“You know him?”

“My lads rescued him. I’d have liked to keep him for the Legion, but Swynyard insisted we do things by the book.”

“I like him well enough,” Starbuck said, “and my need of good officers is greater than yours, Colonel.”

“You really think so?” Maitland asked pointedly.

“That sharpshooter, Colonel,” Starbuck said, “is tapping the bullet through the loader now. Got a breech charged with real good powder, a nice measured amount, and he’s reckoning on giving you four feet of correction for the wind and to fire a wee bit lower than last time. So tell me, do you want to be buried here or is there a Maitland family plot?”

“I think Hollywood Cemetery would be more appropriate,” Maitland said lightly, though he looked uncomfortable. “Discretion, you’re advising, is the better part of valor?” he asked.

“Seems to work that way.”

“Then I’ll bid you good day, Starbuck,” the Colonel touched his hat, “don’t want to expose you to sharpshooters!” He turned his horse away.

Starbuck unhitched his own rifle, from which he had finally blown out the damp powder by dint of working a wire through the nipple and trickling a tiny amount of dry powder into the clotted charge that had finally, reluctantly, exploded when he fired the gun. He loaded it, then pushed a percussion cap onto the cone, hoping it was not one of the bad caps that had suddenly started emerging from the Richmond factories. Rumor said that the Negro workers were deliberately sabotaging the army, and certainly there had been a spate of bad caps filled with anything except fulminate of mercury. He lowered the hammer onto the cap, slung the rifle again, and walked back toward the battalion.

Lieutenant Coffman, who had been appointed as an aide to Swynyard, ran down the back of the brigade’s line. His pouches and scabbard flapped as he ran, while he held his hat on with one hand and carried a rifle in the other. “We’re to advance!” he shouted at Colonel Maitland, then ran on toward Starbuck.

Starbuck waved to show that he had heard. “Battalion! Forward! Get them moving!” he shouted. With the Legion he would probably have gone ahead of the companies, but today he planned to follow his men into the fight, not out of fear, but simply to make certain they did advance. “Forward!” he shouted again, and he heard Dennison, Peel, and Cartwright echo the call. Billy Tumlin, revolver drawn, walked behind the right-hand companies. Tumlin had no company of his own, but Starbuck had given him supervision of those two right-hand companies, as well as asking him to look after the adjutant’s responsibilities, for which Potter was signally inept. “Drive ’em on, Billy!” Starbuck shouted, then moved to his own place behind Lippincott’s and Peel’s companies. “Forward now! Smartly!”

The four-line companies walked forward willingly enough. The rebel artillery fired over their heads, the shells sounding like great barrels rolling across the sky. Some of the men were made nervous by that sound and by the percussive blasts of the guns themselves, but Starbuck shouted at them to hurry as they instinctively crouched beneath the huge noise. “They’re on your side!” he shouted, “now keep going! Sergeants! Look to the line! Look to the line!” Some men were hurrying, either out of eagerness or else a desire to get the advance over, and their haste was making the battalion ragged.