"He's a sly one," Truslow said. "He's like a dog. He needs a master, see? And now that Faulconer's gone he'll like as not shove his nose into Medlicott's pocket." Truslow sniffed. "You hear the rumor that Medlicott is putting around? He says that if he'd kept command of the Legion we wouldn't be fighting with Jackson, but sitting in the trenches at Richmond. Says it's a fact."

"Like hell it is," Starbuck said, wincing as the weight of the rifle dug into his shoulder.

"But it's the kind of rumor men believe if they get unhappy," Truslow said, "and it ain't any good pretending that everyone in the Legion wants you to be in charge. You forget how many men in this regiment depend on Washington Faulconer for a living. They cut his trees, fish his streams, take his wages, keep their money at his bank, and live in his houses. Look at Will Patterson." Truslow was referring to the newly promoted commander of C Company. "Patterson's been trying to become an officer ever since the fighting began," Starbuck said. "He should be grateful to me!"

"That family ain't grateful for nothing!" Truslow said. Sergeant Patterson, the son of a stonemason in Faulconer Court House, had twice tried to win election to officer but had failed both times. Starbuck was not certain Patterson would make a good officer, but there had been no one else he could promote. "And a good half of the Patterson business comes from Washington Faulconer," Truslow went on, "so do you think Will Patterson can afford to be your supporter?"

"So long as he fights," Starbuck said, "that's all that matters."

"But Medlicott, Moxey, and Patterson," Truslow said pointedly, "are in charge of your three right-hand companies. So just how hard do you think those boys will fight when matters get bloody?"

Starbuck thought about that observation and did not like what he was thinking. He kept his conclusion to himself, grinning at Truslow instead. "Some people like me," he said.

"Who?"

"Coffman."

"He's a boy, too young to know better."

"Swynyard?"

"Madder than a rabid bat."

"Pecker?"

"Madder than two rabid bats."

"Murphy."

"Murphy likes everyone. Besides, he's Irish."

"You?"

"I like you," Truslow said scornfully, "but just what kind of recommendation do you think that is?"

Starbuck laughed. "Anyway," he said after a few paces, "we're not here to be liked. We're here to win battles."

"So make sure you do," Truslow said, "make goddamn sure you do."

The tired, hot men received a respite when they came close to the Rappahannock. So far the army had inarched well to the south of the river, but now they were turning north to march past the Yankees' flank. The river's northern bank was a bluff up which the road climbed steeply, and one of Jackson's eighty guns had stuck on the slippery bank. The teamsters used their whips, and the nearest infantry were summoned to put their shoulders to the gun wheels, but the delay inevitably backed the column up, and the grateful men collapsed beside the road to rest their aching legs and catch their breath. Some men slept, their faces given a corpselike look by the dust coated on their skin. Moxey surreptitiously removed the stone from his mare's hoof, then sat beside a glum-looking Major Medlicott. Most of the Legion's other officers gathered around Starbuck, hoping to glean more information than he had given to their men, but Starbuck insisted he did not know where they were going.

"It'll be the Shenandoah Valley," Captain Davies opined, and when no one contradicted him or even asked why he held the opinion, he explained it anyway. "That's Old Jack's backyard, right? He's a terror in the Shenandoah. Once the Yankees know we're in the Shenandoah, then they'll have to split their army in two."

"Not if they decide to let us rot in the Shenandoah," the newly promoted Lieutenant Howes commented.

"So we won't rot there, but cross into Maryland," Davies suggested. "Up the Shenandoah, straight across the Potomac and over to Baltimore. Once we've got Baltimore we can attack Washington. I reckon a month from now we could be running Abe Lincoln out of the White House on one of his Own fence rails."

Davies's confidence was greeted with silence. Someone spat in the road, while another man tilted his canteen to his mouth and held it there in hope of finding one last trickle of tepid water. "Down the Shenandoah," Truslow finally said, "not up."

"Down?" Davies asked, puzzled by the contradiction. "Why should we march south?"

"Down's north and up's south," Truslow said, "always has been and always will be. You go to the valley and ask the way up and they'll send you south. So we'll be going down the Shenandoah, not up."

"Up or down," Davies said, offended by the correction, "who cares? We're still going north. It'll be a two-day march to the Shenandoah, another two to the Potomac, and then a week to Baltimore."

"I was in Baltimore once," Captain Pine said dreamily. Everyone waited to hear more, but it seemed Pine had nothing to add to his brief announcement.

"Up!" Starbuck saw the battalion in front being ordered to their feet. "Get your lads ready."

They crossed the river and headed north. They did not follow the road, which here tended westward, but marched over fields and through woods, across shallow streams and wide paddocks, following a shortcut that at last brought the column to a dirt road leading northward. Starbuck held a hazy map of Virginia in his head, and he sensed how they were now marching parallel to the Blue Ridge Mountains, which meant that just as soon as they reached the Manassas Gap Railroad they could turn west and follow the rails through the pass into the Shenandoah Valley. And that valley was aimed like a gun at the hinterland of Washington, so maybe the excitable Davies had it right. Starbuck tried to imagine the fall of Washington. He saw the ragged rebel legions marching through the conquered ring of forts that surrounded the Yankee capital and then, under the eyes of the silent, shocked spectators who lined the streets, parading past the captured White House. He heard the victory music and saw in his mind's vivid eye the starcrossed battle flag flying high above the white, plump, and self-satisfied buildings, and when the victory parade was finished, the soldiers would take over the captured city and celebrate their triumph. Colonel Lassan, the Frenchman, had spent a week in the North's capital and had described the city to Starbuck. It was a place, Lassan had said, devoid of hard sinews. There was no industry in Washington, no wharves, no factories, no steam-driven mills to scream their whistles and shroud the sun with their filth. It was, Lassan said, a small city with no purpose but to manufacture laws and regulations; an artificial city where slyness passed for intelligence and venality replaced industry. It was peopled by pale lawyers, plump politicians, rich whores, and faceless hordes of black servants, and when the rebels marched in, the lawyers and politicians would doubtless be long gone, which meant that only the good souls would be left behind. That tantalizing prospect served to keep Starbuck's mind off his blistered feet and burning muscles. He dreamed of a soft city, of captured champagne, of wide beds and starched white sheets. He dreamed of fried oysters and turtle soup and roast beef and tenderloin steaks and peach tarts, all of it eaten in the company of the lawyers' rich Washington whores, and that tantalizing thought suddenly reminded him of the golden-haired woman he had glimpsed in her husband's open carriage behind the Yankee lines at the battle of Bull Run. She lived in Washington and had invited Starbuck to visit her, but now, for the life of him, he could not remember her name. Her husband had been a Northern congressman, a pompous and dim-witted man, but the wife had been golden and beautiful, a vision whose memory was lovely enough to console a weary man marching through the small Virginia towns where excited people applauded as their soldier boys went by. Year-old rebel flags, hoarded through the months when the Yankees had been the nearest troops, were hung from balconies and eaves, while small boys brought the troops buckets of tepid well water to drink.