"The object of this war," Colonel Swynyard said tartly, "is to correct Abraham Lincoln's political misconceptions, not to make Captain Medlicott happy." He waited until Starbuck had settled himself in the saddle. "I thought you were going to upset Jackson."

Starbuck grinned. "Old Jack can hardly be expected to approve of womanizing, can he?"

Swynyard looked up at the sky. The last clouds had gone, and there was a splendor of stars arching over their heads. "I suppose I shouldn't pass on rumor," the Colonel said, "but there are stories that Old Jack had a love child once. Long ago. The stories are probably untrue, but who knows? Maybe you have to know sin before you can hate it. Maybe the best of Christians are made from the worst of sinners?"

"So there's hope for me yet?" Starbuck asked teasingly.

"Only if you win battles, Starbuck, only if you win battles." The Colonel looked at the younger man. "The Legion won't be an easy job, Starbuck."

"No, sir, but I'm the best man for it." Starbuck smiled at the Colonel. "I'm an arrogant son of a bitch, but by God I can fight." And now he had a whole regiment to fight for him, and he could not wait to start.

General Thomas Jackson put the interview with Swynyard and Starbuck out of his mind the very second that they left the room, concentrating instead on the maps that Major Hotchkiss had painstakingly drawn for him. Those handmade maps, spread edge to edge on the trestle table where their corners were weighted down by candlesticks, showed the country north of the Rappahannock, the country where Robert Lee's impudent and daring idea would be put to the test. It was an idea that Jackson liked because it was challenging, and because it held immense possibilities.

Which meant it also held enormous risks.

The enemy was digging in beyond the steep northern bank of the Rappahannock, inviting the rebels to throw away their lives in vain attacks across the deep river. The enemy doubtless planned to stay behind the river while more and more of McClellan's regiments joined their ranks until, at last, their numbers were overpowering and they felt confident of sweeping Lee's ragged army clean out of history.

So Lee, in response, was proposing to break one of the fundamental rules of war. Lee was planning to split his already outnumbered army into two smaller armies, each one horribly vulnerable to attack. That vulnerability was the risk, but it was a risk predicated on the likelihood that John Pope would not attack but would instead sit tight behind his steep riverbank and wait for McClellan's regiments to swell his ranks.

So Lee planned to divert Pope's attention by making threatening movements on the Rappahannock's southern bank, and while Pope watched that diversion, Thomas Jackson would march westward with the smaller rebel army. Jackson would march with just twenty-four thousand men, who would go west, then north, and then, with God's help, eastward until they had hooked far and deep into the enemy's rear, and once behind Pope's lines that small rebel army would cut and slash and burn and destroy until John Pope would be forced to turn back to destroy it. Then the small army, the vulnerable army, would have to fight like the devil itself to give Lee time to come to its aid, but at least the rebels would be fighting on ground of their own choosing and not attacking across a blood-dyed river. Jackson's small army was the anvil, and Lee's bigger army the hammer, and by God's good grace John Pope's army would be caught between the two.

But if the hammer and anvil failed to come together, then the history books would say that Lee and Jackson had thrown away a country by breaking the basic rules of war. By mere tomfoolery.

But tomfoolery was the only weapon the rebels had left. And it might just work.

So tomorrow, in the dawn, Tom Fool Jackson would march.

***

THEY MARCHED. They marched like they had never marched in their lives before and like they hoped they would never have to march again.

They marched like no troops had ever marched, and they did it through a day as hot as hell and as dry as hell's bones, and through a thick dust kicked up by the men and horses who marched in front; a dust that coated their tongues and thickened their throats and stung their eyes.

They marched on broken boots or with no boots at all. They marched because Old Mad jack had told them he expected them to march, but no one knew why they were marching or where. First they marched west into a plump country unvisited by forage parties from either army, where the folk greeted the leading regiments with crackers, cheese, and milk, but there was not enough food to serve all the men who trudged past: regiment after regiment, brigade after brigade, the long hurting line of Jackson's foot cavalry heading west into America with dust on their faces and blood in their boots and sweat in their beards. "Where are you going, boys?" an old man shouted at the troops.

"Going to lick the Yankees, Pa!" one man found the energy to call back, but no one except the General really knew their destination.

"Lick 'em good, boys! Lick the sumbitches good and hard!"

The Legion had been woken at three in the morning by bugles that had stirred weary men from a shallow sleep. The soldiers grumbled and cursed at Old Jack, then blew their fires alive to boil their foul-tasting coffee.

Starbuck issued all the ammunition the Legion possessed. Each man would carry thirty rounds, half the usual issue, but that was all the cartridges that were left him. The men would carry their thirty rounds, their weapons, their bedroll, and a haversack with as much hardtack and boiled beef as they could carry, but they could carry nothing else. All knapsacks and heavy baggage were to be left south of the Rappahannock under a corporal's guard of wounded and sick men too weak to march.

Daniel Medlicott, whose promotion to major had been Washington Faulconer's final gift to the Legion, came with Sergeant Major Tolliver to make a formal protest at Starbuck's orders. If the Legion met an enemy, they said, then the men could not fight properly with only half an issue of ammunition. Starbuck, nervous at this first challenge to his authority, had delayed the confrontation by stooping to his campfire and lighting himself a cigar. "We'll just have to fight twice as hard then," he said, trying to turn away their unhappiness with levity.

"It isn't a joke, Starbuck," Medlicott said.

"Of course it isn't a joke!" Starbuck snapped the rejoinder louder than he had intended. "It's war! You don't give up fighting just because you don't have everything you want. The Yankees do that, not us. Besides, we ain't fighting alone. All of Jackson's men are marching with us."

The Sergeant Major looked unhappy but did not press the argument. Starbuck suspected Medlicott had talked the Sergeant Major into joining a protest that arose more from Medlicott's pique than from a genuine concern, and Medlicott, Starbuck conceded, did have cause to feel misused. For one day the miller had thought himself the commander of the Faulconer Legion, and then, out of the blue, the man he most disliked in the regiment had been promoted over his head. Medlicott maintained his protest had a more noble aim than salving his hurt pride. "You don't understand," he told Starbuck, "because you're not a local man. But I am, and these are my neighbors"—he waved a hand at the Legion—"and it's my duty to get them home to their wives and little ones."

"Makes you wonder why we're fighting a war at all,"

Starbuck said.

Medlicott blinked at the Bostonian, unsure how to understand the remark. "I don't think we should march," he reiterated his protest heavily. "And it won't be my fault if there's disaster."

"Of course it won't be your fault," Starbuck spoke caustically. "It'll be my fault, just as it'll be my fault if there ain't a disaster." A year before, he thought, his pride in being grammatical would never have allowed him to say "ain't," but now, to his private amusement, his Boston accent was following his allegiance south. "And your duty, Major," he went on, "is not to make sure your neighbors get home, but to make damn sure the Yankees get home, and if the sumbitches don't have the sense to go of their own accord, then your duty is to send them back to their wives and little ones inside boxes. That's your duty. Good morning to you both." He turned away from the two unhappy men. "Captain Truslow!"