms across the Thuringian landscape in general, and a certain unit of Protestant mercenaries in particular. "Whoreson craven jackals" was perhaps the least obscene.

His second-in-command, a half-bald, mustachioed veteran in his forties, waited patiently until the cavalry commander was finished. Then, spitting casually onto the ground, Andrew Lennox simply shrugged and said: "What d'ye expect, lad? Most o' t'men guarding Badenburg"-the word guarding was accompanied by a magnificent sneer-"ae deserters from Mansfeld's old army. T'most wort'less soldiers in t'world e'en 'fore Mansfeld died."

"Then why did the town fathers hire the bastards?" Mackay demanded hotly. His eyes, still studying the scene of carnage, fell on the corpse of a small boy, perhaps six years of age. The child's body had been charred by the collapsing roof of the burned farmhouse in which he had spent his short life, but not so badly that Mackay couldn't see his entrails stretching across the dirt of the farmyard. The end of his intestines had been pinned to the ground by a kitchen knife, several feet from the body itself. The grotesque display of torture was entirely typical of the way some of Tilly's mercenaries amused themselves.

For all that Mackay had become inured to such scenes in the year since his arrival in Germany, he was glad that the bodies of the farm's womenfolk had been in the house itself. The corpses had been burnt to skeletons in that inferno, so there was no way to determine the exact manner of their deaths. Mackay didn't want to know. At the age of twenty-two, he had learned enough of cruelty and bestiality to last him a lifetime. Even the lifetime of a Scotsman, a breed not noted for their squeamishness.

Lennox did not bother to answer Mackay's question. The question had been purely rhetorical. Young, Mackay might be, but he was not foolish. The cavalry commander knew as well as anyone why Badenburg's notables had "agreed" to hire Ernst Hoffman's small army of mercenaries. They had been given precious little choice. Let them plunder the town all at once, or let them plunder it a bit at a time. Like many other towns in war-ravaged Germany, Badenburg had taken the second option. By now, several years later, most of its citizens had come to regret the choice. Hoffman's men claimed to be "Protestant," but that had proven to be no boon for Protestant Badenburg. With individual exceptions here and there, Hoffman and his thugs could no longer even be considered "soldiers," in any meaningful sense of the term. They were simply a gang of extortionists. Criminals, in all but name.

Mackay's anger faded away, replaced by a weariness of soul which, by right and reason, belonged to a much older man. When it had become clear that Hoffman had no intention of sallying from the shelter of Badenburg's walls to stop the depredations of Tilly's mercenaries, Mackay had led his own soldiers forth to do what he could to protect the farmers in the area.

It was a pointless gesture, in all truth. Mackay and his Scots cavalrymen, employed by the king of Sweden, had arrived in Badenburg less than three months ago. Gustav Adolf had stationed them there as part of his far-flung effort to stabilize his control of Germany's Baltic provinces. But the king was strapped for men-badly strapped. The Protestant princes who had promised him such abundant aid upon his arrival in Germany had, with a few exceptions, proven to be misers with both men and gold. So Mackay had been given not more than a few hundred men to carry out his task. His main task, which was not to attempt the absurdity of guarding an entire province with a small cavalry force.

Memory of that task jarred him out of his bitter mood. He turned to Lennox. "Still no sign of the courier?"

Lennox shook his head. "Nae a trace. Tha' might be good news." The veteran swept his florid mustachios about, as if using the waxed tips as pointers. "Y'can see how little Tilly's swine care 'bout coverin' they crimes. They'll nae ha' buried a ransacked carriage. 'Tis possible t'courier is simply hiding out some'eres." Lennox pointed to the heavily forested hills a few miles to the south. "B'now, tha' must be thousands o' people hidin' in yon hills."

Mackay scanned the Thuringenwald, as that forest was called. He frowned suddenly. "That's odd," he mused. He pointed to a portion of the hills. "I don't remember seeing that before. That stretch there. Looks different."

Lennox squinted, then shrugged. "Sorry, lad. My eyes are nae what they were. I canna make out what ye're pointin' to."

Mackay pursed his lips, trying to think of how to describe that peculiar part of the landscape. Then, spotting movement, he thrust the problem aside. One of his soldiers was coming-at a gallop.