He did not stop as the others had, at a height of a dozen meters. Automatically, as he hurried the others out of their hammocks, he had marked the tallest tree in the area; and this he continued to climb until he had a view out over the tops of the lesser vegetation of the area. He shaded his eyes against the new-rising sun, peering off toward enemy territory, and between the trees.

“Now, what d’we do?” floated up an aggrieved voice from below and off to one side of his own lofty perch. Donal took his palm from his eyes and tilted his head downward.

“Senior Groupman Lee,” he said in a low, but carrying voice. “You will shoot the next man who opens his mouth without being spoken to first by either you, or myself. That is a direct order.”

He raised his head again, amid a new silence, and again peered off under his palm through the trees.

The secret of observation is patience. He saw nothing, but he continued to sit, looking at nothing in particular, and everything in general; and after four slow minutes he was rewarded by a slight flicker of movement that registered on his gaze. He made no effort to search it out again, but continued to observe in the same general area; and gradually, as if they were figures developing on a film out of some tangled background, he became aware of men slipping from cover to cover, a host of men, approaching the camp.

He leaned down again through the branches.

“No firing until I blow my whistle,” he said, in an even lower voice than before. “Pass the word— quietly.”

He heard, like the murmur of wind in those same branches, the order being relayed on to the last man in the Third Group and—he hoped—to the Second and First Groups as well.

The small, chameleon-clad figures continued to advance. Squinting at them through the occulting leaves and limbs, he made out a small black cross sewn to the right shoulder of each battle-dress. These were no mercenaries. These were native elite troops of the United Orthodox Church itself, superb soldiers and wild fanatics both. And even as the recognition confirmed itself in his mind, the advancing men broke into a charge upon the camp, bursting forth all at once in the red-gray dawnlight into full-throated yips and howls, underlaid a second later by the high-pitched singing of their spring-gun slivers as they ripped air and wood and flesh.

They were not yet among the trees where Donal’s force was hiding. But his men were mercenaries, and had friends in the camp the Orthodox elite were attacking. He held them as long as he could, and a couple of seconds longer; and then, putting his whistle to lips, he blew with the damper completely off—a blast that echoed from one end of the camp to the other.