They kept roaring, every throat wide open with sound. The Nationals were standing up, man by man, standing up and falling down and standing up and falling down. Pink flag dodged forward; the smoke shredded and let it through, and a struggling clay torrent screeched behind. The front runners kept flinging out their hands and sprawling forward, and others tumbled over them to do the same thing. The flag bobbed closer, supported by a tight-locked mass of bare arms. Squarely in front of the rolling haze, a row of men came out and knelt; their muskets flamed, but you couldn’t hear the sound any more. There lived a single ocean of pulsation and wail, a bursting rattle which knit all solitary explosions together. A man in a green jacket ran forward and put both hands on the wall beside Dan—he didn’t have a gun or anything. A rifle-butt swung, and the green jacket was spattered.

Gray bodies; they smelled of sweat and chemicals; the red flags wavered, bunched together, there were a dozen of them in front of the trees. That ain’t milishy, looky them clovahs, came a discordant howl. Dan felt people pressing him back, staggering over rocks and outflung arms and legs, and always that rim of wolf-faces pushing him. A black-nailed hand tore the sleeve from his shirt. He still had the gun—he didn’t know what to do except go back with the others. Through the mist before the wall, a block of blue soldiers tumbled out at the left of the copse, striking toward the side of the shrieking swarm. Ahead of them ran a young man with a contorted face; he swung a hatchet over his head. The guns in the rear had ceased firing. The nearer world was too unsupported, though ghosts of detonations still made the ground heave, it would be jelly forever. Bale felt a metal-tired wheel strike his back, and he slid around it. Back this far, he thought. Face poked up beside him and said, Get outa the way. Nuther shot. Claw hauling at a string. A stem of flame crushed the wolf-heads, crushed everyone’s eyes and ears as the cannon went off. Dan slipped, his feet were tangled in something slimy. Felt like ropes: good God, they weren’t ropes.

Here’s Fire Zouaves. New yell rose up in the rear. They yelled, Raaaaa as they came swarming past. Dan saw a man with wooden face and narrow eyes; he was coughing as he ran. Dan yelled, “Ty—for— Ty.” The reserves smashed past the single, silent gun; Tyler swung around, he was announcing something, his face looked like no face he had ever worn before. “Be killed,” Bale said in his brain. He couldn’t hear anything Ty was saying, and Ty couldn’t hear him. Thinks she’s damned if he dies before I talk to him. More important than that—