The musket fire boomed and echoed in the dim, cramped room. A fatalistic calm had settled over the women and children. Seora Esparza stared into space. The eldest of her three sons, a handsome twelve-year- old named Enrique, gazed fiercely at the ceiling, his lips forming words no one could hear. Amanda understood the meaning, though. Very few times in her life had she seen such hatred on a human face.

Unbelievably, the soldiers were still riddling the corpses on the gun platform. Through rifts in the smoke, Amanda saw bodies jump and jerk as the balls struck. The crazed behavior of the Mexicans told her a good deal about the fury of the battle in the plaza. Only incredible losses could explain the savagery of the attackers.

Another bent figure came darting out of the smoke. How Jake Walker, a gunner from Tennessee, had thus far escaped death Amanda couldn't imagine. Then she saw that he had been hit. He seemed to be looking for someone. Suddenly, he rushed forward.

"Miz Dickinson-if they let you live, you got to get a message to my wife. You got to tell her-"

"Jake, not so loud!" Amanda warned.

Too late, Walker whipped his head around. He realized his shout had attracted attention. Soldiers converged on the sacristy door, muskets raised.

Amanda flung herself at Susannah and Walker, hoping to thrust them out of the way. Walker took a step backward. Amanda drove Susannah to the ground, tumbling on top of her.

Walker gaped at the hostile faces in the doorway. He yelled something, raised his hands in front of his face- The muskets exploded. Walker shrieked as a ball struck him in the throat. He fell, blood gushing down over his chest.

On hands and knees beside the gasping Susannah, Amanda watched a boy belonging to one of the Mexican women clamber to his feet. Tugging a blanket around his shoulders as if he were cold, the boy started to speak. A soldier aimed and shot the boy through the stomach.

The mother moaned and fainted as the boy struck the ground. Enraged, Amanda jumped up, running at the soldiers, shouting at them in the Spanish she knew so well: "Goddamn you for a pack of animals-!"

Muskets were leveled again. She ducked as two went off. Susannah cried out-and Angelina too. The little girl clutched her right leg where the ball had hit.

A soldier slammed the butt of his musket against Amanda's forehead. She sprawled, hitting hard. As she struggled to take a breath, half a dozen soldiers crowded into the sacristy and surrounded Jake Walker. As they'd done with Evans and Bowie, they lifted the body on their bayonets and tossed it. Amanda gagged, averting her head. She felt warm blood from the corpse spatter her face- Then, abruptly, she heard a new voice, loud and deep. Something whacked against skin. A soldier squealed.

Amanda pushed up from the ground, gained her feet. She was still short of breath, blinking from the thick smoke beginning to fill the room. Her head ached suddenly. She expected a bayonet stroke any instant- It never came. A man she couldn't immediately identify was flailing the soldiers with the flat of his saber. They fell back, muskets raised to parry the blows.

Her vision cleared a little. The man using his sword to drive the infantrymen into the chapel was a hatless officer in a red-faced blue coat stained with blood and dirt.

"His Excellency gave no orders for slaughtering women, you whoresons!" he shouted. "Get out! Leave these people alone!"

The officer's fury sent the soldiers milling into the smoke. When they were all gone, he touched Jake Walker's corpse with the toe of one boot, getting blood on the leather. His mouth twisted in disgust.

Amanda stood panting and rubbing her watering eyes. Finally she got a clear look at the officer. He was in his thirties, stout. His skin was swarthy, his hair black and wavy. His glance shifted from Walker to the dead boy tangled in the blanket. Looking pained, he tapped the flat of his sword against his trousers and turned his attention to the surviving women and children.

"I assume that most of you speak Spanish? I am here to help you-"

Still sickened by the brutality she'd witnessed, Amanda stepped forward. The officer pivoted. His round face might have been a merry face in different circumstances. Now it showed surprise as Amanda bent her head and spat on the officer's boots.

One of the women groaned, obviously afraid that Amanda's defiance would produce more violence. The officer's jaw whitened. But he didn't raise his sword.

He glanced down at the spittle glistening on his reddened boot. Then back at Amanda. "I will overlook your disrespect, seorita"-he'd glanced at Amanda's left hand and seen no ring; she had put it away permanently after Jaimie died-"because I understand how you were driven to it by the excesses of our men. Sequestered in here, you undoubtedly have no idea of what they have been through. Indeed-"

A bitter amusement shone in his dark eyes. He had an almost boyish countenance, Amanda decided. But the essentially benign features had been hardened by weather, and by war. The officer was clearly no coward, but neither did he seem to be cruel. She began to hope she and the others might survive.

The officer shrugged in a tired way, continuing. "Indeed I doubt whether the army can withstand another such victory." The last word was tainted with sarcasm.

"I am Major Cordoba," he went on. "I must inform you that you are the prisoners of His Excellency General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna, President of the Republic of Mexico." He pointed his saber at Angelina Dickinson. The little girl was leaning against her kneeling mother, crying and clutching her bloodied skirt to her wounded leg. "I shall attempt to secure a litter for the child-"

Still with a bitter edge to her voice, Amanda said, "Don't trick us, Major. If we're going to be taken somewhere and shot, I for one would just as soon get it over with right here."

Cordoba's lips compressed. He was angry. "Seorita-"

"My name is de la Gura. Seora de la Gura."

Amanda's insolent tone made Cordoba color even more. "Seora, then! You are foolish if you refuse to entrust yourself to me. I have been sent specifically-"

"How can we trust men who shoot children?" Amanda retorted, pointing at the fallen boy.

"The boy's death is regrettable, but-"

"Regrettable? It's inhuman!"

Wilting under her glare, Cordoba muttered, "Yes, granted-granted!" Louder then: "But it is impossible to control men who have just concluded an engagement such as this. I repeat-you have no idea of what our troops suffered at the hands of your people."

There was grudging respect in Cordoba's last statement. Amanda's anger cooled a little. The man did seem intelligent-decent, even. That couldn't be said of most of the soldiers.

"Major?" Susannah Dickinson said in English. "My husband was on the gun platform. I-I assume he's dead, but-"

"Please," Cordoba interrupted in Spanish. "It would be easier if you would speak in my language."

"I don't know it very well," Susannah replied, her voice shaky. Amanda hurried to her side and cradled an arm around her shoulder. Clinging to her mother and crying softly, little Angelina looked ready to swoon with pain.

"Ask your question," Amanda said to Susannah. "I'll translate for him."

"Will I have a chance to look for my husband's body? I'd like to see him decently buried."

Cordoba glanced at Amanda. She put the query into Spanish. When she concluded, Cordoba shook his head.

"His Excellency has instructed that only our soldiers are to be buried. Unfortunately, the seora's husband is considered a traitor to the republic. Therefore-"

"For God's sake spare us your lectures, Major!"

"I was only attempting to explain why the seora's husband would be denied burial. I am afraid it will also be denied to yours."

"My husband died four years ago."

"I see."

Cordoba eyed her speculatively while she told Susannah what he had said. Almeron Dickinson's wife closed her eyes and shook her head, looking more defeated than ever.

Cordoba tried to be conciliatory. "For your own safety, I beg you all to remain here while I see about the litter. We will escort you out of the mission and back to Bexar as soon as possible. I suggest that as we depart, you do not look too closely at the sights in the main plaza. For the sake of your own sensibilities-"

The sentence trailed off into awkward silence. All at once Amanda felt completely drained of anger. She was exhausted, and desperate to get out of this death-choked place- Cordoba started to leave. It was Seora Esparza who stopped him this time. "We will look our fill. Butcher."

"Please, seora! You and I are not enemies. We are people of the same nation-"

"No. I am a Texan, like my husband, Gregorio. I hate your Santa Anna just as he did. When my children and I go out, we will see what your dictator has done-and remember it until another time. Then we will repay you."

Cordoba smiled in a humorless way. "I don't doubt His Excellency worries about that very thing. That's why he is in such desperate haste to put an end to the rebellion."

The major vanished into the sunlit smoke. A few seconds later, Amanda heard him summoning men-cursing in the process.

Cordoba's command of obscenities made her wonder about him. Was his apparent concern for the welfare of the noncombatants only a pretense? Or was the bluster, the cursing, the false part? She supposed it didn't really make much difference so long as Angelina received prompt attention, and no one else was hurt.

Another burst of musket fire drew her attention to the chapel. The Mexicans were still mutilating the dead. Laughing, even singing, in celebration of the slaughter- Amanda's face hardened. As Seora Esparza had said, it would be a long time before the people of Texas forgot the dreadful dawn just past.

iv

In the final assault on the Alamo, Santa Anna's army had pounded the walls with cannons, then scaled them with ladders and pushed the defenders back in hand-to-hand combat to last-ditch positions in rooms in the long barracks. But even Major Cordoba's warning hadn't adequately prepared Amanda for what she saw as armed soldiers escorted the survivors into the main plaza.

The plaza was literally a field of corpses, hundreds of them. For every American, there seemed to be ten of the enemy. There was a stench of blood and powder that the morning sun couldn't burn out of the air. The faces and limbs of the dead were black with flies.

Several of the women began crying again. One of the Esparza children vomited. Amanda dug her nails into her palms and swallowed sourness in her throat. It was apparent that the Texans had given ground a foot at a time. The soldiers who had reached the chapel had done so over small mountains of bodies.

Amanda recognized almost all of the Texan dead. She had cooked for the men, joked with them-and now she saw them lying in grotesque postures, lifeless hands clenched around pistols and knives. She fought to keep from weeping herself.

By the time the captives and their guards were a quarter of the way to the open gate, Amanda's shoes gave off a squishing sound. She glanced down, sickened. So much blood had been spilled, the hard ground couldn't absorb it all. She had stepped in a sticky red pool of it.

Mexican soldiers searched for souvenirs among the heaped bodies. But near the wall, she noted an unusually large mound of corpses that the human scavengers seemed to be avoiding. Most of the dead appeared to be Mexicans, but she recognized one American among them. He lay on his back, his face a patchwork of bayonet cuts. At least two dozen other wounds had torn his hunting shirt and trousers.

Pacing at her side as he had since they left the chapel, Cordoba noticed her stare. "That man in the fur cap-is he the one called Crockett?"

"Yes."

"I'm told it took a score or more to bring him down."

"That doesn't surprise me."

"You can see the soldiers fear to go near him even now-"

The sight of Crockett's stabbed body unleashed new rage within her. It found a ready target in Cordoba's continuing presence. "I don't need your personal attention, Major. In fact I resent it."

"Understandably." Cordoba nodded. His brown eyes kept moving back and forth from one group of soldiers to another. Some of the soldiers watched the prisoners with sullen fury. "However, you must accept it until we are safely outside. I want no incidents-"

"What sort of incidents?"

"Noncombatants are to be spared-that was His Excellency's order. But it won't be obeyed voluntarily. I really think you still fail to understand the importance of this engagement, seora."

"What do you mean?"

"Just this. Your General Houston has boasted too often that, with five hundred men, the province of Texas could be liberated from Mexico. His Excellency had to win this battle-at any price. To do so, he inflamed the passions of his men-"

Cordoba inclined his head toward a pair of soldiers busily plying knives. One soldier was sawing through the bone of a Texan's ring finger in order to claim an emerald signet. His sweaty-faced companion had a different purpose. While Amanda watched, the soldier whacked off the ear of a dead man she recognized as one of Crockett's twelve from Tennessee. With a gruff shout, the soldier displayed the souvenir to other Mexicans nearby. They laughed and applauded. Grinning, the soldier tucked the ear into his pocket.

"Indeed, seora, the very spirit with which your people resisted only heightened the desire for revenge. That's why looting must be permitted. And why the faces are being cleaned-"

He pointed to other soldiers using rags to wipe the dirt from the fallen, Mexican and American alike.

Amanda shook her head, not understanding. Cordoba explained in a somber voice, "His Excellency wishes no mistakes made about the identity of each body. As I informed you, our soldiers will be buried. Your people will be burned."

"Scum," she breathed. "Murdering scum, that's all you are-"

"Alas, seora, war is seldom an ethical business."

"There could have been terms! Honorable surrender-"

"No. An example was needed. Besides, would your people have accepted terms?"

She pushed back a stray lock of dirty hair from her forehead, unable to reply. Thank God the gate was only a short distance away. Susannah Dickinson, accompanying the litter on which her daughter rested, had already reached the body-strewn ground between the mission and the river. Two black men were just following her out the gate. One was Sam, who had come from the sacristy. The other was Travis' slave, Joe, captured in the long barracks. Both men were crying.

"Well, seora?" Cordoba prodded. "Would the Texans have accepted terms of any kind?"

She turned her head, gazing at the disheveled major. He was still something of an enigma. He had the erect bearing and outward flintiness of a professional. Yet there was a certain softness in his eyes that suggested another, more elusive man behind the facade. For the first time she noticed his tunic. It bulged noticeably; his belly was growing fat. And he looked tired.

Less angry, she answered, "I doubt it. When Anglos get pushed too far, they usually fight back. There's a saying they use when someone threatens them-"

"A saying? What is it?"

"Turn loose your wolf."

"In other words-do what you will?"

"Do what you will-but you'll regret it."

Cordoba sighed. "That was obviously the case here. However-"

Stumbling, Amanda uttered a little cry. The major caught her arm. One of the enlisted men walking with the captives noticed Cordoba's quick reaction, and smirked.

Cordoba glared. The soldier blinked and swallowed, intimidated by the fury of the major's eyes.

Amanda carefully disengaged her arm from Cordoba's hand. He refused to look at her, staring instead at her cordage bracelet. His round face was still flushed.

By all rights she ought to hate him. Yet she couldn't bring herself to it.

"Where are you taking us?" she asked finally.

"You and the Seora Dickinson are going to His Excellency. The Mexican women and children will be set free."