Starbuck was on foot, limping. After Pocahontas had screamed he had pulled her head to the left, raked her sore flanks with his heels and then galloped clear of the stunned and scattered Yankees. He had tried to follow the fleeing color party, but instead he had felt the mare stumble and he saw droplets of blood spraying from her mouth and nostrils. Her stride had faltered, she had blown a great bubbling breath, then half-collapsed onto her knees. Still she had tried to keep going, but the life was roaring out of her punctured lung and so she had fallen to her side, sliding through the leaf mold and thorns, and Starbuck had just managed to kick his feet free of the stirrups and hurl himself out of the saddle before the dying mare crashed into a tree and stopped. She shivered, tried to raise her head, whinnied once, then her hooves beat a dying tattoo on the ground.

“Oh, God.” Starbuck was shaking. He was crouching, bruised and frightened, his breath coming in huge gasps. The horse shuddered and a great wash of blood spilt from her mouth. The bullet wound in her chest seemed very small. Flies buzzed loud, already settling on the dead horse.

The woodland seemed oddly silent. Flames or musketry crackled far away, but Starbuck could hear no footsteps close by. He clambered to his feet and hissed with pain when he put his weight onto his left ankle. His revolver had fallen into the litter of bloody leaves. He picked it up, shoved it into his holster and had been about to start limping away when he remembered how only that morning Colonel Faulconer had stressed how expensive the saddle was, and Starbuck was assailed by the ridiculous conviction that he would be in bad trouble if he did not rescue the saddle and so he had knelt at the belly of the dead horse and scrabbled to unbuckle the girth. Then, half-sobbing and half-panting, he had heaved the heavy saddle free and pulled the stirrups and girth out from under the deadweight of the mare’s carcass.