Yet there weren’t so many of the dark green uniforms. No more had followed the first flood; plenty were already fallen — for make them angry or scared or merely startled like a herd of spooked cattle, and that Moha rabble could fight. Except at the initial surprise blow there can’t have been much arrow work. Jammed there in the narrow gut of the road, both sides were forced to infighting, always a deadly business. I don’t know how many brown shapes lay mingled with the green-shirted Katskil dead. The brown and red-brown melted at that distance into gory mud.

The flag of Moha reappeared, hurrying up the rise. At least the soldiers of the color guard weren’t all of a whimper for the comfort of the city’s stockade. To this day I wonder why a b.s. yard-boy on the run, with scant reason to love his native land, should have gulped tears of pride and awe at seeing how the Moha color guard knew where to go. A glory of white and blue and gold, it climbed the rise, that rag with no meaning except the fantasies men had woven into the fabric. A wave of green surged to meet it, a wave of men who just as dearly loved a rag of black and scarlet.

I saw that flag too, wrathful in the wind. Moha cavalry charged it; their horses fell pierced or hamstrung. Black and scarlet are colors of night and fire. That flag was glorious as ours, if there is such a thing as glory.

But down in my neighborhood was disgrace, nastiness of panic. I saw one flash of contrary action — one horseman galloped by toward the battle and in passing whipped the flat of his sword against a mouth that was howling: “To Skoar!” Only three riders followed him. Maybe the rest were out of my sight trying to stem the disorder of the infantry, the men who had come to defend the city and were now running for shelter inside it — a slow run, like the motion of men caught in momentum who must keep their legs moving or fall on their faces.

I took out my golden horn. Forty feet above them I blew the call that trumpet had sounded, three times.

I looked down. No one had located me. The sound would have seemed to be coming from all around them. They were not running now. I blew the call a fourth time, more quietly, as though the men of their own kind up the road had said in reasonable voices: “We are in trouble.”

In the silence some cavalry boy dropped the words: “Kay, let’s go take them!” They ran — the other way.

Moha won a dazzling victory that day, if there is such a thing as victory. I’m sure history calls it a victory, for the priests who turn out the little simple books for the schools must have recorded the puffing Moha-Katskil war of 317 — it didn’t even last into the following year. Old woman history chewing her mishmash of truth and maybe-so beside the uncertain fire of today.

When I looked again at the distant rise I saw the color guard still cruelly pressed, no more than a dozen Moha men left around the standard-bearer. As the ring of defenders was cut even smaller it held shape in stubborn courage, a shine of steel within a dark green band. At the crest of the rise the demoralized cavalry was winning back some order. They might have been dangerous in a charge. Charging at what? — not at the nimble devils who slid in and out among them like green smoke. Here and there riderless horses broke for the woods leaving man to his own sickening inventions.

But now came the cavalry of the first battalion returning up the hill roaring calamity, crashing first against the green band around the color guard and smashing it like a splintered wheel. The flag danced and moved up the rise. Then Moha’s foot-soldiers — recovered, eager, their panic overcome by a simpler lust. My mind could hear their steel cuting through air and crushing flesh — for a minute or two I think I was shivering myself with my own insanity of pride. This was the accomplishment of my golden horn.

I watched a man in dark green flee for the forest cover with three Moha soldiers after him. One pursuer had lost his loin-rag and most of his shirt; distance made the naked man an insect — weedy, prancing high-kneed. A javelin caught the fugitive in the back. The naked jo and his companions slowly shoved steel into him as he lay motionless.

Since that day I have fought without disgracing myself in two wars, against the pirates in 327 and in the rebellion of this year, when we fought to defend Dion’s reforms and were compelled to learn that the people will not and cannot benefit from any reforms unless they come gradually; I have never again taken my golden horn near the scene of war…

All Katskil men were now in retreat, and the flag of Moha already throbbed in beauty at the top of the rise. I saw no banner of black and scarlet; it must have gone with the retreat back into the woods. I saw no more sunlight. The fresh cavalry unit joined the broken one and their captains conferred under a gray sky. Only foot-soldiers were chasing the Katskil men into the woods. One cavalry captain was jerking his arms as if talking in wrath, or self-justification maybe. The other must have managed to strike flint and get a light to his pipe in spite of the dancing uneasiness of his horse, for I saw a tiny spook of gray float above his head.

A trumpet presently recalled the infantry — they could hardly have done much in the woods, where the Katskil men might regroup and make them sorry for it — and the Moha battalions were again in motion. Hardly more than twenty minutes could have passed since I saw that first scout. A skirmish, engaging less than a thousand Moha men, on the Katskil side perhaps four hundred.

The cause of the war was a dreary boundary dispute that had been kept alive one way or another for fifty years. So far as I can see, nations exist because of boundaries and not the other way around; the boundaries are drawn by people more or less like you and me and your Aunt Cassandra, and we like to think that as human beings we know enough not to sit down in wet paint bare-ass, or lift a porcupine by the tail, or hack the baby’s head off to cure a teething pain. It’s a curious thing; I can probably give you a perfect solution to any contradictions involved, next Wednesday, if I don’t oversleep.

Words floated up to me from the road: “Did y’ see the Katty I got, tall sumbitch with a beard? My God ’n’ Abraham, don’t look like they teach ’em to cover the gut aytall.” Another voice was crying and petulant — the wounded were being carried by. A man wanted to see his daughter. They could bring her, he said — it was safe here, no stinking soldiers around — she was nine, she’d be wearing a brown smock her Ma made her — that voice faded out and another said: “My head hurts.” Over and over, that also growing fainter, obscured by a shuffle of footsteps, clash of gear, other voices: “My head hurts — my head hurts…” They were gone, leaving the morning peaceful if there is such a thing as peace.

I had heard no noise of dogs behind me; now I was released from that and other fears. Skoar would be soon celebrating the entry of a glorious army, and never mind fugitive yard-boys. There’d be crowds, bonfires with kids dancing naked and shrieking, churches adrone with hymns of thanksgiving, taverns and whorehouses squaring off for a long night’s work, policers busy with brawls and drunks and the quackpots who bounce out of their holes at the first whiff of excitement, and public speakers being trotted out of their stables — you know, with a rope at each side of the bit and a third handler in case the speaker should fumble at the happy task of ramming the splendid mahooha into the quivering public mind.

I studied the countryside, wishing the rain would arrive and lighten the air. Black dots were growing large like separated shreds of cloud. The crows were already on the scene; they would have been cynically watching from nearby. Other creatures would join them before long, the rats and wild yellow dogs and carrion ants.