IT’S REAL COFFEE,” LUCIFER SAID, SHAKING STARBUCK AWAKE, “from Harper’s Ferry.”

Starbuck swore, tried not to believe what was happening, then swore again when he realized it was happening. It was not yet dawn. The mist in the trees was mixed with the acrid smoke of half-dead fires. The leaves dripped. The Yankees were coming today.

“You’re shivering,” Lucifer said. “You got a fever.”

“I don’t.”

“Like a baby. Shivering.” Lucifer prodded the nearest embers with a stick, trying to stir life into the fire’s remnants. “Yankees didn’t have fires,” he said, then grinned. “They’re hiding from us. Reckon they’re more frightened of us than we are of them.”

“They’re on your side,” Starbuck said gracelessly.

“I’m on my side,” Lucifer insisted angrily, “and no one damn else is.”

“Except me,” Starbuck said, trying to mollify the boy. He sipped the coffee. “Did you stay awake all night?”

“I stayed awake,” Lucifer said, “till I was sure they was asleep.”

Starbuck did not ask who “they” were. “There’s nothing to worry about,” he said instead. He hoped that was true. He hoped he had defused Case’s smoldering anger. He hoped he would survive this day.

“You don’t worry ’cos I do,” Lucifer said. “Did I hear Captain Tumlin tell you he saw John Brown hung in Harper’s Ferry?”

Starbuck had to think to remember the conversation, then recalled Tumlin talking about watching with his whore from an upper window of Wager’s Hotel. “Yes,” he said bleakly, trying to imbue the syllable with disapproval for Lucifer having eavesdropped. “So?”

“So,” Lucifer said, “Mister Brown wasn’t ever hung in Harper’s Ferry. He was hung in Charlestown. Everybody knows that.”

“I didn’t.”

“Your Captain Tumlin,” Lucifer said sourly, “don’t know shit from a sugarcone.”

Starbuck sat up and pushed the clammy folds of the blanket away. He was shivering, but he guessed it was just the damp. That and apprehension. He heard twigs snapping in the woods, but there was a strong picket line to the north so the sound had to be his own men stirring. He wondered how long it was till dawn. The mist was thick as gunsmoke. Everything was damp—the wood, the ground, his clothes. His rifle was beaded with dew. The day was chill now, but it promised to be burning hot, a day of rank humidity, a day when the spent powder would choke the rifle barrels like soot clogging a chimney.

“Shit from a sugarcone,” Lucifer said again, trying to provoke a response.

Starbuck sighed. “We’re a makeshift battalion, Lucifer. We get the dregs.” He snapped one of his laces as he tied his boots. He swore, wondering if the small accident was a bad omen. He fiddled out the broken lace and, in the dark, rethreaded what was left and tied a knot. Then he stood up, every bone and muscle aching. Fires were coming to life in the fields and wood, the flames dulled and misted by the fog. Men coughed, spat, grumbled, and pissed. A horse whinnied, then there was a clatter as a man blundered into a stand of arms. “What’s for breakfast?” he asked Lucifer.