“They were afraid of Nate Holn, you see, even then. He appealed to the strong, and they knew it. The augmentation program was cut off.”

The poker turned dull red in the middle. It had stretched to half again its former length when it began to neck and shred like pulled taffy. Gordon glanced quickly at Charles Bezoar, standing beyond the two augments. The Holnist colonel licked his lips nervously, unhappily. Gordon could tell what he was thinking.

Here was strength he could never hope for. The scientists and the hospitals where the work had been done were long gone. According to Bezoar’s religion, these men had to be his masters.

The tips of the torn poker separated with a loud report, giving off friction heat that could be felt some distance away. Neither of the enhanced soldiers even rocked.

“That’ll be all, Shawn.” Macklin threw the pieces into the fireplace as his aide swiveled smartly and marched out of the room. The General looked at Gordon archly.

“Do you doubt any longer we’ll be in Corvallis by May? With or without you? Any of the unaugmented boys in my army are equal to twenty of your fumblebum farmers — or your zany women soldiers.”

Gordon looked up quickly, but Macklin only talked on.

“But even if the sides were more equal, you still wouldn’t have a chance! You think we few augments couldn’t slip into any of your strong points and level them at will? We could tear your silly defenses to pieces with our bare hands. Don’t you hesitate to believe it for even a second.”

He pushed forward the writing paper and rolled the pen toward Gordon.

Gordon stared at the yellowed sheet. What did it matter? In the midst of all these revelations, he felt he knew where things stood. He met Macklin’s eyes.

“I’m impressed. Really. That was a convincing demonstration.

“Tell me though, General, if you’re so good, why aren’t you in Roseburg right now?”

As Macklin reddened, Gordon gave the Holnist chieftain a faint smile.

“And while we’re on the topic, who is it who’s chasing you out of your own domain? I should have guessed before why you’re pushing this war so hard and fast. Why your people are staging their serfs and worldly possessions to move north, en masse. Most barbarian invasions used to start that way, back in history, like dominoes toppled by other dominoes.

“Tell me, General. Who’s kicking your ass so bad you have to get out of the Rogue?”

Macklin’s face was a storm. His knotted hands flexed and made white-hard fists. At any moment Gordon expected to pay the ultimate price for his deeply satisfying outburst.

Barely in control, Macklin’s eyes never left Gordon. “Get him out of here!” he snapped at Bezoar.

Gordon shrugged and turned away from the seething augment.

“And when you get back I want to look into this, Bezoar! I want to find out who broke security!” Macklin’s voice pursued his intelligence chief out onto the steps, where the guards fell in behind them.

Bezoar’s hand on Gordon’s elbow shook all the way back to the jail pen.

“Who put this man here!” The Holnist Colonel shouted as he saw the dying prisoner on the straw tick between Johnny and the wide-eyed woman.

One guard blinked. “Isterman, I think. He just got in from the Salmon River front—”

… the Salmon River front… Gordon recognized the name of a stream in northern California. “Shut up!” Bezoar nearly screamed. But Gordon had his confirmation. There was more to this war than they had known before this evening.

“Get him out of here! Then go bring Isterman to the big house at once!”

The guards moved quickly. “Hey, take it easy with him!” Johnny cried as they grabbed up the unconscious man like a potato sack. Bezoar favored him with a withering glare. The Holnist colonel took out his anger by kicking at the drudge woman, but her instincts were well-honed. She was out the door before he connected.

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” Bezoar told Gordon. “I think you’d better reconsider writing that letter to Corvallis in the meantime. What you did tonight wasn’t wise.”

Gordon looked casually through the man, as if he barely merited notice. “What passes between the General and myself is of no concern to you,” he told Bezoar. “Only peers have the right to exchange threats, or challenges.”

The quote from Nathan Holn seemed to rock Bezoar back as if he had been struck. He stared as Gordon sat down on the straw and put his arms behind his head, ignoring the former lawyer altogether.

Only after Bezoar had departed, when the gloomy shed had quieted again, did Gordon get up and hurry over to Johnny.

“Did the bear-flag soldier ever speak?”

Johnny shook his head. “He never regained consciousness, Gordon.”

“What about the woman? Did she say anything?”

Johnny looked left and right. The other prisoners were in their corners, facing the wall as they had for weeks.

“Not a word. But she did slip me this.”

Gordon took the tattered envelope. He recognized the papers as soon as he pulled them out.

It was Dena’s letter — the one he had received from George Powhatan’s hand, back on Sugarloaf Mountain. It must have been in his pants pocket when the woman took his clothes away to be cleaned. She must have kept it.

No wonder Macklin and Bezoar never mentioned it!

Gordon was determined the General would never get his hands on the letter. However crazy Dena and her friends were, they deserved their chance. He began tearing it up, prior to eating the pieces, but Johnny reached out and stopped him. “No, Gordon! She wrote something on the last page.”

“Who? Who wrote…” Gordon shifted the paper in the faint moonlight that slipped between the slats. At last he saw scrawled pencil scratchings, rude block letters that contrasted starkly under Dena’s flowing script.

Gordon sat for a long time looking at the sad, simple words. Everywhere his ghosts foDowed him, in spite of his newfound resignation. What George Powhatan had said about Dena’s motives still gnawed within him.

The Big Things would not let go.

He ate the letter slowly. He would not let Johnny share this particular meal, but made a penance, a sacrament, of every piece.

About an hour later there was a commotion outside — a ceremony of sorts. Out across the clearing, at the old Agness General Store, a double column of Holnist soldiers marched to the slow beat of muffled drums. In their midst walked a tall, blond man. Gordon recognized him as one of the camouflaged fighters who had dumped the dying prisoner into their midst earlier that day.

“Must be Isterman,” Johnny commented, fascinated.

“This’ll teach him not to come back without reporting in to G-2 first thing.”

Gordon noted that Johnny must have watched too many old World War Two movies, back at the video library in Corvallis.

At the end of the line of escorts he recognized Roger Septien. Even in the dark he could tell that the former mountain robber was trembling, barely able to hold on to his rifle.

Charles Bezoar’s barrister voice sounded nervous, too, as he read the charges. Isterman stood with his back to a large tree, his face impassive. His trophy string lay across his chest like a bandolier… like a sash of grisly merit badges.

Bezoar stood aside and General Macklin stepped up to speak to the condemned man. Macklin shook hands with Isterman, kissed him on both cheeks, then moved over beside his aide to watch the conclusion. A two-earringed sergeant snapped sharp orders. The executioners knelt, raised their rifles, and fired as one.

Except for Roger Septien. Who fainted dead away.

The tall blond Holnist officer now lay crumpled in a pool of blood at the foot of the tree. Gordon thought of the dying prisoner who had shared their captivity for so short a time, and who had told them so much without ever opening his eyes.