It was time, and his heartbeat echoed in his ears.

“You go back if you want, Reverend.” It was Marion, bending down from his horse, his breath visible in the chilly air. “You aren’t sworn nor paid to be here.”

“I’ll stay.” He couldn’t tell whether he’d said that or only thought it, but Marion straightened up and drew his sword from its scabbard, resting the blade on his thigh. He had a blue tricorne on his head, but there were dewdrops in the puffs of hair that covered his ears.

Roger took hold of his borrowed sword, though God knew what he’d do with it. God knew. That was, in fact, a comforting thought, and for a moment he was able to draw a deep breath.

“Save your life, maybe,” Lieutenant Monserrat had said, handing it over yesterday. “Even if you don’t mean to fight.”

I don’t mean to fight. Why am I here?

Because they’re here. The men around him, sweating in the chill, smelling death with the scent of fresh-baked bread.

There was a roar from the first column that spread over the field, and he was seized by panic.

I don’t know what to do.

Mortars nearby fired with a sudden bomph! and he found that his knees and his hands were shaking and he urgently needed a piss.

You didn’t know what to do when the bear killed Amy Higgins, a voice that might have been his said inside his head. But you did something anyway. Things would have been worse if I hadn’t, I know that much. I have to go.

The first column suddenly began to run, not in tidy lines but a mob, surging toward the redoubt and the crack of musket fire, yelling their lungs out, some firing, some just running and screaming, a knife in one hand, clawing their way over the abatis, and they were falling as the bullets struck, those farther out knocked down like bowling pins by bouncing cannonballs. A panicked frog erupted suddenly from a patch of wiry yellow grass near Roger’s foot and landed in a puddle, where it vanished.

“I don’t like this, me,” Marion said, in a brief moment between explosions. He shook his head. “No, I don’t.” He raised his sword. “God be with you, Reverend.”

IT WASN’T GOD he found with him, but the next best thing. Major Gareth Barnard, one of his father’s friends, an ex–military chaplain. Barnard was a tall, long-faced man who wore his graying hair parted down the middle in a way that made him look like an old hound dog, but he’d had a black sense of humor and he’d treated Roger, thirteen years old, as a man.

“Did you ever kill anyone?” he’d asked the major when they were sat around the table after dinner one night, the old men telling stories of the War.

“Yes,” the major replied without hesitation. “I’d be no use to my men, dead.”