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“Thank you, sir,” Sandy said. “I would’ve shot him anyway, but I cherish your approval. After all, he was your crew.”

“We made an agreement,” Picard confirmed, and fumbled to reload his rifle.

Above the heads of the oncoming British floated the King’s colors, the flag of Great Britain emblazoned with the badge of that particular grenadier unit out there. The red jacketed wraiths’ faces were blackened with powder burns now, but they kept coming, unaffected by the sight of Yankee minutemen being mowed down in the town road as one might mow grass. Some grenadiers marching, and others were pausing to fire, then moving on forward. They were doing that by ranks, in disciplined shifts, and Picard found it stunning that such efficient destruction could be so messy.

Behind him, daring patriots were hurled backward and lay moaning in the thickening musket smoke that crippled aim from both sides. Musketballs plucked at the dirt street and snapped bark off trees.

Terror for Alexander knitted Picard’s spine. If one of those hit him, there would be no time to hold the program. “Keep firing!” O’Heyne shouted over the tangled howl of musketfire from the British.

Picard tipped his musket down in an effort to see what was happening, then brought it up quickly and fired, though he couldn’t see a damned thing, not enough to avoid hitting those who were ironically his allies. The explosion came again, but this time there was no “kick.”

Had he forgotten to put the ball in?

He glared at the pigheaded musket as if it was about to grow lips and answer him. Had it misfired?

Sandy Leonfeld leaned down in front of Picard and came up with a lead ball in his hand. “You tipped the barrel down, Lieutenant. The ball rolled out.”

“Oh … thank you, Sergeant.”

“Your servant, sir.”

Picard fielded a perplexed glower from Sandy, intimating that the sergeant didn’t understand why a naval officer wouldn’t know to hold his gun up.

Jeremiah grasped O’Heyne’s arm. “Patrick, we’ll hold this line if we can. You hurry and meet Colonel Fox and tell him what’s happening.”

“I don’t like that much,” O’Heyne said.

“Like it or not, you’d better go. I can’t explain the military approach those men are using, and I think it would be patently beyond the call of our agreement to ask any of these other gentlemen to do our reporting for us.”

O’Heyne glanced through the pale trees at the fleeting phantoms of British soldiers, and reluctantly nodded. He threw an arm around Jeremiah and added, “Fall back if you must. Promise me, now. You have a wife to live for. I’ll have to marry her if you die, and she’s too young for me. Besides, you’re not that good a soldier.”

Jeremiah smiled, but before he could answer, a huge jarring boom burst out behind them!

Picard twisted to see what had happened. Out of the maddened night came a flock of soldiers armed with bayoneted rifles and wearing green jackets faced with red. The colonial militia—the Dover Light Infantry!

“Oh, how nice,” Picard murmured. “Look at that.”

“Can I stay now?” O’Heyne laughed.

Strangely romantic and compelling, the Dover Lights braced in the middle of the street, took aim, and fired as a unit without anyone shouting an order to them, unleashing a hideous punishment over the heads of Picard and the others. The British column hunched forward against the blistering attack, but did not break.

Now there was smoke on both sides of the barricade and it crippled the aim of both units. That didn’t stop or even slow the crack of gunfire or the whine of musketballs. Picard looked up and saw bloody nothing. There was noise, though, lots of it—the boom of rifles, the sounds of gasping, screaming, vomiting, and the rattle of snare drums. Everything was muted, though. He was half deafened.

Jeremiah shouted cryptically, “We can’t hold against them!”

“Maybe they’ll let you be prisoners,” Alexander coughed. “If you give up, they won’t kill you. That’s right, isn’t it?”

“I’ve been supplying the Colonial militia,” O’Heyne told him. “If Delaware Station is taken, I