The ranking sergeant was in the middle of the Parade, screaming a bit of tender abuse at each solitary lobsterback who came running in. Squads were schooling like fish on the green. It put Rufus MacIan in mind of the War: of the glorious carnage of Blenheim, piercing the French lines at Brabant, crossing the morass on the right end of the line at Ramillies, breaking the French cavalry before Oudenaarde. A thousand tales of gallantry that had become mere stuff between veterans’ deaf ears. Part of him wanted to stride across that green Parade, rally those troops—for excellent troops they were—and lead them to the Wharf. But his status as condemned traitor and sworn enemy would be an impediment there. To settle his mind on the task at hand was easy enough—he need only turn around and look at that red-headed girl, and remember the day when he had picked her up from the cold blue breast of her dead mother and wrapped her in bloody bed-clothes and borne her up screaming into the crags above Glen Coe.