"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.

"Hardtack and half an apple."

"Give me half of the half."

He strapped on his belt, then checked that the cartridge pouch was full, the cap box filled, and the revolver loaded. For hundreds of years, he thought, men had woken thus to a day of battle. They had tested their spear points, felt their sword edges, made certain musket flints were tight, then prayed to their gods that they would live. And hundreds of years from now, Starbuck supposed, soldiers would still wake in a gray dark and go through the same motions with whatever unimaginable means of death they carried. He hefted his rifle, checked the percussion cap, then slung it on his shoulder. "To work," he said to Lucifer. "Earn our pay."

"What pay?" Lucifer asked.

"I owe you," Starbuck said.

"So I ain't a slave?"

"You're free as a bird, Lucifer. You want to fly away, then you fly. But I'd miss you. But if you stay today," Starbuck added, knowing full well that Lucifer would stay, "then you keep out of harm's way. This ain't your fight."

"White men only, eh?"

"Fools only, Lucifer. Fools only," Starbuck said, then walked slowly through the dark wood, feeling his way where the feeble light of reviving fires did not show a path. He talked to waking men, stirred the laggards, and organized a work party to fill the battalion's canteens. Biting bullets off cartridges filled the mouth with salty gunpowder so that an hour into a-fight men were parched and water was worth its weight in gold. He sent another party to bring up spare ammunition from the graveyard so that the battalion could have its own reserve supply at the wood's edge. It was there, where the wood bordered the road, that he stopped to listen to an unseen band of men who softly sang a hymn among the dark mist-shrouded trees." 'Jesus, my strength, my hope,'" they sang, " 'On thee I cast my care; With humble confidence look up, And know thou hear'st my prayer.'" The familiar words were strangely comforting, but someone else had also been listening and started to sing another hymn in a voice much louder than those of the men who had gathered for their morning prayers.

"'Hark how the watchmen cry!'" Captain Potter sang in a remarkably good clear tenor voice," 'Attend the trumpet's sound. Stand to your arms, the foe is nigh, The powers of hell surround.'"

Starbuck discovered Potter among the trees. "Let them be," he chided Potter gently for disturbing the prayers.

"I just thought my choice more appropriate than theirs," Potter said. He was in a feverishly excited mood, so much so that for an instant Starbuck wondered if the stone bottle of whiskey had been emptied, but there was no smell of liquor on Potter's breath as, more quietly, he sang the hymn's last quatrain. "'By all hell's host withstood, We all hell's host o'erthrow, And conquering them through Jesus' blood, We on to conquer go.'" He laughed. "Funny, isn't it? The Yankees are probably singing that as well. Both of us clamoring to Jesus. He must be confused."

"How are your pickets?" Starbuck asked.

"Awake. Watching for the host of hell. I came to fetch them a bucket of coffee. I guess proceedings won't begin till light?"

"I guess not."

"And then," Potter said with unholy relish, "we can expect something very nasty. Is it true they outnumber us?"

"So far as we know, yes." Starbuck felt a trembling that seemed to begin in his heart and flicker down his arms and legs. "Maybe by two to one," he added, trying to sound laconic as though he faced battle every day. And what day was it? A Wednesday. There was nothing special about Wednesdays at home. Not like Sundays that were given to God and solemnity, or Mondays that were his mother's washday and when the whole Boston house would be busy with servants and steam. Wednesdays were just Wednesdays, a half marker between Sundays. His father would be saying prayers with the servants. Did anyone in the house wonder where the second son was today?

There was a glimmer of lightening in the fog that lay to the east. " 'Per me si vane la citta dolente? " Potter said suddenly and unexpectedly, "'per me si va ne l'etterno dolore, Per me si va la perduta gente.'"

Starbuck gaped at him. "What the hell?" he asked.

" 'Through me you enter the city of sorrows,'" Potter translated dramatically, " 'through me you come into eternal pain, through me you join the lost people.' Dante," he added, "the words inscribed above the Gates of Hell."

"I thought it said 'Abandon all hope, all ye who enter here'?" Starbuck said.

"That, too," Potter said.

"When the hell did you learn Italian?"

"I didn't. I just read Dante. There was a time, Starbuck, when I fancied myself a poet, so I read all the poetry I could. Then I discovered a quicker way to Elysium."

"Why in God's name did you study medicine?"

"My father believed I should be useful," Potter said. "He believes in usefulness. Saint Paul was a tentmaker, so Matthew Potter must have a trade, and poetry, my rather believed, was not a trade. Poetry, he declared, is not useful unless you're a psalmist, in which case you're dead. He thought I should be a doctor and write uplifting hymns in between killing my unsuspecting patients."

"You'd make a good doctor," Starbuck said.

Potter laughed. "Now you sound like my mother. I must find that cofFee."

"Matthew," Starbuck stopped Potter as he walked away. "Look after yourself today."

Potter smiled. "I have a conviction that I shall live, Starbuck. I can't explain it, but somehow I feel charmed. But thank you. And may you survive too." He walked away.

Beyond the fog the sun was lightening the eastern sky, turning the dark to gray. There was no wind, not a breath, just a still, silent sky heavy with the sullen gray wolf-light, the light before dawn, before battle.

Starbuck flinched, then closed his eyes as he tried to compose a prayer to fit the day, but nothing came. He thought of his younger brothers and sisters safe in their Boston beds, then went to form his men into line.

Because it was a windless, lovely dawn beside the Antietam.

Gunners begin most battles. The infantry will win or lose the fight, but the gunners start the killing and even before the fog had lifted the Yankee gunners across the Antietam began their bombardment. They had positioned their guns the previous evening and now, with nothing to guide their aim but the tops of trees protruding through the fog, the gunners opened fire.

Shells screamed eerily through the vapor. The Federal guns that had been brought across the river joined the cacophony, banging their missiles over the cornfield into the whitened vacancy where the rebels waited. The rebel guns answered, aiming blind at first, but as the fog thinned they were able to fire at the diffused glare of muzzle flames that made livid patches in the mist whenever an enemy gun fired.

Shells plowed the fields newly sown with winter wheat. Dirt vomited up from each impact and for once, Starbuck noted, it was brown dirt rather than the redder Virginian soil. The smoke of each explosion hung motionless in the windless air. A loose gun horse galloped across the field behind Starbuck's battalion. It had been struck by a shell fragment and blood was gleaming on its left hindquarter. The horse caught sight of the waiting infantry and stopped, eyes white, red flank shivering. A gunner finally caught the gelding's bridle and, patting the beast's neck, led it back toward the battery. Each time the rebel guns fired the fog shuddered.

Starbuck paced slowly behind his men. Some were lying down, some were crouching, and some kneeling. The Yankee guns to the north were firing shells that rumbled overhead. Some of the shells whistled. Once, looking up, Starbuck saw a tiny trail of fuse-smoke in the fog, a streak of white vapor thicker than the whiteness about it. The gray light had turned white. It was thinning out.

The gunners worked as though they believed they could win the battle by themselves. The shells plunged and cracked into the high rebel ground and the noise ricocheted about the plateau. One man in Starbuck's battalion was telling his beads. "Jesus, Mary, and Joseph," he prayed, "Jesus, Mary, and Joseph." He said the names again and again, and each time a shell exploded he would twitch. One shell struck high in a nearby tree and the crash of the explosion was followed by a slow, awful creaking as a branch slowly tore away. "Jesus, Mary, and Joseph," the man wailed desperately.

"Where are you from?" Starbuck asked the man.

The soldier looked up at Starbuck. His eyes were empty and scared.

"Where are you from, soldier?"

"Richmond, sir." He had an Irish accent. "Venable Street."

"And before that?"

"Derry."

"What was your trade, lad?" "Saddler, sir."

"I'm glad you're a soldier now." "You are?"

"I thought the Irish were the best fighters in the world?" The man blinked at Starbuck, then smiled. "They are, sir. Had lots of practice."

"Then I'm glad you're here. What's your name?" "Connolly, sir. John Connolly." "Then pray hard, John Connolly, and shoot low." "I will that, sir."

Starbuck's battalion, a tiny regiment, was at the southern edge of the pastureland, a hundred paces behind the cornfield. His two left-hand companies were in the open, facing the corn, while his right companies were huddled in the East Woods. Potter's skirmishers were higher up the wood, waiting for the Yankees. The rest of Swynyard's Brigade was bent back at right angles, lining the wood's edge and then strung across the plowed field toward the family graveyard.

Swynyard joined Starbuck. "A quarter to six," he announced, "or thereabouts. My watch stopped in the night." He glanced to the left. "They look good," he said of the neighboring brigade.

"Georgians," Starbuck said. He had introduced himself to the colonel of the battalion next to him and the man had been cordial, but Starbuck had seen the flicker of worry when the Georgian colonel had learned that the Yellowlegs were guarding his right flank.

Swynyard turned and stared southward across the pasture toward the Smoketown Road, which was just becoming visible in the thinning fog. "Lots of troops ready to back us up," he said.

"Lots?" Starbuck answered wryly, knowing that Swynyard was merely trying to reassure him.

"There are some, anyway," Swynyard admitted wryly. A new battery of rebel guns was being positioned in the pasture, its muzzles pointed ominously northward in a sign that Lee expected the first Yankee attack to come straight down the funnel between the woods. Straight across the cornfield. Straight at the waiting men who crouched beyond the corn. Some Georgian skirmishers were already up among the stalks that stood high as a standing man.

Swynyard dragged his maimed hand through his straggling beard, a gesture that betrayed his nervousness. He was worried about the eastern flank, the long slope that fell with ever-increasing steepness toward the creek. His fear was that the Yankees would embroil his brigade in a fight at the funnel's mouth, then attack up that slope to smash in behind his men. And once the Yankees were up on the high ground about the Smoketown Road there was nothing to stop them carving Lee's army into fragments, but so far there were no signs of Yankee activity on the creek itself. There were no reports of men trying to cross the river, no sounds of guns being dragged down to the fords and bridges, and no glimpses of blue-coated troops filing down the farm tracks toward the Antietam's eastern bank.

A new barrage of guns sounded. These were the rebel guns positioned on the hill to the west of the turnpike and they were firing slantwise across the funnel's northern mouth. "I suspect," Swynyard said, "that our erstwhile brethren are stirring."

"God help us," Starbuck blurted out.

Swynyard put a hand on Starbuck's shoulder. "He does, Nate, He does." The hand on Starbuck's shoulder suddenly convulsed as the sound of rifles crackled through the morning. The skirmishers were engaged. "Not long now," Swynyard said in the unconvincing tone of a dentist trying to soothe a nervous patient. "Not long." His hand convulsed again. "Last night," he said quietly, "I had to fight the temptation for a drink. It was as bad as those first few nights. I just wanted a mouthful of whiskey."

"But you didn't?"

"No. God saw to that." Swynyard took his hand away. "And this morning," he went on, "Maitland searched the Legion's packs. Confiscated their liquor."

"He did what?" Starbuck asked, laughing.

"Took every last drop he found. Says he won't have them fighting drunk."

"So long as they fight," Starbuck said, "why does it matter?" The neighboring battalion was fixing bayonets and some of Starbuck's men followed suit, but he shouted at them to put the blades away. "You'll need to kill a few with bullets first," he called to them. He could not see any enemy because the tall corn hid everything to the north. The field was a screen to hide a nightmare. He could hear gunfire in the woods and guessed that Potter had opened fire.

The neighboring battalion stood ready to give fire. "Get 'em up, Nate," Swynyard said.

"Stand!" Starbuck shouted and the two left-hand companies struggled to their feet. They were thin companies, still missing many of their stragglers, but the remaining men looked confident enough as they waited. The battalion's battle flag was at the center of the two companies, where it hung lifeless in the still air. "I wish I could see the bastards," Starbuck growled. His stomach was churning and the muscles of his right leg involuntarily twitching. He had been constipated for two days, but was suddenly scared that his bowels would void. He had been spared the worst of the cannon fire, for the East Woods served to hide his men from the Yankee guns across the creek and the guns to the north were firing overhead, but still the fear was sapping him. Somewhere ahead of him, somewhere beyond the mist-shrouded stalks of tall corn, there was a Yankee infantry attack coming and he could not see it, though now, dimly, he could hear the sound of boots and drums and men shouting. He looked for the enemy's flags, but could not see them and he guessed this opening attack had not yet reached the cornfield. The skirmishers' rifles cracked and every now and then a rifle bullet would flick a corncob aside and whistle just over the battalion's head. One such bullet came close to Swynyard, startling the Colonel. "Ahab," Swynyard said.

"Sir?" Starbuck asked, thinking that Swynyard had joined in Potter's fancy about Captain Ahab, the Pequod, and Moby Dick.

"He was slain, remember, by a bow drawn at a venture. I always think it would be a pity to be killed by an unaimed bullet, but I suppose it's how most men die in battle."

"King Ahab," Starbuck said, realizing what Swynyard meant. "I don't suppose there's much difference between an aimed and an unaimed bullet." He was forcing himself to sound calm.

"So long as it's quick," Swynyard said, then gasped with surprise.

New Yankee guns had opened fire. The gunners had seen the rebel skirmishers in the corn and now, before their own infantry marched into the tall stalks, the gunners tried to weed the crop of enemy riflemen. The artillery was loaded with canister that scythed through the corn. Barrel after barrel fired, and patch by patch the corn was blasted aside. Each shot bent great swathes of corn that tossed as though they were caught in a hurricane. The bullets flicked up from the hard ground to twitch skirmishers aside and some kept going right through the crop to thud into the infantry waiting in the pasture. Two of Starbuck's men reeled backward, one with brains welling out from a shattered patch of skull. The other man screamed, clutching his belly. "There's a doctor in the graveyard," Swynyard said.

"Peel!" Starbuck shouted. "Get these men back!" He would use men from the two right-hand companies to take the casualties back to the graveyard. "Make certain your men come back here!" he called to Peel, then he cupped his hands and shouted at the two left-hand companies to kneel again. The corn was thrashing and whipping, and patches of it were being slung high into the mist that looked thicker to the north, but that thickness was just gunsmoke clogging the air. More canister slapped and slashed the corn, the bullets whistling as they ricocheted on overhead. The surviving rebel skirmishers were retreating. One man crawled on bloody hands through the stalks, another limped, a third collapsed at the field's edge. Still more canister poured into the bloody field, the worst of the fire going into the center, and so sparing Starbuck's companies the full force of the cannonade. Two rebel howitzers were lobbing shells over the com, trying to find the enemy batteries, while the rebel cannon on the western hill scorched shells down into the pasture where the Yankees advanced. It was still an artillery fight, a complicated mesh of trajectories under which the infantry moved forward to death.

Then, as suddenly as it had begun, the Yankee canister ended.

The corn was still. The day almost seemed silent. Scores of guns were firing, and men were shouting, but it seemed silent. The corn stood thick in patches arid lay crushed in swathes. Small flames flickered among the fallen stalks where the wadding from the skirmishers' rifles had started fires. And, at last, there were flags visible above the standing corn. Tall flags hanging limp from staffs that bobbed up and down as the color bearers marched through the cornfield.

Some of Starbuck's men aimed their rifles. "Wait!" he called. "Wait!"

The Yankees were at last visible through the remnants of standing corn.

They were a dark line in the cornfield's mist. They were a horde of men advancing beneath their brilliant flags. They were death in blue. There were thousands of them, a mass of men, a drum-driven multitude with bayonets on their rifles.

"Two brigades, I'd guess," Swynyard said calmly.

"Wait!" Starbuck called to his men again. The Yankee attack was wide enough to overlap the cornfield, which meant that the eastern end of the blue line was now in the woods. "Tumlin!" he shouted.

"Starbuck?" Tumlin appeared at the wood's edge. The trees above him had been made ragged by Yankee sheik that had stripped some branches of leaves and ripped other branches away.

"Take Dennison's company and support Potter!"

Starbuck shouted. "The sons of bitches are coming through the trees!" Tumlin ducked out of sight without acknowledging the order and Starbuck knew he should go and make certain Dennison's company did move up through the wood, but the sight of the Yankees coming through the shattered cornfield was holding him rooted to the pastureland. The nervousness had ebbed, displaced by the need to hold his men taut.

"Coffman," Swynyard called the young Lieutenant. "Tell Colonel Maitland to advance in support here. He knows what to do. Go on, lad." Coffman ran.

"I'll put Truslow's company into the woods," Swynyard said, sensing Starbuck's nervousness about the battalion's right flank. A crash of exploding shells drowned the Colonel's next words. Some rebel staff officers had ridden to the Smoketown Road, from where they were staring north through big field glasses, and the Yankee gunners across the Antietam were doing their best to kill the mounted men. The salvo of shells gouged the road and its verges with craters. Smoke screened the horsemen. Somewhere a bugle was playing, its notes brazen and rousing. The Yankee drummers were rattling away.

Rebel guns fired from the woods to the west of the cornfield. They used solid shot that plowed into the Yankee lines. A flag went down, and was immediately snatched up. Starbuck had found one of the limestone ribs that hunched its way through the soil and was standing on it for a better view. He could hear hard and solid rifle fire in the woods, but none of his men was running out of the trees, so the fight there had to be under control. Truslow's company from the Legion came running up the edge of the wood and Swynyard went to divert them into the trees. If Truslow was there, Starbuck knew, then he could forget the wood.

"Wait!" Starbuck called to his men. The Yankees were at the center of the cornfield now and it was their turn to be hit by canister. The strike of the bundled shot cut down swathes of corn and drove up spurts of dust from the dry ground. Huge gaps were being torn from the Yankee ranks, but every time the dreadful scythe cut down a handful of men there were others who jumped over the fallen bodies to fill the hole. The Yankees had fixed bayonets. Their flags hung as limp as the rebel battle flags. One brave man waved his banner to and fro so that the Stars and Stripes made a fine show, but his gallantry was rewarded with a blast of canister that snatched him and the flag backward. The flag flew over the heads of the advancing men. Starbuck could hear the boots trampling the corn. He could hear the Northern sergeants shouting harshly at their men to stay in line, to close up, to keep marching. He could hear the drummer boys frantically trying to win the war with the speed of their sticks.

"Aim low!" he told his men. "Aim low. Don't waste your shots! But wait! Wait!" He wanted the first volley to be a killer.

The misted air was full of noise. Shells rumbled overhead, bullets whistled, the boots splintered the corn. Rifles cracked in the woods. The rebel line looked a perilously thin thing to withstand the Yankee hammer blow. "Wait!" Starbuck called, "wait!" Yankee skirmishers were deep in the corn, sniping at his men. A corporal came out of the line with a bloody shoulder, another man choked on his own blood.

The Yankees were two hundred paces away. They looked fresh, well-clothed, and confident. Starbuck could see their mouths open as they shouted their war cries, but he could hear nothing. He stared at them and he suddenly thought that this was how the makers of America had seen the Redcoats. The rebels then had been just as ragged, and the enemy just as well armed and smartly uniformed, and his fear was abruptly swamped by a fierce desire to shatter this overweening enemy. "Fire!" he shouted, "and kill the bastards!" He screamed the last three words and his two companies opened fire a second before the rest of the rebel line fired to blanket the pasture with rifle smoke. "Kill them!" Starbuck was shouting as he walked up and down behind the line. "Kill them!" He pushed through the files and fired his own rifle, then immediately dropped the butt to the ground to begin reloading. His pulse was racing, the fire was in his veins, the madness of battle was beginning its magic. Perfect hate casts away fear. He rammed the bullet down.

"Fire!" Captain Cartwright encouraged his men. It was a straight infantry fight now. The Yankee gunners were unsighted and so the blue-coated riflemen had to fight and kill and endure the bullets coming back. The rebel guns drenched the attackers in canister, blasting new gaps in the surviving corn. A spray of blood misted the air and somewhere a man screamed terribly until his screams were cut short by the meaty thump of a bullet burying itself in flesh. Starbuck smelled the horrid stink of burned powder, he heard the whistle of a minie bullet whip past his ear, then the rifle was back in his shoulder, and he aimed low into the corn and fired.

The gunsmoke was hanging in the still air like a layer of fog. Some men, in order to see beneath the smoke, lay down to aim. Starbuck ducked and could see Yankee legs among the corn. He fired, then backed out through the files to see how his men were faring.

The Yellowlegs were sticking to the fight. They were ramming their bullets, priming the guns, pulling their triggers, but some were falling. Some were dead. The noise was obliterating sense; it was a deafening sky of fire, a numbing rattle laced with screams. More men fell. Starbuck's line was thinning, but suddenly Davies's company from the Legion was pushing into their ranks to add their fire. Davies grinned at Starbuck. "Christ," he said in awe.

"Fire!" Starbuck shouted. Survival now depended simply on outfiring the enemy. "Captain Peel!" He ran toward the trees to summon the last of his shrinking battalion. "Peel! Bring your men!" Peel's company still had the old-fashioned Richmond muskets that were loaded with buck and ball and Starbuck reckoned the smoothbore volleys might work a wicked slaughter in this close-range battle. "Into line! Anywhere!" He pushed men helter-skelter into the ranks, no longer caring whether the companies kept their cohesion. "And fire! Fire! Just kill them!" He screamed the words as he emptied his revolver chamber by chamber into the shroud of smoke. "Kill them!"

Bullets whipped back from the Yankees. Stabs of flame showed where they fired, and Starbuck saw that the flame lances were getting closer as the attackers advanced, their progress fed by the rear ranks, who moved up to take the place of the dead. The rebels were backing away, not in panicked retreat, but step by step, keeping their line, firing and firing at the blue horde that slowly, inexorably, like men wading against an outflowing tide, was forcing its way to the cornfield's southern edge. It was there that they stopped, not because the rebel fire grew worse, but simply because the field's margin served as a natural boundary. Behind them was the illusory cover of what corn remained standing, while ahead of the cornfield were open pastures and rebel batteries, and the Yankee officers could not persuade their men to march into that smoky, death-swept vacancy. The rebel line had also checked, aligned now on its guns, and there the two sides stayed and traded shot for shot and death for death. The wounded hobbled back from their line, but the rebels could spare no men now to carry the injured back to the surgeons. The rebel wounded must bleed to death or else crawl on hands and knees beneath the bruising noise of the big guns.

The Georgians were bringing in reinforcements, and then Colonel Swynyard appeared behind Starbuck with the big 65th Virginia battalion. "Nate! Nate!" Swynyard was only yards away, but the noise of the battle was so great that he needed to shout. "They're firing on the graveyard!" He pointed to the East Woods, meaning that Yankees had somehow reached the trees' southern end and were threatening Swynyard's reserve of ammunition. "Find out what's happening for me!"

Swynyard feared his right flank was about to be turned, but for the moment he would hold on in the pasture where he was tumbling his battalions into the tiny space where the firefight was hottest and where he would fight his brigade as though it were one single battalion. Starbuck, running to his right, sensed that this dawn slaughter was horrendous. He could not ever remember a battle swelling into horror so fast, nor ever seeing so many wounded or dead, yet miraculously his despised battalion had stood the fire and was still standing it and still giving back as good as they got. "Well done!" he shouted at them, "well done!" No one heard him. They were deafened by the blistering noise.

He ran into the trees. A score of wounded rebels had taken shelter beneath the closest trees, and some men, even though unwounded, had joined them there, but Starbuck had no time to stir those laggards back to their duty. Instead he ran northward in the cover of the trunks to where he could hear his skirmishers fighting. They were very close by, evidence that the Yankees had indeed pushed them hard back. Truslow's men were among Potter's skirmishers, who in turn were mixed up with a company of Georgian skirmishers who had retreated to the trees rather than risk the canister that had been cutting the corn short, and now they all fought together. Starbuck saw Truslow reloading his rifle behind an elm tree that was scarred by bullet strikes. He dropped beside him. "What's happening?"

"Bastards ran us back," Truslow said grimly. "Reckon they've reached the road on that side of the wood." He jerked his beard eastward. He was suggesting that the rebels now only held the southwestern corner of the trees. "Sons of bitches have breech loaders," Truslow added, explaining why the Yankees had been so successful.

Breech-loading rifles were much quicker and easier to load, especially when a man was lying down or crouching behind cover, and so the Yankee skirmishers were pouring a much heavier fire than the rebels could maintain, but now the fight had stalled in the corner of the wood where thick brush, scattered stacks of cordwood, and the limestone outcrops gave the rebels enough shelter to frustrate the withering Yankee fire.

"Seen Potter?" Starbuck asked Truslow.

"Who's he?"

"Thin fellow, floppy hair."

"Over to the right," Truslow jerked his chin. "Be careful going through here. Sons of bitches are good shots." A bullet whipped a chunk of bark off the elm. "Like Gaines's Mill," Truslow said.

"That was a hellhole."

"So's this. Be careful."

Starbuck gathered himself for the dash across the wood. He could hear the heavy firing from the cornfield, but that fight seemed distant now. Instead he had entered a different version of hell, one where a man could not see his enemy, but only spot the gouts of rifle smoke that marked where the Yankee sharpshooters lurked. It was dark under the trees, a darkness caused by the remnants of fog and the thickness of powder smoke. Starbuck wondered what time it was. He reckoned the Yankees had attacked at six o'clock and somehow it felt like midday already, though he doubted if even a quarter of an hour had passed since he had first glimpsed that blue mass marching steadily toward the cornfield. "Give my love to Sally if anything happens," he said to Truslow, then he sprinted away from the elm, dodging and darting among the trees. His appearance provoked an instant fusillade from the Yankees. Bullets lashed about him, thumping into trees like ax blows, whistling in the air, flicking through leaves, then a shot seared across his back. He knew he had been hit, yet he was still running and he guessed the wound was nothing but a near miss that had laid open his skin. He saw Potter behind a stack of cord-wood and dived to join him. A Yankee jeered his plunge for safety.

"I'm almost tempted to pray," Potter said.

"Your prayers are answered," Starbuck said, "I'm here. What's happening?"

"We're holding," Potter said laconically.

"Where's Dennison?"

"Dennison? Haven't seen him."

"I sent him to reinforce you. Tumlin?"

"No sign of him," Potter said. Every few seconds the stack of wood was thumped by a Yankee bullet, and every thump would hammer a log a half inch out of alignment. "They're Pennsylvanians," Potter said. "Call themselves the Bucktails."

"How the hell do you know that?" Starbuck asked. He had rammed his rifle into a space between the logs and, without bothering to aim, fired toward the hidden skirmishers.

"We got one of them. Stupid man got too far ahead and Case pulled him down."

"Case? So Dennison's company is here?"

"Private Case is," Potter said, jerking his head west to show where Case was crouching behind a fallen tree. A dead Yankee was beside him and Case had taken the man's breech-loading rifle and was using it to fire steadily into the brush where puffs of smoke betrayed Yankee positions. "The fellow had a deer's tail pinned to the back of his hat," Potter went on. "Full of fleas, it was. He's dead now. It's difficult to live with a slit throat, it seems."

"Where's Sergeant Rothwell?"

"Sent him back for ammunition."

"What's happening out there?" Starbuck jerked his head toward the east, where the Smoketown Road angled through the trees.

"God only knows," Potter said.

Starbuck peered eastward, but could see nothing beyond the trees. He knew some of the Pennsylvanians had got past this point and were now firing toward the graveyard from the southern edge of the wood. For a second he thought about trying to lead an attack that would cut those men off from their companions, then he abandoned that idea. The Yankees were too thick on the ground and too good to be taken that lightly. A Yankee counterattack would destroy his skirmishers and open the brigade's flank to the fire of the Pennsylvania breech-loaders.

"There's blood on your back," Potter said.

"Bullet scrape. Nothing serious."

"Looks impressive." Potter had made a loophole in the cordwood and fired through it. The shot was answered by a half dozen bullets that made the whole log pile quiver. "The bastards can fire three bullets to our one," Potter said. "They're using Sharps rifles."

"I heard. Can you hold?"

"So long as the Yankees don't reinforce."

"Then hold on." Starbuck patted Potter's back, then dashed to his left. His appearance provoked a flurry of shots, but Starbuck had already dropped behind the dead tree where Private Case had found refuge. Case glanced at Starbuck, then peered back toward the enemy. The dead Yankee's throat was cut almost to the spine so that his head lolled back in a mess of fly-encrusted blood.

"Where's Captain Dennison?" Starbuck asked.

Case did not answer. Instead he aimed, fired, then levered down the trigger guard to expose the breech of the Sharps rifle. A puff of smoke curled from the open breech as he pushed a stiff linen-wrapped cartridge into the barrel. He pulled up the trigger guard and Starbuck noted how a built-in shear sliced the back off the cartridge to expose the powder to the firing nipple. Case put a new percussion cap on the nipple and aimed again.

"Where's Dennison?" Starbuck asked.

"Ain't seen him," Case said brusquely.

"You came up here with him?" Starbuck asked.

"I came because there were Yankees to be killed," Case said, as loquacious suddenly as he had ever been with Starbuck. He fired again and his shot was rewarded with a yelp of pain that turned into a wail of agony that echoed through the wood. Case grinned. "I do so like killing Yankees." He turned his flat, hard eyes on Starbuck. "Just love killing Yankees."

Starbuck wondered if that was a threat, then decided it was simple bravado. Case was doing his duty, which suggested that the awkward conversation in the dusk had done its work. "Then just keep killing them," Starbuck said, then waited until a sudden rattle of shots suggested that the nearest Yankees might be reloading before he sprinted back through the trees. He ran for three or four seconds, then twisted sideways and dropped behind a tree just a heart's beat before a rattle of shots whipped the air where he had been running. He crawled a few yards and rolled into cover, waited a few seconds, then ran back to the wood's edge.

The firefight in the pasture still raged, though now both sides were lying down rather than standing up to the killing volleys. Swynyard was crouching, an anxious look on his face. "Pray it's good news," he greeted Starbuck.

Starbuck shook his head. "Bastards have taken most of the wood. We've only got this corner. But they ain't there in force. Just skirmishers." A shell dropped just behind the two men, struck a limestone outcrop and, instead of exploding, bounced up to tumble through the air. It made a weird screeching noise that faded quickly away. "What's happening here?" Starbuck asked.

"Stalemate," Swynyard said. "They ain't coming forward, we ain't going forward, so we're just killing each other. The last man alive wins."

"That bad, eh?" Starbuck asked, trying to sound light-hearted.

"But it's going to get worse," Swynyard promised, "it's going to get one whole lot worse."

When the sun rose above the Red Hill it offered a slanting light to give the watchers at the Pry Farm a marvelous view of the battle, or at least of the battle's smoke. To General McClellan, ensconced in his armchair, it seemed as though the woods on the creek's far side were alight, so much smoke was hanging in and above the trees. That smoke, of course, denoted that the enemy was dying, but the General was still in an irritable mood, for none of his aides had thought to cover the armchairs in the night and consequently the upholstery was damp from the dew that now had seeped through his pants. He decided to make no complaint, mainly because a small crowd of civilians had gathered beside the house to stare at him in admiration, but he petulantly refused the first cup of coffee because it was too weak. The second was better, and came in a fine bone china cup and saucer. "A table would be useful," the General observed.

A side table was fetched from the house and somehow balanced on the sloping lawn behind the barricade. The General sipped the coffee, placed it on the table, then put an eye to the telescope that was conveniently mounted on its tripod beside him. "All goes well," he announced loudly enough for his civilian admirers to hear, "Hooker is driving them." A shadow fell over the telescope and he looked up to see that Colonel Thorne had come to stand behind his chair. "Still here, Thorne?" McClellan asked testily.

"Apparently, sir."

"Then doubtless you heard me. All goes well."

Thorne could not tell, for the attack of Hooker's corps was hidden by trees and smoke. The noise told him that a considerable battle was being fought, for both artillery and musketry sounded hard and fast across the creek's valley, but no one could tell from the noise what was happening on the ground. All Thorne knew for sure was that the First Corps, under General Hooker, with thirty-six guns and over eight thousand men, was attempting to drive down the Hagerstown Pike toward the heart of the rebel position. That much was fine, but what Thorne did not understand was why McClellan had not launched his other troops across the Antietam. The rebels would have their hands full containing Hooker, and now was the time to hit them in the flank. If McClellan threw everything he had against the rebels then the battle would surely be over by lunchtime. The Confederates would be broken and fleeing to the Potomac where, piling up against the single ford that was their retreat, they would be easy pickings for the Northern cavalry.

"What of the other attacks, sir?" Thorne asked, gazing at the battle through a pair of field glasses.

McClellan chose not to hear the question. "Fine china," he said, inspecting the coffee cup that was prettily painted with pansies and forget-me-nots. "They live well here," he spoke to an aide and sounded grudging, as though a rural farmer had no right to possess such good china.

"The purpose of good government, sir, is to provide its citizens with a prosperous existence," Thorne snarled, then turned his glasses northward to where another corps of the Northern army was waiting beside the Hagerstown Pike while Hooker's men attacked. Two whole corps had crossed the river the day before, but only one was driving south. "Is Mansfield to back up Hooker?" he asked.

"Mansfield will do his duty," McClellan snapped, "as will you, Colonel Thorne, if you have any duty other than to bother me with questions that are none of your concern."

Thorne backed away from the reproof. He had done what he could to spur McClellan, and to do more was to risk arrest for insubordination. He paused beside the ever-growing crowd of local people who had come to cheer the North to victory and to observe the great Northern hero, McClellan, and, so far as Thorne could judge, Hooker's attack did seem to be deserving applause, but he still feared for the day. It was not defeat that Thorne feared, for the North outnumbered the South far too heavily to risk defeat, but he did fear a stalemate that would allow Lee to survive and fight another day. McClellan should be swamping the rebels with attacks, drowning them in fire and crushing them with his vast army, but all the signs suggested that the Young Napoleon would be cautious. So cautious that he was here, in his armchair, rather than in his saddle and close to the fighting. Lee, Thorne knew, would be close to where the dying was happening. Thorne had known Lee before the war and he admired the man, and Lee, Thorne knew, would not be admiring the china before a gallery of awestruck spectators.

But Lee was the enemy this day, and an enemy who needed to be destroyed if the Union was to be preserved. Thorne took out his notebook. He knew that whatever happened today, McClellan would paint it a victory and McClellan's supporters in the Northern press and in the Congress would demand that their hero should keep command of the army, but only total victory would justify McClellan keeping command, and Thorne was already seeing that happy outcome slip from the Young Napoleon's nerveless grasp. If Lee did survive to fight another day then Thorne was determined that the North would have a new general, a new hero, to do what should be done this day. Thorne wrote his notes, McClellan worried about a surprise rebel attack that would wrong foot his army, and across the creek men died.

The Confederate reinforcements swelled the defenders' fire, while the Yankees at the edge of the cornfield died. Their fire slackened and the rebels, scenting an advantage, began to advance in small groups. The Yankees retreated,.

yielding the cornfield's edge, and that prompted a sudden shrill outbreak of the rebel yell and the Georgian Brigade was charging into the corn with fixed bayonets. The surviving Yankees broke and ran. Swynyard held his men back, shouting at them to align themselves on the wood instead. "Bayonets!" he shouted. "Forward!"

The Georgians stormed into the cornfield. A few wounded Yankees tried to hold them off with rifle fire, but those brave men were killed with bayonets, and still the Georgians advanced through corn that had been cut down by canister, trampled by boots, scorched by shell fire, and dampened by blood. Beyond the ragged corn the Georgians could see a pasture thick with the retreating enemy and they gave the rebel yell as they hurried forward to chase the Yankees even further.

Then the Yankee gunners saw the rebels in the corn and the canister started again; great gouts of death fanning over the broken field to spin men down and douse the corn in yet more blood. The Pennsylvanians in the trees took the Georgians in the flank with fast rifle fire and the rebel counterattack stalled. For a moment the men stood there, dying, achieving nothing, then they too pulled back from the wrecked corn.

Starbuck found the remains of his three companies close to the wood. Potter's company was still fighting among the trees, while Captain Dennison's men had vanished. Cartwright was shaking with excitement, while Captain Peel was white-faced. "Lippincott's dead," he told Starbuck.

"Lippincott? Christ, I never even knew his first name," Starbuck said.

"It was Daniel," Peel said earnestly. "Where's Dennison?" "Don't know, sir," Peel said.

"I don't even know your name," Starbuck said.

"Nathaniel, sir, like you." Peel seemed embarrassed by the admission, almost as if he thought he was being presumptuous.

"Then well done, Nate," Starbuck said, then he turned as Lieutenant Coffman arrived with an order from Colonel Swynyard. Starbuck's men, along with the big 65th Virginia, were to attack into the trees to rescue the brigade's skirmishers from the deadly Pennsylvanian Bucktails. It took a few minutes to align the three Yeilowleg companies; then, without waiting for the larger Virginian regiment, Starbuck ordered them into the trees. "Charge!" he shouted. "Come on!" He was screaming the rebel yell, wanting to put the fear of God into the enemy, but when the Yellowlegs charged past the skirmish line they discovered the Yankees were gone. The Bucktails had fired so fast that they had exhausted their ammunition and were already slipping back out of the wood. They left their dead behind, each corpse with a buck's tail on its hat. Swynyard's attack, denied its prey, slowed and stopped.

"Back where you started from!" Colonel Swynyard called. "Back to your positions! Back! Captain Truslow! Here!"

He put Truslow in charge of the wood, giving him every skirmisher in the brigade as his force. The Pennsylvanians would probably return, resupplied with their unique cartridges. Truslow had found one of the Sharps rifles and was exploring its mechanism. "Clever," Truslow said sourly, reluctant to praise anything Northern.

"Accurate, too," Starbuck said, looking at his own dead skirmishers. Sergeant Rothwell was alive, and so was Potter, but too many good men had died. Case was alive, leading a small coterie of his cronies. Case, like a couple of his friends, had pinned a dead Pennsylvanian's buck's tail to his own hat to show he had killed one of the feared skirmishers and Starbuck liked the gesture. "Case!" he shouted.

Case turned his gaze on Starbuck, saying nothing. "You're a sergeant."

A flicker of a smile showed on the grim face, then Case turned away. "He don't like you," Truslow said. "He's the one I fought."

"The one you should have killed," Truslow said. "He's a good soldier."

"Good soldiers make bad enemies," Truslow observed, then spat tobacco juice.

The brigade formed again where it had started the day, though now its ranks had been thinned by death. Men from Haxall's Arkansas regiment helped the wounded back to the graveyard, while others brought water from the springhouse of the burned farm. Starbuck sent a dozen men to loot the cartridge pouches of the dead and distribute the ammunition. Lucifer brought Starbuck a full canteen of water. "Mister Tumlin," Lucifer said gleefully, "is in the graveyard."

"Dead?" Starbuck asked savagely.

"Hiding behind the wall."

"Dennison?"

"Him too," Lucifer grinned.

"Sons of bitches," Starbuck said. He turned to run over to the graveyard, but just then a bugle sounded and the Yankee artillery began to fire again and Starbuck turned back.

The second Northern attack was coming.

In Harper's Ferry the noise of battle was like distant thunder, but a thunder that never ended. Vagaries of wind would sometimes dull the sound to a grumble, or else magnify it so that the ominous crack of individual guns could be heard.

The captured Federal garrison had been marched away to captivity and now the last rebel soldiers prepared to leave the small, ransacked town. The troops were General Hill's Light Division, three thousand of Jackson's best men, and they had seventeen miles to march to reach the source of the bruising noise that filled the sky.

It promised to be a hot day, a searing hot day, a day when marching would be hell, but nothing to the hell that waited for them at their journey's end. General Hill wore his red shirt, a sign he expected to fight.

The Light Division began its march, while ten miles north, but blocked from them by the wide Potomac River, their comrades pushed new powder into blackened rifle barrels and a new mass of Yankees, more numerous than the first, came down the turnpike.

And the battle was scarcely a half hour old.