He lowered the glasses, and hawked a gob of spit up from his throat, and leaned over to let it dribble on his boot. But he straightened up in time to see his brother jump, and seize the adjutant by his polished foot, and turn him out of the saddle so that he sprawled across the muddy stones. The horse pulled away, but the antinomial ran after her and vaulted up onto her back. And even though she kicked and reared, he kept his seat. He had lost his sunglasses, and Aspe could see his icy eyes.

He calmed the horse, though through the field glasses Aspe could see she still trembled, and when a roof caved in and filled the air with sparks, she started desperately. The antinomial reached down to stroke her neck, and through the glasses Aspe could see his lips moving. He was singing to her. She lifted up her narrow beak, and he unstrapped her bridle and her cruel bit, and threw them down into the mud. Then from his belt he took his axe, and raising it in both hands above his head, he gave a shout that Aspe could hear even at that distance, and spurred the horse towards him up the flaming street, a bullet in the muzzle of a gun.

Aspe handed his glasses to the soldier at his side, and as he did so he noticed for the first time that, to his right and to his left, sharpshooters had dismounted, assembling their rifles. For a moment he could feel the temptations of inertia and old age, and he wondered whether he should let the soldiers shoot his brother down. But then he saw the man burst towards him over the parade ground out of the street’s fiery throat, and above the roaring of the fire he could hear sweet music, the sweet song of battle, which he had never hoped to hear again. It touched his biter’s heart, and filled it with singing, and filled his body and made a whirlwind in his head, and swept away all slavish thoughts and considerations. He stood up in his stirrups, and his harsh voice echoed over the parade ground. He shouted to his soldiers: “Barbarian scum! Don’t touch him. Are you deaf? It is my brother.” And he rode out to greet him, his whip in his live hand, his steel hand tightened into a steel claw.