"Who are you, boys?" shouted Charles's senior lieutenant, a stocky, cheery young man with red curls.

On the June breeze, blurred by hoofbeats, the answer came bock: "Black Horse. Fauquier County."

"Let's give 'em a run, Charlie," First Lieutenant Ambrose Pell veiled to his superior.

To stave off chaos, Charles reacted with a bellowed order. "Form twos — trot — march!"

The execution of the maneuver was so sloppy as to defy belief. The troop managed to straggle into a double file at the proper gait, then responded with whoops and much kepi-flourishing when Charles gave the order to gallop. But they were too late to patch the sergeants, who drove the five black horses away to the left, crossing the pasture and vanishing in a grove.

Envy stung Charles. If the noncoms indeed came from the Black Horse Cavalry he'd heard so much about, they had found some fine animals. He was dissatisfied with his own mount, Hasher, bought in Columbia. She came of good Carolina saddle-horse stock, but she was frequently balky. So far she didn't live up to her name.

The road curved northeast, away from the fenced pasture. Charles reduced the gait to a trot, ignored another frivolous question from Ambrose, whom he had the professional misfortune to like, and wondered how in heaven he could forge a fighting unit from this assortment of aristocrats who called you by your first name, disdained all graduates of West Point, and tried to knock you down if you gave an order to which they objected. Twice since arriving at the bivouac down in Hanover County, Charles had resorted to his fists to curb disobedience.

In the Hampton Legion, his was a kind of misfit troop, consisting of men who'd come in from all parts of South Carolina. Nearly every one of the foot and mounted units in Hampton's command had been raised in a single county, or even a single town.