The Legion had not started forward yet, or rather some companies had advanced when Starbuck’s men began walking, but Maitland had called them back into alignment and now he fussily dressed the ranks while on either side of his regiment the other battalions of Swynyard’s Brigade advanced down the gentle slope. The battle flags lifted in the small breeze. The day was ragged with explosions, punctured by the hammer of cannons, splintered by rifles, and filled now by the sound of hundreds of feet swishing through the grass. A skirmisher limped back toward the Special Battalion, another lay dead with a bullet in his brain and with his arms outflung like a man crucified. Someone, probably one of the skirmishers armed with an old Richmond Musket, had already taken the man’s rifle.

The Legion started forward at last. Starbuck’s right-hand company, under Dennison, was lagging, maybe in the hope that the Legion would catch up and support them. “Keep ’em up, Billy!” Starbuck shouted, “chivvy them!”

Billy Blythe lumbered over to Dennison’s company and waved his arms impressively. This morning’s action was not to Blythe’s liking. He was happy enough to shelter in the Special Battalion until the tide of war took him close enough to the Yankee lines, but he had no wish to fight, and no wish whatsoever to fight as an infantryman, but he knew he would have to keep up the pretense for a good while yet. There was no point in jumping over to these Yankees in Harper’s Ferry for they were surrounded and doomed. He must wait till the battalion was across the river and so nearer to McClellan’s main force. Until then he had decided he would do as much as was needed and no more. “Keep them moving, Tom!” he called to Dennison, but did not push the men himself.

Dennison called for the company to speed up, but without any conviction in his voice, and though the company did pick up its heels, some of the men, led by Case, deliberately dawdled. Starbuck himself ran over. “Move!” he shouted. “Move! Faster!”

Case slowed even more.

Starbuck dragged out the revolver and put a bullet into the turf behind Case’s heels. “Move!” he shouted, “move!” He fired a second bullet, this one well wide of anyone. He had not looked at Case, nor at any other man as he fired, for he had not wanted another confrontation, just to keep the company moving, and the two revolver shots had the happy effect of moving the laggards on like startled rabbits. “Keep them going, Billy!” Starbuck snarled. “Captain Dennison! Move them!”

Billy Blythe was too shocked to respond. He stumbled on, chivvying Dennison’s company with his arms, suddenly more frightened of Starbuck than of the Yankees waiting on the ridge. The sheer force of Starbuck’s anger had startled him, but he recognized it as genuine power. Starbuck was one of those men who could shift whole battalions by his personality and it was Starbuck’s anger and resolve that was keeping the Yellowlegs moving across the valley under the rippling thunder of rebel shells that arched above their heads. Starbuck, Billy Blythe reflected, was the kind of man who got other men killed. Or got killed himself. “What’s your name, Case?” Blythe fell into step beside Case who, to show his independence, had again started to lag a few paces behind the rest of A Company.