Starbuck turned slowly, looking at the worried faces of the men. “I think they can fight, Sergeant.” He turned all the way round to face Case again. “But can you?”

“I’ve been there,” Case said curtly, “and I know what it takes for men to fight. Not this!” He waved a scornful hand at the battalion. “No proper officer would take this rabble to war.”

Starbuck stepped closer to Case. “Do I take that to mean that you won’t lead them into battle, Sergeant?”

Case sensed he might have gone too far, but he was unwilling to back down in the face of his supporters. “Lead them into battle?” He scoffed Starbuck by crudely imitating his Boston accent. “Sounds like a fine Yankee phrase to me, Major.”

“I asked you a question, Case.”

“I ain’t afraid to fight!” Case blustered and, by refusing to answer the question, implicitly backed away from the confrontation.

Starbuck could have let Case off the hook, but chose not to. “I asked you a question,” he said again.

“Hell,” Case said, cornered, “these men ain’t fit to fight!”

“They’re fit enough,” Starbuck said, “it’s you that ain’t fit.” He could have left it there, but sheer devilment made him rack the tension higher. “Take your stripes off,” he said.

Case, faced with losing his rank, accepted the showdown. “You take ’em, Major,” he said, “if you can.” His fellow sergeants greeted the defiance with hand-clapping.

Starbuck turned away and walked to the vacated pitcher’s spot. From the very first he had worried about imposing his authority on this despised battalion, and he had never done it. He had assumed that if he led they would follow, not because he inspired them, but because men usually do what is expected of them. In time, he had hoped, battle would wipe out the regiment’s past history and unite it in purpose, but instead the crisis had come now, which meant that the solution could not wait for battle, but would have to be imposed now. He would exhaust the formal route first, but he knew it was doomed even as he turned back to the group of sergeants who slowly ended their clapping as he stared at them. “Sergeant Webber? Cowper?” he said. “Arrest Case.”

The two sergeants spat, but neither made any other movement.

“Captain Dennison?” Starbuck turned.

“Ain’t my business,” Dennison said. “Finish what you started, Starbuck, ain’t that what you once told me?”

Starbuck nodded. “When I’ve finished here,” he raised his voice, “every company will elect new sergeants. Case!” he snapped. “Bring me your coat.”

Case, driven to mutiny, brazened out the moment. “Come and get it, Major.”

There was a moment’s silence as the men watched Starbuck; then he took off his coat and revolver. He was apprehensive, though he took care not to show it. Case was a tall man, probably stronger than Starbuck, and probably no stranger to casual violence—any man who had survived fourteen years in a European army had to be tough—while Starbuck had been reared in the gentler world of respectable Boston, which eschewed violence as a means of resolving argument. Respectable Boston believed in reason leavened by Godliness, while Starbuck’s career now depended on beating down a bullying thug who had probably not lost a fight in a dozen years, but he was also a thug who was more than slightly drunk and that, Starbuck reckoned, should help him. “The trouble with you, Case,” he said as he walked slowly toward the taller man, “is that you’ve spent too long wearing a red coat. You ain’t a fusilier now, you’re a rebel, and if you don’t like the way we do things then you ought to get the hell out of here and go back to Queen Victoria’s petticoats. You probably ain’t man enough to fight Yankees.” He was hoping to provoke Case into a rushed attack, but the big man had the sense to hold his ground and let Starbuck come to him. Starbuck broke into a jog, then aimed a massive kick at Case’s groin, but a heartbeat later he jarred his left foot forward to stop his forward momentum.