She laughed and squeezed his hand. "God help me, as if I didn't already know that. Who'd ever have thought I'd be going about half in love with a man like you."
"I thought you once said you weren't interested in falling in love." He kissed her lightly. "Probably a safe idea. I don't know how many of us are going to live through this."
Before she could respond, he rose on one elbow and pointed toward a pair of horses approaching from the south. "It looks like we may get back to Bridgetown after all. I think that's Briggs, and he's brought Anthony with him. It's odds they both distrust me only slightly more than they hate each other, but it's enough to make them allies for a while. Well, they're welcome to have back this command any time they want it."
"I don't think Anthony's going to like that idea, but it's your affair. God knows I know better than to try and give you advice."
She laughed. "Then you're starting to understand me better than I thought."
"Let me just have a word with Anthony about the condition of the ordnance. And make some gunnery assignments." He began to pull himself up. "Then maybe we'll retire down to the _Defiance _for a while. I've missed her." He stooped and kissed the top of her head as he rose to his feet. "And I've missed you, too. Truly."
Anthony Walrond reined in his dun mare and stared dumbly toward the shore as he and Briggs emerged from the trees. The night before it had been a melee of muskets, commands, screams; now it was a smoky landscape strewn with lost helmets and bandoliers, and stained with dark splotches where men had fallen. In its peacefulness it made the battle seem scarcely more than a violent dream, a lost episode that existed only in man's flawed memory, not in time.
Battles, he reflected, were always a matter of chance. You plan strategies for days, devise elaborate tactics, try to guess what you would do if you were the foe. But in the end little of it really matters. A man panics, or a horse stumbles, or your musket fails to fire, and suddenly nothing happens the way you thought. It becomes a contest of bravery, luck, happenstance. Whether you win or lose, it's likely as not for reasons you never envisioned.
In a way, last night's episode was no different. Dick Morris and his Roundheads lost more men than they should have. Since they only expected militia at the breastwork, the parapet caught them by surprise. Also, they seemed deceived at first by the feigned retreat, the bird limping and flopping away from her nest to lure the fox.