"I'm told that General Jackson is not given to confiding in his inferiors," Swynyard said, "or in his superiors either, for that matter, so I can only guess, and my guess is that we've been sent here as bait."

"Bait." Starbuck repeated the word flatly. It did not sound good.

"I'm guessing that we've been sent up here to pull the Yankees out of their defenses on the Rappahannock," Swynyard said, then paused to watch a soldier shake loose yards and yards of mosquito netting, "which could mean that in a few hours we'll have every blessed Yankee in Virginia trying to kill us." He finished, then stared northward to where a brisk rattle of rifle fire had sounded. The volley was followed by the heavier sound of artillery. "Someone's getting thumped," Swynyard said with a bloodthirsty relish, then twisted in his saddle to watch a sad procession come into sight beside the warehouse. A group of rebel soldiers were escorting a long line of black men and women, some crying but most walking with a stiff dignity. "Escaped slaves," Swynyard explained curtly.

A woman tried to break away from the column but was shoved back into place by a soldier. Starbuck counted almost two hundred of the slaves, who were now ordered to form a line close beside a captured portable forge. "What they should have done," Swynyard said, "is keep running north of the Potomac." "Why didn't they?"

"Because the Yankees declared Manassas a safe refuge for contrabands. They want to keep the darkies down here, you see, south of the Mason-Dixon line. It's one thing to preach emancipation, but quite another to have them living in your street, ain't that the case?"

"I don't know, sir." Starbuck grimaced as he saw a leather-aproned blacksmith test the heat of the forge's furnace. The portable forge was a traveling blacksmith's shop mounted on the back of a heavy wagon that could travel with the army and shoe horses or provide instant repairs to broken metal. The smith dragged a length of chain out of a barrel, and Starbuck immediately understood what was about to happen to the recaptured slaves.

"So how many blacks live in your father's street?" Swynyard demanded.

"None, except for a couple of servants." "And has your father ever had a black at his dinner table?" "Not that I know of," Starbuck said. A hammer clanged on the anvil. The smith was fashioning manacles out of barrel hoops, then brazing the open manacles onto the chain. Heat shimmered over the small open furnace, which was being fanned by two soldiers pumping a leather bellows. Every minute or so a recaptured slave was forced to the forge to have one of the newly made manacles closed around an ankle. A huge-bellied captain with a bristling black beard was supervising the operation, cuffing the slaves if they showed any resistance and boasting how they would suffer now they had been recaptured. "What happens to them?" Starbuck asked.

"You can never trust a black that's run away," Swynyard said, speaking with the authority of a man born into one of Virginia's oldest slave-trading families. "It don't matter how valuable he is, he's been spoilt for good if he's tasted a bit of liberty, so they'll all get sold down the river." "Women too?"

The Colonel nodded. "Women too. And children." "So they'll all be dead in a year?"

"Unless they're real lucky," Swynyard said, "and die sooner." Being sold down the river meant going to the sweated chain gangs on the cotton plantations of the deep South. Swynyard looked away. "I guess my two boys had the good sense to keep on running. They ain't here, anyway, I looked for them." He paused as the gunfire to the north reached a crackling crescendo. Powder smoke was whitening the sky, indicating that a skirmish of some severity was taking place, but the fact that no staff officers were demanding reinforcements from the troops rifling the depot suggested that the enemy was well in hand. "Right now," Swynyard said, "I'd guess that we've just got a few odds and ends coming to attack us. The real attack won't hit till tomorrow."

"Something to look forward to," Starbuck said dryly. The Colonel grinned and rode on, leaving Starbuck to stroll among his happy men. There was no grumbling now about missing a chance to join the Richmond garrison; instead the Legion was reveling in its chance of loot. Captain Moxey had found some frilled shirts and was pulling them on one above another to save himself the trouble of cramming them into a haversack already stuffed with tins of chicken in aspic. Sergeant Major Tolliver had unpacked a whole case of long-barreled Whitney revolvers and was attempting to stow as many as possible in his clothing, while Lieutenant Coffman had discovered a handsome black cloak edged with blue silk braid that he swirled dramatically around his body. At least two men were already blind drunk.

Starbuck dragged one of the drunken men off a case marked "Massachusetts Arms Co. Chicopee Falls." The man groaned and protested, but Starbuck snarled at him to shut up, then levered the case open to find a shipment of Adams .36-caliber revolvers. The guns, with their blued barrels and cross-hatched black-walnut grips, looked deadly and beautiful. Starbuck discarded the clumsier long-barreled Colt he had taken from a dead New Yorker at Gaines Mill and helped himself to one of the new revolvers. He was just loading the last of the Adams's five chambers when a chorus of shouts erupted from further down the warehouse. Starbuck turned to see an excited mob of his men chasing an agile black figure, who swerved around an astonished Coffman, leaped over an opened crate of canteens, and would have got clean away had not the drunk beside Starbuck reached out an oblivious hand that inadvertently tripped the fugitive. The boy—he was hardly more than a boy—sprawled in the mud, where he was pounced on by his cheering pursuers.

"Bring the bastard here!" Major Medlicott strode down the warehouse carrying a teamster's whip.

The prisoner yelped as Abram Trent cuffed him around the head. "Goddamned nigger thief!" Trent had the boy by one ear and was hitting him with his free hand. "Thieving black bastard."

"Enough!" Starbuck pushed a man aside. "Let go of him."

"He's a thieving—"

"I said let go of him!"

Trent reluctantly let go of the boy's ear, but not without giving the captured fugitive a last savage blow. The boy staggered but managed to stay on his feet. He looked around for an escape, realized he was trapped, and so adopted a defiant air. He had a thin face, long black hair, a straight nose, and high cheekbones. He was dressed in a sailor's bell-bottom pants and a billowing striped shirt that gave him an exotic look. Starbuck had once spent a few weeks with a traveling troupe of actors, and there was something in the boy's flamboyance that reminded him of those distant times. "What's your name?" Starbuck asked him.

The boy looked up at his savior, but instead of showing gratitude, he spat. "Ain't got a name."

"What's your name?" Starbuck insisted again, but only received a truculent glare for answer.

Medlicott pushed through the ring of men. "Stay out of this, Starbuck!" he said, raising the whip against the black lad.

Starbuck stepped in front of Major Medlicott. He kept a smile on his face as he put his mouth close to Medlicott's right ear, and he kept smiling as he spoke softly, so softly that only Medlicott could hear him. "Listen, you lily-livered son of a bitch, you give me orders one more time and I'll pistol-whip you down to corporal." Starbuck was still smiling as he stepped a pace backward. "Don't you agree that's the best way to proceed, Major?"

Medlicott was not certain at first that he had heard right and just blinked at Starbuck. Then he took a backward pace and flicked the whip toward the captured boy. "He stole my watch," Medlicott said. "The little black bastard lifted it out of my pocket when I laid my coat down. It was a present from my wife, too," he added indignantly, "from Edna!" Starbuck looked at the boy. "Give the Major his watch." "Don't have it."