Starbuck felt a pang of terror at the news. He had got what he wanted. “We’re going north then?”

“Isn’t that what you wanted?” Delaney asked. He had caught a whiff of Starbuck’s fear.

“Yes,” Starbuck said, “it is.”

“Because you’re going in two days,” Delaney said. “I don’t think Holborrow wants you in his sight a moment longer than possible.”

“Jesus!” Starbuck swore. Two days! “What about my rifles?”

“Thirty.”

“Thirty!” Starbuck protested.

“Nate! Nate!” Delaney held up a cautionary hand. “I told you I had no ammunition to force that issue. The rest of the rifles are sold, I know that and you know that, but Holborrow’s never going to admit it. But he says he can find thirty good rifles, so be grateful. You’ll just have to steal the others off the enemy. Aren’t you supposed to be good at that?”

Starbuck swore again, but his anger ebbed as he considered the deal Delaney had struck. He had got what he wanted, a battlefield command, and somehow in the next few days he had to make the Special Battalion into a unit that could stand against the Yankees. He would make it so damned special that other Confederate battalions would wish that they too were punishment units. “Thanks, Delaney,” he said grudgingly.

“I am overwhelmed by your gratitude.” The lawyer smiled. “And now, I suppose, you want to spend an evening of dissipation at my expense?”

“No,” Starbuck said, because if the Yellowlegs really were going north then he had work to do. He had men to train and boots to find and a battalion to shake into efficiency and only two days to work his miracle. Two days before they went to where the Yankees waited. Before the Yellowlegs went back to war.

PART ONE

ADAM FAULCONER HAD RARELY FELT SO USELESS, or so unwanted, for he realized after just a half day at McClellan’s headquarters that he had nothing whatever to do. For a time those headquarters had stayed obstinately in Washington, where the Young Napoleon had insisted there were necessary arrangements that could not be made from the saddle nor by telegraph from the field, and so the blue-coated army moved slowly westward while their commander slept in the bed of his comfortable house on Fifteenth Street. A nervous silence descended on Washington when the troops departed; a silence enervated by rumors of rebel activity. Gray horsemen were reported in Pennsylvania, a barn had been burned in Ohio, the state militia was assembling to protect Philadelphia, but in all the rumor there was not one hard fact. No one actually reported seeing Lee or the redoubtable Jackson, though Northern newspapers were more than ready to print elaborate fancies in the factless vacuum. The rebels were said to be 150,000 strong, they were planning to take Baltimore, they had designs on Washington, they were marching against New York, and even Chicago was threatened. The newspapers were eagerly read by the blue army that was bivouacked not far from Washington, in the green Maryland fields, where they waited for McClellan. Meanwhile the Young Napoleon rode about the Federal capital leaving visiting cards in a score of fashionable houses, each scrap of pasteboard carefully inked with the initials PPC, which had the recipients puzzled until the French ambassador explained that the letters stood for Pour Prendre Congé and were the polite manner of indicating that a soldier was leaving home to go on campaign.