Crack. And she could feel the rightness of the bullet's trajectory, a completeness that had nothing to do with its goal, a thing right in itself.

She stood, drawing a deep breath and releasing it, the rifle hanging in her hand, ignoring the loaded weapon thrust at her. The elephant's charge continued, its head down, then lower, the tusks plowing into the packed sandy dirt, sliding forward, throwing a cloud of dust and leaves and a fine spray of blood before. Stillness, the elephant's body slumping sideways with its head held upright by the tusks, a huge release of steaming dung as the muscles relaxed in death. Marian stared into the beast's dark eye as it went blank, feeling an obscure communion that could never be described.

Another breath, and the world returned to its everyday self. "Woof," she said quietly.

"My uncles aren't going to believe me," Swindapa said, with a slight catch in her voice; her hand came over to grip her partner's shoulder.

Marian touched it with her own, then looked down. The San was slowly lifting his hands from his head and looking up, then even more slowly looking backward. The ridge of earth plowed up by the elephant's last slide touched his injured foot; he jerked it away sharply and hissed with pain. The he grinned, a wide, white, triumphant smile, looking up at her.

The American smiled back and went to one knee beside him, propping the rifle against the roadside brush. "Here," she said, uncorking her canteen, sipping from it and then offering it to the local.

He turned over, wincing, and sat up to accept it. Swindapa slung her rifle and went to examine his ankle, washing it with water from her own canteen and then manipulating it with strong, skilled fingers.

"Miller, Llancraxsson," she said. "We'll cut some poles for stretchers." For the first time she took in their white, shocked faces. "Miller?"

The noncom shook himself and lowered the loaded rifle he still held outstretched. "Ah…"

"Very well done, Miller, you and Llancraxsson," she said gently. "It was one of the rifles you two loaded that got him."

The man nodded, licking his lips and straightening. "Right, ma'am- thanks. A stretcher, we'll get right to it."

There were two red holes precisely.40 in diameter within a finger's breadth of the third corrugation of the elephant's trunk, each weeping a slow red trickle. Another was six inches higher and to the right, just in from one eye. God knew where the fourth shot had gone; still, not bad shooting at all. No telling whose shot had drilled the beast's brain, of course.

Swindapa was standing by the head; it was nearly as tall as she was, and she wasn't a short woman. Tentatively, awed, she reached out and touched it.

"I feel as if we've killed a mountain," she said softly.

"I know what you mean, sugar," Alston answered. "I surely do."

First big battle, Clemens thought, swallowing his nervousness. It can't be too different from skirmishes, except for the scale. I hope. He restrained an impulse to wipe his hands-they were already clean- and looked over at his Babylonian assistant.

Azzu-ena was big-nosed and scrawny, and there was the faintest suggestion of a mustache on her upper lip. When focused in total concentration, her face was still beautiful. She bent over the bilingual text, lips moving slightly as she read down the list. It was the same technique the Babylonians used themselves to teach Sumerian, the sacred language of learning and religion that was long dead as a spoken tongue.

"Izi-iz: stand!" she murmured. "Luzi-iz: let me stand. Lizi-iz: let him stand. Iza-az: he will stand. Aza-az: I shall stand."

She looked up to where Clemens and Smith were setting out surgical instruments from the portable autoclave on the trays, then covering them with sheets of sterile gauze. Reluctantly she set the folder of reed-pulp paper aside and rose, folding back the sleeves of her gown and beginning to scrub down in the sheet-copper basin of boiled water diluted with carbolic acid. They all had roughed, reddened hands from it; she seemed to regard it as a mark of honor. Word had come back that the allied forces were going to force the crossing of the Diyala River against opposition, and that meant business for the Corps.

Justin gave a quick glance around the forward medical tent. It had been set up on a slight rise, far enough back that the dust wasn't too bad, far enough forward that the wounded wouldn't have to be carried too far-timely treatment was the great secret of keeping mortality low. The tent had three poles down the center and one at each corner of the long rectangle; the canvas of the sides had been rolled up and tied, leaving only gauze along the walls. He checked over the contents: three operating tables, ether, oxygen cylinders, instruments, the medical cabinets, rows of cots, tubs of plaster of Paris and bandaging for splints. The personnel-himself and the three other doctor-surgeons from Ur Base, their assistants, a dozen of Shuriash's palace women who'd proved to have some appetite for nursing, corpsmen waiting with stretchers.

The light was good, bright but not blinding. The big tent smelled of hot canvas, steam from the autoclave, and kerosene from the burner underneath it; big vats of water were boiling not far away outside. Must remember to have anyone brought in checked for lice, he thought. Lice were a wonderful thing, from the point of view of bacteria that wanted to spread.

"Heads up!"

Off to the northeast there was a distant thudding, and then a long brabbling, crackling sound.

At Azzu-ena's enquiring look, he spoke: "Guns. Rifles, cannon- our weapons."

She nodded, thoughtful and without the edge of fear that most locals showed when gunpowder came up. "What are the characteristic wounds?"

Clemens heard a chuckle from one of the other doctors. Nevins- she spoke pretty good Akkadian too. He felt a big grin spreading himself. She knows the right questions, at least!

"Tissue trauma, of course," he answered. "Long tracks of damaged tissue, with foreign matter carried deep into the body. Treatment is to remove all matter and debride the damaged tissue." You cut out everything that had been torn, and you eliminated the necrosis that was the greatest danger for gangrene. "Broken bone-shattered, splintered as well as broken."

A two-horse ambulance trotted up outside, swaying on its springs. Corpsmen sprang out and brought in the stretchers. Clemens ran over, swallowing. I hate doing triage, he thought, and then pushed the emotion away. He'd pay for that later, but later it wouldn't hurt his patients.

There were five figures on the stretchers, one thrashing and moaning. "Morphia here!" he snapped, continuing his quick examination.

All arrow wounds; two in the extremities, no immediate danger.

"Sedate and stabilize," he said. "I'll take the sucking chest wound. Nevins, you're on the gut. Thurtontan, you're on the one in the face- I think you can save that eye. Let's go, people!"

Some distant corner of his mind wondered how the fighting was going, but that wasn't his proper concern. Everyone who came to him had already lost their battle.